China Vs the U.S

Hiding nukes in freight planes? I think that's a war crime.

So are a lot of things; doesn't stop people from doing them if they think it's effective.

Well the freighting system is a bit strange right now. The Chinese typically ship stuff to Canada, which is then shipped into the US because that is faster processing time through customs. The US deliberately delays Chinese goods on the docks for up to 6 months, while Canada processes them normally. For Canada it's fine, it provides jobs, opportunity and import tax money. For the US it means goods are priced substantially higher (two sets of customs duties and import taxes), and they get it much slower, which increases business input costs.

Also the US has stuff to ship to China. Unlike Japan, they take in goods from everywhere in the world without problem (bureaucratic wise or culturally). You'll notice much more trade imbalance with Japan than you have with China but China is a larger economy so it matters more in absolute terms. For instance, American car sales in China have been increasing at a rate of something like 50% to 150% per year.

edited 2nd Sep '11 9:23:34 AM by breadloaf

Do cars ship on freight planes? :/

edited 2nd Sep '11 9:25:29 AM by OhSoIntoCats

No... it doesn't, so I suppose it doesn't help with that particular type of trade.

Actually, very little is shipped on planes because it's so expensive. I'm not sure the purpose of that. Other than air mail, seems kinda silly.

Yeah that's what I thought. It was my understanding that the vast majority of US manufacturing is on large items (cars, airplane engines, stuff like that) which doesn't seem very efficient to ship on airplanes, unless you're shipping the finished airplanes themselves...?

They do ship planes like that and technically America has a very good aviation industry.

Yea, were finally getting our act togetherwith the cars and building the best ones again.

and the china shipping stuff through canada thing pisses me off. (knew we shoulda bought the whole west coast while we had the chance.)

plus, the main reason china makes the little thing so cheap is the lack of enviornmental laws. you want to pump to poisonus shit into that river? go right ahead! we don't like lead in our drinking water though, so it makes cheap stuff in bulk cost more.

Very sorry to post in an old thread, but I noticed something. Some folks kept asking for the cassus belli of a Sino-American conflict, and no one mentioned petroleum, energy, or oil. Even if you discount the possibility of a peak oil event, one only has to look back at some of the previous few knock-down drag-out wars to see that the 20th century and the early 21st century have largely been about energy control. Japan hit us first in desperation because we were embargoing them, Germany tried to blitz Russia over their oil fields, and the elephant in the room that rarely seems to be discussed anymore is that Halliburton-owned refineries were among the first things to go up in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. If I had to guess, trade and economic interconnectedness mean nearly nothing when you can't buy food with the money in circulation because of it. From what I've seen of China's capabilities, they're planning to outlast the chaos that will likely unfold if a peak event happens and the price of oil starts affecting our ability to project force abroad. Their ASAT weapons could easily reach our GPS network in MEO, and they wouldn't even have to hit all of the sattellites to seriously hamper our long-range weaponry systems. There's the threat of Kessler syndrome if they break up enough, too. For comparison, the Chinese equivalent of GPS is being assembled out in geostationary orbit, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm given to understand debris that occurs in that orbital doesn't remain long, and is unlikely to hit other sattellites at that altitude. I'd expect them to move into Taiwan and possibly Japan very quickly if our carrier groups come home, and simply scrap MEO if we start shooting. And if you think they wouldn't deny themselves the benefits of space if it meant their enemies couldn't threaten them from across the oceans, remember Zheng He. They burned the most advanced fleet in the world at anchor and destroyed his records and charts over internal politics and Confucianism, even though it had been a massively profitable endeavor. They would almost certainly consider space denial and the sort of dark age it would cast over us all as a viable option. This time, the children of Daqin are likely to be placed in a worse position than Qin by the enforced relinquishment of technology.

edited 1st Jul '14 9:41:27 PM by Artificius

If China started firing missiles into space there's a decent chance the US would go nuclear, as they'd have no way of knowing if those missiles were aimed at satellites or were ICB Ms.

Plus a CB isn't the hard part, it's a CB that makes any sense that's hard to find. the US and China are economically dependant on each other, you don't start a war with your biggest economic partner.

