China's Defense/Military Breaking News Thread

[lgnxz]

This should be my final comment to the topic, as the thread isn't really suited for it.

Declining R&D spending as a percentage of GDP?!

This one from Statista shows complete difference to post #1496 above.

Both of your posts show the whole R&D program in china instead of R&D that focuses only on military, so they don't really contradict my picture. Of course, my graph could be in the wrong one as china never shares the exact number of budget allocation specific for military research, but that's originally the response that people used to prop up the low defence budget that I brought up, so third party researchers kinda forced to do the guesswork to guess the number, not to mention their biases. Nevertheless, my core point that's outside of the R&D discussion still stands, which is the defence budget that's too low.

Stop comparing China to Japan. Japan is a developed country that has pretty much reached its peak level, China is a developing country. Once China becomes a first world nation in every sense of the word, only then should military funding take priority over poverty alleviation.

What you've said is a complete 180 to the reality tho. Developing countries need to have higher defence budgets to compensate for their lack of economy, developed countries can afford themselves lower defence budget because they already have such a high GDP per capita, thus a lower percentage of military budget would be comparable to the budget of a higher percentage, developing country's budget. For example, on a pure nominal sake, a country with 30000 GDP per capita with 1% defence budget is comparable to a country with 10000 GDP per capita that has 3% defence budget. China and Japan comparison thus can show just how under-budget the PLA truly is.

An exaggeration, but the point remains. Feed your starving populace. Put a roof over their heads. Eradicate diseases and parasites. Build infrastructure. Build more infrastructure. Build schools. Mandate education. Improve material wealth. Improve social services. Encourage the flow of human capital from rich areas to poor areas. This is what China has been doing for the past 72 years of its existence, and the ensuing result is the greatest poverty alleviation campaign in human history and the birth of a superpower.

So basically you're giving the excuses on why the defence budget is this low, instead of explaining how the low defence budget can even be considered remotely acceptable when every adversarial neighbors around you are rapidly increasing their defence budget and getting more and more brazen in provoking security crisis. Wew, where do we even begin with this.. The measurement of quality of life is unrelated with the need of maintaining national sovereignty from adequate defence budget, they are mutually exclusive and not a dichotomy.

You're also treating the defence sectors as if it's not a part of the economy itself that also have a secondary function as a part of the infrastructure, industry, and material wealth. Learning from history, as it has been mentioned by other member earlier as well, some dynasties of china have collapsed because their military weren't good enough despite flourishing culturally and economically.

At a time when the pursue of economic growth can be understandably subsided with the occurring global pandemic, recession, concern for climate change and crisis in ukraine, coupled with the rapid defence growths and increasingly brazen behaviors from our adversarial neighbors, your excuses for status quo couldn't sound anymore illogical, hence the justification for a more balanced defence budget that I think should be implemented asap.

Indians are not naturally more stupid or incapable than Chinese, a look at Indian talent in the west should tell you that.

Eh I disagree, your follow up too is merely at best an indication of brain drain that's still screwing them up, and its worst is just a pure cherrypicking logic. I won't talk more of this as I've said that these metrics are quite meaningless

India will not beat China regardless of budget because its malnourishment rate, infant mortality, poverty, average IQ, life expectancy, etc, are all decades and decades behind China.

hahahaha are you serious? If this is actually true, then the people's republic of china wouldn't win a single war throughout the history. Judging by china's history I'd even half-jokingly say that we'd be at the disadvantage as the richer state against the malnourished country with high infant mortality, low life expectancy that are also developmentally decades behind The matter of militarily beating or not-beating someone historically didn't hinge on those things.

As a matter of fact, purely from those talking points, being such an advanced country could cause an incentive for your poorer yet heavily armed neighbors to cause security problems instead of deterring them. They have nothing to lose, not to mention the envy for the riches that the advanced country has can make them think they have a real possibility to have a go for a piece of the pie. Damn if only there's an answer on how to actually deter them.. All in all, I can see why you name yourself 'dengyeye' based on your general opinion on putting the economy at such a high pedestal that you even have unrealistic views on what they can do when 'shit hits the fan'.

 

[tygyg1111]

What you've said is a complete 180 to the reality tho. Developing countries need to have higher defence budgets to compensate for their lack of economy, developed countries can afford themselves lower defence budget because they already have such a high GDP per capita, thus a lower percentage of military budget would be comparable to the budget of a higher percentage, developing country's budget. For example, on a pure nominal sake, a country with 30000 GDP per capita with 1% defence budget is comparable to a country with 10000 GDP per capita that has 3% defence budget. China and Japan comparison thus can show just how under-budget the PLA truly is.

