Alarm as Japan steps up military spending

Japan's military spending will rise 1.3 percent to a record 5.2 trillion yen ($46 billion), under a defense budget approved by the Cabinet on Friday.

The budget for the year starting in April means Japan's military spending has kept rising for six consecutive years. Such spending has grown about 10 percent since Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in 2012, Bloomberg said.

Zhang Xiaolei, associate researcher at the Institute of Japanese Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said rises in military spending were a constant feature of Abe's rule.