China v The west does the dragon have enough puff?

[UglyMowgli]

I spent some time in China, I had the opportunity to discuss with different people, the AskInt work very well


So first, why china went from an army equipped with WW2 hardware to a modern technology army in less than 20 years?


It started first with what was called the "Yinhe Incident" in 1993 then it culminated on a day of May 1999 when a US cruise missile slammed on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade killing 3 Chinese.


At those two time the response from the government was weak (they had few options: a million of grunts with WW2 guns or nukes, almost nothing in between) but the Chinese population was angry not only at the US but at the lack of answer from the upper level and it worried the government (it started slowly in 93 but in 99 the popular movement was strong enough to make the PRC to react and decided to modernize the their armed forces).
As one of the Chinese guy told me : "We get the mean/capability to have peace" The Chinese version of "si vis pacem, para bellum"



Also , what everybody here forget, is that the notion of time is different in China. They have time, they know where they want to go, what they want to achieve and they have time. They can backsliding and move forward when the right time come, if it take 10, 50 or 100 years dosen't matter for them.

[Jimbuna]

With only the one currently, Liaoning,the carrier has an air wing somewhere in the regionof 26 Shenyang J-15 multirole fighters, 12 Changhe Z-18 anti-submarine warfare/transport helicopters, and 2 Harbin Z-9 utility helicopters.

I know which side I'd be backing.

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

With only the one currently, Liaoning,the carrier has an air wing somewhere in the regionof 26 Shenyang J-15 multirole fighters, 12 Changhe Z-18 anti-submarine warfare/transport helicopters, and 2 Harbin Z-9 utility helicopters.

I know which side I'd be backing.

I think we might be betting on the same horse

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

Not quite even if it went nuclear the consequences for China would be horrendous.

Any person who says just nuke them or they have nuclear weapons really cant hold any argument to counter the original point.

Is nuclear war likely ? nope not a chance even if a large war was to happen the rational of people would realize that your destroying your customer base because even after war victor or not you still need to trade to survive.

And currently China is America's best customer for buying its debt.

There are other ways.

Sorry for the late reply (and the rather strong language that would follow), but this is wishful thinking. Even if both sides are fully rational (and even this is not nessesarily the case all the time) escalation of a large scale conventional war between two nuclear powers is not only posible but likely, which is why such a war has not happened since 1945.
Denying that the nuclear war could happen or overstating the damage by a limited exchange ("loss of all life on earth" etc) is dangerous as it is both delusional and undermines the bedrock of the modern security - deterence.

The economic interconnectivity/cost arguments are particularly bad, as even if discount both world wars we would see many modern conflicts, for example in the Middle East, where those considerations did not stop wars from happening.

For a practical hypotheoretical example I would suggest reading this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Commission-Re...=UTF8&qid=&sr=
(free from audible trial)


I would also suggest reading this long article on a broader and more detailed look into the US-PRC specific scenarios:
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi...2/isec_a_00320


p.s.
There are three questions you need to answer when considering this problem:
1) What kind of damage is unacceptable to the adversary?
2) Does the adversary view our capability to deal it as credible?
3) What do we do if deterence fails?
While the (1) did improve from 1950s-1960s in the sense that it is now believed that things under the Macnamara/Kurchatov criteria could work, with development and deployment of new arms, particularly by the US (2) looks bleaker, which pushes Russia and PRC to improve their forces.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

With only the one currently, Liaoning,the carrier has an air wing somewhere in the regionof 26 Shenyang J-15 multirole fighters, 12 Changhe Z-18 anti-submarine warfare/transport helicopters, and 2 Harbin Z-9 utility helicopters.

I know which side I'd be backing.

PRC if it selects the time and place of the conflict and thus achieves the strategic initiative would be able to concentrate their forces and achieve mass.


For example while PLAN has fewer carriers than USN by timing the attack and selecting a specific area of operations (instead of global operations by the USN) they could create a situation where they have 2 carriers deployed in a conflict against one USN carrier, etc.

[Jimbuna]

I'd still take two against one personally.

[Kapitan]

China does not need to be defeated militarily sanctions and embargo's can force their hand and that is likely to come before any action.

I am keeping the nuclear option out of the debate here because anyone can rock up and say nuke them and its over i want to explore other options and ideas, ive not ruled out nuclear weapons but i find it very unlikely that either side would want to use them based on international opinion therefore its an opinion not a denial.

The way the USA and Soviet union dealt with the test of strength is by using proxy wars Angola Vietnam Korea to name a few and i would think we may even see a return to that given China is now arming states not friendly to the west.

Russia should also be very careful here Russian-Chinese relations are not brilliant and they have over taken you in most spheres not just economically but also in military terms.

Another option is this The USA has a lot of debt and 23% of its debt is owned by China so in theory China could ask for payment in full thus cripple the USA, however on the flip side the USA imports a lot of items from China so any deal like that will likely cause a mass decline in the Chinese economy, if the rest of the west followed suit China could not afford to continue its build up and that is end of argument because the west are mass importers of Chinese goods and China relies heavily on much raw materials.

The latest figures released by china just 9 hours ago shows the slowest growth of its economy since 1990 down from 6.9% in 2018 to 6.6% today this is forecast to decline further and dip below the 5% mark, if the west pulled out of China that figure would go negative over night.

I will have a read of the paper you sent a link too MIT is a university think tank and the paper is based on theoretical hypothesis based on a what if scenario using the scale of probability

[ikalugin]

Sorry, I found your post confusing but I would try to adress it to the best of my ability.

I am keeping the nuclear option out of the debate here because anyone can rock up and say nuke them and its over i want to explore other options and ideas, ive not ruled out nuclear weapons but i find it very unlikely that either side would want to use them based on international opinion therefore its an opinion not a denial.

Nuclear warfighting is a valid and common concept.

Russia should also be very careful here Russian-Chinese relations are not brilliant and they have over taken you in most spheres not just economically but also in military terms.

Russia is a de-facto ally of the PRC right now. This is based not only on the post 2014 events, but also on the good post 1989 relations and the decent overall relations (with it's short term dark spots like sino-soviet split).
While one can argue that Russia could be a junior partner in such an alliance this does not make it any less real or mutually beneficial.

[Kapitan]

The Nuclear option yes i agree is also a valid argument but it should not be the default argument.

While i agree the Russia-China defacto alliance exists, it is not on the same level as say the UK-USA alliance, one can only state yes Russia is the junior partner however with the fact that China copies a lot of Russia technology once purchased and does not obtain licences for the said copying leads to a lot of tensions between the two even recently.

China and Russia relations are IMHO tepid they co operate for mutual benefit in dealing with the USA however i could never see Russia running to the aid of China if the Chinese launched a preemptive strike against the USA i do not think Russia would be that senseless nor do i think the Chinese want that situation between them and the USA either.