China’s Defense Budget Is Near What The U.S. Spends

Three reports from the Pentagon very accurately describe the rapid growth and modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. U.S. Department of Defense

Defense One: China’s Defense Spending Is Larger Than It Looks

Accounting for true purchasing power, Beijing’s military budget is about 87% of America’s.

An early lesson emerging from China’s handling of the COVID-19 emergency is that Beijing still manipulates data to fit its desired narrative. This has long been the case in China’s defense budget, where the party-government omits and withholds data to project a non-threatening image of its People’s Liberation Army. However, there are ways to cut through some of the mangled information.

If you account for differences in reporting structure, purchasing power, and labor costs, you find that China’s 2017 defense budget provided 87 percent of the purchasing power of American’s 2017 defense budget.

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WNU Editor: Beijing has a long history of manipulating its economic data, and as we have learned in the past three months, data on the Covid-19 crisis. So you can take this to the bank, they are also manipulating their numbers when it comes to their military and defense forces.

Update: Here is a good read .... Everything You Need To Know About the Chinese Military (June 22, 2019)

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