China's Defense Spending Thread

[schlieffen]

The truth is, it'll be difficult for you to hire a nanny for 5k yuan/month in relatively large cities in today's China. And today's PLA is not your grandpa's PLA any more. They are only enlisting high school graduates and increasingly college graduates (particularly for navy and air force).

Since when is nanny a low-income trade in China?

Status or not, kids care is and has always been expensive in urban China, just like many other countries. A skilled, caring and trustworthy nanny is always highly valued and extremely difficult to find, especially since the introduction of one-child policy. It is perfectly normal for them to earn much more than a white collar clerk or young engineer.

Finally, I found it interesting that you’re citing a website that I actually contributes (although I didn’t wrote this article).

 

[tphuang]

we are getting off topic here. Let's get back to just defense spending. This is not a thread on the disposable income of soldiers.

 

[weig2000]

Jesus Christ, is it so hard to understand the difference between income and wage? Wage by necessity can only be divided by the number of residents who actually earn a wage, in other words the workforce, whereas income can be averaged by the entire population.I was always referring to income and never said anything about wage.


BTW the source is here

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I can see you're really getting tangential here. Not sure how relevant to bring in the income vs. wage discussion. Please focus on the larger issue here: how much does it cost to enlist PLA personnel today (both average soldiers and officers) and what are its implications to defense spending.

My challenge to you was that you quoted some dubiously low number (26k) to justify your arguments that the PLA personnel cost in general are quite low. I also pointed out, with sources, that today's PLA recruits are not at the lowest rung of the society ladder and therefore you don't expect to enlist them cheaply. Understand the issue here, then you don't need get into these very technical definitions of income, wages, stipend, bonus, subsidiaries etc. The bottom line is what the personnel cost to PLA (not equipment or training cost), because that's ultimately counted in defense spending.

It's better if you can find more direct sources to back up your arguments, instead of debating the social status of nannies in contemporary China, the mathematical definitions of income vs wage, or getting into long-winded rants on NCO and such. That would be a more productive contribution to the discussion.

I've made my points, and don't see any point to get suck into some side arguments. Therefore I will not respond to your comments on this topic any more.

 

[schlieffen]

we are getting off topic here. Let's get back to just defense spending. This is not a thread on the disposable income of soldiers.

I agree. That being that, running a thread like this always carries a risk of people venture off course. Imagine a thread titled ‘US’s defense spending’. If the moderators feel uncomfortable about this I recon close this thread for good.



Defense spending is now one of the largest single item in the central government budget. For those of us who live in China, or live overseas but still keep a strong commitment to our past, this is very much a real life issue. It’s not some obscure development behind the bamboo curtail.


Furthermore, since China does not encourage real public debate on budgetary issues, and does not publish a lot of information vital to the debate, it’s not really possible to run a proper and informed discussion on public spending. All I saw in this thread is either Chinese military purchases which is also off-topic or meaningless number crunching.

 

[schlieffen]

I can see you're really getting tangential here. Not sure how relevant to bring in the income vs. wage discussion. Please focus on the larger issue here: how much does it cost to enlist PLA personnel today (both average soldiers and officers) and what are its implications to defense spending.

It's better if you can find more direct sources to back up your arguments, instead of debating the social status of nannies in contemporary China, the mathematical definitions of income vs wage, or getting into long-winded rants on NCO and such. That would be a more productive contribution to the discussion.

I've made my points, and don't see any point to get suck into some side arguments. Therefore I will not respond to your comments on this topic any more.

Long-winded rants? How is refuting a completely inaccurate and probably deliberate misleading statement ‘long-winded rants’? All I saw is you started dodging after being exposed.


Like I said the PLA never ever used the word士兵/soldier on anyone other than junior enlists. What you were trying to say is that an average soldier, that is a junior enlist, earns 6.6k/month. Not only did the article say nothing of the sort – the author was talking about NCOs – but to believe that an enlisted draftee could earn 6.6k is totally ridicules. Anyone who believe this shows zero experience with the uniformed services, and honestly a complete disengagement with the lower echelon of the society.

I don’t need Google to tell me how much an enlist earns, I have a relative who enrolled in the PLA in 2014, like the other dozen or so relatives in my extended family. I know how much they earn. In the first year of service it’s more like 1/7 ~ 1/8 of 6.6k.


Sorry moderator, I will make no further reply on this pointless debate.

 

[vincent]

we are getting off topic here. Let's get back to just defense spending. This is not a thread on the disposable income of soldiers.

I think soldiers' salaries are highly relevant to the amount of defense spendings. When i was working in Shanghai around 2009-2011, the code monkeys in my group probably makes around 150k rmb per year. Managers makes quite a bit more. Just last night my friend in shanghai told me 500k rmb/year jobs are not that hard to find. Granted she is at a pretty senior level. Overtime salaries for talented people within PLA has to match the civilian ones to keep them around

 

[Totoro]

I would like to achieve some sort of rough guesstimate on various aspects of defense spending. How much in percentages goes on personnel? On ops? On R&D? On procurement? Are pensions and benefits included? IS budget for reserve component and militia included?

Hard data is hard to come by. Various unnamed sources might indicate PAP budget is separate from defense spending. But reserve and militia spending IS part of official budget. With pensions it's even hazier. Some say pensions are included, but many sources say pensions are separate. Maybe truth is somewhere in between? But where exactly?

 

[plawolf]

I would like to achieve some sort of rough guesstimate on various aspects of defense spending. How much in percentages goes on personnel? On ops? On R&D? On procurement? Are pensions and benefits included? IS budget for reserve component and militia included?

Hard data is hard to come by. Various unnamed sources might indicate PAP budget is separate from defense spending. But reserve and militia spending IS part of official budget. With pensions it's even hazier. Some say pensions are included, but many sources say pensions are separate. Maybe truth is somewhere in between? But where exactly?

Western intelligence would almost certainly pay very good money for the kinds of information you ask for, given how much they whine about China's lack of "transparency" with its defence expenditure.

PAP budget is not part of PLA budget, and is instead under internal security, which actually has a bigger budget than the PLA.

 

[tphuang]

I think soldiers' salaries are highly relevant to the amount of defense spendings. When i was working in Shanghai around 2009-2011, the code monkeys in my group probably makes around 150k rmb per year. Managers makes quite a bit more. Just last night my friend in shanghai told me 500k rmb/year jobs are not that hard to find. Granted she is at a pretty senior level. Overtime salaries for talented people within PLA has to match the civilian ones to keep them around

That's straddling the line, but when you start talking about kids care and nanny cost, that's definitely off topic. Anything more along this line will be deleted.

 

[Franklin]

Top 10 defense spenders in 2015. Saudi Arabia spends about 11% of their GDP on defense.