Comment by JanSolo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JanSolo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If the US got into a hot war with China, we are all screwed.

Recall that the US succeeded in WW1 and WW2 by out-producing their opponents. They simply built more guns and tanks and munitions than everyone else. US munitions were lower quality than what was produced in Europe, but they were cheaper and available in large numbers. That's what mattered.

However, that's a strategy that won't work against China. The Chinese are the undisputed kings of building things fast and cheap. They would out-produce the US easily AND they have a much larger population to conscript into their armies.

US military chiefs must know that a land-war against China has almost no chance of success. China is too big and their army too numerous.

So if the war were to go badly (which it almost certainly would) they would be likely to consider the nuclear option... and once we go there, there's no going back. China would retaliate; Russia would likely get involved; article 5 would be invoked.... game over.

How well could China sustain that production with zero imports via sea? They have relied on imported coal for power production since 2007, and are now the world's largest importer of oil, 43% of it coming from the gulf in big slow tankers. US Carrier groups thousands of miles away from China could cripple it's imports with a few radio messages.

"the world's largest importer of oil, 43% of it coming from the gulf in big slow tankers."

The Middle-East's oil and the factories in China are all on the same land-mass. They don't need sea transport, that's just more convenient/cheaper for China at present.

China has only a single land fueled pipeline that doesn't lead to Russia, and it comes from Kazakhstan. It can carry 120 thousand barrels per day. China used over 13 million barrels per day in 2017, and I can only imagine it has increased since then.

There is a pipeline that leads from Myanmar to China, but it is supplied by tankers docking in Myanmar. I assume the US Navy would put a stop to that pretty quickly.

After pipelines the next best way to move oil over land is by train. Huge trains of tanker cars are extremely visible to surveillance. Since they have to follow the train tracks and are slow moving, they make perfect targets as well, and you only need one missile to get through.

Also, in any kind of hot war, all kinds of overland transportation infrastructure are going to be high-priority targets. The are probably more than a few bridges between the Middle East and China.

US munitions being lower quality is debatable- US munitions and equipment were more generally more reliable than German equivalents. There were some doctrinal differences that led to some unfortunate design decisions, but what was made was well-executed.

This is true. Large volume, simple design, and loose tolerances were the Soviet production strategy, but not ours. We cut some corners in terms of e.g. not replacing the Sherman tank with something newer, which meant the Sherman was immediately outclassed by the Tiger and Panther, but that didn't matter because most of the Wehrmacht was still using Panzer IV's.

China needs access to natural resources to run those production lines, and China itself is relatively resource poor. In the event of open war with the US, they'd be mostly trying keep their supply lines open. Such a war would take place all over the world, rather than in China itself.

We're more likely to see a nuclear conflict involving China if the Chinese leaders feel that resource needs make it necessary to seize Russian territory.

China and Russia go to war... what would the US do?

You don't want Russia or China losing, but you want both of them to have losses because it would improve your economic position.

A land war would be completely unnecessary. China could be blockaded long enough to cripple their export-based economy. (Hence the importance of naval power in particular.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com