Why China’s ‘unstoppable’ £175billion military is now the biggest threat to world order – and the West can’t keep up

[fncceo]

American greed has created the Chinese industrial and military giant.

We saw this coming 30 years ago, and yet we poured untold billions of dollars into their economy yearly for three decades. And now thousands are pouring across the southern border, taking direct flights from China to Tijuana.

Are they escaping, or working for China?

I'm not really afraid of a Chinese invasion.

They have really pretty girls, great cuisine, and absolutely zero tolerance for all the hippy dippy social justice nonsense.

If we're gonna be conquered, we could do a lot worse.

 

[Dekster]

I do find this concerning. The West is spending their time and resources with Ukraine while China continues to beef up their military arsenal to a point they may be reasonably unstoppable. Xi Jinping has already stated he intends to take back Taiwan. It's not an if, it's a when, and when that happens then what? The United States can't fend off Russia and China. Plus, throw Iran into the mix and who knows what will be going on with Israel at the time. Even with the help of Europe, who have been underfunding their military capabilities for years, this can turn into a very serious global threat. We need to sever ties with China completely. Our trading with them is funding this threat.

China's 'unstoppable' military is now biggest world threat & West can’t keep up

CHINA has crafted an unstoppable military under Xi Jinping’s ruthless dictatorship which poses the greatest threat to the world order, experts have warned. As the West steels itself for globa…

www.thesun.co.uk

I am not opposed to cutting them off, but the reality is, if they move on Taiwan there wouldn't be much left of Taiwan with what it would take to dislodge the Chinese. In addition, America would see such huge death tolls, the public would turn against the effort pretty quick. Even the most optimistic estimates have us losing a couple carrier groups and around 60K troops just in the first 6 weeks.

 

[Lastamender]

I do find this concerning. The West is spending their time and resources with Ukraine while China continues to beef up their military arsenal to a point they may be reasonably unstoppable. Xi Jinping has already stated he intends to take back Taiwan. It's not an if, it's a when, and when that happens then what? The United States can't fend off Russia and China. Plus, throw Iran into the mix and who knows what will be going on with Israel at the time. Even with the help of Europe, who have been underfunding their military capabilities for years, this can turn into a very serious global threat. We need to sever ties with China completely. Our trading with them is funding this threat.

China's 'unstoppable' military is now biggest world threat & West can’t keep up

CHINA has crafted an unstoppable military under Xi Jinping’s ruthless dictatorship which poses the greatest threat to the world order, experts have warned. As the West steels itself for globa…

www.thesun.co.uk

They own our president and a good chunk of Congress and the bureaucracy. Good luck with that.

 

[Donald H]

Chinese growth was spurred on by both Democrats and Republicans, but especially Republicans, who gave in to corporate greed and enacted tax breaks and incentives for multinationals to invest in China. These tax breaks and incentives decimated the manufacturing base here. Now, China is the Frankenstein monster. Not to mix metaphors, but that genie has been unleashed and there is no turning back.

At least we now have a president who has enacted real legislation to get our manufacturing back.

As far as the Chinese military is concerned, China's rise was to be expected. China is exercising its power in Asia and the third world. Welcome to the 21st century. The Chinese played off our greed and now come the consequences.

We have to face this new reality and not run away from it.

China offered cooperation and another way forward that doesn't include America's continuous wars.

They still do but the terms are now less favourable to America now.

 

[Donald H]

I am not opposed to cutting them off, but the reality is, if they move on Taiwan there wouldn't be much left of Taiwan with what it would take to dislodge the Chinese. In addition, America would see such huge death tolls, the public would turn against the effort pretty quick. Even the most optimistic estimates have us losing a couple carrier groups and around 60K troops just in the first 6 weeks.

China has always insisted that they would bring Taiwan back into China by peaceful means. When that started to look like it would happen, the US got involved to prevent it.

It's a story that has been repeated time after time. Vietnam and now the latest with the Ukraine being prevented from signing the deal at Minsk.

See Tucker Carlson's interview of Putin.

 

[Donald H]

China has always insisted that they would bring Taiwan back into China by peaceful means. When that started to look like it would happen, the US got involved to prevent it.

