Put it an example why GDP sizes can be missleading as proxy on how you can spend militarily. Indonesia has 4-5 times GDP/Economic sizes than Singapore..well we should be able at least spend on our defense 2-3 times more than Singapore. The reality, in average, Singapore spend nearly twice than Indonesia on defense due to the fact average Singaporean living standard already much higher than average living standard of Indonesian. Thus the amount of resources that Indonesia must provide for social development will take much of the economy realtive with what Singapore did. Thus Singapore will have enough extra fund to spend on non social development activity including defense.
I agree that GDP does not tell the whole story with regard to productive capacity (which in turn does not translate directly to military capability, etc.) but I disagree that this changes the calculus re: China.
The relevant difference between Singapore and Indonesia is not living standards, but national culture, political organisation, external threats relative to national size, etc. The Soviet Union had nothing like the living standards of the west, but it was nonetheless able to devote much greater proportion of resources to military spending on account of its political structure (which was enabled by an underlying cultural and social structure which is still evident today). Look at India and Pakistan even — despite all the poverty and chaos that reign there, they nonetheless have highly developed military apparatus and associated ‘upper crust’ (in large part a legacy of British rule) with proportional spending on par with the major western powers before the post-Cold War drawdown.
There are any number of additional factors one could add to the simplistic narrative conveyed in my previous post. The problem is, most of those additional factors favour China as well.
You guys already see how China growth decreasing.
Decreasing economic growth as China develops has always been part of the models used to predict China’s emergence as global colossus and alters those projections not one bit. The projections are not wildly optimistic in their assumptions; indeed, over the last generation China has out-paced virtually all projections because they were too conservative! The only people ‘surprised’ by China’s slowing economic growth are newscasters, shareholders, and other folks with the attention span of a goldfish.
Sign In
