
How China is replacing America as Asia’s military titan - Element_
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-army-xi/
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noobermin
We should match our military spending with China's, that should do it.

EDIT: I hope everyone realizes this is sarcastic. We already spend more than
China and then some.

~~~
JimboOmega
It kind of worked with the Soviet Union. They tried to keep up, but just
didn't have the economic power to do it.

It won't with China, because China isn't playing the force projecting world
superpower game like the SU was.

~~~
luckylion
The SU was also much smaller than NATO wrt to population, it's reversed with
China.

~~~
Areading314
NATO countries have a comparable population to China, 938 million, according
to this: [http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nato-
countries/](http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nato-countries/)

~~~
luckylion
Yeah, it's not a 2:1 thing, but 40% more is still significant.

NATO countries are much more industrialized than China (the same applied when
the SU was the opponent), so that certainly helps.

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jlarocco
Honestly I don't see a problem with it.

We already waste too much money in the United States trying to be the world
police, and there's no good reason for it any more. We have too many of our
own problems to deal with to waste so much money on that crap.

~~~
boomboomsubban
The entire "world police" concept is ridiculous and used to mask the true
colonialist ambitions the US operates under. The reason this is a "problem" is
that it might make China richer rather than the US.

The notion that the US military has been a force of good for the world needs
to be abandoned. It serves only to encourage the US to attack more countries,
as killing millions more Asians would be viewed as the more moral option than
allowing Chinese influence to spread.

~~~
ethbro
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

America, every European colonial power, Britian, the Soviet Union, and
Imperial Japan have each had their share of atrocities where they were
unchallenged superpowers.

There's a lot to be said for multipolarity.

Additionally, I'd point out the US funds ~1/4 of the UN (China next at ~1/10).
Which seems pretty generous to maintaining internal order in a broad way.

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mc32
Ideally the US, EU and CN would work cooperatively rather than adversarially
with regards to leading the world into a brighter future. The US and EU share
s lot in terms of philosophy and economic goals. Japan and the “Asian tigers”
also fit in. I think India to a great degree shares the same, but China
currently is not in synchronicity with the EU-US-JP and to a lesser extent
India’s goals on the world stage. We can quibble about climate change or
tariffs, but we’ll agree on basic frameworks around trade, security,
cooperation, and many other policies. We need a way to weave China into this
(Russia too, but that’s another story) MFN status and WTO could have been
leveraged, but that ship sailed a long time ago...

~~~
AtlasLion
your priorities seem way off to me, I don't care if these countries disagree
about trade but climate change needs everyone on board. Also, we don't need
China following the US regime change war machine.

~~~
beasteurope
Count Europe out as well. With Italy officially joining the Belt and Road and
Hungary expressing interest we should align ourselves with the future not a
dying America.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Sure, China has the best interests of europe in mind. /s Or could they be
trying to split Italy off with their populist govt not have much experience
and wanting to show they are 'independent'.

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Leary
With anti access area denial weapons like ballistic missiles and submarines,
it is increasingly difficult to offensively project naval forces into a
region. While this means America will have trouble navigating within China's
vicinity, it also means that even relatively small countries like Vietnam and
Taiwan can buy equipment to deter China.

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sremani
>> His push to project power abroad was accompanied by a power play at home.
Xi has purged more than 100 generals accused of corruption or disloyalty,
according to the official state-controlled media. >>

For me this is a resounding signal the PLA is predominantly a domestic force.
American Presidents do not sack Admirals that easily, because the American
admirals are more powerful on the seas than domestic policy or DC.

I am not discounting the improvements in Chinese firepower, esp. their
missiles targeting carriers. This article does not have anything substantial
to say, China is a military Titan.

China may escalate certain issues to divert the attention of people especially
if their economy has a hard landing. Its a risk, but we all know it.

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olivermarks
In fiscal year 2015, US military spending was projected to account for 54
percent of _all federal discretionary spending_ , a total of $598.5 billion.

Translation: they need even more money.

~~~
rayiner
Both "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make
military spending look artificially large. For one thing, defense is one of
the relatively few things the federal government is supposed to be doing--you
would expect defense to account for a disproportionately large fraction of
"federal" expenditures. (And it makes for misleading comparisons to countries
with unified governments, where military spending is reported as a percentage
of _all_ government spending.)

For another thing, many expenditures are mandatory rather than discretionary,
for good reason. Peoples' social security checks shouldn't vary from year-to-
year based on government finances. That doesn't mean that social security
spending should be ignored when you're looking at the percentage of government
spending that goes to the military.

Total government expenditures in the U.S. is _$7.65 trillion._ The military
budget is less than 8% of that. We're on the higher side, but that's less than
for example India or Singapore. As a percentage of GDP we're at 3.1%, which is
again on the high side but not crazy out of line. France is at 2.3%, and the
NATO target for Europe is 2%. In the early 1990s, France and UK were spending
the same percentage of GDP as the U.S. is spending now (over 3%). I remember
people talking about Seinfeld and Friends back then, but not about how the
U.K. and France were crazy out-of-control with their military spending.

