I haven't read the congressional reports. I am handwaving them away, but mostly because while China can be formidable in regional defense, they simply don't have power projection military technologies yet.
I don't remember the actual numbers, but Japan is heavily increasing its defense budget. This is significant because historically, unlike China/India, if Japan invests in its military, it produces a good military. Japan + India with funded modern militaries is a very legitimate counter to China. In particular India is a sleeping tiger that should be far more influential and productive.
India we won't give our top weapons. Japan we very likely will.
Energy diversity helps in many respects, China can mitigate domestic needs with EVs, solar, and wind, and I guess coal if they want to burn money.
But war and food need petroleum. Pipelines and rail are extremely vulnerable, a single raid can shut them down for weeks or months, they have fixed, limited capacity. If we were talking a 50 million population country, sure. But it's a goddamn billion+ frikking people, and not enough productive land to feed them.
India is a billion plus people, so if it wants to militarize, corruption and internecine ethnic relations be damned, they'll probably have one capabable of worrying China.
Everyone is arming up. NATO nations are reconstructing their military industrial complex in anticipation of Russia beating Ukraine.
I guess fundamentally I see China as a nation that is critically dependent on open maritime trade, and that world is basically over, partially of their own creation. The "Dear Leader" phenomenon is particularly troubling, particularly because Xi sets the stage in 10-15 years for a bloody succession and equally or more autocratic leader that assumes the strings of control.
Most "Dear Leader" countries start from a point of stagnation and then limp along under the repression. China is different, it went through a massive economic expansion due to free trade and relative free will, but now it will sharply regress. If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be fascinating to see what happens.
The Naval War College prof points out that historically continental powers overextend, and then collapse when their central government fails. China has done this something like 5 or 10 times in its long history. Both Russia and China seem to be in the overextension phase. She contrasts to maritime powers like the UK and US that don't need buffer states, and thrive with world trade, while the buffer state syndrome of continental empires inevitably leads to an autocratic paranoid country or corruption/decay.
I don't remember the actual numbers, but Japan is heavily increasing its defense budget. This is significant because historically, unlike China/India, if Japan invests in its military, it produces a good military. Japan + India with funded modern militaries is a very legitimate counter to China. In particular India is a sleeping tiger that should be far more influential and productive.
India we won't give our top weapons. Japan we very likely will.
Energy diversity helps in many respects, China can mitigate domestic needs with EVs, solar, and wind, and I guess coal if they want to burn money.
But war and food need petroleum. Pipelines and rail are extremely vulnerable, a single raid can shut them down for weeks or months, they have fixed, limited capacity. If we were talking a 50 million population country, sure. But it's a goddamn billion+ frikking people, and not enough productive land to feed them.
India is a billion plus people, so if it wants to militarize, corruption and internecine ethnic relations be damned, they'll probably have one capabable of worrying China.
Everyone is arming up. NATO nations are reconstructing their military industrial complex in anticipation of Russia beating Ukraine.
I guess fundamentally I see China as a nation that is critically dependent on open maritime trade, and that world is basically over, partially of their own creation. The "Dear Leader" phenomenon is particularly troubling, particularly because Xi sets the stage in 10-15 years for a bloody succession and equally or more autocratic leader that assumes the strings of control.
Most "Dear Leader" countries start from a point of stagnation and then limp along under the repression. China is different, it went through a massive economic expansion due to free trade and relative free will, but now it will sharply regress. If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be fascinating to see what happens.
The Naval War College prof points out that historically continental powers overextend, and then collapse when their central government fails. China has done this something like 5 or 10 times in its long history. Both Russia and China seem to be in the overextension phase. She contrasts to maritime powers like the UK and US that don't need buffer states, and thrive with world trade, while the buffer state syndrome of continental empires inevitably leads to an autocratic paranoid country or corruption/decay.
Anyway, what do I know.