'Estimating China’s Defense Spending: How To Get It Wrong (and Right)' - by CWP alum M. Taylor Fravel

China’s defense spending is opaque, and China spends more on defense than its official 2024 defense budget of 1.67 trillion yuan ($232 billion) indicates. Some analysts claim China’s defense spending is equivalent to $700 billion, approaching the level of the U.S. defense budget. These estimates mistakenly exaggerate China’s spending. They rely on unbalanced accounting for so-called off-budget expenditures and employ flawed purchasing power parity methods. We explain these flaws and offer a novel method for a more accurate assessment. According to our calculation, China will spend an estimated $471 billion on defense in 2024, or around 36 percent of comparable U.S. defense spending of about $1.3 trillion in 2024. A better understanding of Chinese defense spending enables U.S. policymakers and military planners to make more informed resourcing and allocation decisions while reducing the likelihood of overreaction and miscalculation

Estimating China’s Defense Spending: How To Get It Wrong (and Right)

M. Taylor Fravel, George J. Gilboy, and Eric Heginbotham

Texas National Security Review Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer 2024) - https://ssp.mit.edu/publications/2024/estimating-china-s-defense-spending-how-to-get-it-wrong-and-right

M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taylor studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China's Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019). His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, Asian Survey, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor, and Contemporary Southeast Asia.

Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Taylor is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and serves as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.

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