Well, you can’t compare China’s defence expenditure as percentage of GDP to western countries. China has an internal security budget that is higher than those for the PLA. That’s because China unique history in the past 200 years resulted in many unresolved internal frozen conflicts (Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, religions, hanjians, etc.) along with new ones (radical feminists funded by the west, online narrative warfare, Chinese ‘journalists’ propagating western narratives without directly violating Chinese law, corporate and financial elites working on behalf of western interests, etc.). When combining the PLA’s budget with those spent on internal security, you have a roughly 4% similar to those of US.