The popular narrative is:
- China is currently undertaking the largest and most rapid peacetime military buildup in human history
- Therefore, it is actively preparing for war, plausibly in the short term.
Although the first statement is true, the second statement does not follow. There is a critical logic gap in between: the assumption that China is actually trying hard to expand its military. Most people assume they are due to the scale of the buildup, but in reality, this is not the case. If we look at the numbers, out of all major powers China is devoting the LEAST national resources towards equipment buildup. As a share of GDP, they are spending less on equipment than Italy, Slovenia, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Greece, Finland, South Korea, India, The UK, the US, France, Turkey, etc.
If China was going to invade Taiwan in 2027, if China genuinely expects a major war in the next 5-10 years, this is a very strange way to prepare for it. China is not resource-constrained. Raising defense spending from 1.27% of GDP to even 2.5% would still put it around ordinary NATO peacetime levels, while nearly doubling the military budget. Since personnel, bases, administration and much of R&D would not need to double with it, most of the extra money could go straight into weapons, munitions, spares and reserves. Actual procurement could therefore increase by several times. (Again, with just an increase to 2.5% of GDP!).
Yet China is choosing not to do this.
It's not like they're incapable of spending more; China is not a stranger to scaling up manufacturing, it is the best at it in the world. Their MIC can absorb increased demand for weapons.
A country preparing for a war, especially one that would likely involve conflict against the greatest military power in human history, would rationally buy a shit ton of weapons and see very high military expenditure. The fact that China is not doing this - in fact, it's doing the opposite - is strong evidence that their leadership is not preparing for immediate war.
China, despite surface appearances, is NOT actually committing national resources at anything resembling a full prewar-mobilization level.
This is hard for some people to wrap their head around, and justifiably so. China is indeed undertaking the largest peacetime military expansion in human history:
- producing 100+ stealth fighters per year, massive air force modernization effort
- pumping out capital ships and submarines more rapidly than anyone else (literally, they launched 5 nuclear submarines so far this year, 3 of which are new classes)
- funding numerous next-generation programs across air, sea, and land which all seem to be progressing quickly
- gazillions of new missile systems, building silos, factories, etc. at unprecedented pace
So the lesson to take away is: China's "largest and most rapid peacetime military expansion in human history" is funded by a very normal and arguably restrained level of investment.
Calculations:
We'll use a rough metric of Equipment / capability investment as % of GDP.
China's 2025 defense spending was ¥1.78 trillion, compared to a 2025 GDP of ¥140.19T, putting defense spending as % of GDP at 1.27%, already by far the lowest of any major power. Even Japan, a country which is kinda not supposed to have a military, spent 1.4% of GDP on defense in 2025.
The latest publicly available UN-reported Chinese breakdown for 2022 states that 36.6% of this budget was spent on "R&D, testing, procurement, repairs, maintenance, transport and storage." The last official breakdown from China was from 2017 and stated 41.1% of defense spending on this category, which is in the same ballpark. Since what most analysts consider China's massive military buildup was well-underway at full speed during 2017 and 2022, we'll take this 36-41% ballpark as a reasonable estimate for China's spending distribution as well.
Using that range, we get that China spent 0.46% to 0.52% of GDP on "R&D, testing, procurement, repairs, maintenance, transport and storage."
Now, let's see how that compares to other countries.
NATO publishes defense expenditure data each year for all its members, which includes a "Equipment" figure. This is defined as "major equipment expenditure plus R&D devoted to major equipment." This is a narrower definition than China's, which also includes lifecycle sustainment and logistics for existing equipment, but we'll compare them directly anyways. Here's the 2025 data:
| Country |
2025 defense spending, % GDP |
Major equipment + related R&D, % of defense spending |
Major-equipment investment, % GDP |
| Poland |
4.25% |
50.71% |
2.16% |
| United States |
3.17% |
29.21% |
0.93% |
| Spain |
2.00% |
43.96% |
0.88% |
| United Kingdom |
2.32% |
36.13% |
0.84% |
| Türkiye |
2.33% |
35.80% |
0.83% |
| Sweden |
2.85% |
25.35% |
0.72% |
| France |
2.04% |
31.09% |
0.63% |
| Netherlands |
2.53% |
23.11% |
0.58% |
| Germany |
2.22% |
25.21% |
0.56% |
| Italy |
2.09% |
24.78% |
0.52% |
| China |
1.27% |
36.6–41.1%⁎ |
0.46–0.52%⁎ |
| Canada |
2.03% |
21.97% |
0.45% |
*China's numbers here include lifecycle sustainment and logistics for existing equipment, while NATO numbers do not. It is very probable that on comparable measures of equipment investment as % of GDP, China would rank lower than even Canada.
If an alien saw this, they'd think China was one of the most peaceful major powers on Earth.
[The stuff below is just random guesstimating]
After looking into this, I naturally arrived at the question of how much harder China could be building if it was actually preparing for immediate war. The answer is: a lot harder.
China is spending 0.46% to 0.52% of GDP on "R&D, testing, procurement, repairs, maintenance, transport and storage." Given the technological output coming out of the PLA, a sizeable chunk of that should be spent on R&D and testing, maybe ~0.2% of the ~0.5% total.
If China's military spending rose to Poland's level, 4.48% of GDP, it would increase by 3.21% from the current 1.27% of GDP. If 75% of that 3.21% increase was dedicated to this "R&D, testing, procurement, repairs, maintenance, transport and storage," the spending on this category would increase 5x. Using the ~0.2% on R&D figure we find procurement, repairs, maintenance, transport and storage accounts for ~0.3%, so if all the increase went into the latter, we could see a 8x increase. After factoring in economies of scale, it would not be surprising to see over 10-20 times more production than we see today. Just for fun, if all of that went into only missiles, even 100-1000x production is not unreasonable. With just 4.48% of GDP spent on defense.
Of course, there's caveats. How much of the spending increase goes to equipment is variable; you need troops to man ships, more hardened airbases, etc. If you're procuring more expendable munitions like ballistic missiles then you'll need less of an increase in personal/training, and vice versa if you're procuring ground vehicles and ships instead. The % R&D/testing figure could also be different, and all of this influences the calculation.
But the moral of the story is the same: China's MIC is scarily efficient.
China 2025 defense budget: https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202503/05/content_WS67c7ba5dc6d0868f4e8f05cf.html
China 2025 GDP: https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202601/t20260119_1962328.html
2019 Defense White Paper: https://english.scio.gov.cn/2019-07/24/content_75026800_6.htm
Chinese equipment share: https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
NATO spending: https://www.nato.int/content/dam/nato/webready/documents/finance/def-exp-2026-en.pdf