My personal definition of comprehensive national strength is:

Things that the national finance can purchase through state procurement that can improve the country’s economic strength, military strength, scientific and technological level and political influence. .

A very critical problem in other definitions is that they do not effectively distinguish between a country's strength and potential.

In a country, no matter how rich the people are, they must be spent by the state through national harvest taxes in order to become a national strength. No matter how good a company's products are, they must be purchased by the state and used by the state in order to become a national strength. No matter how high the level of scientific and technological personnel is, they must be hired by the country and serve the country in order to become a national strength. Otherwise, these things are just the country's potential rather than its national strength. The comprehensive national strength of a country actually depends on the level and effectiveness of the country's fiscal expenditure.

Next, let me take India as an example to talk about the decisive impact of finance on national strength:

1. India’s fiscal revenue. China's GDP is about five times that of India, but China's fiscal revenue is about 8 to 11.5 times that of India (according to different statistical calibers). Therefore, about half of the GDP of India cannot be converted into national power. The gap in national power between China and India is larger than the gap in GDP.

It should be pointed out that there are four main types of taxes in a country: tariffs, corporate income tax, value-added tax/consumption tax, and personal income tax. India, like China, is a country that mainly relies on value-added tax, and the tax rates for all four major taxes in India are higher than those in China. The immediate problem with India's finances is that a large amount of GDP cannot be collected in taxes and can only lie in statistics. This is why we often say that India’s GDP is very weak.

2. India’s fiscal expenditure. The fiscal expenditures of China and India are actually similar to the proportion of GDP. The gap between fiscal revenue and expenditure is mainly made up of debt. Therefore, this country relies on a large amount of debt to barely maintain a face to compete with China. However, India's national debt has two serious problems: the proportion of foreign currency national debt is very high; the interest rate on national debt is very high. Although India's national debt ratio is not very high (compared to the United States and Japan), the burden of government debt is very large, and the debt has no potential to expand. After the Modi government came to power, India's national debt has been rising, and the interest on the national debt alone consumes hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange every year. Therefore, India's fiscal expenditure is firstly unsustainable, and secondly, it seriously overdraws its fiscal potential. It is already difficult for the Indian government to maintain this face. In recent years, it has begun to gradually sell state-owned assets to maintain finances.

3. Effectiveness of fiscal expenditure. India's fiscal expenditure has two huge weaknesses:

Reliance on imports of important equipment and equipment. We often talk about independence, but many people’s understanding of independence is limited to what to do if they are blocked internationally. However, for a country like India that cannot achieve independence, the direct problem caused by its reliance on imports of important assets is that purchases cannot use the local currency raised from taxes and can only consume foreign exchange. In other words, India's fiscal revenue does not play a role in a considerable part of national strength building. Countries whose industries cannot be independent have extremely weak foreign exchange capabilities and need to rely on borrowing from foreign countries to obtain foreign exchange. As a result, the construction of national strength is constantly sucked by foreign debt.

Most of the fiscal expenditure is used to maintain its own operation and cannot be used to invest and thereby generate national strength. Taking military expenditure as an example, India's military expenditure on personnel is equivalent to about 65% of China's (per capita, the difference is almost the same. Think about what conditions Indian soldiers live in, food, clothing, and housing, and how they spend their money?). The equipment purchase cost is only one-fifth, and the training cost is only one-fifteenth. Therefore, most of their military expenditures were eaten up and did not translate into military strength. India's aerospace industry is considered a bright spot. It often boasts that it only spent tens of millions to go to the moon and only tens of millions to go to Mars. However, in fact, India's aerospace expenditures are billions of dollars a year, and most of them are not used on serious matters.

Financial capabilities are ultimately reflected in national strength: during Modi’s seven years in office, India purchased 36 Rafale fighter jets as an important weapons procurement project, but not all of them have been delivered yet; an important aerospace science project, the Chandrayaan No. 2 also failed; only a few hundred kilometers of important infrastructure projects, railways and highways, were completed. At the same time, its northern neighbor purchased ten times more third-and-a-half- and fourth-generation fighter jets; built a hundred times more high-speed railways and highways; and carried out landings on the back of the moon, lunar sample returns, Mars landing patrols, space stations, and global operations. Positioning systems, quantum satellites, dark matter satellites.

For comparison, India's GDP is higher than that of the United Kingdom, but its national strength is significantly weaker than that of the United Kingdom. This is because:

The UK’s fiscal revenue is 1.5 times that of India; although the UK’s national debt is higher than India’s, its international credit is also higher than India’s, the national debt interest rate is low, and the pound itself is an international currency. It can more easily issue local currency national debt, so its borrowing capacity is stronger; the UK has higher income and higher national debt credit, resulting in stronger fiscal spending capacity; the UK has stronger scientific research capabilities. Although its industrial production capacity is not good, it has key equipment and equipment It still has its own production capacity, and the international procurement environment in the UK is stronger than that in India, so the efficiency of UK fiscal expenditure is much higher than that in India.

In general, although the UK’s GDP on paper is not high, there is no problem that its real national strength is two or three times that of India.