I mean this without the slightest hint of doubt, really just curious: Source?

My wife is a Chinese so I’ve been interested in Chinese news, economics and geopolitics for 20 years now. I also have friends who have lived there for years, including one who’s father in law is, I’ll just say well connected*. I can’t give you one source, I read almost everything about China I come across.

* His perspective on the internal politics of zero covid isn’t anything I’ve seen reported anywhere so I can’t corroborate it in any way, but it’s jaw dropping. Basically his position is that the extreme swings in policy implementation by the regions is a deliberate attempt to discredit Hu. Since Hu has deeply identified covid policy with himself personally, and all the regional party factions absolutely hate his guts (which I know is true), they’re deliberately blowing it large style on covid policy. One clue this might be correct is national news now doesn’t mention Hu in relation to covid any more, but regional news often still does.

Who is Hu? Chinese president is Xi instead of Hu.

Sorry you must be wrong. This person is an expert on China and his wife is "a Chinese."

? I am curious about Hu. Can you tell me his name? If you mean Hu Xijin, I will say he is a news reporter instead of expert.

I think this person is just deeply confused.

I shouldn't post at 4am.

Your last word is very interesting. The equivalents have been used in many places. It has more meaning than it appears.

There's no really good research on decoding the mind of modern human specie' yet and even there was one, there would be little impact because the result will be consumed by human mind so if there were bugs then they won't be fixed because the bugs are in human mind.

The conflicts in the world are caused by those bugs, in AI's opinion(in future)

I have zero expertise in this area, but I did read an article earlier today suggesting that the bigger naval fleet almost always wins against a technically superior but smaller fleet, and that China already has the world’s largest navy [0]

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/16/asia/china-navy-fleet-siz...

The problem the Chinese fleet has is zero operational experience. Their carriers are barely capable of peacetime air operations. You’re making the same mistake everyone made about the Russian army a year ago, big on numbers and big on hardware so big on threat. But all that hardware doesn’t do you much good if the actual soldiers (or seamen) have no idea how to function in an actual war.

China has the world's 2nd largest navy, by any metric that makes sense.

It's only the largest if you count the number of ships, counting every ship equally. Counting a small coastal patrol boat the same as an aircraft carrier is manifestly absurd. China currently has 3 aircraft carriers, only one of which is a "supercarrier" on par with American carriers. The US has 11 supercarriers. One could make similar comparisons with nuclear-powered submarines and many other types of ships.

Overall tonnage is a better metric: the Chinese navy weighs about 1.3 tons, while the US navy weighs about 4.5 million tons. Of course, there are many other factors beyond this one-dimensional metric, but this nevertheless gives you an idea of the large gap between the US and Chinese navies.

China is catching up with the US quickly, because of China's growing industrial might, but it will still take decades to reach full parity.

Somebody listened to Joe Rogan's podcast last week.

Russia won't be joining the sanctions against China. Russia and China share a border. China will continue to eat Russian food as they have since trump scared them off reliance on US soy without disruption.

Furthermore, the imagined might of the US navy in the age of drones is as obsolete as the fleets of World War One in the age of aircraft carriers.

Almost all of those Russian exports go by sea, not land. They’re coming from the wrong end of Russia and the rail links have very limited capacity. China has been trying to get that upgraded as part of belt and a road, but it’s been slow going and far more expensive than they thought and much of the capacity that does exist goes through the stans. A decent capacity gas pipeline only got approved after the Ukraine war and will take a decade or more to get operational.

Drones are too slow and too short range to be anything more than a near coastal threat. China’s sea lane supply routes stretch from south China all the way to the Persian gulf, Suez and round Africa. Only a real global navy can secure shipping across that sort of territory, and only the USA has a real global navy on that scale these days.

Also where are all the Chinese naval bases to support such operations? The US and its allies have naval bases peppered over that whole area. China has one in Djibouti. It’s their only overseas naval base.

> The US and its allies have naval bases peppered over that whole area.

Is this the "Chinese aggression" I’ve been hearing so much about?

