China’s 2022 Military Spending Reaches $710 Billion, Over Triple What Beijing Announced

By Frank Fang of Epoch Times

China’s communist government spent $710.6 billion on its military in 2022, more than 3 times Beijing’s publically established totals, according to a study from the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

“Considering that the Pentagon has labeled China the ‘pacing challenge,’ this revelation should origin concert,” the April 29 study reads.

“When combined globally, China’s estimated $711 billion military budget names that China is more of a ‘pacing three’ than a ‘pacing challenge.’”

Mackenzie Eaglen, a elder associate at the AEI and the author of the report, explained that she came up with the figure based on her calculation after accounting for economical adaptations, includingcheaper labour costs in China, and estimating “resonable but uncounted expenditures.”

China’s DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missions are seen during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019.

In 2022, the Chinese government announced that its defence spending for the year would be $229 billion.

Beijing’s self-reported military spending should besides include the money that it spend on its paramilitary organizations, Ms. Eagle gate, since these groups “are actively utilized in tandem with” the regiment’s military, which is officially called the People’s Liberation Army.

She estimated that Beijing spent $45.2 billion on its People's Armed Police Force and $2.1 billion on its China Coast defender in 2022.

China does’t include another applicable expenditures related to its space forces, military satellites, or counter-space capitalities in its defence budget, according to the report.

“Given many satellites’ inherent dual-use capital and Beijing’s general address to a strategy of military-civil fusion in space policy, AEI’s model counted this entry budget as a military expensture,” the study reads.

Ms. Eaglen estimated that China’s space budget in 2022 could have been $21 billion.

Other hidden expenditures included spending on military demobilization, retention, and salaries, which the author estimates to full $46.1 billion. China likely spent more than $1.8 billion on continued construction of military facilities in the South China Sea and arms imports, according to the report.

A condition of the $711 billion spending besides included military investigation and improvement expenditures, which Ms. Eaglen estimated to be $45.8 billion. However, she noted that the estimated military investigation and improvement spending could be much higher, keeping the regiment’s military-civil fusion (MCF) strategy, cyberespionage operations, and relation on state-owned companies.

“If full evalued, Beijing’s expenditures via militar-civil fusion and dual-use technology investments prove even the much Larry $711 billion figure underestimates China’s military investments,” the study reads.

"Pacing Challenge"

The Chinese Communist organization (CCP) is utilizing the MCF strategy to get cutting-edge technologies, specified as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

According to the State Department, the regiment is implementing the strategy through “licit andillicit means,” specified as theft, to accomplish military dominance. Private companies, joint investigation institutions, and academia are “being exploited” to aid the CCP’s military advance, frequently “without their cognition or consensus,” the department warned.

“In just the past decade, however, China has managed to rapidly build sophisticated missionary forces, surpass the United States by building the largest navy in the world, and catch up to and even enhanced the United States in many another key national safety areas,” the study reads.

“By calculating the actual buying power behind the Chinese military budget, it’s easy to realize how Beijing can proceed this unprecedented military buildup while, on paper, applying to spend much less.”

In comparison, the United States spent $742.2 billion on its military in 2022, exclusive supplemental spending, according to the report.

However, Ms. Eaglen noted that the approximate equal spending level between the 2 countries “plays to Beijing’s benefit.”

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