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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

> 1. Its geography means it's impervious to conventional invasions.

You'd have to be insane to invade China, though. "Never get involved in a land war in Asia". Especially never get involved in a land war in Asia against someone with an army the size of China's.

> 2. Its embracing culture will attract more immigrants.

This advantage the current administration seems to be working as hard as possible to destroy. As far as I know, though, this is still an advantage for the US compared to China.

> 2. Its [China's] economy is still underdeveloped, therefore economic growth is a lot easier.

It's not nearly as underdeveloped as it used to be. Further growth will be significantly harder than past growth was. Can China keep it going? I don't know.

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Nobody is capable of invading China, that is true. But American mainland is a lot more secure than China's. Any military conflict will be fought near China and have direct costs to China. For example, a blockage of the strait of Malacca will cripple China.

As to the economy, as long as China grows faster than 3%, it will gain relatively to the US.

Infrastructure destruction by missiles, terrorism and hacking (power grid, financial system, etc.) seem more dangerous at the moment and geography plays little to no role in any of those.

Also, weaponize space and all terrestrial advantages become mostly moot (no GPS, communications, etc.).

Actually, it isn't impossible.

You don't need to invade the entire land, you just need to bomb a few targets. A nice chunk of China's population and structure is distributed across China's shores. If you take a look at photos of China at night from space, you'll see that the shores are way way brighter than inland. Interesting enough, there are plenty US allies nearby which could be used as base to make bombing easier.

Edit:However, I, personally, don't think we'll see big dogs such as U.S and China fighting in any moment near future. We have developed tools so efficient to kill each other that the best ideia possible is to not use them. At these times, big wars are too costly for everyone, involved or not.

Yes, you'd have to be insane to invade China. Their massive army makes it mass suicide.

Maintaining that deterrence is the the actual disadvantage to China - not the risk of invasion, but the cost of preventing invasion.

I don't think they're actually concerned about that. I think their standing force is more about building national unity and pride.

Battles are rapidly migrating to the air (drones, missiles, etc.) and cyberspace.

You cannot fight in cyberspace when a foot soldier turns the server off.

The US would never need to invade China in the (horrific) event of a conflict. Simply cut off their access to oil by blocking the Strait of Malacca. Better yet do nothing and allow Japan do it for you.

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