From Heritage Foundation website:
While everyone else in the world, including the Chinese government, says China’s spending on its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is growing by double-digit percentages annually, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has quietly cut its estimate of Chinese defense spending from 4.3 percent of GDP down to 3.8 percent–a drop of about 12 percent. The timing and methodology behind the revision suggest that the CIA may be under political pressure to downplay the “China threat.” [Full Text]
John J. Tkacik, Jr., is Senior Research Fellow in China, Taiwan, and Mongolia Policy in the Asian Stud­ies Center at The Heritage Foundation.
