How China's Military Views the United States

China's youth unemployment is climbing, now at 17.1%. That would be their "official" unemployment number, so the actual number is expected to be higher. And the number climbed almost 4% from June to July.

China youth unemployment jumps to 17.1% in July

 

China has now rammed two Philippine Coast Guard ships to try to intimidate the Philippines into giving up their western islands and fishing waters.

Chinese, Philippine ships collide near hotspot South China Sea reef

 

The latest phrases in the Chinese lexicon: rotten-tail homes and rotten-tail kids. A rotten-tail home is one that is not finished and has little prospects for being finished. A rotten-tail kid is a college graduate who can't find a job, and lives at home on his parents' pension. For those lucky enough to get a job, it is not uncommon for them to work a probationary period for $0.70 per hour for 12 hours per day.

'Rotten-tail kids': China's rising youth unemployment breeds new working class

 

What an idiotic post, with imbecilic propaganda! China spends plenty of money on their military, especially when you consider that they only have one significant potential enemy (read: country standing in the way of their dreams of regional conquest). And while China does have high-speed rail (for the moment), they do not have a significant number of miles of freight rail. Not like the nation that leads the world in reliable freight rail track (the U.S.). Freight rail helps the U.S. economy be more efficient than China (and most other countries, for that matter). HSR would be something that is nice to have, but would not have near as much positive impact on the economy as freight rail, since the U.S. already has efficient highway and air travel systems, plus low-speed rail.

We'll make friends with China when they return to being a friendly nation, and stop bullying and threatening their neighbors and claiming territories that do not belong to them, and they stop investing in a modernized military that they do not need for self-defense. Only an idiot makes friends with a serial killer and helps them buy weapons.

As far as keeping up with China, we actually do keep up with China (actually, we are way ahead of them) on two of the more important statistics:

1) Willingness to have children (birthrate: 1.66 and stable in the U.S.; 1.0 and falling in China), plus ability to attract immigrants.

2) Median income (2023: U.S. $48,000; China $4,600).

 

More on China's birthrate falling off a cliff . . .

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/18/china/china-one-child-policy-hangover-intl-hnk/index.html

 

Another foolish post, I see. You tell us that the U.S. cannot compete with China due to systemic factors that cannot be corrected, but you apparently have no idea what those factors might be, because you don't mention them (or you fall back on idiocy like ship-building capacity). This is your typical "throw dog sh!t at the wall, and see if it sticks." No one is falling for your propaganda today.

The U.S. is not trying to be a nation over other nations. Our position as the world's leading economy dictates that we do more than the other countries to enforce a rule-based world that all civilized nations want. We usually get good agreement from other nations not named "China" and "Russia" for our policies. So quit whining.

The truth is that China is suffering from some rather severe "systemic factors" that they cannot fix, such as:

1) a housing crisis that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
2) a wealthy customer base (the U.S. and Europe) that is highly offended by China's illegal territorial claims and military buildup to enforce them, and has stopped buying many things from China.
3) youth unemployment caused by a lack of income.
4) an aging population, combined with a rapidly declining birthrate, and virtually no immigration.

The U.S. still has the world's largest and most resilient economy. Shipbuilding is not that big of a deal, and is something the U.S. could easily correct if it chose to. Sea battles in the 21st century are not won automatically by who has the most ships (this isn't the 1600's); they are won by who has the best technology and training. A single U.S. aircraft carrier has dozens of jets that are capable of carrying multiple missiles on each trip. Most Chinese ships can be sunk by just a few missiles (or maybe one, depending on what kind of ship and where the missile hits). Shooting down the U.S. plane is a difficult, if not impossible, proposition because it doesn't have a significant radar signature. China will know that a U.S. plane is nearby when one of their ships blows up (probably going to be the largest ship that gets sunk first). The job of most of the ships around an aircraft carrier is to protect the aircraft carrier. China has two outdated and under-sized carriers vs. eleven modern ones for the U.S.

China's navy is designed to intimidate and abuse their neighbors, not tangle with the United States.

And finally, something for you to chew on: I guarantee that the U.S. can sink China's ships faster than they can build them. A LOT faster.

 

China's economic struggles forces them to raise the retirement age by five years. This is one area where they are going to pass the U.S., and I'm all for it. The average retirement age in the U.S. is 62. Men in China can retire at 60, but that will soon be 65. White collar women will be able to retire at 60, and working-class women will be able to retire at 55.

What kind of gov't pension do Chinese workers get? Former (federal) gov't employees get $10k/yr. Public employment (regional or local?) get $6k/yr. Urban salaried employees get $5.6k/yr. Rural workers get $300/yr.

The average Social Security benefit in the U.S. is over $22k/yr.

The Average Retirement Age in 2024: US vs. China

A lot of younger Chinese are giving up on saving for retirement, with little confidence in China's economic future.

China’s Young People Are Giving Up on Saving for Retirement.

 

Thanks to heavy discounts, China's electric vehicle manufacturers are selling more EV's than ever, and 30 out of 32 companies are losing money on each one. One more economic disaster to add to China's long list.

Chinese EV makers' losses mount as rising sales fail to offset steep discounts

 

And that is one of the reasons China used to have a large military, to give young men something to do and someone to watch over them and keep them out of trouble. When I worked in central China in the mid-2000's, the chemical plant I was in was heavily guarded by tall, young soldiers. None of them had any weapons that I could see, but they were a bit on the arrogant side, and did not seem to trust or like Americans. The top communist party official for the chemical plant was very nice to us (after we treated her group well in the U.S.), so I was not concerned about having any problems with the soldiers that she couldn't fix.

The other reason China had a large military was to help out with all of the natural disasters they had (floods, earthquakes, etc.).

I think I read that it was common to have a group of hookers stationed in the military bases to service the troops.

The overall problem of not enough women was not too bad for China when they were rolling in money. Semi-wealthy (middle class) men with no prospects at home could easily go to Vietnam or other SE Asian countries and persuade a woman from a poor family to marry him. That was fairly common.

 

Non-nuke ICBM's would probably not be a good idea, and would likely not be necessary. If China believes that an inbound non-nuclear ICBM is a nuclear ICBM, they may respond with the launch of their nuclear ICBM's before our non-nuclear missiles strike their targets and demonstrate that they are conventional weapons.

We also do not need hyper-speed rockets. We already have a devastating weapons platform that China currently has no answer for: the F-35. We send up F-35's at night, they will not know they are approaching their naval vessels until the missiles are launched from them, and at that point, there is little they can do to prevent their ships from being hit and sunk. Same for any aircraft that are in the air or parked in air bases near the coast. Their submarines are a minor concern, but not a major one--their sub commanders are the worst qualified of all their services, and their subs are not as good as ours.

As long as we do not put our surface fleet close to China's shores when the war breaks out, and we do not put our ground troops in China at any point, we are fairly safe and will cruise to an easy victory (by air and sea) over China. Taiwan should be able to defend itself from any parts of an invasion fleet that survive the initial fighting.

China is very well suited to winning a war against any Asian adversary (Japan is a possible exception, especially if South Korea comes to their aid; and India might be able to stand up to a Chinese ground invasion). China is not prepared to fight the U.S.