This Country Has the World’s Largest Military

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated May 3, 9:49AM EDT · Published May 1, 7:31AM EDT

This Country Has the World’s Largest Military — © Kevin Frayer / Getty Images

The United States has a military that includes about 1.3 million people spread across the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. It is not by any means the world’s largest. That distinction belongs to China. Its military has slightly more than 2 million members. Some estimates put the figure higher, and in one case by several hundred thousand.

The U.S. Department of Defense produced a document titled “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” It issues the report once a year. Among the observations of the report:

With a force that totals approximately two million personnel in the regular forces, the PLA has sought to modernize its capabilities and improve its proficiencies across all warfare domains so that as a joint force it can conduct the range of land, air, and maritime operations as well as space, counterspace, electronic warfare (EW), and cyber operations.

Global Firepower has a different count for the Chinese military and places the figure closer to 3.4 million. This includes active personnel of 2.2 million, about 500,000 reserves, and close to 700,000 it labels as members its “paramilitary”.

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According to the 24/7 Wall St. analysis titled “Countries Spending the Most on War,” China does not rank highest among all nations in military spending. The United States is first at $649 billion. China is second. In detail:

> 2018 military spending: $250.0 billion
> Military spending change, 2009-2018: +83%
> Expenditure as pct. Of GDP: 1.9%
> Military spending per capita: $180

No major military power has ramped up its military like China in the past decade. Since 2009, the nation’s military expenditure has increased by 83%, and this year represents the 24th straight year of growth in military spending. The world’s most populous nation requires males ages 18-22 years old to serve in the military for at least two years and has an armed forces size of 2.7 million personnel. China is also bulking up its navy — its second aircraft carrier is near completion.

Click here to see the countries spending the most on war.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.