I'd say oil is a suitable, though likely unofficial CB. If economics are a social glue that binds us together and prevents us from doing anything too terrible to each other, famine and resource depletion are the solvents. Consider that crude oil is an arguably finite resource which we use (it or its derivatives) for just about everything, from agriculture (pesticides and fertilizers, if you can believe it), to a primary source of energy for just about all of our infrastructure, to plastics and other materials. We are incredibly dependent on it, and China's getting there. If its price skyrockets, such as after news that some OPEC country has significantly less proven reserves than it felt was expedient to say, or that fracking is a bubble, it will be difficult to produce, much less trade anything that requires its energy to make or ship. It would no longer be economical to ship most goods between countries, and trans-oceanic trade would largely dry up. In that environment, any former economic co-dependency would be irrelevant. We would likely be fighting over the very thing that made cooperation viable to begin with, particularly if we thought we had a solid chance at claiming the remains (World's greatest Navy/Air Force/Army). And again, don't forget that the UK and Germany were integral trading partners running up to both world wars. To sum up, that it would be economic suicide doesn't strike me as a comprehensive deterrent, and desperation mixed with the possibility of swift gains through asymetrical warfare could corrode the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

edited 5th Jul '14 7:45:20 PM by Artificius

Well others have thought of oil as a CB. been seeing the results myself the past few days.

(ie, I'm on a 3 day Fallout 3 kick. please help, I think I'm trapped)

If there would be a CB for China, it's not just oil, that's not the "China way". It's the oil, the natural gas, the rare earth metals, the nickel, the copper, the iron, the lumber, the fishes, the corals, the turtles, the gold, the silver, the steel, the aluminum...

Seem like neither China nor America would be particularly good targets for invasion over resources, like literally the two worst countries to go to war with.

I'd thought I bring this up: while it may have less of a great effect in the event of a US-China conflict, the US in fact boasts a certain cultural edge over China's in terms of cultural attitudes to professional soldiering.

You see, the attitudes of the average Han Chinese citizen towards towards joining the military has traditionally been rather hypocritical and contradictory: on one hand, they idolize the ideal of the citizen soldier, and logically worship and respect young men who volunteer in times of open warfare. Yet those who enlist during peacetime are generally looked down upon as being desperate and misguided youths who are simply finding a way to compensate for their irresponsible education and upbringing. Also, historical attitudes seem to indicate that, depending on the time period, officers are either revered as moralistic fathers to their men or cold hearted Commissar types eager to execute their subordinates for vague accusations, while common grunts are depicted as criminals with excuses to kill, loot, and rape or tragic heroes that are the victims of political puppet masters.

The primary reason for this seesaw of attitudes mainly comes out of the lack of developed Western-style military justice systems in Chinese history, with any that seem useful enough to implement immediately being deployed to politically keep the military in line with whatever current regime that's in charge.

The aforementioned attitudes mentioned above are still quite apparent as described by several relatives who were conscripted into the Taiwanese military: unlike in the West, where uniform-donning soldiers strolling in public are treated with respect and thanks for their services, Chinese cultured peoples would generally gossip and stiff up upon seeing military personnel in public.

This is coupled with the long lasting effects of the One Child Policy in the mainland, which by itself plays alongside the traditional cultural attitudes of favoring male children as heirs to the family. Due to the fact that the average Chinese family will revere what single son that they've nurtured and care for, the infamous nationalism of China's population can be somewhat countered with a general reluctance for its young men to enlist, an act which is seen as undertaken only by hopeless school dropouts or dirt poor members of society's less well off.

America has about the same views on soldiering, just less extreme on both ends, and the fact that soldiers get a lot of respect across the board, except at the very fringes of Left and Right, but few enough people actually want to go out and do it.

The US and China wouldn't be invading each other to take advantage of resources locked away within their respective native soils. This would likely be a conflict over empire and who gets claim on their native soils, for all the good that's ever done.

edited 6th Jul '14 4:43:24 PM by Artificius

The big problem with this whole concept is that China lacks the force projection ability of the USA (China cannot invade the USA. End of discussion there.) A conflict between the two would have to be local, and would have to involve a Chinese attack on an American ally, or vice-versa. At which point the entire conversation devolves into one about who is willing to commit more resources, etc, etc, to the conflict in question.

