China's Defense Spending Thread

[tamsen_ikard]

Guys here advocating for a massive defense spending increase, which area of spending can PRC afford to decrease? Industrial Policy and subsidies? Education and healthcare? RnD? Infrastructure?
There just isn't a way to not compromise future development, US military is built on top of these sacrifices and that has led to the current situation - it would have been worse(it will in the future) if not for US's historic gap vs ROW.

They can boost the aweful tax collection that China has. China only collects 19% of its GDP in taxes, all developed countries collect around 40% in taxes. What do Chinese people do with all the extra money they have? They buy useless real-estate or launder the money abroad to buy real-estate in western countries. Again a massive loss.

China is still not a proper developed country due to how low the government spending is. They need to boost tax collection, increase defense spending, increase spending on childcare subsidies and continue spending on all the other things. O yes, one more thing, impose a massive property tax to take out all the speculators.

 

[antiterror13]

They can boost the aweful tax collection that China has. China only collects 19% of its GDP in taxes, all developed countries collect around 40% in taxes. What do Chinese people do with all the extra money they have? They buy useless real-estate or launder the money abroad to buy real-estate in western countries. Again a massive loss.

China is still not a proper developed country due to how low the government spending is. They need to boost tax collection, increase defense spending, increase spending on childcare subsidies and continue spending on all the other things. O yes, one more thing, impose a massive property tax to take out all the speculators.

Yeapp, it should increase incrementally to ~25-30% ideally

I think China has a quite high "tax free" income threshold (which I think a good thing)
Income up to 5,000 RMB / month (60,000 RMB / year) are tax free, but there are additional can be added
* Children’s Education: 2,000 RMB per child/month.
* Housing Rent: 800 to 1,500 RMB/month (depending on the city).
* Home Mortgage Interest: 1,000 RMB/month.
* Elderly Care: Up to 3,000 RMB/month.
* Infant Care (under 3): 2,000 RMB per child/month.

In developed countries, they don't have those, and elderly & Infant care are under social budget

Also the income tax rates are quite low (even for high earners)

After all deductions (tax free threshold)

Level Annual Taxable ) Tax Rate
Income (RMB)
1 0 – 36,000 3%
2 36,000 – 144,000 10%
3 144,000 – 300,000 20%
4 300,000 – 420,000 25%
5 420,000 – 660,000 30%
6 660,000 – 960,000 35%
7 Over 960,000 45%

VAT in China is also modest 13% for general goods and 6% for modern services

I think is not bad. I know there are still many "shadow economy" in China that the incomes are not reported, estimated of over $3.6T

I am fine with "shadow economy" for small informal sectors, like Small-scale street vendors, "mom-and-pop" shops.

However the "Grey" economy for legitimate business that under-report the true earning (on purpose) and Illegal market must be controlled

 

[Wrought]

Having said that, the current 1.27% is indeed a joke from China’s angle. During the Cold War, the USSR maintained 4-digit ICBM and IRBM launchers, a 4-digit size navy with comprised mostly of expandable missiles boats and submarines, and a 5 million strong personnel size. And that was the bare minimum needed to deter NATO. It costed Moscow roughly 20% of its GDP and its economy.

Remind me, how did spending 20% of GDP on the military turn out for Moscow?

 

[RoastGooseHKer]

Japan and South Korea don't have the capacity.

Japan is roughly 11x smaller, and South Korea about 28x smaller than China.
So you have to scale their production capacity downwards

Plus Japan and South Korea will be under an effective blockade if China is launching over 60K munitions per month, just from Shaheeds.

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The USSR was trying to match the USA, Europe, China and Japan at the same time.
That is not the case today with China.

Also, I don't think China needs more missile brigades for low-cost munitions. The issue is producing enough munitions as a single brigade that does 5 salvoes daily is going to launch 600 Shaheeds. That is already 18K per month.

But if you increase the size and number of launchers/munitions concentrated for a single brigade, the only thing an adversary needs to do is to decapitate the brigade commander and commissar like how the Israelis are doing to the Iranian military (and what Ukraine was able to do to Russian flag officers in 2022). You might as well increase the number of bridges in order to disperse long range missile launching capacity and alleviate the effect of the death of one bridge commander might have on the entire war.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Remind me, how did spending 20% of GDP on the military turn out for Moscow?

Its a fallacy to think overspending on defense was what broke the Soviet economy. What really happened was the Soviet economy reached a stagnate/broken state some time in the 70s and the only place that the state could channel excess production capacity was the military. The alternative was mass unemployment.

 

[AndrewS]

Its a fallacy to think overspending on defense was what broke the Soviet economy. What really happened was the Soviet economy reached a stagnate/broken state some time in the 70s and the only place that the state could channel excess production capacity was the military. The alternative was mass unemployment.

The USSR was trying to compete with combined economies that were over 5x larger.

Whatever military they built was never enough, because true military security comes from having good relations with your neighbours.

There was no excess production capacity, otherwise why the constant shortages and rationing?

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

The USSR was trying to compete with combined economies that were over 5x larger.

Whatever military they built was never enough, because true military security comes from having good relations with your neighbours.

There was no excess production capacity, otherwise why the constant shortages and rationing?

If it weren't for nukes, Soviet conventional forces would steamroll NATO in any conflict Europe- replay of the last 2 years of WW2. Shortages and rationing were due to a dysfunctional economic system that never scaled to handle increasing economic complexity and distribution inefficiencies. The Soviets kept on overproducing military goods in order to avoid mass unemployment which would've led to mass social unrest that would've brought about its collapse even sooner than in the real timeline.

 

[AndrewS]

But if you increase the size and number of launchers/munitions concentrated for a single brigade, the only thing an adversary needs to do is to decapitate the brigade commander and commissar like how the Israelis are doing to the Iranian military (and what Ukraine was able to do to Russian flag officers in 2022). You might as well increase the number of bridges in order to disperse long range missile launching capacity and alleviate the effect of the death of one bridge commander might have on the entire war.

The point was that launch vehicles aren't really the bottleneck.

When you're talking about decapitating brigade commanders, you're essentially saying the launch vehicles themselves are being attacked. I just don't see that happening.

Having said that, you do want enough vehicles to launch saturation waves like in Ukraine with with 600+ at a time. So call it 5 brigades with 120 launch vehicles.

 

[AndrewS]

If it weren't for nukes, Soviet conventional forces would steamroll NATO in any conflict Europe- replay of the last 2 years of WW2. Shortages and rationing were due to a dysfunctional economic system that never scaled to handle increasing economic complexity and distribution inefficiencies. The Soviets kept on overproducing military goods in order to avoid mass unemployment which would've led to mass social unrest that would've brought about its collapse even sooner than in the real timeline.

But the nukes do exist, which meant NATO could field a smaller military than otherwise.

But let's say there is a conventional war. I think that the Soviet forces would have reached the Rhine. But then the USSR still faces a fully mobilised NATO, which is still 2-3x larger.

Ok. Then suppose the USSR somehow conquers France and France doesn't use its nukes.

Then Spain and Italy still provide a land route all the way back to Germany in a long war.

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Consider what you're saying. The USSR made a conscious effort to overproduce military goods to provide employment to avoid unrest

Surely a better choice would be to provide jobs to improve the distribution system (aka a better road network) which would have both economic and military benefits.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Surely a better choice would be to provide jobs to improve the distribution system (aka a better road network) which would have both economic and military benefits.

If they could've done so then they would have. Unfortunately Soviet economy ran into the limits of centrally planned economy and eventually they realized communism doesn't work. Collapse of Soviet Union had nothing to do with military/security competetion with the West to even the slightest degree.