- Two analysts said the Pentagon's report on China's military makes Beijing appear weaker than it actually is.
- According to the 2023 report, the US defense budget is $889 billion, while China's defense budget is about $230 billion.
- But researchers said this left out important factors such as research budgets and China's purchasing power.
China's military spending and threats are likely much higher than portrayed by the Pentagon, which recently reported figures showing that China's defense budget is nearly a quarter of the US's. said two U.S. analysts on Monday.
The Pentagon's annual report to Congress, released in October 2023, addressed military development in China in 2022 and reported that China spent $230 billion on defense that year.
Much of that spending went toward strengthening China's ability to occupy Taiwan by force, the report said, by aggressively expanding its navy, air force and nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile, in December, Congress approved $886 billion in funding for the U.S. military, approximately 3.85 times the reported 2022 Chinese budget.
But anyone who thinks this means China's military is one-fourth as strong as the U.S. is missing several important factors, says Allison National Security, a conservative think tank run by the Heritage Foundation. write center researchers Robert Peters and Wilson Beaver.
“As the newspaper acknowledges, China's real defense spending is probably much higher. European think tanks estimate that China's real defense spending is at least 30-40% higher than the official budget.” Beaver wrote on the military news site Real Clear Defense.
Peters and Beaver wrote that the Pentagon assessment fails to account for China's military research spending.
Such an amount would be substantial, they wrote, given the amount of money the United States spends for this purpose. The Department of Defense has requested $145 billion for research, development and testing in 2024.
China also implements a “civil-military fusion” strategy that gives the military free access to private sector intellectual property and technology.
“Confusingly, this report does not attempt to account for any of these important considerations in its treatment of China's top-line defense budget,” Peters and Beaver write.
China could significantly reduce pay for soldiers
And China's high purchasing power means it can do much more with less, they added.
As an example, the Chinese government pays its soldiers much less than the United States, the researchers wrote. A 2021 report from the oft-cited Economist magazine reported that Chinese new employees earn a monthly salary of $108, which is one-sixteenth of the $1,900 monthly salary for new employees in the United States.
Peters and Beaver estimate that, in general, “Chinese military personnel earn only about a quarter of what American military personnel earn.”
“Simply put, China's defense spending is much more advanced than the United States because of lower labor and material costs in China,” the researchers wrote.
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said in September that the Chinese government's annual defense budget for 2023 is $224 billion, compared to an internal US assessment that puts the Chinese government's annual defense budget at $700 billion. Since then, China's true military spending has once again attracted attention.
Former Atlantic Treaty Organization Allied Commander in Chief James Stavridis said in September that if China's budget was indeed $700 billion, it would be growing rapidly and account for about 4% of the country's GDP. .
“That trajectory alone is alarming,” Stavridis wrote in Bloomberg.
China's GDP in 2023 is reported to be approximately $17.8 trillion. The United States spends about 3.5% of its GDP on the military.
“We should avoid overreacting to what appears to be more accurate data on China's military push,” Stavridis wrote.
“But the first step is for the Pentagon, not just the halls of power in Washington, to discuss this issue,” he added.
Peters and Bieber made a similar argument, warning that “there is a significant disconnect between the U.S. government's perception of the threat posed by China's military spending and the public's perception of it.”
“Because while this report is alarming, it almost certainly underestimates the threat from China,” they wrote.
The Pentagon Press Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside of normal business hours.
