Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "The Return of the CENTRAL EMPIRE? How CHINA CHALLENGES the US military - VisualPolitik EN" video.

  1. The way China is aging, polluting, and taking on debt, not by much and not for long 📈📉
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  2. The PLA isn't short on wasteful spending either. They spend way more time on grand parades and patriotic indoctrination when they could be out training in the field and figuring out how their equipment will hold up away from the luxury of garrison maintenance.
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  3.  @seh1080  Even then, taking Táiwān wouldn't necessarily grant the PRC that high value-added human capital the Taiwanese possess in their brains and democratized governance. That durable prosperity comes through societal trust and exploratory dissent, which can't develop under Communism.
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  4. But does their equipment work as advertised? They're already getting complaints of low quality and high amounts of downtime in peace, imagine those things in the degraded maintenance environment of war.
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  5. Probably not. Chinese people aren't as brainwashed and infantilized as North Koreans (who generally would sacrifice themselves for the glory of Kim and the Korean race), and the deaths/disappearances of so many only-sons could incite open revolt against the Party now that those families have no legacy left to lose.
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  6.  @joem0088  China's debt ratio has been growing alarmingly fast, riding on a less diverse portfolio of shoddily-built structures with quickly shrinking returns on investments. They're losing their low-end manufacturing to South and SE Asia, while lagging in high value-added services because of the lack in societal trust and exploratory dissent that truly creative ventures require -- their economy is becoming as brittle as the flaky concrete of their "modern" buildings because that's literally the only place they can trust their money to grow in.
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  7. Rail and road links alone won't make up for the loss of shipping by sea, and all the West has to do is provide enough crossfire to make civilian ships reconsider the costs of entering a war zone with the food and fuel China needs because they're too polluted, inefficient, and overextracted in their own lands. Choke off the supply lines (it doesn't even have to be completely) for a year or two and the Party's grip will collapse in the explosion of unrest within the Mainland.
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  8.  @codechannel528  At the same time the PRC is not recognized as the government over Táiwān. It's more like North and South Korea where they both officially claim each other, but are effectively dealt as separate equal entities.
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  9.  @liu3gz  Which would make China unbeatable in a land war where simple machining and infantry moxy negates the advantages of high tech weaponry. Unfortunately the battles will be more at sea and in the air where casual combatants can't fight (or on Táiwān where the roles reverse), and China's reliance on imports for food and fuel means it won't be able to afford both beans and bullets for that long without getting distracted by the rising unrest back at home.
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  10. The US wouldn't have to occupy or even dominate the area around China though, just provide enough return fire for civilian ships to reconsider the waybill and insurance rates for sailing into Chinese ports with the food and fuel they rely on. Even a stalemate would mean the Party loses when their treasury and shelves empty out over the course of a year or more; no amount of patriotic education will suppress the literal starvation and subsequent desire to flee from or fight the failing authorities.
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  11. Right, Maritime SE Asia has been heading anti-China despite their "non-aligned" policy because of all the hostile acts with Chinese fishing hordes emptying the local seas. Indonesia alone could make it really hurt for China by stopping ships going through their waters -- they're already readily suspicious of Chinese, Communists, and acts of anti-Islam -- and along with Vietnam and the Philippines would easily empty the PRC's treasury by forcing them to use more expensive overland routes for basic food and fuel. I wouldn't be surprised if undeployed PLA forces were even left largely unmolested, just so they can eat through the Mainland's dwindling supplies and fuel unrest among China's civilians to cause even more division in operational efforts.
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  12. Russia relies more on subterfuge -- it's estimated that their intelligence community is like 3x the size of America's. The cost being a culture-wide lack of trust in each other, on top of having not much else going for the average Russian citizen.
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  13. Don't forget that the Taiwanese will be fighting too. Even with a PLA takeover there's still plenty of space on the island from which they can hide and mount an insurrection... and they're increasingly asking the US on how even a minimally armed but determined population can defeat the political agenda of an occupying force.
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  14. Once the missiles launch the supplies will dry up anyway. Anti-ship missiles aren't terribly smart on their own -- especially when the long range sensor assets are under attack -- and it only takes one container ship being mistaken for a juicy aircraft carrier or amphibious assault ship to really scare away the civilian traffic who were sailing to China.
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  15. US doesn't have to overpower China either, just dissuade trade with sanctions and potential crossfire, starving the Mainland of the food and fuel it has to import. That's if America wants to preempt the looming challenges of aging, debt, pollution, and corruption which threatens the continued prosperity of the PRC (and thus the legitimacy of an unchallenged CPC) anyway.
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  16. The effect of the spending depends on access too, Afghanistan is literally surrounded by major anti-US powers on all sides so a lot of that money had to go into basically bribery for the gatekeepers. For Táiwān though there's only open ocean and plenty of friendly ports nearby... combine that with defensible terrain and a hostile population, and the island is arguably the Afghanistan for Mainland China.
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  17.  @HDsharp  What makes you say that? Maritime SE Asia is leaning anti-China -- I was just there, and that's the feeling I got talking with the locals.
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  18. Veterancy and experience would be especially important in this scenario, because there wouldn't be much of a land war where casual combatants can hide and ambush from. For air and sea operations, pure technical superiority is all that really matters.
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  19. But then the PLA's budget is split between defending its territory from its neighbors (nearly all of whom carry considerable discontent with China), rehearsing and performing grand parades, and regular stand-downs for political indoctrination. This doesn't leave much to go toe to toe with a opponent with much more training and combat experience... and there's no land war for casual combatants to ambush them from.
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  20. The US wouldn't be fighting to dominate China, it'd be more returning enough fire and gathering allies to make trade with China undesirable and prolonging the pain until the Party's dragon starves and collapses under its own weight as food, fuel, and foreign reserves dwindle. Even seizing Táiwān won't guarantee Communist victory, because it'll be followed by an insurrection in very defensible terrain by a prepared hostile population... who have been asking the US their direct experience on how to defeat the political agenda of a modern occupying force.
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  21. Chinese soldiers aren't paid as much, but they're also stuck doing a lot of political indoctrination classes while American units regularly get sent to field exercises if not the combat zone. Plus PLA equipment gets enough complaints of breakdowns in garrison, imagine how reliable those would be in the degraded maintenance of war.
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  22. America has been tearing itself apart constantly, critics have doubted its continued existence since 1812, various Panics, the Civil War, the anarco-communist insurrection, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement where even the President wasn't safe from some random sniper. These critics underestimate the American ability to come back and help each other just as fast. China also has a long history of revolt and reform, but each reform often requires a full and usually violent change of leadership, which is exactly what the Party fears.
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  23. Land forces aren't that useful in a largely air and sea battle of cross-Straits combat. In fact they may be a liability having to feed them all, especially when food and fuel prices explode in the absence of shipping to Chinese ports who got scared off by the crossfire.
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  24. The US recently came out with an improved bolt-on JDAM kit that turns cheap gravity bombs into warship killers -- there's tens of thousands in the existing stockpile launchable by practically anything that flies, each at 1/20th the cost of a regular anti-ship missile. A dozen-sortie raid would easily overwhelm even the most heavily-armed cruiser, and would be overkill for the practically defenseless patrol boats and coastal cutters that make up the bulk of the PLAN fleet.
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