Think about how many personnel are employed in the Chinese military as opposed to the US millitary. Now, think how much more an average US soldier gets paid as opposed to your average Chinese soldiers.
Next, think about how much lower the quality of living is for their soldiers, and how much less money gets spent on maintanance and training. (hint: the Chinese military is so poorly funded that it's not unusual for soldiers to be sent to work in factories or farms in order to get "extra funding")
Next, think about how much money China is saving by ripping off military technology developed by other countries.
Also, think about how much money China saves by employing EXTREMELY cheap (by US standards) labour to build all it's vehicles, equipment, etc.
And finally, compare the total ammount of money spent in each country as a percentage of their GDP's (the only measurement worth comparing, as anyone with a basic grasp of economics should understand).
If you account for all of those differences, the numbers paint a much different picture. Just as a general guideline, if you took the Chinese military, gave them proper training, gave them the quality of life standard that we accept as a norm in North America, gave them the same sort of income as US soldiers, made them buy and develop their technology instead of stealing it, and then equiped them using only north-american/NATO suppliers, you end up with a budget that's a hell of a lot bigger than anything the US spends.
Or, conversly, if you took the US military, brought down their level of training, had them start stealing technology from other countries, paid them $800 a month, started buying all equipment, vehicles, and clothing from Mexico, and sent soldiers out to work at McDonalds and Burger King in order to make more funding for the army, you'd be quite surprised at how much cheaper it would be to maintain the same size force.
So if you're angry that the US is spending a lot of money, then fine, keep quoting that statistic. But if, through those figures, you're trying to prove that the US is more warlike, or anything relating to their actual military abilities, well, you need to rethink that. |
