I saw this chart posted few days ago. For those who cannot read Chinese, from top to bottom:
GDP
Revenue (government tax revenue)
Military expenditure
Military expenditure as % of government revenue
Military expenditure as % of GDP
The first thing to consider is that many governments lie about their military expenditures, the real figure is 150%-200% higher than stated. So if the chart shows that China's military expenditure is 1.26% of GDP, the real figure is likely to be 1.9% to 2.5% of GDP.
The second thing to notice is that the military expenditure % to government revenue is on a steep decline, which the % GDP is fairly constant. Hmmm?
From 1999 to 2013, China's GDP grew 6.3 times, military spending grew 6.7 times, but government tax revenue grew 11.3 times. Eh??