According to the Global Network reported on March 16, Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released the world's major arms export records between 2016 and 2020 on the 15th, SIPRI declared that global arms exports between 2016 and 2020 were flat with 2010-2015, of which the Arms Exports of the United States, France, and Germany increased significantly, especially the ARMS exports of the United States accounted for 37% of the world, while China's arms exports fell by 7.8%. It accounts for only 5.2% of the world.
Due to the imbalance in the development of industry and science and technology, coupled with the size of the country, so most countries in the world today more or less need to import weapons and equipment to maintain their own national defense security, and the arms trade is also considered to be second only to drug trafficking in the profiteering industry, and is a legal profiteering industry, so many world powers are to sell arms as an important national activity, the most typical of which is the United States.
Arms exports for the United States actually have two functions: first of course, to make money, after all, capitalists attach the most importance to profits; second, is to use arms exports as a means to manipulate the political trends of other countries. Because any country that purchases weapons and equipment needs to be used for years or even decades, during this period, the politics, national defense and many other matters of the arms procurement party need to be guaranteed by the arms exporting country to ensure the effectiveness of the weapons and equipment. The ability to make huge profits and control the internal affairs of other countries is the fundamental factor that the United States is particularly keen on arms exports.
In the period from 2016 to 2020, most of the arms exports of the world's major powers are growing, but only the arms exports of China and Russia have declined, Russia is because of the gradual backwardness of technology, which is extenuating, but China's economic and technological level has soared in recent years, the technical performance of weapons and equipment has increased significantly, but arms exports are still showing a downward trend, and the decline is still very large, which seems to make people feel incredible, but if you think about it carefully, it is not difficult to find that this is actually reasonable.
First of all, China is a pacifist country that advocates the settlement of disputes between countries through negotiations and does not advocate the easy use of force. Proceeding from such a diplomatic basis, China can be said to be quite "Buddhist" for the arms trade, far less powerful than the external marketing of high-speed rail, ULTRA-high voltage, photovoltaic or 5G technology. Moreover, most of China's arms enterprises are state-owned enterprises, which are very different from the private capital of the West, and the arms companies of Western countries even do not hesitate to openly create disputes and turmoil in the name of the state in order to sell arms to the outside world.
Taking the United States as an example, 47% of the US arms exports flow to the Middle East countries, while Saudi Arabia alone accounts for 24% of the US foreign arms exports. China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, nor will it provoke disputes in other countries and regions like the United States, so China's arms exports will continue to decline.
Second, China's traditional arms sales markets are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria and other countries, which are among the poorest countries in the world recognized by the United Nations. China's cooperation with the above-mentioned countries is more reflected in the economic, trade and cultural fields, such as the China-Pakistan Railway, the China-invested bangladesh Chittagong and other projects, the core goal is to promote local economic development through investment and achieve common prosperity. Moreover, with China's military strength as an endorsement, these countries themselves do not need to invest too much budget for armament expansion, and the money saved can be invested in economic construction and improve people's living standards, which is obviously more meaningful than buying several sets of weapons and equipment.
Finally, China is the world's largest overseas trading country, China's foreign trade accounts for about 70% of the world's total, which on the one hand highlights China's pacifist policy, on the other hand, it also shows China's strong strength: we are not unable to build good weapons and equipment, but our energy is more focused on peaceful civilian trade, and we do not pay as much attention to arms trade as Western countries. Here is still the United States as an example, since the era of World War II, the United States has gradually formed an organization called the "military-industrial complex", because this organization is composed of the largest arms dealers in the United States, so the way to profit is to sell weapons and ammunition to the outside world, so we can see that since the end of World War II, the United States has continued to create regional frictions and even wars in the world, if there is no friction, and even take the initiative to provoke disputes, thus earning a lot of arms profits.
So the way china and the United States trade foreign is fundamentally different: the United States makes profits by destroying a country, and China creates wealth by building a country and then achieving common prosperity with that country. Compared with the two, it is not difficult to see from this perspective that arms exports are not China's main trade direction, as long as China's exports in the civilian field still maintain a strong upward momentum, the decline in arms exports is not necessarily a bad thing.