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Comment by suraci | Hacker News Reader

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> not a single chinese have a single thought about going war with the US

Odd. Then who in China feels the need to outcompete US military technology? Why is China developing missiles like DF-27 that are difficult to counter and take out aircraft carriers? Who is coming up with these ideas and for what purposes?

This misconception is common among US official/think tanks especially related to DOD because the way Chinese government operated is so counter-intuitive from US perspective (probably many other governments). It's actually same as how China makes economics policy: First assess the "inevitable" future, than make a plan to better adapt to that future (e.g. Battery, EV, Solar...actually a lot more examples before those). This means China is constantly making policies considered "ineffective" because in many cases they don't have a clear goal (build the capbility for the sake of the build). On contrast US sets a clear goal first and build the capbility accordingly, which means you build the capbility for a purpose.

For some reason people can't translate the same process when talking about military capbility. The current assessment from China probably is some version of "China will be regard as superpower. to be regarded as a credible superpower, credible superpower level army is required". While most US officials think China builds this military power for a concrete goal (why spend money if you don't plan to use it?).

This misconception at least has been communicated by some US intellectuals many times though I think it's not very effective under current geopolitical climate.

I think China is building military capability because they think they need it. We don’t know why. If you think about the game theoretic aspects of this, then it makes sense for the US to preemptively mass forces nearby even if they believe China’s ambitions are peaceful. You can’t just assume that because your opponent is telling you that. And vice-versa if you’re China and you see the US massing forces.

The fact that Chinese fishing ships invade other territorial waters to steal fish and damage habitat and the fact that the premier wants to bring Taiwan back suggests a will to be the aggressor.

China didn’t increase defense budget accordingly and for now still sticking to the same gdp percentage (around 1.5%) so the spiral hasn’t started yet (surprisingly).

Also China is always aggressive to DPP which isn’t something new and US government well understood the reason and used to assure China they will deter DPP’s independence agenda (if you’re familiar with that history. also https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/taiwan-china-true-sour...). Unfortunately there isn’t much political room now in US for that kind of assurance.

that's the refelection you'll have if your neighbor is a psycho whose first thought every morning is to decide whether he should go around to shoot something, especially after the psycho neighbor has shooted to many ones already

You understand of course that you can replace psycho in your sentence with either party and it just describes the others beliefs.

There are living citizens of both countries that have shot at each other in a hot war. It’s not unreasonable in that case yo think it will happen again.

China is actively annexing their neighbors in the ASEAN sea and constantly frustrated the US intervenes.

Their entire military deployment around there is based on fighting the US intervening in their military expansion, eg, against the Philippines.

> even the most hawks Americans can only think about how to defend and A2/AD if the Chinese intervene in taiwan

Works both ways.

i don't know which one is more crazier

you don't know where taiwan is

you know it well but still think it's totally normal and reasonable to do that

Perhaps Xi Jinping and his henchmen should also look at a map? In case they have trouble understanding, here's a hint: Taiwan belongs to that large part of the globe which is "not China".

Just like Panama and Greenland?

Yes. Or sort-of, at least. China is making serious military investments that seem targeted at achieving a capability to invade Taiwan while fending off US efforts to foil such an invasion. In contrast, I've seen no indication that the US is seriously considering taking Panama or Greenland by force except for the bluster from the chief blowhard. Still, that mark of shame will take a long time to wash off.

The nine dash line is objectively and hilariously bad.

If China wants to seize territory internationally recognized as part of other countries... why lie about it so poorly?

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