If you're looking at GPD per cap, it works only if both countries have an equal population.

 

[zgx09t]

You people simply don't get it. Is it really too much to ask for the defence spending to grows parallel to the economy? economy grows 8%, defence then should go up 8%, economy grows 4%, then defence should at least be 4% too, higher would ofc be better, it's really simple. However, what we have had for at least the last 15-20 years is a complete negligence in trying to ramp up the defence spending in conjunction with the growing economy, hence for such a long period of time, defence spending as a percentage just keeps going down, all the way now to the comical 1.27% (again that too using 2021 GDP, so it's actually even lower).

If you still can't comprehend the absurdity, let's compare it to japan. Japan, whose defence is already helped by the american's colony in their soil, and with how they legally forbid themselves to have a lot of attack/strike oriented capability, has a

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, and given their trend the rate will continue to increase as their economy is already stagnant. What's your excuse now for china to has a defence spending that's LOWER than japan??

So please, change your mindset and get a sense of the urgency, start behaving like you're from a country with 18.1 trillion dollars economy and 1.4 billion populations currently facing security challenges from india in the west, south china sea and taiwan contingency in the south east, and the american with its puppets in the east.

It's doubtful budgeting process is done without the inputs from various commands and branches prior to finalizing the hard numbers. One could imagine it's a long and tedious process stretching out over a few years ahead, at least in projections of what are in the hopper, which any planners who is worth a salt would insist as the bare minimum. And it's not a commonsense thinking that military budget should follow the temporary swings in annual GDP; rather, it should hold a steady smooth upward trend without wide swings, as budgetary outlays are mostly fixed every year regardless of what happens in the current year. You'd still do the same training, same maintenance, etc. And 7.1 % increase in this year budget would actually be more than last year's budget in absolute terms, due to base effect. If you build too much hardware in a good year, they would go obsolete almost at the same time, creating more legacy problems. So steady build up is in a way future proofing yourself with room to catch up on latest and greatest tech while maintaining a steady operational tempo. Yes China can afford drastic surge in spending but needs to make sure it's not for the last war.

 

[lgnxz]

If you're looking at GPD per cap, it works only if both countries have an equal population.

You could imagine it to be china in the future, in 2040 or whatever, then sure ~1.7% budget would be more acceptable if you have a +30 trillion dollars economy, but not now. You can also compare today's china with NATO too.

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, they have a whopping

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, which means their defence budget is well above 3% of total GDP. Ofc, it's mostly carried by the US defence spending, while others are hovering around 2%, the target that they themselves deemed as adequate and suggested for every members, but with the ukraine war you can bet that they'll raise it even more at a rapid pace. This is also not an absolutely equal comparison, as NATO's population is still 450 millions lower than china.

And it's not a commonsense thinking that military budget should follow the temporary swings in annual GDP; rather, it should hold a steady smooth upward trend without wide swings, as budgetary outlays are mostly fixed every year regardless of what happens in the current year.

Yes and no. Yes the military budget should technically be determined outside of the material condition of the country, as I said they are mutally exclusive but also not a dichotomy. Rather, they should follow the needs from the security challenges that each specific country might face now and in the near future. Logically speaking, the US has zero threat threatening them within their vicinity so there's no need for them to have a 800 billion defence budget, but as we know the ghouls and warmongers who govern the country will always behave like ghouls and warmongers.

And because of that, going back to the china's case, No, military budget doesn't have to follow a "steady smooth upward trend without wide swings" if the reality requires you to do so, and I'd say the reality does requires china to do just that: US pivot to asia, india's rapid increase in defence budget and encroachment to the western border, japan's recent militarization and floating the idea of removing legal obstacles to give their self-defence forces strike capability, taiwan's overall behaviors under tsai's regime, the QUAD, the AUKUS, destabilization attempts against china and its neighboring allies, NATO's posturing and economic warfare during and after ukraine war, all these recent trends and you think we should just sit idly and maintain status quo, waiting for the steady smooth upward trend to be good enough, no plan adjustment, no sense of urgency whatsoever?

Am I really the only crazy one here that don't share your from-god-knows-where confidence that china's defence budget is adequate? Who should I thank for getting you all to think like this? Those western propaganda that have successfully psyop you into thinking china's a militaristic country instead of objectively a complete 180? Or is it simply the trust on the PLA (and ofc their own trust on themselves) to be able to function given past's history who has been always at a disadvantage, winning itself purely with determination, superior fighting spirit, but also higher casualties? If it's the former then please wake the hell up, and if it's the latter then I hope those determination and spirit still exists, but personally I'd rather to even or overturn the playing field to leave no chances for victory and ofc minimize the damages that war will ultimately bring.

