China’s Military Is Catching Up to the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

China’s Military Is Catching Up to the U.S.

wsj.com

8 pointsmardoik15 comments

As Flatcircle states, China has a serious demographics problem, as does Russia. Extremely serious.

A huge number of women have just hit 40-years-old, so they can not longer have children. The one-child policy means there are hardly any children, AND female children were aborted to have a male child, so there is something like 125 males for every female, which exacerbates the problem.

China is far from the cheapest place to manufacture anymore and companies are flyuing out of China because of that and belligerence and supply chains and opaque laws, mandatory technical transfer, and so much more. All this is making land and housing expensive, and poor paying jobs so that they young cannot afford stuff, which is why "laying flat" is such a big deal there now. Why work hard for nothing, no chance of making it?

Same with Russia, for a long time, and this war has killed how many young Russian men in the prime of their life, and also to flee the country, most likely permanently in many cases as they find jobs and settle down in new countries.

Russia and China are in serious trouble demographically. This is why Russia attacked Ukraine, in my opinion. They will even have less manpower in 10 years. And I think this is going to drive China to attack Taiwan - they just won't have the manpower in 10 years, not like they have now...even with 1 billion people.

Depends. I could imagine wild reaction of Chinese families being essentially wiped out when their only sons will die in trying to to storm few but heavily fortified beaches of Taiwan. Could be recipe for another collapse of China.

> They will even have less manpower in 10 years. And I think this is going to drive China to attack Taiwan

What would China gain by attacking Taiwan though? They only have 24 million people.

Because Taiwan is the single most important producer of semiconductors in the world, is the most important reason. If China gains that, they gain the world. Everything is dependant on that. They would have a chokehold on the world.

Also, Taiwan is an unsinkable aircraft carrier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

It can be used as a staging location for an attack on China, same as Cuba could be for Russia. Look what the USA did there.

I see the main reason is that it's a core tenant to Xi's current CCP that there will be one China and they want to destroy them. The existence of a Chinese democracy is intolerable to them. It certainly goes against the stated vision that the communist China state will be the most powerful country in the world, lead all the Chinese people, etc. Just like Honk Kong was an intolerable example of (basically) free and democratic thinking.

In a generation. If present trends continue. Experts predict. Barring unforseen events. Anyway, here's the end of the article.

The true test of PLA personnel will be when they’re called on to fight. Some American military strategists and analysts say China might be a generation away from having the ability and training in its military that could effectively match those of the U.S.

“Our staffs have been doing extended combined operations for decades. Theirs haven’t,” Mr. Blasko said.

I was interested to hear Peter Zeehan's book, "The end of the world is just the beginning." In it, he basically says China will fall apart over the next decade as the the disastrous one child policy takes effect and depletes the countries population. They are going to lose hundreds of millions of young workers and the entire country is about to become one large retiree nation with very little productivity.

1. China's military age population: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/15-49...

2. China's old age dependency ratio, 65-plus per worker 20-64: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/Ratios/OA...

I read it too and the way he backs it up makes sense.

IMO lazy surface level analysis (per usual Zeihan).

Imagine if PRC replaced 200M farmers and un/low skilled workers with 100M skilled jobs (sci+tech, high value manufacturing, services etc) and 100M human labour equivalent of automation in agriculture and factories, while also shedding resources needed to sustain 100M bodies. The latter is a PRC with much greater productive and power potential. Here (for very coarse illustration) is how one should think about where the PRC’s demographic mix and strategic posture is trending, she's swapping one Nigeria's worth of human capital + industrial productivity with that of one Japan every 10 years, while improving potential wartime resource security.

Family planning should/needs to be reformed to smooth the curve/transition, However, One Child Policy successfully pooled developing country household income/resources to educate cohorts of only kids which has set up the PRC to have the greatest "skilled" demographic dividend in human history for future decades. Still several times more than US can born + brain drain for foreseeable future. Meanwhile shedding hundreds of millions mouths = increased autarky (energy/resource security) = more strategic flexibility. Huge % of bodies that will be shed are un/low skilled workers that drags on productivity, because bluntly PRC simply has too many useless people, so much that demographics was always more cursed than dividend. 1.4B pop was overkill for moving from farming to factory, even more so when upgrading from factory to laboratory. Reducing net population while increasing absolute skilled population will be painful but optimal demographic trends for moving up the development/value chain, building comprehensive national power, and competing in great power competition.

Yes, negotiating the net population decline is going to be a PIA socially, but PRC lack of safety net, high home ownership+savings rate, huge acquisition in industrial automation, makes her structurally and culturally well positioned to weather the drop while coming out more powerful and productive. Probably better than west can weather drama from increased population due to immigration drama and current trend in decline of QoL/welfare entitlements due to unstainable spending.

TLDR is PRC has significant room to grow in productivity and power by having absolute # of skilled/talent + automation, and having less absolute # of people increases PRC’s strategic posture. Even if the transition into that combination makes everyone very sad and stressed.

Robotic automation will have an enormous multiplier effect on the work units of Communist Party Youth. Would be interesting to know the primary author of that one child policy and the gullible decision tree in the Communist Party that fell for the argument.

>Mr. Xi’s ambition, according to China’s most recent defense white paper, is to complete a modernization of the military by 2035 and turn it into a “world-class force” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

With the speed of advancement in PLA rocketry and pursuing their version of prompt global strike, the timeline for PRC acquiring capabilities to negate US supremacy may be much shorter - PRC doesn't need to catch up with the US overall to successfully counter her.

IMO western analysis/MSM gets fixated/distracted by these white paper milestones for when PLA thinks they'll be a sufficiently modern/joint force across all domains, or when they'll reach parity with US in broad-spectrum capabilities (what world-class entails). 2035 is about basic modernization - develop + acquire some new hardware, get trained on them, integrate into new warfare concepts, improve jointness etc. 2049 is about acquiring major platforms in numbers to rival the US. But these are both relatively slow processes - building 10 carrier groups and crewing them takes a while even at PRC speed.

But standing up enough missile brigades protected in hardened bunkers that can destroy any US capital asset worldwide (including CONUS) that are fixed for at least 30 minutes? That can be done much faster. And by all accounts PLARocketForce has been growing rapidly in the last few years, with accompanying R&D news hinting at goals past PGS accompanied by 100+ tests per year (stupid amount).

ULtimately, PGS is not enough to enable PRC to do what she wants to do (take TW), but IMO it's sufficient to deter/counter US from doing or succeeding in what PRC doesn't want US to do (intervene on TW). Arguably the most important current consideration for PRC.

https://archive.ph/q73Tv

China's strong points:

-China's military has hypersonic missiles that evade most defenses

-Chinese attack drones can paralyze communications networks

-China's naval ships outnumber America's, including 3 aircraft carriers

-China has 2 million serving members vs. 1.4 million US soldiers

-Cyberwar capabilities can disrupt US infrastructure

Considerations:

-China lacks combat experience

-A top-down command structure could make them less flexible to improvise on the field

-40% of training involves studying the Communist Party rather than training

-Untested modern warfare efforts of joint military branch execution

-General lack of readiness based on red vs. blue team exercises

-Shortage of high-quality talent based on standardized admission tests

Americas navy dwarfs chinas from what I’ve heard. I believe the majority of chinas ships are smaller to medium range and lack any ability to sail any meaningful distance which is a major tactical Achilles

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