How To Compare Military Spending In The Us And China?
Posted by China Sourcing CommentatorJul 31
OK, the US spends A LOT on defense and China spends much less but aren’t products much cheaper to produce in China? Doesn’t this give them, oversimplifying for example, two tanks for every one of ours? Is calculating expenditures a skewed way to compare the two countries’ military might? What do you think?
-Also assuming the Chinese government doesn’t reveal all its spending (and the US most likely does the same).
-Links to good sources are more than welcome.
Chris
Eugene, OR
Popularity: 5% [?]
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
I don’t have a definitive answer of course, but I think that a lot more than spending has to be considered. I think strategically the US would have to be considered far superior based soley on it’s international relations that allow the US to be nearly everywhere. There are military bases worldwide, war planes can be launched from nearly every continent and certainly every ocean. And when you also consider who would ally with the US vs China…I would think the US would come out on top after a long and horrible war.
Strategic use of ICBM’s though might be the final say though.
Interested question. I don’t know there is way to answer this though…well, not to peacefully answer it.
One stat to compare economies with military spending is to use “percentage of GNP.” The higher the percentage, the more militaristic they are. For instance Colombia dedicates 6.5% (some of that U.S. military aid) because they have been fighting FARC and drug lords for years. Meanwhile Venezuela has spent less than 2% of their GNP on their military. China spent 1.7% of their GNP on their military last year. Meanwhile the U.S. spent 3.9% of its GNP on the military.
CHina, will never reveal all of his spending, for this good reason: they don’t even really know themselves! Each bases must provides his own income to pay for maintenance and even food, so each bases have to setup a small business plan, and soldiers must work outside maneuvers to pay for their bases. Many are doing illegal business, as police cannot enter military barracks, so most bootleg dvd’s are made in those bases (at least some of them). So it is quite difficult to know where all of this money is going! And as CHina is CHina, many of those money, enter the pockets of the elite… Corruption eats everything in China. So yes, money pay for more in CHina, but money disapear far more too… So I guess its pretty even! Also, you must know that the farther the money is going, inside China, the least Chance it will reach its destination… And Finally, CHina, has 1.3 billion peoples to control, so if something is happening, they need the muscle to back the power in place… So they have far more soldiers than the US will ever dream!
Alot is taken into consideration. Aircraft, naval vessels, armored land vechicles, Available man power, misslie defenses, artillery, infantry support weapons. Then there is other expenditures included. Ports, merchant marine vessels, oil reserves, air bases, and civilian labor force. then the purchasing power. In short the US has much more of everything except manpower and artillery. GDP purchasing ..US=$13,860,000,000,000 vs China=$7,043,000,000,000. What is not calculated is the technology which is far superior in favor of US. One M1A1 Abrams tank can destroy any five T80 tanks.