How China is beating the US in new weapons race with a fraction of the budget
The country’s military modernisation integrates civilian scientific and industrial capabilities into defence innovation allowing rapid development
The disparity becomes clearer when focusing specifically on military research and development. The US Department of Defence allocates about US$140 billion annually to research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E) – roughly 15 to 17 per cent of the Pentagon’s total budget.
China does not publish a detailed R&D breakdown, but most external estimates suggest that between 5 and 10 per cent of its defence spending goes towards military research – around US$20 billion to US$50 billion.
Yet China continues to introduce a wide range of advanced systems across multiple technological domains. This has prompted a debate among defence researchers: how can a country with much lower defence spending sustain such a broad portfolio of military innovation?
With his colleagues, Wu Ji, director and associate researcher with the science and technology department at the Institute for Defence Technology and Strategic Studies at the National University of Defence Technology, described what they called a “new nationwide mobilisation system”, which had been implemented in recent years to boost defence science and technology.