How China's Military Views the United States

The Brits are recommending that the U.S. (and possibly Britain) get involved in enforcing international maritime law in the Philippines dispute with China.

Beijing aims to snatch the entire South China Sea. The US Navy is backing down

 

I think you meant to say "target-building capacity". Yes, they are better at building targets than the U.S. But are their boats combat-ready? Wasn't China's last successful naval activity 600 years ago with Admiral Zheng He? Fishing and intimidating other countries' fishing boats with lasers and water cannon are a bit different than combat. China would be wise to remember that.

Zheng He - Wikipedia

 

One more potential headache for China: Taiwan has developed and launched a new diesel-electric submarine, and apparently it looks like a pretty good one for their needs. It is a combination of Japanese and Dutch technology. Several of China's neighbors around the South China Sea have submarines, and the Philippines is looking at getting a few. It is a shame that China's pursuit of military technology and greed for conquest has caused almost all of Asia to militarize against the Chinese threat. It's an absolute disgrace that the U.S. and Europe did not see it coming and stop supporting China's economy until now. Too many ignorant, light-weight leaders, I suppose.

Taiwan’s new home-grown submarine is a massive headache for China

 

Nope. It's back on Page 1. Somebody must have replied to it.

 

True, but what we have is something that evolved from that experience, along with having our ships attacked several times from the air as well as the sea in recent decades (USS Cole, the ship hit by an Iraqi missile, etc.). The U.S. Navy has also supported combat plenty of times since WWII, sending in aircraft from carriers for bombing runs over Iraq (in two wars), for example. And I have to believe that we have a better testing system for the navy, since we've been doing it so long. But I think the major difference is in the people. The U.S. knows how to run training programs geared towards being prepared for combat, whereas communist countries are usually more geared toward spotless presentation and parade-type activities to impress the party leadership. It is effective at intimidating an outclassed opponent, but not so much against a peer opponent. That's why Russia's first instinct in the Ukraine War was to have a parade travel to Kiev to accept Ukraine's surrender.

 

The Cole attack is relevant in that you need to have procedures and defenses in place for all kinds of attack scenarios, including asymmetric warfare. The USS Stark attack is relevant because it influences both ship design and procedures. The Gulf Wars are relevant because a lot of the fighting that our navy typically does during warfare is done by launching jets from aircraft carriers. Having an aircraft carrier and operating it at peak efficiency are often two different things.

The U.S., I believe, also has much more realistic naval exercises, often with other countries, than China does. All China seems able to do is run circles around Taiwan with their ships to prove that they can, and try to intimidate Taiwan. That's not much of a realistic warfare training exercise. Meeting up with some rust-bucket Russian ships in the Bering Sea is not a military-preparedness exercise of any consequence.

And, of course, the big advantage is that we have jets on the aircraft carriers that the Chinese radar is likely unable to see. They have an older generation of stealth jet than we have. Until China has an answer for that, things will be difficult for them.

The Chinese economy is no longer considered the dynamo that it used to be. They have some serious long-term problems with it. They may need to hurry their timeline for invading Taiwan, if they really want to do that.

 

I'm not against succeeding, and I'm not against education. I know we aren't going to win by China failing. I think we have enough going for us that we can continue to be successful with or without a relationship with China, as long as:

1) We don't fall for the con-man's (Trump's) lies and incompetence.

2) We don't fall for Russian propaganda.

3) We continue to recognize China as an economic and military threat, and remain committed to de-coupling our technology supply chains from China.

4) We continue to maintain a good working relationship with Europe, and they continue to work on de-coupling economically from China.

And yes, China has some serious economic headwinds long-term. Their one-child policy, combined with their recent turn towards authoritarianism (Covid response, political speech restrictions, etc.), and combined with the uncertainty of the current economic crisis, has turned women off severely from having children. Many women don't want any kids. They don't trust their government. Their population is on its way to taking a long, slow nose-dive. Combine that with the retirement policies (full retirement at 55/60 years of age, or 50 for blue collar jobs), and China will have trouble maintaining their growing elderly population as the working-age population shrinks. And right now, 46% of people 16-25 years old are unemployed, so the average number of years that people will be working is shrinking. Most people in the west work for 40+ years--in China, that number is shrinking toward 30 years. Worse, younger people will not have developed any job skills by the time they do get a job. The things they learned in college will be forgotten or out-of-date by the time they get their first job. And I haven't even started talking about the housing crisis. Worse than the housing crisis itself is how China got into the mess that they are in now with housing. Their system for handing out money for housing project is obviously flawed, but they don't seem to have a clue how to solve it. They have always relied on the federal government to decide which provinces get loans for projects, and the provinces will never stop asking for loans. No one is risking their own money on these projects, so there is little reason to say no. The disconnects of central government planning is one of the major disadvantages of communist governments, and China clearly proved that, just as Russia proved it over 30 years ago. I also suspect that the Chinese are starting to feel that Chairman Xi is well on his way to becoming a dictator. Previous leaders were not so full of arrogance and power-hungry like Xi, intimidating other party leaders to exceed the normal term limits of the job.

 

Here is another article on the possibly lost sub. Not much detail, and no confirmation. China will, of course, try to hide it if possible.

If it is true, it is another example of an inexperienced navy making one mistake too many in an unforgiving environment. Ironic if it was taken down by its own defensive hardware trying to trap a British sub.

Has a Chinese submarine crashed in the Taiwan Strait? What we know