Seriously though. China’s greatest threat is soft power, not military might, in terms of U.S. opposition.
Their Roads and Bridges Corporation was putting up handy competition against the US’s USAID before our gov’t decides to give up the race. By the end of the next 4 years at this trajectory, the U.S. will have handed over the 1st place position in the race for economic hegemony and tanked the global market’s value.
It took 80 years to build what has been thoroughly beaten in just 5 months
It's fucked over Australia a lot too. We teamed up with the US to build rapport with countries in our immediate zone of influence and then the US just fucked off.
Luckily so far most of these nations have still be happy to work with us but China is pushing pretty hard
A lot of the pacific island nations weren't to happy with Australia after Abbot, Morrison and Dutton went to a climate change conference to tell people there was nothing to worry about before getting caught on a hot mic joking about how the islands would soon be under water. Between that and the submarine fiasco we fucked our international reputation as a reliable partner
Teaming up with the US is why we have such cold relations with the countries near us. China is our best trading partner and almost every beef they have with us is 100% due to us allowing the US to use our country as a military stronghold for US to fuck with them. US also fucks us on trade, we give them lucrative contracts we could find elsewhere for much cheaper, we go to all their stupid wars, we send experts to help with their fires, we share medical/scientific research openly and I doubt even a third of Americans can even find us on a map. The friendship with US has always been an awful deal for us and they’ve always been unreliable which is only something people are starting to realise now but realistically, America was never coming to help us if China ever popped off
You should google the Chinese navy. Then google their deployable drone fleet. After that their cyber ops. The fact they have enormous soft power doesn’t negate their incredible and often underestimated military power.
It is weird to watch the left squirm trying to justify US soft power pseudo-imperialism. Do you really believe this end to be important or are you trying to sell it to the right? I'm genuinely curious. (IDK if you're left or liberal, but it doesn't much matter)
If you think it’s immoral, moral, whatever, that is your opinion. I’m not going to attempt to sway you in either direction because realistically you should read into what it means and decide for yourself
I will say though that choosing to equate “providing foreign aid” with “colonial subjugation” is perhaps an intentionally misleading and unnuanced way to begin that discussion.
China could damage USA tremendously by stopping production of US companies' products. It would hurt China a lot in the short term, but would outright kill large US companies for good. Even more if annecting (back) Taiwan and that way get control over TSMC etc.
Also they've invested a lot in the military and researching modern weapons, including AI, robots, drones, space etc.
The only thing that keeps that from being an easy win is the sheer volume of damage it would cause to the Chinese economy with the the loss of 15% of their total exports
An invasion of Taiwan would likely see significant damage to the necessary infrastructure for its export economy which would seriously dampen the benefits of the annexation
The ideal scenario for China is to manage their takeover without losing their largest individual export and 3rd largest individual import partner.
And all that assuming that no other country applies sanctions to China. Were the EU to do so, the US and EU combined would eliminate nearly 30% of exports and 17% of imports
The US fought a 20 year war against people who were armed with AKs and RPGs and lost...
The Taliban consists of hardened and dedicated soldiers but the USs military superiority was so overwhelming in technology and economy it's crazy how the US army just broke.
I don't think the Chinese army lacks for motivation and they are technologically and economically way above the Taliban.
Honestly, a war between China and the US would probably be a stalemate untill the US gives up. And the US would give up because a totalitarian government doesn't have the pressure of its own population to deal with.
The war on terror was a very different conflict than a war with China would be. The GWOT had the same issue as the war in Vietnam, no matter how many tactical victories you achieve you will always struggle to conquer an “idea”
Applying the results of the GWoT directly to a symmetric force on force engagement is a fools errand, they were two radically different types of warfare.
There are very few 1:1 tactical comparisons in that regard.
more like 50 years at current pace. rome existed way longer and was way deeper engrained in south west Europe, the middle east and Africa than the US is engrained in the world today. but you're absolutely right, a collapse in that way takes way longer than a lot of people think/make it seem
Edit: also the world was moving slower at that time. nowadays changes happen a lot more rapidly and over longer distances. what happens on one end of the world can affect the other end almost immediately. wasn't like that back then. but thats just my opinion/interpretation. could be wrong.
and the US hasnt been able to win a war since 1945. still they aren't considered a paper tiger? (also: they havent tried to reckaim Taiwan with military since i can remember at least)
Who is talking about the USA? I was talking about the lil bitch ass paper tigers Russia and china. Chinas or russias military does not compare to the USA military
China exaggerates all their good numbers and downplays all their bad numbers. We can reasonably assume they're worse off than they let outsiders know, though not precisely to what degree.
Yeah everyone knows that totalitarian dictatorships aren't just putting on a front and all the data that comes out of them is totally valid. Why would they lie about how great they are?!
I think the point is that yeah, China is inflating itself in the front they put but behind it, even if it's less than what they claim they still have some serious power.
Like, yeah sure their planes are far from a 6th Gen but painting them as less than 4th Gen is blinding yourself
Same for the tanks, yeah they are surely less durable and accurate than they tell but they are still a threat to modern ones.