China Vs the US-

ie- the biggest one-sided conflict since the anglo-zanzibarian war.

First, what matters- Force projection. China's got almost none, America's got more than the rest of the world combined. The war's going to be entirely the US fighting around China. China can negate SOME of America's abilities but not all.

Secondly, ability to maintain the war machine

The US provides 84% of it's own energy needs, and alot of the rest comes from Canada.

China Imports over 70% of it's energy needs.

Given the US's expansive submarine and surface fleet, you can expect oil imports by water(which is where most of it comes from) to be shut down.

Just from this stuff, the US can't "lose". China would NEVER be able to mount an invasion. They'd be completely contained.

thirdly the whole invasion bit.

Mounting a full on invasion of China would be completely insane. Generally.

BUT the US doesn't have to take on the Chinese military by itself. There's more than a few within China that'd do so for them. Xinjiang Has been having more and more unrest lately, and thee Tibetans still aren't quite done with trying to break off. Throw in a near complete starvation of energy imports and their single biggest economic customer suddenly not buying anything(and the US could always buy it's cheap crap elsewhere), and the Chinese economy's tanked, and you're going to have more than just a few unruly separatists. And that's not even mentioning Taiwan, Which would probably jump at the chance to help prove it's the 'real' government of china.

(in short, while a standard invasion where the locals resist and the entire enemy army fights would be a bloodbath, that's not likely to happen as many chinese citizens already dislike their government).

It'd be costly but at this point in time US vs China wouldn't even be a fight after the initial stage of the conflict.

Of course, if nukes fly we're all dead but that's not as much fun to talk about

edited 27th Aug '14 8:28:22 AM by joesolo

What you describe doesn't sound one-sided at all. Especially that part about the Chinese economy tanking.

Who will make our cheap things when China tanks?

Taiwan probably. Maybe Vietnam

...lolwut?

economic devastation vs some manageable issues sounds pretty one sided to me.

a lot of south east asia already trades with the US with similar things. They could probably pick up production a bit.

edited 27th Aug '14 8:49:18 AM by joesolo

That's not a "maybe". ASEAN as a whole are indeed turning into direct competitors of China. Ever wonder why China wants ASEAN countries to just keep on trading with them more? Because that way the natural resources goes to trade rather than to the local industries. The West in general trades "evenly" for raw materials and finished products, while China is quite lopsided (heck they even send their own citizens to work for the companies getting those resources; compare for example a mining complex operated by the Japanese over here...they didn't send Japanese workers to the mine, they hired locals - like my grandfather). Chinese lumber company in Papua New Guinea? Almost all of the workforce is Chinese. Chinese-operated oil refinery in Nigeria? Almost all of the workforce is Chinese. Asphalt roads in Uganda? Donated by China, constructed by Chinese workers.

edited 27th Aug '14 9:35:36 AM by entropy13

Also even if the U Ss allies outside the region didn't weigh in militarily you can bet we'd weigh in economically (assuming China started the war), there goes another big chunk of China's economy with all it's exports to the EU disappearing.

Plus you've got the possibility of India coming to join the fight economically and politically, allowing the US to feed weapons and special opps into areas like Tibet (and allowing India to break the Pakistan-US alliance when Pakistan sides with China).

A US/China clash on a small scale is actually a more interesting topic, when you get right down to it. If the two were to fight each other within the context of a Second Korean War, or somesuch, the odds are much more even and both sides stand a better chance. China can more effectively bring its manpower advantage to bear, and without direct US strikes on China itself, their economy can stand a fairly lengthy war.

Conversely, in a full scale total war, you've got a world superpower fighting a regional superpower, which can only go one way. The USA can't conquer China, but they can leave them economically and militarily crippled—though it would still be long and ugly. China's not Iraq, and they can put a lot more men—and a lot more better trained men at that—into the field than most of the USA's Third World enemies. Still, in the end, however long it takes, the Americans will grind their way to victory.