~~~
avar
> "federal" and "discretionary" are weasel qualifiers that attempt to make
> military spending look artificially large[...]

It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in the
US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military. Considering
pensions paid to veterans a part of military spending is the norm, e.g. NATO's
% GDP numbers take that into account for all its members.

> For one thing, defense is one of the relatively few things the federal
> government is supposed to be doing[..]

Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary. It's mostly
a political decision to keep spending more today as a percentage of GDP than
the US was doing in the 1930s[1], or to name an example closer to the current
day more than was being spent on September 10th, 2001.

1\.
[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_201...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_2010USp_11s1lo011lcn_30f)

~~~
rayiner
> It's not just a weasel qualifier. There is mandatory military spending in
> the US, e.g. pensions paid to retired members of the military.

So? When you're talking about how the military budget is too big, how does it
make sense to exclude all the mandatory social spending from the calculation?

> Sure, but the extent to which it does it is largely discretionary.

That's not the point. Because defense is one of the few things the federal
government _is supposed to do_ , looking only at the federal budget will
always make defense spending seem artificially large. You see people say stuff
like "the U.S. spends more on defense than education!" In fact, we spend more
on K-12 alone than defense--it's just that the education spending shows up in
the $3.5 trillion of non-federal spending. We spend almost as much on
infrastructure as on the military, a fact that is again obscured if you're
looking only at the federal budget.

~~~
avar
I wasn't trying to refute your larger point that quoting some arbitrary part
of a government's total % of GDP spending is mostly meaningless.

I _was_ saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military
spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong, because that part of the budget _is_
meaningfully broken down into discretionary and non-discretionary spending.
You can decide to scale active military personnel up and down, you can't (as
easily) decide to stop paying military pensions.

> [...]defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to
> do[...]

So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how _much_ is
being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part of
the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not meaningful
to discuss how _much_ needs to be spent on that task.

~~~
rayiner
> I was saying that your claim that "discretionary" in "discretionary military
> spending" is a weasel qualifier is wrong

In the above, the "discretionary" qualifier is being applied to "federal
spending" not "military spending."

> So you keep saying, but the upthread comment is clearly about how much is
> being spent on that topic. Just because there's a law saying a certain part
> of the government is entrusted with a given task doesn't mean it's not
> meaningful to discuss how much needs to be spent on that task.

The upstream comment is arguing that too much is being spent on defense by
pointing to defense spending being a _high percentage_ of discretionary
federal spending. It is meaningful to discuss whether too much is being spent
on the military. But it's misleading to make that argument by pointing out
that the part of the government that's meant to provide for defense (and
little else) spends a large fraction of its budget on defense.

It's like the statement that "44% of Americans pay no federal income tax."
That statement is technically true, but calculated to mislead because it
ignores that most of the total tax burden is not "federal income tax."
Likewise, more than 80% of total governmental spending is not "federal
discretionary spending."

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thatfrenchguy
s/America/United States.

Seriously this bad naming needs to stop.

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mrb
Half the comments in HN are flagged or downvoted. Is it a sign that the HN
crowd feels uneasy and divided about China's rising power?

Meta comment: wonder if my comment will get downvoted too when it's just
asking a question meant to start an intelligent discussion.

~~~
gervase
HN intentionally flags and removes controversial comments and posts, with the
intention to prevent trolling, flame wars, and other detrimental behavior
patterns. This is considered a feature, not a bug [0].

This ensures that HN provides a semi-curated discussion weighted towards
technical and scientific issues, and against geopolitical or socioeconomic
topics, for example.

That isn't a statement that these topics shouldn't be discussed, just that
they aren't necessarily appropriate for discussion _here_.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
rexpop
> HN intentionally flags and removes

You mean, the forum software itself? Who wrote the algorithm?

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NTDF9
I can't be the only one noticing so much noise about China in American media.

Is America really so scared of being number 2?

~~~
jayd16
Of course. Our entire national psyche has been centered around American
exceptionalism for at least 70 years. Scared isn't exactly right. We're very
rival focused, I would say. It's China now but there was a time when it felt
like Japan would control the electronics industry, for example.

~~~
NTDF9
But is there an acceptance that the exceptionalism cannot be had by massive
global bullying, wars, lack of investment in people vs corporations?

I mean, its literally impossible to be number 1, if the competition is
investing in their people and aren't going to insane wars.

America is still number 2 and that's not a bad place.

~~~
jayd16
You say that but quality of life is still considered considerably higher in
the US than China. Even if the trajectory looks good, as more of China moves
to a middle class lifestyle, the growth that's fueled by cheap labor will
slow.

~~~
NTDF9
Sure. But I don't know what's better.

A life of $10/day with dirt cheap healthcare or a life of $60/day with the
constant fear of losing healthcare.

This is why PPP comparison matters.

