ABSTRACT
Western and Chinese analysts would generally agree that the People's Republic of China officially published military budget does not represent China's total defense spending or its potential revenue base. There are several broad reasons why one might be interested, from a policy perspective, in the amount of money China spends per year on defense. First, development economists believe that the relative defense burden can have an important impact on economic growth, although economists are unsurprisingly divided over whether the net impact is positive or negative. Second, students of Chinese domestic politics may use the defense budget as an indicator of the relative political clout of the military in Chinese domestic politics. Because the People's Liberation Army (PLA) does not control most of the funding that goes to either major foreign weapon purchases or to subsidize domestic defense industries, it must lobby central authorities through the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Defense Ministry to assure its needs are met.