It's a story that has been repeated time after time. Vietnam, Iraq, afghanistan, and now the latest with the Ukraine being prevented from signing the deal at Minsk.

See Tucker Carlson's interview of Putin.

 

[Mushroom]

I do find this concerning. The West is spending their time and resources with Ukraine while China continues to beef up their military arsenal to a point they may be reasonably unstoppable

China is nowhere near unstoppable. They are largely a paper tiger to be honest.

 

[Mushroom]

who gave in to corporate greed and enacted tax breaks and incentives for multinationals to invest in China.

Not hardly, this has been going on for decades. But it was driven primarily by the US consumers and nothing else.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

China is watching carefully the Western reaction to Putin’s bloody invasion of sovereign Ukraine. If we abandon Ukraine or stop our aid to its government, it will not only be Putin who will be emboldened, but Xi’s regime as well.

Of course Taiwan is not internationally recognized as a sovereign state, which means our attitude and military and economic posture toward it and China must be much more carefully calibrated than our military aid and overall posture to Ukraine and Russia’s invasion.

So far, the Biden Administration has done a reasonably good job of standing up to Putin and keeping NATO united and strong during this extended crisis. If negotiations do eventually take place, we must make sure Ukraine is not negotiating from a position of weakness, its army without ammunition and helpless..

A serious defeat of Putin will encourage China to make demands on Russia’s sparsely populated Far Eastern areas that China once possessed, and Central Asian states that are under Russian influence will also start trading more and allowing more influence to both the U.S. and China.

The crazy idea that we have the luxury of standing up to only one of the two powers, Russia or China, when and if they engage in blatant aggression (China is much smarter than Russia in that respect and wants to continue to trade with the West) is utterly false. It is as false as assuming that we should expect always to have the luxury of adopting a pacifist policy in the Middle East when terrorist forces attack ships in the Red Sea or try to decide who can use it.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The US can at the same time wreck China's AF and navy, then concentrate on Russia, while Israel bombs Iran into the Stone Age.

There are some very obvious reasons China had not moved on Taiwan while Ukraine is going on.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The US can at the same time wreck China's AF and navy, then concentrate on Russia, while Israel bombs Iran into the Stone Age….

This is not at all clear — indeed is almost certainly untrue. The U.S., for many reasons, must NOT adopt a jingoistic or extreme militarist policy toward China. Mainland China is an unsinkable aircraft carrier with a growing military and a great industrial power in Asia. It will probably remain the most powerful regional hegemon in East and Southeast Asia for the foreseeable future. Our policy must not be to seek war with it, nor to encourage it to seize Taiwan. For now China’s leadership need only be convinced that a straight-out invasion of Taiwan would kill the Golden Goose it covets, and is in no way worthwhile.

 

[fncceo]

Since, quite literally, everything we use today is manufactured in part or in whole in China... going to war with China would put us back to the Neolithic era.

We could never invade China so any war of attrition would devastate our country and strengthen China.

I seriously hope no one is STUPID enough to attempt going to war with China.

 

[Mushroom]

Since, quite literally, everything we use today is manufactured in part or in whole in China... going to war with China would put us back to the Neolithic era.

And what stops them from being manufactured elsewhere? Not a damned thing.

What I think most people do not realize is that is all that China does. They do not actually "make" much of anything at all, they only manufacture it. From designs and plans created by others. And if an I-phone can be made in China, it can be made anywhere else in the world. It is not like the things they make were not made elsewhere before so many companies went to them to keep costs down.

And it would not even take a war to see that happen. A lot of companies pulled out of China in 1989, and it took them almost a decade to get a lot of those companies back. Something entirely internal and involving no other nations could very well do the same thing.

 

[fncceo]

And what stops them from being manufactured elsewhere? Not a damned thing.

Well, not a damned thing except...

Cost, expertise, manpower, existing manufacturing capability and availability. Infrastructure, and existing environmental prohibition

 

[fncceo]

They do not actually "make" much of anything at all, they only manufacture it. F

Having a blueprint of a pencil does not necessarily mean you can make a pencil unless, of course, you already posesses wood, wood working tools, graphite mines, ore processing facilities, aluminum mining and smelting plants, metal working equipment and expertise, rubber plantations, and the ability to process rubber into little round erasers..