The primary mission of the US navy globally is to guarantee freedom of navigation for everyone in international waters. That includes for shipping to and from China. The Chinese know this very well. The truth is Chinese and US commercial and strategic interests align almost completely in practice because their economies complement each other much more than they compete and their strategic dependencies are mostly shared (Gulf oil being a biggie), the problems are political.

They're major political problems for sure and they lead to strong economic rivalry for geopolitical reasons, but take away the political dimension and they'd be natural allies, IMHO. It's the same way that Japan and the USA went from being direct competitors to natural allies after WW2. Before WW2 that would have been unimaginable, after WW2 it became obvious. I think it's the same with China.

Also Russia actually, it's why the Ukraine invasion caught the USA completely by surprise. They just don't see what Russia could possibly gain from it because they view the world in commercial terms. If Russia was a liberal democracy them and the USA would be best friends ever, but authoritarian regimes must have enemies in order to justify their repression.

You cannot speak coherently about geopolitics without discussing currency politics and financial hegemony. What defines US geopolitical relationships is not whether a country is "authoritarian" but how it relates to the petrodollar/IMF/World Bank global financial system. A government can behave however it wants and never be bothered by the US as long as it submits its economy to this system. This explains why some oil-rich countries are sworn enemies of the US and some aren't much better than "freedom and democracy".

What defines China specifically as a malign actor from the US perspective is that it is offering countries outside the West a second choice for how to finance and pursue development. The mere presence of this competition is a mortal threat to the entire established order.

I think you're vastly underestimating the havoc that can be wrought by a single submarine briefly surfacing near a carrier group, belching out a giant swarm of expendable drones and disappearing under the waves again.

And the US is incredibly vulnerable to having its 130 refineries destroyed by PRC conventional global strike - ultimately no better able to defend her energy and calorie inputs as PRC. The Malacca dilemma / PRC blockade was viable in an era where the US could unilaterally enforce with impunity. That game theory doesn't hold anymore, PRC can simply run blockade and threaten to take down comparable levels of US energy production that will reverberate down the chain into fertilizer and agriculture. Fortress America doesn't exist when an adversary like PRC can hit strategic targets on CONUS, hence US energy "security" is relegated to energy autonomy, the resources exist, but their processing cannot be secured in war. Think Saudi. Functionally, the CONUS is now as existentially vulnerable as the PRC in the event of war. The US knows this.

In terms of sanctions, which producer is going to sanction PRC? We already see with RU war that bulk cargo will just get transshipped through various middle men. Or that PRC can always double down on coal conversion to make fertilizer - was previously curtailed to reduce emissions, but coal is making way back on the menu in the last few years. Projection of the PRC blockade scenario has PRC stretching out reserves and rationing for multiple years. Which TBH is longer than modern war will last, and by that time, in terms of attrition, US homefront would be as dire as PRC. Zeihan stans keep wanking about virtues of USN blue water projection and energy security as if PRC needs to match like for like to be able to challenge the US. PRC doesn't need to spend 30 years building 11 carriers to secure trade, it needs 5 years to build enough conventional global strike backed by ongoing nuke expansion to deter anyone from messing with her SLOCs in the first place.

When you’re talking about global strikes between nuclear powers and converting massive amounts of coal to fertilizer, you have already exceeded the optimal costs for a splendid little war. China blundering into more than it bargained for over Taiwan is one thing, are you really expecting it’s going to commit to a world war-level of production and economic transformation over one island, no matter how much it might believe it to be its patrimony? As if the U.S. wouldn't retaliate with conventional strikes in kind?

As we see in the reversal over zero-COVID, even the Chinese government has to listen to the sentiments of its well-to-do urbanized population created by Dengist reforms, regardless of how objectionable it might find them. Can you not imagine those coastal elites and middle classes complaining about wartime austerity, the blow to the quality of life they're used to?

At some point devising so many elaborate hypothetical war plans is just technothriller novelizing. Which is just fine with me, Tom Clancy left us no true heirs.