7.1 % increase in this year budget would actually be more than last year's budget in absolute terms, due to base effect.

What do you even mean with base effect? 7.1% increase is only 7.1%. As it's also only a nominal increase, the inflation adjusted one would be even lower, just like how china's GDP growths 12.8% nominally but it's 8.1% adjusted to inflation.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

What do you even mean with base effect? 7.1% increase is only 7.1%. As it's also only a nominal increase, the inflation adjusted one would be even lower, just like how china's GDP growths 12.8% nominally but it's 8.1% adjusted to inflation.

By base effect - he means a growth of 7.1% this year would represent a larger increase than growth of 7.1% in the previous year.
As in absolute growth during the first year would be equal to 0.071 * X, whereas absolute growth in second year would be 0.071 * 1.071 * X.

 

[56860]

What you've said is a complete 180 to the reality tho. Developing countries need to have higher defence budgets to compensate for their lack of economy, developed countries can afford themselves lower defence budget because they already have such a high GDP per capita, thus a lower percentage of military budget would be comparable to the budget of a higher percentage, developing country's budget. For example, on a pure nominal sake, a country with 30000 GDP per capita with 1% defence budget is comparable to a country with 10000 GDP per capita that has 3% defence budget. China and Japan comparison thus can show just how under-budget the PLA truly is.

Laughable statement. Go and look at how well countries governed by military juntas in South Africa/Myanmar develop. That's what happens when an impoverished nation goes ham on military spending. I am not saying that building up your armed forces isn't important - I am saying that for a developing country where you literally have kids not growing to their full mental and physical stature due to malnourishment/sanitation/education etc, there are quite frankly more important things to worry about. China, while far more developed than Africa and India (precisely because it hasn't been going absolutely ham on military spending all these years!) is still a developing nation. Poverty alleviation will continue to take #1 priority.

So basically you're giving the excuses on why the defence budget is this low, instead of explaining how the low defence budget can even be considered remotely acceptable when every adversarial neighbors around you are rapidly increasing their defence budget and getting more and more brazen in provoking security crisis. Wew, where do we even begin with this.. The measurement of quality of life is unrelated with the need of maintaining national sovereignty from adequate defence budget, they are mutually exclusive and not a dichotomy.

You're also treating the defence sectors as if it's not a part of the economy itself that also have a secondary function as a part of the infrastructure, industry, and material wealth. Learning from history, as it has been mentioned by other member earlier as well, some dynasties of china have collapsed because their military weren't good enough despite flourishing culturally and economically.

At a time when the pursue of economic growth can be understandably subsided with the occurring global pandemic, recession, concern for climate change and crisis in ukraine, coupled with the rapid defence growths and increasingly brazen behaviors from our adversarial neighbors, your excuses for status quo couldn't sound anymore illogical, hence the justification for a more balanced defence budget that I think should be implemented asap.

Nah. You're missing the point completely. Quality of life is directly correlated to a nation's military might. The two are absolutely related. Going back to my previous example - let's say we double China's current military expenditure - do you think if we threw 500 billion USD at Qing Dynasty era peasants with a

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and

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, that they would produce better results?

One look at the world will confirm the positive effect raising life expectancy, years of education, etc, has on military and technological capability. Compare first world nations with high standards of living (North America, Europe) to third world nations (Africa, Middle East). Notice something?

hahahaha are you serious? If this is actually true, then the people's republic of china wouldn't win a single war throughout the history. Judging by china's history I'd even half-jokingly say that we'd be at the disadvantage as the richer state against the malnourished country with high infant mortality, low life expectancy that are also developmentally decades behind The matter of militarily beating or not-beating someone historically didn't hinge on those things.

As a matter of fact, purely from those talking points, being such an advanced country could cause an incentive for your poorer yet heavily armed neighbors to cause security problems instead of deterring them. They have nothing to lose, not to mention the envy for the riches that the advanced country has can make them think they have a real possibility to have a go for a piece of the pie. Damn if only there's an answer on how to actually deter them.. All in all, I can see why you name yourself 'dengyeye' based on your general opinion on putting the economy at such a high pedestal that you even have unrealistic views on what they can do when 'shit hits the fan'.

The century of humiliation was pretty much the result of China's failure to industrialize and raise the standard of living for its 300 million starving peasants. I mean this just further proves my point. Even though China was actually far richer than Britain or Japan as a whole, taking up 30% of world GDP at the time, it got thoroughly walloped by the both of them. Good luck getting a

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to fight off modern industrialized powers.

