The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has published a new report on the actual military expenditure of the People’s Republic of China since 2010. The figures vary considerably depending on the source.
According to the official budget, China’s military spending amounted to around 144 billion euros in 2019, while external estimates put the figure at 165 billion euros for 2019, the Pentagon puts spending at more than 186 billion euros for 2018 and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) even estimates up to 215 billion euros for 2019. Such large deviations can be explained by China’s low and very patchy public transparency in military matters, which is why Western institutes and analysts, as well as some experts in China, have been questioning the completeness of the official budget for some time. They argue that official Chinese spending does not cover all activities related to the entire Chinese military. Expenditure on some military activities would therefore be wholly or partially outside the official national defense budget. For example, military research and development is outsourced in many places to university institutes and increasingly also to companies (conglomerates). It is also difficult to assess and estimate expenditure on paramilitary forces such as border guards and special police forces, the (militarized) coast guard and state fishing fleets, infrastructure construction for ultimately military purposes – such as on the islands in the South China Sea – as well as major arms imports such as the recent influx of Su-35 jets and S-400 air defence systems.
This new (English language) report by authors Nan Tian and Fei Su updates SIPRI’s assessment of how best to track Chinese military expenditure. It builds on previous research around official Chinese budget documents, as well as Western and Chinese research on how to track military spending outside the official figures. The resulting impression that money for these key areas apparently does not play a role there has also been gained by Militär Aktuell on several occasions in contact with Chinese armed forces.
