News
By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer, American Greatness
05-13-24
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) recently released a report that estimated the People’s Republic China’s (PRC) true military spending as $710.6 billion, which is three times larger than PRC’s self-reported totals and several billion dollars higher than estimates from the U.S. intelligence community.
This report has been interpreted as good news as it demonstrates the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) assertions about how much it spends on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cannot be trusted. While this aspect of the report is true, it misses the most important point—the obvious indictment of the U.S. defense acquisition community, whether acquisition officials in the Department of Defense or the “Big Five Primes” of the private sector—that the PRC continues to outproduce the U.S. in military hardware.
For instance, if each side is spending roughly the same on defense, then the critical issue is what is each side getting for money spent on research and development, manufacturing, training and maintenance, personnel, and equipment. In this regard, fundamentally, the PRC is more efficient in its military spending and thus has been able to alter the military balance of power not just in the Indo-Pacific but increasingly around the globe.
Read the full article here: U.S. Defense Spending: The Value of Spending Rather Than Its Amount › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
