Sunday, August 5, 2018

China's military advances


The most optimistic Chinese experts estimate China will not challenge the US in military even in 2049, the 100th anniversary PRC was founded. However, the gap has been reduced and China can easily defend herself.

In 2018, China budgeted $175 billion USD (some estimated $210B comparing our $600B) for defense expenditure. Adjusted for purchase power bias, it is far more than $175 B USD. From China, it is about 1.5% of GDP, so it is high only in absolute term. With the growing GDP (assuming no trade war), the military expense will be increased.

US is still far ahead in defense expenditure but China is about 3 times as much as Russia and India.

Russia is shrinking in military expenditure. Hence, I predict China will be catching up fast. China still depends a lot of technology from Russia especially on jet engines.

If there is a war between China and US, Russia will be likely on China’s side but EU is no longer our puppet.

Recently, US, China and her neighbors have avoided conflicts and disputes. China is more interested in economic growth. US has been busy in Middle East. N. Korea seems to be more peaceful in the first half of 2018.

Throughout history, China has been a victim than an aggressor. China learned the bitter lesson of centuries of humiliation and a strong military is the answer to prevent history to be repeated.

Even when China was powerful, she never wanted to be a hegemony. In general, she has seldom colonized, enslaved and stolen the resources of other countries as the Europeans did. The tributary system in ancient China is a way of respecting a bigger brother; they were repaid with treasures from China.

Two of the last three dynasties were ruled by northern ‘barbarians’. Mao made them civil wars by including the Mongolians and Manchus part of the Chinese nation.

The Great Wall was built for defense. The coastal areas were robbed by Japanese pirates throughout history. The wars with Vietnam and India were brief and small compared to our endless wars. With the exception of protecting the trade routes and oil supply (part of the reason for “One Belt, One Road” Initiatives, China has not expressed the interest to send soldiers overseas to maintain global orders, which should be done by UN.

One weakness is most Chinese weapons have not been used in real combat where logistics, transportation, information gathering / distribution… are important.  In modern wars, quality is more important than quantity. However, China’s cyber-warfare is very capable. Most likely, China has stolen a lot of weapon secrets from espionage and cyber.

China has only one foreign military site in Djibouti near Ethiopia and one carrier (several are being built or been approved). It poses no threat so far. The carrier and the future carriers could be used to invade Taiwan especially the air refueling technology has not been implemented.

China is the distant #3 in exporting her military weapons. In 2018 military drones have been their best sellers in the Middle East due to the low prices and few restrictions to export. All the major military exporting countries need foreign sales to finance further development of their weapons

Our military advances, military sites in Asia with the missile defense systems in Asian countries and constant harassing China’s territory space cause China to spend in her military to me. It would lead to mistrust in both sides and could trigger military conflicts. China’s military today can defend themselves easily and is getting ready to invade Taiwan.

China has achieved many milestones in updating her military forces. It is still decades away from US, but she has been catching up fast. Russia supplies a lot of advanced weapons to China. However, they have several breakthroughs that are close to ours or even pass ours.

Here are some of China’s accomplishments in this area:

Cyber warfare. They can control electronics and hack government databases. Most likely China has stolen a lot of military secrets via cyber hacking.

Nuclear warheads and missiles. Chinese are capable to destroy the entire US but it would be digging her own grave. China has declared not to be the first country to use nukes.

Air force, navy and land force have been modernized. China is the third country that can build stealth jets and the first to implement railgun in a warship. They have huge hovercraft tank landing ships that would be handy for invading Taiwan.

China’s submarines most likely have nukes and US technology (stolen?) that cannot be detected easily.

China’s carriers may be more than 50 years late, but Chinese are catching up with at least three operational within a decade. They will be used to protect the oil route from Middle East, invade Taiwan and enforce territory.

China’s military drones are capturing the global market particularly in Middle East with US’s restrictions and reluctance to sell to countries they do not want to.

China’s carrier killers could be deadly. No one knows how effective it could be. With stealth jets and stealth drones, we need to devise better weapons to protect our carriers.

Starting from nothing, China’s missile defense system is among the best in the world.

Satellite killers have been tested successfully a long while ago. Shooting a space object moving at 17,000 mph is no small task. Most of our missiles depend on GPS. When they get shoot all the satellite down, our missiles and devices depending on GPS are useless.

  Links: Magazine, 1, 2. Technology 1 , Youtube 1    

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The above is from my book "Can China Say No?". Click here for more info in Amazon.com.

 

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