How China's Military Views the United States

War games indicate that the U.S. would likely eventually prevail over China in a battle for Taiwan, but at a heavy cost.

In think tank’s Taiwan war game, US beats China at high cost

 

More on the Chinese housing debacle:

The Chinese dream of home ownership is crumbling. The economy could go with it

Apparently, the protests have grown to 300 housing projects in 100 cities. And based on my experience in China, housing projects are usually not just one or two buildings. The majority of the projects that I saw were 10-15 buildings.

It's hard to believe that China will have any GDP growth this year (they predicted 5.5% growth back in March) with this disaster combined with their Covid lockdown problems.

 

Southern China is experiencing a heat wave and a drought. The drought is reducing the water levels behind dams that produce electricity for their factories. So factories that recently were able to re-start after a lengthy shutdown for Covid, have just shut down again.

China's factories are shutting down again—but not because of covid

 

Another downside for the economy in China: college graduates can't find jobs. The unemployment rate for ages 16-24 is 20%. China may be running out of money to support new hires, or they may have been distracted by Taiwan, Covid, energy and water issues and lost focus on hiring. Or maybe their economy just does not support the additional labor right now. Their economy might be a lot worse than even we think it is. This news certainly does not support the idea that China's economy is continuing to grow at a high rate.

I'm actually surprised. From what I heard a couple years ago, factories were having a hard time finding workers, because the factory workers didn't make much money and they typically live in poorly-made dormitories that are not much better than prisons without prison bars.

China's College Grads Can't Find Jobs: 'It's Exhausting and I'm Ready to Give Up'

 

Some more news on the Chinese economy. China is pausing the construction of new, partially-built apartment buildings, and in some cases, destroying these buildings. Something is apparently not going right with their planned economy. Not a very efficient use of capital.

China tears down tower blocks in effort to boost stalling economy

 

Factory closures due to electrical shortages continue in China. Last week was the worst yet. Shanghai has started to kill street lighting in some of the high-value areas.

Shanghai turns out the lights as China struggles to maintain power supplies amid a record heat wave

 

China's tech companies get a big break courtesy of a U.S. ruling. They will now be allowed to be on the U.S. stock exchange, in return for allowing U.S. auditors to see their books. Just because China is very good at cooking the books, it doesn't mean that the U.S. is getting ripped off, does it?

U.S. and China reach landmark audit deal in boon for Chinese tech companies

 

See post 341 (at the top of the page). The U.S. takes some significant losses in the wargames, but comes out victorious in virtually every scenario. Not too bad when you are fighting in someone else's back yard.

Besides, I would say that these wargames may not represent the reality of the situation in an actual war. I'm certain that wargames with Ukraine fighting a Russian invasion done last year would show that Russia would have owned Ukraine in a couple of months. That, of course, didn't happen. Russia's military had far too much corruption, and far too little training, to fight a determined and well-armed opponent. After Ukraine, no one is scared of Russia's military. China's military probably has far less corruption, but it also has far less experience in battle, which counts for a lot. Both are well-suited to dominate second- and third-world militaries (like the Philippines or Belarus), but not the U.S.

I suspect that many of these wargames are sponsored by the U.S. military industrial complex--the one group that has the most to gain by scaring Americans with the thought of losing a war with Russia or China.

 

Another story on how China convinces political dissidents to return to China to face trial. They operate 54 unofficial police stations in other countries. They provide services to Chinese people to help them with paperwork in a strange country as a legitimate function, and then work on political dissidents as a side gig. Apparently, they have persuaded 230,000 Chinese to return to China in the last year and a half. This allows them to bypass the extradition process.

Report: China’s unofficial ‘police stations’ operating under the radar in London, other parts of the world

 

Very foolish indeed. What would happen is that countries like China and Russia would, if possible, take over neighboring countries and set up satellite states, robbing them blind of natural resources and feeding their economy and military with them. China and Russia would then decide whether the U.S. was allowed to trade with their satellite countries or not. The U.S. and Europe would be "defeated" (in irreversible economic decline) without China and Russia firing a shot at us. They would make the rules, and we would have to follow their rules. We would be limited to the natural resources we have within the U.S., and our economy would falter. There is no question that they would do this if they could. Russia has already started the process in Ukraine.

Pacifists like you are the reason that we eventually get into massive wars (like WWII) after years of neglecting and mismanaging foreign affairs while coddling communist/fascist governments. No doubt, the U.S. could be smarter about what smaller wars they get into, and how they prosecute those wars. Being global policeman is not an ideal situation for the U.S, to be in, but it's a lot better than the alternative.

I do have some hope that the U.S. can reduce defense spending slightly, as Russia's little misadventure in Ukraine has convinced European countries to increase their own defense spending, and China's belligerence has convinced Japan to take national defense more seriously.

 

I think you meant to say that Russia is currently battle-softened and extremely afraid of US and NATO.