4 ms·

Anyone else feel like in today's world, China could do this better than the US?

dzink 2y ago
They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or their trade imbalance can turn violent.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.
  - pie420 2y ago
    This is every military in the history of the world.
    - vkou 2y ago
      The US military does not do a lot of domestic work, because it would undermine the private sector. It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it doesn't.
    - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
      Sorry, but you're not making any argument or refutation with any sort of nuance. The Chinese military civic works and infrastructure development Bechtel look like 2 TaskRabbit helpers. USACE does a lot of good domestically and internationally, but it isn't even close. See also: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-india-military-airport-heliport/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-indi...
bojan 2y ago
That really depends on your definition of "better". In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more expensive. In the US is that way less the case.
- NotSammyHagar 2y ago
  I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples. Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk you). In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW and came home after the war. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-darkest-days-us-army-air-forces#:~:text=In%20late%201943%2C%20the%20average,applied%20to%20the%20crews%20themselves https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-da....
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > In the US is that way less the case. Day-to-day, sure. In a national mobilization (even without additional action of Congress) when the President’s emergency powers in law are deployed to enable production? Things change radically.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HPsquared 2y ago
China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...
- foota 2y ago
  While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which are within the US sphere of influence or far from China. The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct military conflict.
    - foota 2y ago
      I think this hypothetical is more about once a conflict is imminent. Also, general consensus seems to be that economic codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine, humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and China poised to attack Taiwan.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      The world was also very interconnected prior to WW1.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Vietnam has faught war with china more reciently than the us. They are also afraid that chian will attack again, while they are reasonable confident the us won't.
    - foota 2y ago
duxup 2y ago
Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much not get things done very well at all.
maxglute 2y ago
It's already obvious. 230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature" industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift. US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs. The advantages are snowballing. US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech, but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year. SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40 resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.
- NotSammyHagar 2y ago
  I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one would believe it could be done. I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable lauch + mega constellations only started last few years (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it, i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they work with a lot of developed countries with their own launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand. Question is if they find something to justify spamming magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this article, if they did, it's probably going to be weaponinizing space.
more_corn 2y ago
They’re also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
China's current production capacity would be eliminated by USA standoff attack aircraft within a few weeks. Pre war production capacity has nothing to do with war time production capacity if you can't defend your factories. How many Chinese factories depend on advanced foreign machining machines (vertical mills, horizontal mills, etc)? Can China constantly replace their capacity of these during sustained foreign bombardment? China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has a distributed highway system for wartime variability/survivability. China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil exporter.
- maxglute 2y ago
  US doesn't remotely have the fires to take out PRC MIC industry, they don't even have enough to scratch PRC coastal military installations, we're talking about potentially 1,000,000s of aim points to try to crack a lot of concrete, with a lot of ability to eat attrition / regenerate. Something US projection is not equipped to deal with especially with crippled delivery rates at standoff range. PRC has entire chain of advanced indigenous tooling inudstry. They also have massive capital stock. PRC capital stock have magnitude more installed robots than US has smart munitions. For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back. Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is massive. PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to have capability to move MIC underground, see third front. PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to run military AND industry with transport rationing. But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables), and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive the attrition game.
Qwertious 2y ago
It's because you know more about the USA's internal politics (and internal embarassments) than about China's. China has plenty of shitshows, but most of them don't reach international news.
class3shock 2y ago
To what end though? I know Taiwan is the hot button issue at the moment but it's hard for me to think China wants to get into war with the US, let alone the whole "west", over it. Doesn't the war with Ukraine show that any large scale military conflict is incredibly costly and difficult to benefit from?

They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or their trade imbalance can turn violent.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.
- pie420 2y ago
  This is every military in the history of the world.
  - vkou 2y ago
    The US military does not do a lot of domestic work, because it would undermine the private sector. It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it doesn't.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Sorry, but you're not making any argument or refutation with any sort of nuance. The Chinese military civic works and infrastructure development Bechtel look like 2 TaskRabbit helpers. USACE does a lot of good domestically and internationally, but it isn't even close. See also: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-india-military-airport-heliport/ https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-indi...

bojan 2y ago

That really depends on your definition of "better". In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more expensive. In the US is that way less the case.

NotSammyHagar 2y ago
I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples. Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk you). In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW and came home after the war. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-darkest-days-us-army-air-forces#:~:text=In%20late%201943%2C%20the%20average,applied%20to%20the%20crews%20themselves https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-da....
dragonwriter 2y ago
> In the US is that way less the case. Day-to-day, sure. In a national mobilization (even without additional action of Congress) when the President’s emergency powers in law are deployed to enable production? Things change radically.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

HPsquared 2y ago

China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...

foota 2y ago
While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which are within the US sphere of influence or far from China. The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct military conflict.
  - foota 2y ago
    I think this hypothetical is more about once a conflict is imminent. Also, general consensus seems to be that economic codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine, humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and China poised to attack Taiwan.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    The world was also very interconnected prior to WW1.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Vietnam has faught war with china more reciently than the us. They are also afraid that chian will attack again, while they are reasonable confident the us won't.
  - foota 2y ago

duxup 2y ago

Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much not get things done very well at all.

maxglute 2y ago

It's already obvious. 230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature" industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift. US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs. The advantages are snowballing. US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech, but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year. SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40 resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.

NotSammyHagar 2y ago
I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one would believe it could be done. I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.
- maxglute 2y ago
  They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable lauch + mega constellations only started last few years (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it, i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they work with a lot of developed countries with their own launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand. Question is if they find something to justify spamming magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this article, if they did, it's probably going to be weaponinizing space.

more_corn 2y ago

They’re also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

China's current production capacity would be eliminated by USA standoff attack aircraft within a few weeks. Pre war production capacity has nothing to do with war time production capacity if you can't defend your factories. How many Chinese factories depend on advanced foreign machining machines (vertical mills, horizontal mills, etc)? Can China constantly replace their capacity of these during sustained foreign bombardment? China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has a distributed highway system for wartime variability/survivability. China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil exporter.

maxglute 2y ago
US doesn't remotely have the fires to take out PRC MIC industry, they don't even have enough to scratch PRC coastal military installations, we're talking about potentially 1,000,000s of aim points to try to crack a lot of concrete, with a lot of ability to eat attrition / regenerate. Something US projection is not equipped to deal with especially with crippled delivery rates at standoff range. PRC has entire chain of advanced indigenous tooling inudstry. They also have massive capital stock. PRC capital stock have magnitude more installed robots than US has smart munitions. For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back. Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is massive. PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to have capability to move MIC underground, see third front. PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to run military AND industry with transport rationing. But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables), and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive the attrition game.

Qwertious 2y ago

It's because you know more about the USA's internal politics (and internal embarassments) than about China's. China has plenty of shitshows, but most of them don't reach international news.

class3shock 2y ago

To what end though? I know Taiwan is the hot button issue at the moment but it's hard for me to think China wants to get into war with the US, let alone the whole "west", over it. Doesn't the war with Ukraine show that any large scale military conflict is incredibly costly and difficult to benefit from?