>converting massive amounts of coal to fertilizer

This isn’t anything new, IIRC PRC was converting ~50 million tons of fertilizer using coal gasification, which it has curtailed significantly under Xi to focus on emission goals by relying more on imports. But now that great power competition is back, security > environment. Combined with moving to better ag practices where net fertilizer use is decreasing while output increasing (PRC previously used a stupid amount of fertilizer / unit). Peak PRC fertilizer production was like 100M tons, current consumption is ~50M, down from high 60M. Circling back to ops point = PRC can indigenously supply their own fertilizer with domestic inputs which is enough for food security in terms of calories.

>elaborate hypothetical war plans

If by elaborate hypothetical war plans you mean establishing deterrence to mitigate world war levels of destruction by establishing more rungs of escalation than homeland strikes straight to nukes, I call that responsible planning. PRC pursuing a prompt global strike is part of the PLA's 2020 Science of Military Strategy, and acknowledged by the 2022 DoD report on PRC military. It’s no different than various US blob/warplanners plotting interventions on a TW scenario, replete with mainland strikes. If the US expects to escalate that far, of course the PRC is willing (and most importantly, increasingly able) to reciprocate.

Ultimately, this is merely the flip side of US efforts of "integrated deterrence", US wants to deter PRC reclaiming TW, and PRC wants to deter US from "blundering" into greater conflict by showing existential cost is now mutual. Then it circles back to the question of who wants it more. I imagine US polity wondering if intervening in TW is worth it if war follows to the US homeland. Not just revolutionary skirmishes but existential destruction that the US has so far been isolated against. I can imagine that impacts actual US decision making regardless of propaganda layer. What I can also imagine is CCP telling coastal elites, as it has consistently, that peaceful reunification is preferable but military force is not out of the question, and in the event of military force, mutual vulnerability to deter homeland strikes means their QoL will not spiral out of control. If the US is deterred from intervening, PRC can prosecute TW like US conducted wars in the Middle East, with little impact on domestic affairs, even less with strict media controls.

They may make plans, but when it comes time to actually wage a war against a fellow nuclear power that drops DEFCON levels, will they actually commit to a path such as striking American soil that will so inevitably wreck the very globalized interconnected system of political and economic ties that made modern China in the first place? Not to mention, it's all very well to build such intercontinental rockets, hard to say they will work as expected in an actual conflict. Perhaps the Pentagon will bring back Star Wars. Imperial Japan had such innovations as midget submarines and balloon bombs too, not all innovations work out in war, outside the imagination.

> mutual vulnerability to deter homeland strikes means their QoL will not spiral out of control

We are talking about a situation where the sheer disruption to world trade, never mind sanctions and the like, would drop quality of life. The sheer economic shocks and supply chain disruptions would be massive. You expect normal shipping to take place near a war zone, sanctions or no sanctions? The government can make all of the promises they'd like, things have a tendency to spiral out of control in war.

> PRC can prosecute TW like US conducted wars in the Middle East, with little impact on domestic affairs, even less with strict media controls.

On this I am of two minds. On one hand, it seems that inevitably, the Chinese public will lose the stomach for a protracted conflict that hurts their fellow Han people, especially those who they consider as fellow Chinese nationals, especially people whom they have not been at actual war with in seven decades, who they have shared plenty of trade, cultural, tourist ties with. On the other, I have read that often the contemporary popular sentiment is actually more raring for war than the actual current government is; perhaps in a way not dissimilar to U.S. public sentiment towards war in the Middle East after 9/11. So your guess is as good as mine as how the general population reacts to war. But I still believe that as modern China sees itself as a developed, advanced, optimistic society, there would be no shortage of people not wanting to commit to a brothers' war, at the very least because they consider it to be beneath the conduct of a civilized, stability-obsessed society.

Now flip the question. Will the US strike PRC mainland targets in a TW scenario, or will be deterred from doing so because PRC can hit CONUS? That's the point of deterrence, it figures as much in making plans as preventing plans of adversaries. PRC is as committed to counter striking American soil as the US is committed to striking PRC soil in what is legally an ongoing Chinese civil war. Which is to say, with proper deterrence in place, hopefully not very committed.

