According to a report of the Global Times published on March 5, China announced yesterday its 2010 defense budget which is pending NPC review. The double-digit growth in the past two decades was broken with an increase rate suddenly dropping to 7.5%, causing a general sudden feeling from the outside world. The Chinese military expenditure has always been criticized by western public opinions in recent years, and "the acceleration of PLA modernization" has become the best excuse for many countries and different groups to seek profits in the past decade. Western public opinions mostly made comments yesterday with vigilance on the changes in the growth of Chinese military expenditure. The two most concentrated views are: one is that this is a "political statement" to appease the outside concerns; the other is to speculate that the poor economic situation makes China "tighten the belt" on military expenditure. Many people at home similarly expressed yesterday that it was "unexpectable". In the voting on the Global Network on the 4th, 81% of the voters considered that "it was too little an increase".