 

[Mushroom]

Having a blueprint of a pencil does not necessarily mean you can make a pencil

But look at anything they themselves have "made".

Their cell phones are pretty much the joke of the industry. And their consoles and computers are even worse.

 

[fncceo]

Their cell phones are pretty much the joke o

Their cell phones ARE our cell phones. Apple, Google, Motorola, all made in China.

 

[Esdraelon]

China has an economy that could easily collapse soon, under its own weight and debt. They have huge numbers of men under arms but their technology is like Russia's - though arguably somewhat better - in that their weapons systems are not nearly as reliable as ours nor are they as accurate. Time will change that against us, certainly, but they are not the threat being made of them today. The time to seriously become worried about China is when they have a sustainable Blue Water Navy and the ability to project power around the globe other than with fixed loan systems.

 

[Mushroom]

Apple, Google, Motorola, all made in China.

The correct word is "manufactured", not "made". In other words, "assembled" not "created".

Chine did not "make" any of them. All of the companies you listed along with many others (LG, Samsung, etc) are designed by companies in other nations. In fact, those would all be absolutely worthless without the processors, and guess where the vast majority of those come from? Yep, the US. The second largest maker is Taiwan. South Korea is also a powerhouse in semiconductors, but not mainline CPUs. But they are a growing maker of ARM processors.

The China silicon industry is actually rather small, other than the lower end ones that basically use 20 year old technology. They are a great choice if all you need is roughly the computing power of a 386, for say toys or basic monitors. But nobody uses their actual processors for much more than that.

 

[Mushroom]

Time will change that against us, certainly, but they are not the threat being made of them today. The time to seriously become worried about China is when they have a sustainable Blue Water Navy and the ability to project power around the globe

And that is exactly what I have pointed out many times.

Yes, China has a huge Army. However, as the saying goes "they have no legs". In other words, unless the nation shares a direct land border with them, they are actually very little of a threat. Because they have almost no sealift or airlift capability. And without those, you are of no real threat to anybody you do not share a border with.

And as you pointed out, they have almost no "Blue Water Navy" capability. They do not work as a "navy" as most would think of it, it is operated much more like a Coast Guard than anything else. Almost every ship operating almost completely independently, almost never doing any sort of actual fleet operations. They have no real UNREP capability, they have never done any kind of fleet operations beyond two week exercises.

Such a match-up would not be unlike creating a sports team of the very best College players in a country, and then having them face off against even a marginal professional team. The difference would be drastic, as what you would have is among the best in the sport, but they have never worked together before. And having them go against people who have played and trained together for years. Or taking some of the best musicians in the world, and throwing them into a band and handing them some sheet music and expecting them to sound like an actual orchestra doing the same music. The fact is, the PLAN has almost zero experience actually operating "like a navy", and if an actual conflict broke out that would quickly be obvious.

And that is not even something you can throw together in a couple of years, it takes decades to get that kind of proficiency. And that is the kind of experience they are completely lacking. And they seem to think that once a year sending out a handful of ships to work together is anything even close to what is needed. Their ability to operate their navy as a real navy is not even up to the Cold War era Soviet Navy, and even they were not very good at that.

No, if it ever came to blows, I rather expect that the PLAN would be about as effective as the Russian Navy has been in the last few years against Ukraine. In fact, as much as they outnumber the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, I think even the JMSDF by itself would largely wipe the floor of the PLAN because they actually have a rather long professional naval tradition, and operate regularly in fleet operations where each ship knows what to do in almost any situation.

Especially when one considers the current and future upgrades of the Izumo (2) and Hyuga (2) class Helicopter Destroyers. They will not have the missiles of the Chinese Aircraft Carrying Cruisers, but will have about the same number of a vastly superior fighters in the F-35B. The Chinese copy of the Su-33 does not even come close.

Many do not seem to understand it is not the amount of toys that matters, it is the quality and the experience of those using those toys.