China is defending its rising military spending, saying its massive investments in the armed forces have contributed to global peace and stability.

Spokeswoman Fu Ying said the figure for this year's defense budget would appear in the overall budget to be released Tuesday at the opening of the annual legislative session.

Fu cited U.N. peacekeeping and anti-piracy patrols as examples of China's contribution to world peace and stability.

Chinese defense spending has grown substantially each year for more than two decades, and last year rose 11.2 percent to 670.2 billion yuan ($106.4 billion), an increase of about 67 billion yuan.

This is puts China’s military spending ahead third-place Russia’s, but still still dwarfed by the U.S. base defense budget of $530 billion. In 2011 China’s military budget made up 2 percent of national GDP according to the World Bank, making it a nation with moderately high proportionate military expenditure, but still far from the U.S.’s 4.7 percent and Israel’s 6.8 percent.