How China's Military Views the United States

Hot off the press:

China’s top naval scientist proposes a Star Wars-style ‘supership’

This is more interesting than most other scaremongering news out of China because this is apparently based on a paper by Ma Weiming. He's a serious dude, the PLA general in charge of their electrical based weapons systems. For example, he's the head designer of the electromagnetic catapult on their new aircraft carrier, the guy leading their warship electric propulsion system research which has been in service on coast guard vessels, and probably plays a big role in their EM gun research efforts as well which has been testing onboard a landing ship for a few years.

If his claims that these types of electrical based systems are ready for implementation then that'd be quite a leap in capabilities for the PLAN. This will be a major shock to the USN, which has received paltry sums under Biden's FY24 budget for upgrades and expansions. A single major Chinese shipyard has more capacity than all our major shipyards combined right now, and they have many. If they manage to achieve a qualitative advantage as well, it won't bode well for our future in Westpac.

Key lawmakers flex new positions to bolster shipbuilding industry

 

I don’t understand why China needs aircraft carriers. It’s not like it’s bent on global military domination like the US.

 

It sounds like he means to redefine the role of all warships by his quote "[it] will completely overturn the combat formation of naval fleets that has been in place for over a hundred years." In the end, its worth will have to be proven in war. After all, the obsolescence of battleships wasn't clear until WWII when aircraft carriers proved their worth.

With that said, I agree with you that it's probably unwise to cram too much responsibility into one ship. However, the important thing in the article to me isn't the sensationalist "supership" that he proposes, but his claims that the subsystems such as railgun, coilgun, EM launcher systems, and modular supercapacitors are ready for use. These things can make their way into a number of types of ships. In fact, according to the article it's not just for surface warships either, but land-based and underwater systems as well.

 

China shuddering.

 

Sad to say it but Germany is finished. They're the last industrial power in Europe, so really the whole of Europe is now finished. With their rapid de-industrialization and shifting political winds, they've got their hands full at home. Check out their chemical production:



And look at their latest polling numbers. The far right AfD's numbers are skyrocketing.


You can't really even blame the Ukraine war for this, they've been done for a while when they missed all the future tech whether it's chips or software/AI or renewables or EVs or telecom or quantum computers/communications. Cheap Russian gas was keeping them afloat by enabling their dominance of legacy industries, but now that that's gone they're done for good. The only thing left from all of Europe now is ASML, but they're using EUV tech licensed from the US, so when the world moves on from EUV they'll have zero company in the most advanced tech.

With Europe under stress, liberalism will fade and right wing authoritarianism will rise. AfD with all their extremist and Nazi ties is about to become the 2nd most popular party in Germany, Marine Le Pen won 40% of the votes in the last French presidential elections, Italy has a far right PM already in Meloni, and Poland just passed an authoritarian judicial "reform" in defiance of the EU. Division and extremism will characterize European politics, not very much unlike here in the US.

Moving goods purchases from China to other countries is really the least of their concerns, and not much of China's either. Those other countries are the quickest growing trade partners of China, and they're rapidly replacing China's traditional trade partners like the US, Europe, Japan, and SK. Per the latest Chinese trade data they now trade more with Latin America more than with the US, more with ASEAN than with the EU, more with Africa than with Japan, and more with Russia than with Germany. These numbers are all still growing despite a global downturn in trade numbers, cushioning the blow of the economic slow down in the West.

 

That's a crazy view of Europe economically. Economically, Europe is still a powerhouse. They are threatened by disunity in fiscal Union and the pressures of immigration far greater than we have, which will be especially destabilized with climate change. But their economic decisions will not be the source of decline, if it happens, especially towards manufacturing

 

They won't fall in a day, for sure, but the writing's been on the wall for over a decade now. The EU's GDP in 2008 was $16.3 trillion, and in 2021 was $17.1 trillion. That's a 5% growth in 13 years. In the same time period the US grew from $14.8 trillion to $23.3 trillion, a 57% increase.

They're starting from a large base, so it'll take time for their position to fall, but where are you gonna find growth in Europe? What's changed the last 13 years that'll allow them to grow again? When chips move on from EUV and transportation becomes battery/hydrogen based, they'll literally have no industry left. The only industry they'd have remaining will be manufacturers from the US or China making stuff using American and Chinese tech/components to avoid tariffs/VAT.

 

Where are you getting your numbers, as membership has not been constant and that doesn’t sound correct?

Looks like Macrotrends but methodology not explained. Not making sense with changing membership and integration issues. Don’t think manufacturing is that big a ro,e

 

This is 6 years old and I have not reread in a few years but it was persuasive

Europe Is Still a Superpower