By John Grady, US Naval Security Institute News. October 26 2021
While China’s known military spending has remained consistent as a percentage of its gross domestic product for decades, but this provides only a rough measure of what Beijing has actually committed to a broad range of obscured or classified expenditures, two experts on defense spending said Tuesday.
Peter Robertson, dean of the University of Western Australia’s Business School, said using that percentage did show with the Soviet Union in the Cold War “what strain [military spending] was putting on the country.” The measure was valuable “in looking for trends … that something’s up” with a nation’s military intent.
In China’s case, those strains include the future of Taiwan, its need for oil to keep its manufacturing moving and ambitions in the South China Sea.
But “what does [that military spending] actually buy” in a particular country is a factor that must be considered as well. “Your dollar goes a lot farther in China, Mexico [and other countries] where wages are low,” he said.
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