‘True Size’ of China’s Military Budget Could Match US Spending: Research

Following American intelligence reports saying last year that China is vastly underreporting its military budget, new research has crunched numbers and determined the country’s defense spending could rival that of the United States.Beijing’s reported defense spending has ticked upward by 6.6 percent to 7.5 percent over the past five years, totaling less than one-third the defense budgets approved by Congress.However, “accounting for economic adjustments and estimating reasonable but uncounted expenditures, the buying power of China’s 2022 military budget balloons to an estimated $711…