 

[56860]

This should be my final comment to the topic, as the thread isn't really suited for it.


Both of your posts show the whole R&D program in china instead of R&D that focuses only on military, so they don't really contradict my picture. Of course, my graph could be in the wrong one as china never shares the exact number of budget allocation specific for military research, but that's originally the response that people used to prop up the low defence budget that I brought up, so third party researchers kinda forced to do the guesswork to guess the number, not to mention their biases. Nevertheless, my core point that's outside of the R&D discussion still stands, which is the defence budget that's too low.

What you've said is a complete 180 to the reality tho. Developing countries need to have higher defence budgets to compensate for their lack of economy, developed countries can afford themselves lower defence budget because they already have such a high GDP per capita, thus a lower percentage of military budget would be comparable to the budget of a higher percentage, developing country's budget. For example, on a pure nominal sake, a country with 30000 GDP per capita with 1% defence budget is comparable to a country with 10000 GDP per capita that has 3% defence budget. China and Japan comparison thus can show just how under-budget the PLA truly is.

So basically you're giving the excuses on why the defence budget is this low, instead of explaining how the low defence budget can even be considered remotely acceptable when every adversarial neighbors around you are rapidly increasing their defence budget and getting more and more brazen in provoking security crisis. Wew, where do we even begin with this.. The measurement of quality of life is unrelated with the need of maintaining national sovereignty from adequate defence budget, they are mutually exclusive and not a dichotomy.

You're also treating the defence sectors as if it's not a part of the economy itself that also have a secondary function as a part of the infrastructure, industry, and material wealth. Learning from history, as it has been mentioned by other member earlier as well, some dynasties of china have collapsed because their military weren't good enough despite flourishing culturally and economically.

At a time when the pursue of economic growth can be understandably subsided with the occurring global pandemic, recession, concern for climate change and crisis in ukraine, coupled with the rapid defence growths and increasingly brazen behaviors from our adversarial neighbors, your excuses for status quo couldn't sound anymore illogical, hence the justification for a more balanced defence budget that I think should be implemented asap.

Eh I disagree, your follow up too is merely at best an indication of brain drain that's still screwing them up, and its worst is just a pure cherrypicking logic. I won't talk more of this as I've said that these metrics are quite meaningless

hahahaha are you serious? If this is actually true, then the people's republic of china wouldn't win a single war throughout the history. Judging by china's history I'd even half-jokingly say that we'd be at the disadvantage as the richer state against the malnourished country with high infant mortality, low life expectancy that are also developmentally decades behind The matter of militarily beating or not-beating someone historically didn't hinge on those things.

As a matter of fact, purely from those talking points, being such an advanced country could cause an incentive for your poorer yet heavily armed neighbors to cause security problems instead of deterring them. They have nothing to lose, not to mention the envy for the riches that the advanced country has can make them think they have a real possibility to have a go for a piece of the pie. Damn if only there's an answer on how to actually deter them.. All in all, I can see why you name yourself 'dengyeye' based on your general opinion on putting the economy at such a high pedestal that you even have unrealistic views on what they can do when 'shit hits the fan'.

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Look at India, splurging money on its MIC (if you can call it that, they barely have any indigenous capability and basically import everything from Russia/Europe) when 60% of the population is living under $3.20 per day. So even though they spend far more as a % of GDP, in absolute terms China's budget is larger by over 3 times. China actually developed its stock of human capital and now has an economy 6 times larger than India. India went ham on fancy imported fighter jets when they should really be using that money to lift people out of poverty.

 

[lgnxz]

Go and look at how well countries governed by military juntas in South Africa/Myanmar develop. That's what happens when an impoverished nation goes ham on military spending.

First of all, why do you even bother quoting me if you're not gonna respond to my argument, and instead go on an unrelated tangent like this? The discussion becomes increasingly tiresome because you keep doing this and thus we're talking past each other. What makes the whole thing even sadder is that you don't even know what you're talking about as your tangential examples, south africa and myanmar, don't even support your narrative. South africa's military budget have been

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for a decade already, how do you even get into the conclusion that they're a high-spending militarist junta??

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, they have high defence spending only because of the US-backed color revolution in 2008, before it in 2001 they even went as low as 1.1%, the same goes for when things have cooled down where they had a 2% budget in 2019. Looks like these impoverished nations still stay poor despite not going ham on military spending huh.

I am saying that for a developing country where you literally have kids not growing to their full mental and physical stature due to malnourishment/sanitation/education etc, there are quite frankly more important things to worry about.

