Government-linked commentators in China have reacted with typical hostility to Australia's plans to increase defence spending, highlighting a gradual cooling of relations between Beijing and Canberra at a time of growing strategic rivalries. 
Li Jie, who works for a research unit under the People's Liberation Army Navy said via phone from Beijing Australia's military build-up will threaten its economic relationship with China and is part of a "dangerous regional trend".
"Australia has been encouraged, seduced and threatened [into a military build-up] by the United States. Australia should try to maintain a good economic and trade relationship with China ... military expenditure will not bring any benefit to Australia either strategically or economically."
As part of its long-term defence planning, Australia has committed to increase spending by $30 billion over the next decade. The increase was contained in the government's latest defence white paper released on Thursday, which Li said highlights Australia's increasing closeness to Japan and the United States.
"The white paper reveals the likelihood of a strengthened alliance between the US, Japan and Australia."
As The Australian Financial Review reported on Monday, Japanese politicians now openly talk about growing defence ties with Australia as a "quasi-alliance". Australia has not bought into such language, but its increasingly close ties with Tokyo have upset Beijing and saw Foreign Minster Julie Bishop receive a cool reception during her visit to China last week.
Tensions between Japan and China have eased in recent months, but Beijing still regularly rebukes Tokyo for a failure to sufficiently acknowledge its wartime atrocities.
It has also criticised Japan's new security legislation, which allows its troops to fight overseas to protect its allies and export arms for the first time since World War II.
This could see Japan win the bid for Australia's new fleet of 12 submarines, which the white paper said would cost $150 billion to build and maintain over the next 30 years - three times the estimates.
"What's the point of the Australian government spending so much taxpayers' money?" Li said. "Australia can get a good economic return from China but only promises from the US."
China has increased its defence budget by at least 10 per cent each year for the last two decades, spending $200 billion in 2015, expenditure which ranked it second behind the US.
Wang Zhenyu from the China Institute of International Studies, a think tank attached to the Foreign Ministry, said Australia's economic relationship with China could be hurt by its security arrangements with the United States and Japan.
"Australia's security architecture in the region is at odds with its economic architecture," he said. "I think China would be concerned about this large increase in Australia's defence budget."