One thing I notice in all this analysis of PPP or cost or efficiency of China's procurement vs US is this desire to show how China doesn't need more spending because they are already at parity or gaining with US when it comes to getting newer systems.
But why should that be the only criteria to judge what the military spending level should be?
China is not just fighting US, its fighting the whole US empire including US+asian allies+aus+Canada and even to some extent Europe. The whole US alliance combined is 60% of world GDP. Yes, they might be showing incompetence in terms of getting more systems into production but that's because they don't think they are threatened enough to sacrifice more. You get a China collapse or China paper tiger article every day in the western media which keeps them complacent. But that doesn't mean they don't have the huge capacity to increase production if they were really really serious. They have the capacity to produce huge number of jet engines or rockets too. China cannot fight US+allies fight with this low level of spending. Those allies are ramping up their spending and acquisitions.
Moreover, China is catching up to US numbers extremely slowly. The rate they are going, China will probably catch up to US in like 30 years when it comes to carrier numbers or submarine numbers. There is no guarantee war will happen 30 years from now. They might be forced to fight next year.
In fact, the threat of war is only increasing against China. US and allies are not blind. They see the trajectory China is going. They can do projections. And when they see the projection of China's future state 20-30 years from now, they might decide lets go for it now rather than wait for 30 years and lose.
I think there is no reason for China to be this slow to catch up to US. I think they should not go for parity. They should go for overmatch and completely dominate US and allies. Make their chances of winning better.
They can increase budget, and with that increased budget, they can increase their number of factories, boost production, train more troops for advanced planes, ships and so on. Because modern war is not like old times when you can start the war slow, then ramp up production for several years. China might be forced to expend all its munitions, fighters and ships in the first weeks. If you lose in those first weeks, your factories might be destroyed thus removing any opportunity to increase production. So, having a well trained but large force is very important.
Anyways, that's just my opinion. I think China is being very complacent, trusting of US intentions by keeping their budget this low. If the war comes in the next 5-10 years, they will regret this decision very badly. Its better to be more prepared rather than less.