Well thankfully china does not face those major problems, as I've already told you many times already (that you completely ignored) about the more pressing security matters caused by the recent posturing from our surrounding neighbors that's more relevant than whether or not the economy is rising 0.1-0.5% faster. But please, do try to explain how security matters with a clear red line that have recently been tested many times by the adversaries who also increased their defence budget rapidly is somehow less important than growth which even if some of its budget is directly allocated for the military, at the worst case scenario is only going to be growing at a rate tad slower than before.

Nah. You're missing the point completely.

LOL what a masterful display from you in refuting those rationales! It really is so tedious..

Quality of life is directly correlated to a nation's military might. The two are absolutely related.

Lol yeah exactly, it's only a correlation! You don't understand what 'mutually exclusive but not a dichotomy' mean, do you? A country's growth and development does correlate with this advancing military, but just because they are both growing, that still doesn't mean the economic growth by itself causes those advancements, hence mutual exclusivity. However, that doesn't mean you have to completely sacrifice one of those two aspects as you can put more emphasis on the one with more importance and urgency, aka not a dichotomy. In china's case, I can confidently say that right now, security matters is more urgent and important. Do I need to repeat myself to you again on what would directly impact the military's growth and advancement?

let's say we double China's current military expenditure - do you think if we threw 500 billion USD at Qing Dynasty era peasants with a

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and

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, that they would produce better results?

The century of humiliation was pretty much the result of China's failure to industrialize and raise the standard of living for its 300 million starving peasants. I mean this just further proves my point. Even though China was actually far richer than Britain or Japan as a whole, taking up 30% of world GDP at the time, it got thoroughly walloped by the both of them. Good luck getting a

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to fight off modern industrialized powers.

Hahahaha why do you have to use such a stark parable to emphasize your point? Not only that it's not realistic, the amount of meaningful comparison that we can use when discussing modern china is very limited. Here, let me help you make a better analogy:
"Do you think if we threw 500 billion USD for 2022 China's military budget, the PLA who has an efficient MIC and grounded strategies would improve their capabilities massively?" I think you already know the answer.

One look at the world will confirm the positive effect raising life expectancy, years of education, etc, has on military and technological capability. Compare first world nations with high standards of living (North America, Europe) to third world nations (Africa, Middle East). Notice something?

What I notice is that many variables exist to easily show your reductionist conclusion on the relation between a country's development and its military budgetary/capabilities to be false. There are many examples that show you how a more developed country losing against the impoverished one (basically the majority of US-led wars since ww2). There are also many examples of countries with low military budget that stay poor even if they try their damndest to become a developed country. It's as you said, correlation, hence the variability, but not causation.

Look at India, splurging money on its MIC (if you can call it that, they barely have any indigenous capability and basically import everything from Russia/Europe) when 60% of the population is living under $3.20 per day. So even though they spend far more as a % of GDP, in absolute terms China's budget is larger by over 3 times. China actually developed its stock of human capital and now has an economy 6 times larger than India. India went ham on fancy imported fighter jets when they should really be using that money to lift people out of poverty.

Logic when comparing china vs a less developed country that has higher military budget (india): "Oh dude, just look how pathetic their society is, they will never win against us in a war! We'll easily smite them in mere minutes, just like how historically every developed countries have managed to defeat these poor bumpkins since ww2! "

Logic when comparing china vs a more developed country that also has a higher military budget (US, japan, and most of NATO): "Dude, stop wasting money on defence, they're just way richer than us, we simply can't compete with them! Therefore, we first need to just catch up economically! Just focus on how we can maintain this GDP growth bro, the line going up is very important, it gives me that sweet dopamine hit! Defence, security issues? What the hell are those? Haha don't worry too much about it, we'll be fine, just trust the plan "

Yeah that pretty much sum up your argument. Very amusing too how so many people here seem to agree with this circular reasoning on how in all scenarios the correct answer for china is to always have military budget that's lower than everyone else, with every excuses justifying it can be dumbed down to "le economy and muh development".

As a final note, I've talked about the tediousness that I personally feel from the discussion and with my initial intention to not extend it further, this would really be my final post about this topic. You can reply however you want, ignoring it and going on another tangent as usual, I won't care, let's just agree to disagree.

 

[Maikeru]

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[Michaelsinodef]

Yes I know it's binkov and in the end it's mostly just speculations and guestimates, but still an interesting look into China's defense budget.

And of course, we all should know equipment and stuff is much cheaper for the chinese military as well compared to us military (like with naval ships as an example).