SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: China’s Defense Spending Is Larger Than It Looks.

If you account for differences in reporting structure, purchasing power, and labor costs, you find that China’s 2017 defense budget provided 87 percent of the purchasing power of American’s 2017 defense budget.

This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States spends more on its military than the next 12 countries combined or that China lags annual U.S. military spending by close to $400 billion. Those misleading comparisons are based on simply converting Beijing’s reported defense budget from yuan to dollars by applying a market exchange rate. That produces a distorted picture. We must take into consideration several key factors to arrive at an accurate understanding of just how much Beijing is investing in its military.

One key factor—and perhaps the main one that makes accurate comparison so challenging—is how Beijing accounts for its military research and development. Put simply, it doesn’t include it in any of its reports on military expenditures.

On the other hand, Communist QC has never been any good.