First of all, China and the US, besides their rivalry, are huge economic partners: china and the US trade from each other a lot. Either of them going into military conflict with the other would mean massive economic losses. Im not saying it cant happen, but it cannot be the goal to get richer so in the end you can get poorer.
Ofc is reasonable to think that being an economic power gives you also political power, and as an American you can perceive that the US benefits from that position today and doesnt want to lose it to China.
I would say that first of all, most of U.S. intervention in other countries has cost dearly both for the intervened countries and to the american taxpayer(and sometimes citizen or soldier). China as well as the US are a problem in that regard. Its true that it could have negative consequences, as it does for the US to have that power, but it feels to me secondary to economic power, and more relevant to how international institutions should work.
In any case, China doesnt have to surpass the US to do this, as today it already has a lot of questionable policies(like being an ally to north korea, or getting into borderline military conflicts for sea territory).
But as the US prospered, the Civil Rights movement kicked in. So perhaps the same will happen in China.
Were slaves not human back then? GP is right: the human rights standard was appalling, and this is before considering the Trail of Tears and other small-pox-related incidents
So the west only had to apply what human rights already existed universally to "develop," and there was already moral pressure to do so from unfairness. China already has "fairness", but no where to go after that; there is definitely no moral pressure from within to do better.
> While belief in the sanctity of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world, the idea of human rights, that is, the notion that a human being has a set of inviolable rights simply on grounds of being human, began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period. The European wars of religion and the civil wars of seventeenth-century England gave rise to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in human rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. These ideas of human rights lay at the core of the American and French Revolutions which occurred toward the end of that century. Democratic evolution through the nineteenth century paved the way for the advent of universal suffrage in the twentieth century. Two world wars led to the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
> The post-war era saw human rights movements for special interest groups such as feminism and the civil rights of African-Americans. The human rights of members of the Soviet bloc emerged in the 1970s along with workers' rights in the West. The movement quickly jelled as social activism and political rhetoric in many nations put it high on the world agenda.[1] By the 21st century, Moyn has argued, the human rights movement expanded beyond its original anti-totalitarianism to include numerous causes involving humanitarianism and social and economic development in the Developing World.[2]
> Some notions of righteousness present in ancient law and religion is sometimes retrospectively included under the term "human rights". While Enlightenment philosophers suggest a secular social contract between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from notions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law.
One can say "human rights" and still not have accomplished the goal yet, but if one cannot say "human rights" at all, there is no goal in sight. The Chinese media always complains that "human rights" is a western-biased concept, not appropriate for China, and at least we can agree on the first part. Human rights was a concept in the west, even if it had flaws, it was never even a concept in China (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values).
And surely, the rich and connected people in China have those rights. They are treated fairly by the system and society.
It's just those poorer people that are hurt, but hey, the framework for it still exists.
People all have the same standards enshrined in the political system, but it is a low bar, and everyone makes out in the economic system instead. It's basically what a libertarian society would look like if they kept the government to a minimum (sans the occasional persecution of a dissident).
That's utterly hilarious. If there's a world in which that's even remotely possible, we'll all be long, long dead by the time it happens.
China's GDP per capita is currently about 14% of the United States [1]. That's roughly the same ratio that Japan faced in 1960, yet within 30 years Japan overtook the US in GDP per capita [2].
My view is that China has a number of economic and demographic disadvantages that mean in 30 years China is 'only' likely to reach 30-50% of US GDP per capita. But with a population projected to be 3 times the US [3], China's overall GDP will be greater than the US. In 30 years.
And once that happens, how long will it take for China's military power to exceed the United States? You might be dead, but your grandchildren will certainly see it happen.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
[2] Based on the Google graph when you search "Japan GDP per capita", etc.
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_gr...
Second, even reaching parity is an immensely daunting proposition. If China were to start building ships and aircraft, the US would respond in kind. Right now there's a lot of overhead and waste in the procurement process, that waste would disappear if shit suddenly got real. Sure, we 'only' have 20 carrier groups right now, but there's no reason we can't have 40.
There's two main force multipliers I see that we have that China will never be able to catch up with us on. First, training and experience. The reason we keep a small military manpower-wise is because every US soldier is extremely well-trained. If China conscripted a percentage of their population, they could instantly have a larger army, but that army would then need to be trained in how to conduct modern warfare.
Second, alliances with other countries. The best air-to-air missile right now is the Meteor, it's being developed in Sweden and sold throughout Europe. If China started rising militarily, the US and Europe would immediately start cooperating to counter it by sharing technology.
The US has an enormous amount invested in its military dominance, it will not give that up at any cost. China could not reach parity slowly, as it would never catch up, and it can't reach it quickly, because we'd notice and respond appropriately. It would be such a huge drain on their economy that they'd abandon the effort.
The Soviets never even came close to parity in conventional force projection. The Chinese wouldn't either in a strategic arms race. Even if they did, they'd still never in a million years be able to conquer the US. As well try to conquer the Sun.
For China to some day have the ability to conquer the US, wouldn't they first have to reach parity? Seems to me the post was implicitly claiming that the China's military could reach parity with the United States. But I agree that the focus of the argument is on exceeding the US military power.
The generals of the First World War had training and experience, but technological change meant that training was useless and they had to re-learn how to fight on the battlefield. Future technology will have the same effect - for example, a swarm of drones might be more capable than a manned fighter aircraft. Air superiority might come down to who can write the better drone software, or perhaps simply who has the most drones. The old investment in manned fighter aircraft would count for nothing.
I agree that the US alliances with other countries is a benefit that China will not have. But China has its own unique benefit - its manufacturing industry. It already far exceeds the US in ability to mass produce smartphones. Couldn't it one day churn out military robots at a far greater rate than the US and Germany combined?
The Soviets never came close to achieving economic parity with the United States. A better analogy would be Britain in the 19th century - it lost its military dominance as the US grew its economy to be much larger than the British economy. In the 21st century China will do to the US what the US did to Britain the 19th century.
My logic is simple: (a) in 30 years China's economy will be bigger than the US economy; (b) in 60 years China's economy will be double the US economy; (c) A country will lose its military superiority to another country if that other country can afford to spend twice as much on its military.
None of these three statements seems particularly controversial to me.
Sure. But it's not enough.
To conquer a country you have to invade it. To invade it you have to move soldiers to it. A lot of them. China could destroy our entire navy and air force and still not be able to conquer us.
This is the reason we used nuclear weapons against Japan in WW2 rather than try to invade it. We could have, but the amount of resources and blood it would have taken was extreme. An operation of that scale conducted across an ocean has only been successful once, and that's because we had a friendly country to establish a base on. (DDay)
Should the Chinese want to invade us, their only real option would be through Mexico. No amount of conventional military dominance can overcome the sheer impossibility of trying to invade a country by sea. And the US and Canada are too close for them to go that route. Invading Canada would be just as hard as invading the US. They could maybe try overland across Russia, Alaska, and Canada, but that would be just as hard as an amphibious assault.
Should the US see that China was gearing up for such a plan, we'd send our army there to rebuff the attempt, ignoring Mexican sovereignty if we had to.
Without troops on the ground, there is no conquest. They could conceivably beat us in conventional conflict given a serious enough advantage, but they could never actually invade us, so complete neutralization is impossible.
But it doesn't really matter whether Japan got to 105% or 95% of US GDP in 1990 - my point that China could get to 30-50% of US GDP in 30 years stands.