It’s a safe assumption, but Clinton was also a shoo in back in 2016.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
The betting market didn't think so back in 2016.
Then again these Ko betters are delusional.
The US betting market gave pretty similar odds.
Hmm I was mistaken, I thought 2016 betting markets favoured Trump. I guess we'll find out very soon.
With more dangers, defenses in the province need to be enhanced. Hopefully, China can get a new budget through.
The risk with the whole Ukraine thing and that Beijing's geopolitical team can run circles around US is that it's masking the need for increased defenses. When US illegally sent their officials into China to forment rebellion, they show clear intent of planning invasion. Sure, the whole Pelosi thing didn't go anywhere, because US didn't have the forces at the moment to follow it through. But they demonstrated clear intent to invade.
During that time, the government should already have used it as an excuse to spike up defense spending. With 3% spending, we'd have as large budget as all of NATO combined, and instead of sitting here splitting hairs and being worried if our underfunded military can hold against an American storming of Taiwan, it'd be Americans being worried.
What the Chinese government is doing now teters on hubris. And if they cross that line, they need to be woken up.
The risk with the whole Ukraine thing and that Beijing's geopolitical team can run circles around US is that it's masking the need for increased defenses. When US illegally sent their officials into China to forment rebellion, they show clear intent of planning invasion. Sure, the whole Pelosi thing didn't go anywhere, because US didn't have the forces at the moment to follow it through. But they demonstrated clear intent to invade.
During that time, the government should already have used it as an excuse to spike up defense spending. With 3% spending, we'd have as large budget as all of NATO combined, and instead of sitting here splitting hairs and being worried if our underfunded military can hold against an American storming of Taiwan, it'd be Americans being worried.
What the Chinese government is doing now teters on hubris. And if they cross that line, they need to be woken up.
If military spending was hiked from 1.7% to 3%, what would the Chinese military spend the extra money on?
We already have a situation where if you look at all the major Naval and Air Force platforms, China is matching or exceeding the US in terms of annual procurement. And this arms buildup would have been planned and started some years ago.
Sure, they could increase the procurement rates even more, but what practical effect does this have?
You'd be looking at reaching desired force levels for example in say:
a) 7 years instead of 10 years
or
b) 4 years instead of 6 years
It doesn't actually change the overall picture much, given that the trajectory for the next 2 years has already been decided.
Immediately
Training hours and bigger exercises up to the point of mock full mobilizations.
Start converting civilian shipyards to be able to build warships.
Increase R&D spending.
In the 2 year time frame
Mainly munitions production and small-medium sized drone production. Landing crafts if needed could be built in large numbers.
Prob some increase in armored vehicles of all kinds and artillery since those factories are most likely not running 24/7 today.
Fully equip all soldiers with the latest weapons and personal gear etc.
Build hardened shelters and improve basing infrastructure where needed.
In the 4 year time frame
This is enough time to get completely new factories up and running so now we can see big production increases across the field.
Ships built in previous civilian shipyards will start to enter service.
Some benefits of the increased R&D spending will start to pay off.
In the 7-8 year time frame
Ships and submarines built in the completely new shipyards will start to enter service.
Large benefits of increased R&D spending.
Please cost out some of the production increases.
You can see that they do not require anything like an increase in military spending from 1.7% to 3% of GDP, which works out as circa $260 Bn annually in nominal exchange rate terms.
For example, Chinese construction of major naval surface combatants and submarines is likely running at circa $10 Bn per year (destroyers, frigates, submarines). Or for the J-20 programme, let's says they doubled it to 200 plane per year. That's roughly works out as an additional $10 Bn per year.
These are the biggest acquisition programmes you could expand now, as the Chinese carriers aren't ready.
And all the other programmes cost way less in comparison
So if you wanted to double this production, it's only an extra $20 Bn per year, which is less than 8% of a notional $260 Bn increase. But you very quickly end up with excessively high levels of procurement such as:
Annually
200 J-20
8 Destroyers
8 Frigates
6 SSNs
You also have to factor in operating costs, but again, these are far less than the annual procurement figures.
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The money is better off spent on other areas, such as technology development and the energy transition, which will make China more self-sufficient in the event of a war and also spur domestic economic development and higher wages.
Money isn't spent efficiently. There's clearly still a problem with corruption, Li Shangfu was fired for a reason. If you increase funding too quickly, it will feed more corruption and production capacity won't be able to keep up. So raising the military budget by 7% a year is safe, maybe 10% would be ok as well. But it will take many years of gradual increases to get to 2-3% of GDP.