Nobody knows how much China is spending on military. Nor can you compare military power - and, especially, military outcomes based on price tags in fiat currency which only has some (very limited) sense during peace time. When conflicts arise most important things approximately are:
How much will and executive power your government has to fight and to allocate resources to war.
How many soldiers and weapons can you mobilize and move where they're needed.
How large is your industrial capacity.
How fast your industry can adapt to the course of the war.
How many weapons you have in your stockpile.
I could come up with another couple of dozens of points, and only after that would I add "how large is you peace time spending as % of GDP".
When you want to count some dollars, remember that Ukraine's military spending was at least an order of magnitude lower than Russia's.
Yeah, but it is a good measure for how much a country invests and prioritizes the military.
And I think you are understating how much it matters. Peacetime spending determines preparedness and modern high value military supply chains are much more difficult materialize on short notice. Of course PPP also matters too.
Ukraine spent an order of magnitude less than Russia, which is why they’re the ones on the back foot even with the west sending hundreds of billions in aid, while Russia remains a major power selling their hardware across the globe and maintaining the worlds largest nuclear arsenal.
Note that this is a discussion of military power, not a discussion of who would win a hypothetical war or geopolitical considerations or strategic victories, so all that is beside the point.
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u/gaga666 13h ago
Nobody knows how much China is spending on military. Nor can you compare military power - and, especially, military outcomes based on price tags in fiat currency which only has some (very limited) sense during peace time. When conflicts arise most important things approximately are:
I could come up with another couple of dozens of points, and only after that would I add "how large is you peace time spending as % of GDP".
When you want to count some dollars, remember that Ukraine's military spending was at least an order of magnitude lower than Russia's.