Thursday, October 31, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT
As tensions continue to mount in the U.S.-China relationship, concerns have grown among U.S. political and military leaders regarding China’s defense spending, which is often said to be significantly higher than it actually is. In a new report, M. Taylor Fravel, George Gilboy, and Eric Heginbotham argue that the estimate that China’s military spending has surged to $700 billion depends on flawed assumptions and miscalculations. The claim has gained traction in various circles, including in the U.S. Congress and the media, where some suggest China’s military budget is comparable to that of the United States.
In an interview conducted on October 9, 2024, M. Taylor Fravel, George Gilboy, and Eric Heginbotham, in conversation with Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise, discuss the implications of overestimating China’s defense spending and offer alternative methods to gauge China’s spending more accurately.
Speakers
M. Taylor Fravel
M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. His publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, and The China Quarterly, among others. Dr. Fravel is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Dr. Fravel is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and serves as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.
George J. Gilboy
George J. Gilboy is an executive at an international energy firm and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Studies at MIT. He is also a member of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He has lived and worked in China from 1994 to 2013 in roles with Woodside, Shell, Cambridge Energy Research, and Tsinghua University. Dr. Gilboy holds a BA from Boston College and a doctorate in political economy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Eric Heginbotham
Eric Heginbotham is a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Security Studies Program (SSP) and is Co-Director of SSP’s Wargaming Lab. Before joining MIT, he was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he led research projects on China, Japan, and regional security issues and regularly briefed senior military, intelligence, and political leaders. Dr. Heginbotham was also previously a senior fellow of Asian Studies with the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks Chinese and Japanese, was a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve, and holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Moderator
Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise
Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise is director of the CNA China Studies Program. She has over two decades of experience directing projects and conducting research and analysis on Chinese military and strategic issues. Her research interests include PRC military modernization, Chinese politics and foreign policy, economics as an instrument of national security policy, South China Sea issues, strategic communications, and information operations. Ms. Kivlehan-Wise holds an M.A. in security policy studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and a B.A. in political science from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is also a graduate of the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, and she has studied Mandarin Chinese in Beijing at Capital Normal University.