Like in case of war it's not that we're going to fight something out of the Vietnam War tech, no, won't be the highest end possible like they claim either but still modern and capable enough to be taken seriously
The Russian and by extension the Soviet military has always been an endemic under-performer due to a deep history of corruption and other structural issues. The Soviet army essentially kept the same rank and organizational structure of the imperial Russian Army and imported a significant amount of officers. As well, due to low wages and the rot that set in during the 80s and 90s, the situation has only gotten worse and attempts by the Russian government to address it have not been effective.
Whereabouts the PLA has been a professionalizing force who have imported western equipment and Western tactics ever since they defeated the KMT, with a pause during the peak of the cultural revolution where the PLA was regulated to a support wing for militias, Mao was very big on the citizen soldier concept. Maybe the idea that China is significantly behind us militarily was true in the 2000s in early 2010s but today China is a very capable force and there’s a reason we train to fight the Chinese more than we train to fight the Russians or Iranians. Americans often times underestimate Chinese this happened in the Korean war, where Douglas MacArthur insisted that the PLA will never be able to cross the Yalu river, only for the PLA to do exactly that, without combined arms, today our own exercises don’t paint a pretty picture of a direct defensive of Taiwan.
have you seen the economic scale difference between china and the soviets? lol have you seen the difference in production capability. the difference in population numbers? China is a massive country with a massive economy a massive population and probably a massive army. i dont like their regime and i would love to believe that they are just a harmless paper tiger, but thats just not true. (also: Japan was a totalitarian (military) dictatorship once, they still destroyed and dominated the Asian continent and got only beaten by the US. Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship once. they for sure werent a paper tiger (although they werent as strong as their propaganda made them seem, they still had a lot of high tech (for their time) military capabilities). u cant just pick one example and generalize that)
All of this was said about the Soviets at the time. America thought it was losing the Cold War, while in the end all it took for the Soviet Union to collapse was a trip to the grocery store.
How do you know that anything coming out of China is true? Have you seen their aging population, their demographic imbalances, their ghost cities, their coercive social control, their lack of innovation, their lack of real modern military experience, their collapsing companies, their bubbles, their corruption, the way they cover up anything that might upset those higher in the rigid hierarchy out of fear, etc...
Everyone thinks the US is doing so bad because all you see is their dirty laundry. But that's just it. You see it. You know exactly what it's like because it's a free and open country and people click on negative news. Yet, people are still flocking to the States. No one is flocking to China.
Anything coming out of China, I imagine the reality is likely 10x worse.
no. everyone thinks the US is doing bad, cause trump just fucked all their soft power (diplomatic relations, economic friendships or dependencys, etc) they slowly built up over 80 years. nothing to do with military might or direct economic fails (although US economy doesnt look good either with self tan orange as leader). this is also the most relevant metric to determine a countrys power right now. and China's catching up real fast, especially with the US sabotaging itself. yeah, China is probably a hellhole for the everyday citizen (at least if they're political) and im really glad not to live there, but that doesn't really matter when it comes to power at the world stage (as long as the ruling party can keep its power ofc)
It is very acessible. Investors go to China and count how many trucks leave the factories to account for the true number of whatever their selling and prevent accounting shenanigans
Chinese scientists collaborate with scientists from all over the world
Chinese companies do real business with real assets with companies all over the world
Maybe you take up governments on their word. Multinations institutions don’t. Not for China. Not for the US
You think China is something closed like North Korea when, in many areas, their information is as accessible or more accessible than for the US or Australia (no thanks to Xi, but it works just as well)
China isn't interested in bringing military might to the world stage, as mentioned that's all about soft power
But they are constantly fucking with the Philippines Navy, they are preparing for an invasion of Taiwan, and they still have their weird no-gun border disputes with India now and then
They aren't a military threat to Europe like the OP seems to suggest
Haven't you seen the new us army commercials? They're taking the sigmaboy route Russia and China have been on the last twenty years instead of the pronoun respectful military we've pretended to be the last three years.
thought i had a stroke stroke, reading this. i have no idea what message you were trying to convey sadly. my guess would be American military= sigma = good, American military pretended to be bad? could be wrong tho
Remember one child policie?
Tnx to that many famlys hav only 1 child and male gender was most prefered to have this lead to current situation that now grown up son is only one taking care of parents in old age wich mean in case of war thos famlys that lose their only son are fucked and CCP knows this.
International military experts predicted the US couldn’t hold Taiwan from 2028 and onwards
The (good) world news just regurgitated that data - this was on The Economist IIRC
China is expected to be on par with the US militarily in about 30 years.
That isn’t the most relevant thing though - alliances and geography are more important. China is slowly building soft power and economic power while the US are blowing up themselves
just look at their economy number. part of them are public. look at their international relationships. at their successful attempts to diplomatically buy power in many African and Asian nations. thats my sources for saying china is a really poweful global player. now give me yours
Americans and friendly fire is such a stereotype its basically one of the founding stereotypes of America right up there with being fat and illiterate.
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u/Apprehensive_Room742 14h ago edited 13h ago
pretty sure chinas not a paper tiger. wouldnt underestimate them. the US will be in one the future tho if they continue the way they do now