“The Chinese spend $131 billion a year on defense, we spend $640 billion. Somethin’ ain’t right with this story.”
Over 50% of our spending goes to cover personnel costs including a bloated general officer corps (more generals than in WWII) and a huge civilian bureaucracy which keeps growing as the forces shrink. The Chinese are also not deploying armed forces at offshore bases, nor are they funding a Navy that patrols the world’s oceans. In fact our navy subsides their foreign trade by protecting the shipping lanes. Likely the US spends more on high tech weaponry.
We also can’t assume the Chinese are truthful about their spending levels. All government data from China is suspect.
So is all governmental data from our government (see Unemployment numbers) sad to say.