The CCP is Increasing Military Spending – Again

The Chinese Communist Party announced plans to increase its annual military budget by another 7.2% this week. This continues the CCP’s decades of massive investments into its military as Chinese leaders pledge they are ready to fight “any kind of war” with the United States “to the end."
The CCP’s military spending increase is alarming enough, but the danger is even worse because the Biden Administration spent the past four years kneecapping America’s defense budget. Beijing is rapidly scaling its military capabilities while our defense apparatus suffers from real budget cuts and reduced buying power due to inflation.
Failing to deter China by cutting our military would be one of the most catastrophic mistakes the United States has ever made. Losing a war with China would be a multi-trillion-dollar blunder costing thousands of American lives.
China’s military spending increase comes just months after Russia hiked its own military budget by 25 percent, reaching its highest level since the Cold War.
It’s time to ditch budget delusion and face reality: America’s military budget must rise to meet the threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The best way to avert war and protect American blood and treasure is to invest in our security before it’s too late.

The CCP says it will only spend about $245 billion on China’s military, but the true value of its spending is far higher. Estimates by the U.S. intelligence community and leading defense budget experts indicate the true amount may be triple what China’s topline claims.
To minimize international blowback, PRC officials work hard every year to diffuse their military expenditures across China’s federal budget. They omit tens of billions of dollars the CCP spends on R&D, internal state security, paramilitaries, and space initiatives from its reported military spending.
After accounting for economic adjustments and estimating uncounted expenditures, the buying power of China’s military budgets increases by hundreds of billions of dollars, rivaling U.S. defense efforts.
China’s true annual military spending is upwards of $700 billion–most of which it can devote to its ambitions in the Asia-Pacific, unlike the $850 billion U.S. defense budget which must also address Russia’s aggression, deal with a nuclear-aspiring Iran, and more.

Even before the CCP’s military budget increase, the Defense Department was sounding the alarm on the threats posed by the CCP’s military buildup to the United States in a December report.
The Pentagon warned Congress what Communist China would do with an even larger military budget in 2025: drive spending on high-tech military assets–stealth fighters, aircraft carriers, and an expanded nuclear arsenal.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Four years ago, China’s nuclear stockpile was about 200 operational warheads. According to DoD estimates, the PLA now has well over 600 and is projected to reach 1,000 warheads by 2030–more than enough to obliterate every major U.S. city and more.
All that doesn’t even account for the PLA Navy–now the largest in the world. The Pentagon says China’s fleet is expected to increase to 395 by 2025 and 435 ships by 2030. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s shipbuilding plan projected we’d only reach 381 battle force ships in 2043.

Some argue that China just wants a security perimeter and its military weapons are just for defensive purposes. If that’s the case, why is the CCP hacking U.S. telecommunications, attacking Filipino sailors, encircling Taiwan with provocative exercises, and backing Russia’s war in Ukraine?
The CCP is clearly preparing to go to war with America. Just hours before announcing their military spending increase, China’s embassy declared the PRC was “ready to fight” any type of war with America “until the end.”
Xi Jinping has made no bones about his ultimate goal: achieving “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049. That means making the world safe for Chinese-style Communism and dangerous for free nations like America.
He has instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan within the next two years, which could force the United States into one of the most disastrous wars in human history–a conflict that would easily dwarf the costs of all recent wars combined.
The price of a deterrence failure in the Indo-Pacific would be measured in trillions, with costs incurred by American taxpayers for decades to come.

Even as the threats from abroad rose, President Biden kept proposing defense budgets to Congress with cuts, taking into account the high inflation generated by his policies. It is only thanks to conservatives that the worst of those cuts were averted.
The result is a U.S. military budget that is among the smallest since before the Second World War, and a historically low share of GDP spent on the U.S. military.
America’s security cannot afford four more years of defense spending cuts. Conservatives should push for major and sustained defense spending increases over the next four years.

We can’t expect to stop China’s aggression without giving our defense apparatus the funding to get the job done. Without defense spending increases, China’s military edge over America will only accelerate.
President Trump has made clear he is determined to restore American military strength, lethality, and readiness. A precondition to delivering on that agenda is Congress providing the Trump Administration a defense budget that aligns with the scope of the challenge.
The voters are demanding action. A record 8 in 10 Americans support more defense spending, including a whopping 88 percent of Trump voters and 72 percent of Democrats. Strong majorities back measures to deter an invasion of Taiwan: arms sales, regional military presence, and even an Asian security alliance. Congress should respond accordingly.