I hate to quote Joe Biden but come on, man! Really? How about spending beyond a measly 1.4% of GDP. Maybe get to the NATO minimum of 2% at least.
You are getting way too fixated on a number. Instead look at what is actually happening on the ground and tell me where China is not closing the gap to the US militarily or even pulling ahead.
As a counter example, look at Ukraine and the ridiculous waste happening when you just blindly throw mountains of money at a problem and actually expect that money to magic armies out of thin air overnight. The real world doesn’t work like that.
Chinese defence spending as a percentage of GDP is modest because Chinese GDP has been rising so spectacularly for decades. The real year-on-year budge growth has basically never fallen below 10% for more years than I can easily recall. And that’s pretty much as fast as something as vast as the PLA can growth without wasting too much. Double the budget and you won’t get anything like double the fighting power, just rampant inflation and waste and maybe even corruption.
And that’s just the official figure, if you don’t think China has significant defence spending squirrelled away under other budgets than I got a bridge in Africa to sell you. If China put its actual defence spending in its white paper, it will absolutely cause the Americans to loose their shit and kick start a new Cold War and arms race. Why give them that clarify when a little ‘creative accounting’ on where certain projects gets their funding can help to keep the Americans complacent and more focused on fighting their ideological enemies at home?
