China’s military potential is at Europe’s heels

The International Institute for Strategic Studies has released yet another report dedicated to military balance of the countries - World Military Balance 2017. Experts have noted growing military potential of China which is already at Europe's heels. In 2013 Asia pushed Europe out of its second place on defence budget. While in 2016 the Asian countries spent 1.3 times more money for weapons than the European countries.

The US with its military expenditures worth $604bln is still the world leader. The second place goes to China with $145bln while Russia is third with its $58.9bln. It is noted in the report that

challenges to military supremacy of the West are more and more substantial: 'China appears to be reaching near-parity with the West'.

If before China used to imitate mainly Soviet and Russian samples, now it is evident that China has focused on its own research and production in key fields, which is supported with growing allocations, the report says.

Experts highlighted China's success in military aviation and navy: construction of three newest type 055 missile destroyers has been started. And what about 13 up-to-date type 052D destroyers, five are already in service, and eight more will be deployed in 2017-2018.

Speaking about Russia, the IISS experts pointed out that appliance of Russian weapons in Syria since September 2015 evidences that Russia keeps upgrading its Armed Forces and building-up capability of its systems.

Pravda.Ru