> not all innovations work out in war

PRC tests 100s of advanced missiles every year for more advanced targets, more than the rest of the world combined and has a sophisticated space program. At the end of the day, hitting large fixed targets like a refinery or power plant or data warehouse, all you need is sub 100m CEP - basically 80s technology. It’s maybe rocket science but not hard or innovative rocket science like hitting a moving ship at sea with all of the countermeasures and no way comparable to WW2 tier midget subs and unguided balloon bombs. Even Tom Clancy wouldn't make that comparison.

>expect normal shipping

Depending on scenario, if no outside intervention, then likely yes, TW ability to disrupt has relatively little window to counter strike PRC ports or ability threaten PRC shipping after being defanged. Probably just Xiamen has to be redirected, otherwise it's hard to overstate levels of force overmatch between PRC and TW. Like even the most ardent TW porcupine advocates don’t expect TW to put up a fight outside the island. Bay of Pigs disrupted the US minimally / not at all, because the US could simply prevent Cuba from hitting back.

>would drop quality of life

Question is by how much and who bears what cost? PRC exports to the west whose most likely to sanction is like >10% of GDP and decreasing, assuming all trade ceases, which it likely won't because supply chains at that scale aren't as fungible as energy. Also keep in mind PRC trade:GDP is lowish (35% trending down from 65% high), not US low (25% down from 30% high), but low enough that trade disruptions don't impact it as much as actual trade dependent actors (over 60%). Host of western countries fit that bill and would hurt more sanctioning PRC. It’s one reason why US can fuck around the world with relatively little domestic impact. Will QoL drop, sure, but the goal is to prevent scenarios where QoL will spiral, which assuming broader war is deterred, is possible. There’s also considerations that breaking TW will cause others QoL to drop more, i.e. west is going to suffer much more without high end TW semis where they get disproportionate value capture that’s already being denied to PRC.

While reality is complicated, half the reason people worry about TW scenarios AND trying to build up costs/deterrence is because conceivably, PRC can eat the cost. Like if Xi is offered to prosecute TW without US intervention in exchange for cutting off all trade with the west, he’d probably take it.

E: Over post limit, leaving this thread now.

>how the general population reacts to war

See how PRC gen pop reacted to HK protests / riots. Narcissism of small differences / manufacturing consent against related peoples is much easier than one thinks. In the end IMO a battle over TW is conditional based, not capability based, IMO PRC wouldn’t move against TW even if she has ability to, at least not for another 20 years. Trigger will be either TW moves towards independence in which case narrative writes itself, or US intervenes in which case protracted conflict is even easier to justify. After all, US intervention was why the civil war remains unresolved all these years. I think gen pop anywhere doesn't want war, but cross strait dynamic has always been averting resumption of war that could (and have) popped off several times in the last 70 years. Anyone over 50 in PRC knows the history, that includes anyone in senior leadership in the foreseeable future.

> TW ability to disrupt has relatively little window to counter strike PRC ports or ability threaten PRC shipping after being defanged.

Taiwan needn’t even attack mainland ports for there to be a slowdown in trade. No insurance company in the world is going to underwrite shipping through an active war zone, so routes that are near a blockade, let alone naval warfare, would be affected.

Insurance underwrites active war zones all the time with war risk cover / premium. Otherwise PRC has the 2nd largest (and growing) merchant fleet and can insure on their own in event of sanctions, which is unlikely because many trade dependent nations are much more vulnerable to disruption. Overall, affected sure, but again it’s a matter of how much. I contend not much, at least not enough to deter in a limited TW scenario with only PRC and TW as belligerents. Attacks on commercial shipping happen near coasts, look at where Mokova hit Iranian attacks on Gulf shipping occurred in the last few years, and that’s from define belligerents operating from much more permissive conditions. All the while energy continues to flow from the Gulf. Strait / adjacent routes “near” TW warzone can be diverted even further out, a few 100 nms to be nowhere "near '' active warzone, incidentally why this article's assumption that PRC controlled TW would threaten JP shipping is stupid. Naval warfare between PRC + US where shipping can be disrupted is a different story, but again, that’s why PRC building CONUS strike deterrent. Otherwise, limited PRC-TW scenario I imagine much less than zero covid levels of shipping disruption, few months to a year depending on how fast PRC rushes blockade, with single digit % hit on economy.