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Due
to the lack of transparency and difficulty in estimating China’s real
military expenditure, analysts have often estimate China’s military
expenditure to be much more than was officially announced. For example,
the International Monetary Fund uses it’s own Purchasing-Power-Parity
(PPP) to estimate that China’s annual expenditure was between US$23
billion to US$32 billion for 1990-1995 while the World Bank estimates at
US$37 billion - US$52 billion6.
On
the other hand, analyst like Shaoguang Wang whose study was supported by
the Chinese Association for Eurasian Studies (Taiwan), argued that
China’s military expenditure was only slightly higher than the
official figure7. Indeed,
the PPP-based defence budget data may say nothing more than to
indicate that maintaining a military force the size of the
PLA in Western cost analyst would amount to dollar denomination that is
significantly higher than official Chinese figures. It does not meant
that the Chinese military has the estimated amount at its disposal8. |