More interesting is the comment of a delegate at the Party Congress:
one party member to comment wryly to the Financial Times that nothing displays structural weakness like overweight generals.The most interesting claim is that 40% of China's military budget is lost to corruption. I doubt that is so. It appears plausible though.
I live very close to a PLA Air Force base. As a military brat, I've been living near Air Force bases my whole life. And you never forget because planes are always being obnoxious overhead.
I didn't realize I was living so close to a PLA Air Force base until my father told me he'd spotted it on Google Earth. In the last three months, I've never seen more than two fighters jets up at a time. So maybe the fuel budget is being misappropriated. I doubt it though.
Looking at a Rand Report, I'm using projected figures for 2025, 44% of China's defense budget is spent on personnel. 28% is spent on Operations and Maintenance. 28% is spent on Procurement and RDT&E.
You'd need to steal half the personnel budget, a third of the operations budget, and a third of the procurement budget. I suppose stealing from the personnel budget is the easiest and least harmful.
Your guess is as good as mine as to where they're stealing the money from. Incidentally Gu Junshan, it appears, just sold off military owned land and stole homes meant for retired officers. Such actions don't diminish China's military capability.
The corruption needn't involves embezzlement from the State coffers. The PLA is a big business. Generals can enrich themselves on the business side through tax avoidance. According to Rand, in the 1990s, most employees of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, didn't even bother to pay income tax. They can also just embezzle from said companies. The money PLA Inc. made used to just for increasing troop living standards.
In short, corruption within the PLA leadership doesn't mean China's military is a paper tiger.
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