Reply #26: Ah. This again.

[Igel]

Let's take one line, the number of soldiers.

1.6 vs. 2.3 million.

Base pay for a new recruit in the US is about $14k/year. Add in all kinds of additional stuff like special skills, and the average pay quickly rises to well over $20k per year. Then pitch in family housing, etc. The typical GI costs much more than $20k/year. 1,600,000 x $20,000 = $32 billion. That's really, really a low cut-off. Then there are things like the GI Bill, VA benefits, etc., etc. The US spends far more than the stated Chinese military budget on salaries and benefits.

Base pay for a new recruit in China is about $2,000 per year. Pitch it training, etc., and it'll rise to perhaps $2,500. There is no family housing for conscripts. For 2.3 million, we're looking at perhaps $6 billion for salaries. They don't have to worry about benefits. The "military spending" that the US--many billions of dollars--devotes to such things are covered (or not covered) elsewhere.

Now let's consider that the yuan is overvalued by perhaps 15%. In other words, all the $ values discussed get to be discounted by 15% (or the number of yuan increased by 15%.) They spend more than the numbers would say, in other words.

It's a tough call as to whether all the future interest on the debt that can be attributed to military spending should be included as current military spending. It's essentially a claim that if the US disbanded all of its military, didn't so much as buy a single bullet, fired everybody on the payroll, disposed of all military-related benefits (no more pensions, VA hospitals, or GI bill) and converted all military installations and land to farming parsley that we'd still have over $100 billion in "military expenses." Come to think of it, no, it's not a tough call. It's ridiculous to include that kind of spending in this kind of comparison.

It's also difficult to tease out exactly how much of the spending on the military is covert, covered by profits from the huge number of military-run enterprises. (In this, the Chinese Army is like the Pakistani Army--both are heavily invested in the 'private sector', are probably the largest single employer in their respective country, and control a lot of resources that even when expensed aren't strictly speaking part of government expenses.)

But none of this actually matters, while it's necessary for understanding it's all completely beside the point.