[Trex]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

Anyway this is just from a wiki thing, but this list of global military spending shows, if correct, what China's really looks like:

which is to actually say less than 1/10th the US spending, not 1/4, scarcely more than Japan's, and less than France's.

Using raw stats is always dodgy. Assuming for the purpose of this discussion that the figures are correct (and SIPRI is generally reasonably accurate), consider a few things:

First, the relative costs of things in China and the USA. Note that there is no indication that those figures were put into equivalent dollars. The reason that China has such a booming economy is that it is far cheaper to build something there, using imported materials, then ship it to the other side of the world than it is to build the same item at point of sale. Consider the respective pay rates of a typical US soldier and a typical Chinese one. A dollar buys a lot more there than it does in the USA.

Second, Victor Suvarov, a defector from the USSR during the cold war, noted that all of the Soviet Union's military cost... nothing. In a communist system, raw materials, etc can be diverted to the military's use by a central planning commission and the 'costs' simply written off. Same-same in China, I suspect.

Thirdly, one of the biggest economic powers inside China is the PLA, which owns and operates dozens, if not hundreds, of factories. F-22s would cost a lot less if the USAF owned the plant making them.