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Defence Spending : China and the US
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Heres an interesting global security comparison of defence spending rates for each country.
Heres the money shot :
The official Chinese defense budget is thought to be an underestimation of real spending. But note that the White House's FY2007 budget requests $439.3 billion for the Department of Defense plus $50 billion for "bridge funding" for Afghanistan and Iraq. That bridge funding is significantly larger than the entire official Chinese military budget for 2005. The $439.3 billion funding request is more than double the total revenue of the Chinese government. This is not the stuff out of which a peer is made. China's 12.6 percent budget increase sounds impressive, but the FY07 budget requests a seven percent increase for the Pentagon.
That seven percent is coming from a much larger base and amounts to an increase of about $29 billion which is just a bit lower than China's overall defense budget. The PRC is not only not a peer, it's not even closing the gap.
Even if you extrapolate Chinas current 8% a year growth rate (which it won't be able to sustain for the next 10 years, let alone the next 50), it will take the Chinese decades to even come close to matching US defence spending.
In an Eastern Pacific war, the USA still would come out on top - no question. The balance of power has yet to shift at all.
Heres the money shot :
China's defense budget continued to grow in 2004. Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing proposed an increase of 11.6 percent [$2.6 billion] in military expenditures. The government forecast total revenue for the central budget at $157 billion, up 7 percent [$10.9 billion] from 2003, with a 7 percent boost in overall spending from 2003. The country's $38.7 billion deficit was the same as 2003. Adding off-budget funding for foreign weapons system imports, total defense-related expenditures for 2004 were estimated at between $50 and $70 billion dollars by Richard Lawless, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense.
In 2005, it was announced that China's military budget will rise 12.6 percent, to 247.7 billion yuan ($29.9 billion). China has announced double-digit increases in military spending nearly every year for more than a decade.
The official Chinese defense budget is thought to be an underestimation of real spending. But note that the White House's FY2007 budget requests $439.3 billion for the Department of Defense plus $50 billion for "bridge funding" for Afghanistan and Iraq. That bridge funding is significantly larger than the entire official Chinese military budget for 2005. The $439.3 billion funding request is more than double the total revenue of the Chinese government. This is not the stuff out of which a peer is made. China's 12.6 percent budget increase sounds impressive, but the FY07 budget requests a seven percent increase for the Pentagon.
That seven percent is coming from a much larger base and amounts to an increase of about $29 billion which is just a bit lower than China's overall defense budget. The PRC is not only not a peer, it's not even closing the gap.
Even if you extrapolate Chinas current 8% a year growth rate (which it won't be able to sustain for the next 10 years, let alone the next 50), it will take the Chinese decades to even come close to matching US defence spending.
In an Eastern Pacific war, the USA still would come out on top - no question. The balance of power has yet to shift at all.
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Comments
We really are a despicable, hateful species. I couldn't blame an alien race for wanting to wipe us all out and allow this beautful planet and its remaining creatures live in peace.
So if every country took 1% of its defence budget and instead put it towards wiping out disease or poverty, that would be a terrible idea?
No, I was referring to this, which was the ravings of a madman:
Death Cult Armageddon.
no one to wonder ...to search ...to change ...to marvel.
without humans you believe the rest of the animal kingdom would live in peace!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think its fairly clear he's not being totally serious.
And when you see these people have been privileged enough to be on a planet rich in life and resources and yet treat it like shit and slowly choke it death without any concerns, wouldn't you be tempted to think that the planet in question and the other billion or so species that live in it would be better off without them?
Forgive me but I fail to get much excited and moved by countries spending obscene amounts of money on what amounts to be little more than toys for the boys who need their egos and their nationalistic, violent aspirations massaged.
the reality is ...we don't seem bright enough to ever have leaders who aren't killers thieves and lawyers.
If spending and tech were the factor, the Nazi's would have won WW2.
If Iraq does descend into a total civil war, as it sadly looks to be heading for, then ultimately we will see another 'Hanoi evacuation' iconic image as the last US army choppers hastily pull out, and all the hundreds of billions of dollars' expenditure and ultra-advanced state of the art weapons and aircraft used on that war will have counted for nothing.
No, because carrier fleets have gone the way of the battleship.
Gary Brecher explains it excellently.
Well. If he can do that with the little he is given... imagine what someone used to working with low-tech shit can do... given high-tech shit. E.g: The Chinese. They haven't had their modern stuff that long, and there are piles of low-tech crap sitting around in reserve now, or wating to be scrapped...
And they can conscript 20million at any given time if needed, to add to the current armed forces anyway. They have a 1million standing army alone, ffs.
:chin:
I blame the aztecs!
As for his comments about the Argentinian Airforce - the Super Etenard with Exocets was probably the best anti-shipping aircraft around at the time. And for all his claims the Argentinians failed to stop the landing of a task force which was protected by just over twenty aircraft (some of them primarily ground attack). The average US carrier group has a few more (and in the Persian Gulf is also likely to be protected by ground base planes as well).
Blechers may be an interesting polemicist, but he's a shite analyst. And as for this
taken from another of his polemics
http://www.exile.ru/2003-January-22/war_nerd.html
the reason the Gurkhas didn't take prisoners is that they didn't fight any battles in the Falklands. If you don't know the basics of what you're talking about you're not going to be taken seriously.
This is where China can do damage. They purchas from Russia all sorts of missile technology that the Russians have come up with specially to act as a defence against aircraft carriers. These misiles will kill ships. End of. The chinese army is huge and poorly equipped, thier airfoce isn't much whack (apart from the sheer size of it) and thier navy is out of date. However, if america steams into chinese waters thier ships will go the same way as the British battleships that were sunk by the Japanese in world war 2. Modern missiles are cheap, easy to fire in large numbers and hard if not impossible to defend against.
haha. the parameters clearly seamed wrong to them because they can't accept the fact aircraft carriers are now out of date and extremely vulnerable to an enemy that isn't piss poor, like the Iraqis.
But if the US fought an enemy who stood a chance, such as laucnhing an attack on China, they would probably lose alot, if not all, of their navy. Which is why attacking China is a bad idea, and I don't think it will happen. It'll just be several many planse firing missiles from miles off, when the US Air Force tries to intercept... Chinese fighters occupy them so they cannot preventthe strike plane from firing it's payload.
Their big advantage is that the enemy has to find you before he kills you and a smart Admiral will keep his fleet moving around, with airpatrols to knock out the enemy aircraft and a screen of subs to knock out his naval assets before they get into range.
if the US did invade China (and at the moment its a pretty big if). I'd expect them to move their subs in first to launch missiles at Chinese radar and communications sites (and if they've got a few spare missiles at some of his airfields as well). And only then would they launch air strikes from carriers/
They might loose a few, but assuming they're willing to take casualties, they're likely to come off much the better.
If they invade China its more likely to go China's way, not because they're good, but because they're large and US doesn't have the men to take and hold an area the size of China without serious difficulties. The only way the US could win is if the Chinese people decide that they dislike there rulers more than they like the Yanks. and if I was a US commander I wouldn't like to bet on those odds.
Well, they do have many diesel electric subs.
The Chinese miht use the US to overthrow their government... then do an Iraq and try to get rid of the US after. Doubtful though. I think the Chinese Airforce is big enough to decimate the US fleet beyond effectiveness, so it would br helpless. The Chinese are not afriad to lose some planes... they have loads. They'd just launch a sustained mass attack probably, regardless of fatalities.