China 'will not match' US military power - general

[alp227]

Source: BBC News

China has no intention to match US military power, a top Chinese general has said.

Speaking in Washington, Gen Chen Bingde said America's armed forces remained far more advanced than China's despite considerable progress by China in recent years.

But Gen Chen warned that further US arms sales to Taiwan could damage US-China military relations.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunited.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13450316

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[unkachuck]

1. when will China....

....place a couple dozen 60 megaton Czar-bombs on satellites? I hope I'm dead before it happens....

....I'm guessing space is where the next super-large military spending boondoggle will occur, if it hasn't already....

[Egnever]

2. Geez 4.3 % of GDP

Thats crazy

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. They won't have to.

Omitted: China is presently building SIX aircraft carriers; the Pacific won't be an American lake for much longer.

[Incitatus]

15. So what?

US bombers can't destroy 6 air craft carriers if they wanted to?

A greater concern would be submarines with nuclear weapons, IMHO.

[Sirveri]

16. CV's are specifically designed for force projection.

Submarines less so. Subs are great, but they can't provide air support, the best they can do for force projection is special operations support. They are good at force denial however. It's all irrelevant though since the Chinese already have ballistic missle subs.

[Incitatus]

18. Both the US and China have enough nukes to devastate each others countties.

I also don't doubt they could also blow any ship out of the water if the wanted to. If it really came down to a showdown between both countries, the end result would be very bad for both.

[JVS]

20. This isn't about head to head competition, this is about being able to do things your way.

Suppose that Indonesia has some kind of insurrection/ civil war. With carriers, China can support a faction in that civil war the same way that the US is doing in Libya.

[Sirveri]

17. Long deck or short deck?

Payload and combat efficiency matters. Doubly so since that chart only lists long deck carriers, toss in the short deck LHA's and other amphibious support units and we get a whole lot more air power, albeit with harrier 2 jump jets and helicopter gunships (or osprey's).

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. It just proves they are smarter than us. They use their money for better

uses....like buying Amerika.

[flyingfysh]

5. That makes sense for them

Military expenses are a huge drain on the US. If that same money had gone for infrastructure, health care, global warming prevention, solar & wind, etc, etc, this would be an amazing place to live.

[RC]

6. Of course China has no need to match our military power

They make the electronic components for our expensive war toys.

[AllTooEasy]

10. Bullshit! US weapons have to be manufactured COMPLETELY in the US.

I know because I work for a defense contractor. Every product we sell has to be manufactured in house or from an approved American vendor, who has to manufacture all parts in America.

Even the raw materials, (like copper wire, carbon fiber, etc) have to come from the US to protect US jobs. When folks complain about the US Military Industrial Clomplex, well there it is.

...and it's crazy expensive too. You don't want to know the price difference between custom making a device in America and buying that same equivalent device at Walmart. You're paying for it!!!

[RC]

22. Key word: Components.

We may design and make the circuits here, but we import way too many of the component parts.

[NickB79]

23. Yet we're forced to import ammo from Israel and Taiwan. nt

[LetTimmySmoke]

7. The Military-Industrial Complex is a drain on society.

[Alcibiades]

8. It's working for them

The crazy thing is that you hear folks all the time complaining that various other countries do not spend enough on "defense" (read: war), never seeming to understand that we are the outlier. In economic terms, you might as well be dumping the money and burning it.

Real defense would entail something more like what the Chinese have, without the expensive doo-dads required of a global empire. Meanwhile we can't get out of Afghanistan, a country of 28 million, which makes it the size of three or four mid-sized Chinese cities. Even with a military budget one tenth of ours, I guess we couldn't successfully occupy china, either.

[Kolesar]

24. With ya' ... eom

[David__77]

9. 2% of GDP is much more reasonable.

I think, however, that is a bit high as well. They should focus on further reducing the numbers in the military, and focusing efforts on developing high technology methods that will really facilitate DEFENSE. They've gone in the right direction, avoiding the pitfalls of the Soviet path.

[AllTooEasy]

11. You are an IDIOT if you believe anything or numbers reported by those bastards

Who's seen their books? Nobody! China is a bad excuse for socialism. I don't trust the US gov't, especially Repukes, but the Chinese gov't makes Boehner and Cantor look saintly.

[yurbud]

12. they don't need a single bullet to take us down or even a computer virus--just call in our debt

and we're toast.

Of course if they did that they'd have no one to buy the shit they make.

[AtheistCrusader]

13. They can't call in our debt.

They could firesale it though. But they'd never get their money's worth trying it.

[yurbud]

19. it would be a kamikaze attack, but the point is, it wouldn't require weapons of any sort

and no matter how much they spend on their military, it would never be a good idea to get in a fight with China anywhere they can walk to.

[and-justice-for-all]

14. They will hit us with an economic bomb..

which is slowly exploding as we speak.

[OmahaBlueDog]

21. China won't have to spend that much

First, they have a massive conscript army that doesn't cost them much.

Second, they have the industrial capacity to outproduce us in drone aircraft and missles at a fraction of our cost.

Third, they aren't going to make the mistake we make of investing in weapons systems designed to fight the last war.

[NickB79]

25. They don't have to fight the US directly, just control the world's natural resources

South America and Africa are shaping up to be the two most contested areas of the world in the 21st century simply because they still have untapped reserves of natural resources needed to maintain the locust-like lifestyle we in the US have developed, and that the Chinese want to emulate. By building a navy that can simply project power into these regions, they can work to set up regimes friendly to their economic interests and cut our legs out from under us by simply starving us of the resources we need to keep our economy going and the markets we need to sell our goods to.

[Igel]

26. Ah. This again.

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.