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China wants a blue-water navy, and they want to keep US military bases far enough away that a pre-emptive strike is difficult. Their Pacific coast is blocked of

by bbctol 10y ago

China wants a blue-water navy, and they want to keep US military bases far enough away that a pre-emptive strike is difficult. Their Pacific coast is blocked off by opposed states: South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are protected by the United States, and while the Philippines has slipped into a more complicated situation recently, they're still quite hostile to China. It's stated Chinese military doctrine to work towards securing this "first island chain," and disable US military bases and aircraft carrier groups in the area. This prevents the United States from exerting control through potential pre-emptive strike capability, and in the long run ensures them an easy path to the Pacific.

hga 10y ago
Although I'll note that as of WWII that strategy was pants for Imperial Japan. We peeled off their 3 or so defensive island chains, and nowadays we're a lot more mobile, we have all sorts of things than can all but completely ignore such like ballistic missiles, stealth planes and stealthy nuclear subs, etc. Maybe we couldn't stop them from taking Taiwan, especially if they're willing to pound it into rubble† with the ... more than a thousand IRBMs they've got pointed at it, but we could make that very expensive. †Which would then crater a lot of everyone's economies as foundry chips, computers and their components get super scarce to unavailable for a long time....
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  During WW2, the US's industrial output (and particularly ship tonnage production) was about 10 times that of Japan. China's industrial output is actually above the US's now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto...
  - hga 10y ago
    And you don't think the Japanese didn't know that? (On the other hand, anyone pointing that out would have been assassinated, so...). And note we were likely to be committed to the European theater as well. A lot of this comes down to quality, which by and large neither the Japanese had at the time, e.g. an ability to built reliable airplane engines significantly more powerful than the one the Zero started out with, and as for the PRC, the latest tidbit in this area is their embarrassment that for all the billions of ball point pens they manufacture each year, they have to import the ball bearings, since they can't produce them in the quality required, at least not at the volumes required. (On the other hand, their Long Lance torpedoes were an unpleasant surprise, and their torpedoes actually worked, or at least they quickly fixed whatever problems theirs' had (I've read in passing that all the naval power's torpedoes had problems at the beginning of the war, unfortunately the US Navy bureaucracy's total inability to believe field reports resulted in very bad results for more than a year). Then again, you didn't really need such fast and long range torpedoes, and they weren't decisive.) And quality matters a lot in warfare. Just our nuclear attack subs alone could make an invasion of Taiwan ultimately impractical, unless they somehow figure out how to find them (and even espionage isn't going to be enough to target weapons).
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Sure, but I'm just pointing out that saying some strategy didn't work for Japan in the Pacific nearly a hundred years ago has little bearing on what that would mean for China, given the differences in technology, industrial strength, and military strategy. For one thing, the de facto state of the world right now is that the US controls all the oceans. Being able to secure island chains and put area denial weapons on them would increase China's capabilities and also reduce the US ability to project power easily. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be swept aside in a real war, but they would impose a real cost on the US to get rid of, and that's the entire point.

by bbctol 10y ago

hga 10y ago

Although I'll note that as of WWII that strategy was pants for Imperial Japan. We peeled off their 3 or so defensive island chains, and nowadays we're a lot more mobile, we have all sorts of things than can all but completely ignore such like ballistic missiles, stealth planes and stealthy nuclear subs, etc. Maybe we couldn't stop them from taking Taiwan, especially if they're willing to pound it into rubble† with the ... more than a thousand IRBMs they've got pointed at it, but we could make that very expensive. †Which would then crater a lot of everyone's economies as foundry chips, computers and their components get super scarce to unavailable for a long time....

smallnamespace 10y ago
During WW2, the US's industrial output (and particularly ship tonnage production) was about 10 times that of Japan. China's industrial output is actually above the US's now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto...
- hga 10y ago
  And you don't think the Japanese didn't know that? (On the other hand, anyone pointing that out would have been assassinated, so...). And note we were likely to be committed to the European theater as well. A lot of this comes down to quality, which by and large neither the Japanese had at the time, e.g. an ability to built reliable airplane engines significantly more powerful than the one the Zero started out with, and as for the PRC, the latest tidbit in this area is their embarrassment that for all the billions of ball point pens they manufacture each year, they have to import the ball bearings, since they can't produce them in the quality required, at least not at the volumes required. (On the other hand, their Long Lance torpedoes were an unpleasant surprise, and their torpedoes actually worked, or at least they quickly fixed whatever problems theirs' had (I've read in passing that all the naval power's torpedoes had problems at the beginning of the war, unfortunately the US Navy bureaucracy's total inability to believe field reports resulted in very bad results for more than a year). Then again, you didn't really need such fast and long range torpedoes, and they weren't decisive.) And quality matters a lot in warfare. Just our nuclear attack subs alone could make an invasion of Taiwan ultimately impractical, unless they somehow figure out how to find them (and even espionage isn't going to be enough to target weapons).
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Sure, but I'm just pointing out that saying some strategy didn't work for Japan in the Pacific nearly a hundred years ago has little bearing on what that would mean for China, given the differences in technology, industrial strength, and military strategy. For one thing, the de facto state of the world right now is that the US controls all the oceans. Being able to secure island chains and put area denial weapons on them would increase China's capabilities and also reduce the US ability to project power easily. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be swept aside in a real war, but they would impose a real cost on the US to get rid of, and that's the entire point.