Satellite images show massive models of US warships built in China desert

boing
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On the contrary, that form of government is exactly what enables China to set its own long term goals and act to achieve them, and stick to it. Their leadership does not have to worry about or focus on what the electorate will think every 4/5/6/7 years - they have the luxury of being able to think 10 or 20 years ahead, form a strategy that will get them there, and serially implement tactics that serve that strategy.

The CCP has proven itself to be extraordinarily resilient. It IS playing (metaphorical) “nth-dimensional chess” and because much of the rest of the world doesn’t think this is how the world works, it stands a very good chance of achieving its goals. I’m not sure who you think is being ‘othered’ here, but China is very happy to be ‘other’ than the rest of the world.

PS I was not talking about China’s ‘military industrial complex’ either. They do not have any such thing that is separate from generalised government. It is all, ultimately, directed by the CCP.

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Also the form of gubblement that lets the current Great Helmsman make really stupid decisions, and enforce them, blithely shielded from feedback.

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right, but as pointed out by other commenters - that doesn’t always make for good decisions. id go even further than that though. an autocracy can’t be prepared to handle reality by definition.

reality never plays out as planned, and that’s why diversity in power ( ideally co-equal ) can always keep ( stumbling sometimes ) moving on

the truly strategic route would be unwinding the centralized government, and yet their government has been headed the opposite way. it’s not really even strategy. it’s just self empowerment and corruption in a different form

what i find othering i guess is marking that out as special, ignoring how deeply similar the internal and external power grabs in fact are

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Or not starting so many wars. That is an option too.

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They’re going to kill those sparrows no matter what.

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And the Chinese leadership has demonstrated its ability to adapt tactics, deal with events, and alter short- and medium-term course to deal with reality, as it continues to pursue very long-term goals.

You think it is all corruption and self-empowerment. From western perspectives it may look like that because in general western populations assume their politicians always operate this way. No doubt there is much of that in China, too. But the CCP both creates and deals with external reality.

Are you aware of how much overseas agricultural land China now owns? (Especially in Africa.) A deliberate, long-term strategy to ensure it could feed its population in the long term. Indeed, are you aware of how much aid China gives to Africa in general? It will expect a return on that one day.

Do not be in any doubt that China is serious in its intent that it will one day take back Taiwan. (This is possibly the likeliest trigger for a next world war and why China is moving slowly, but incrementally to secure that outcome - hence its take-over of China Sea islands well outside its limits and in international waters, and so far unopposed.)

Why has it been intent on destroying any chance of Tibetan re-independence? To secure water for its population and/or control water elsewhere.

The Tibetan Plateau is an oxygen-scarce landscape of enormous glaciers, huge alpine lakes, and mighty waterfalls – a storehouse of freshwater so bountiful that the region serves as the headwaters for many of Asia’s largest rivers, including the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, and Sutlej, among others. According to studies by the United Nations and several prominent global environmental organizations, almost half of the world’s population lives in the watersheds of the rivers whose sources lie on the Tibetan Plateau.

(Since it started in Tibet, the glacial shrinkage has no doubt caused some concern, admittedly. The climate emergency may be the biggest test of China’s abilities, yet.)

The Belt and Road initiative was kicked off in 2013. Its target completion date is 2049 and it appears to be on track (no pun intended). That is truly strategic.

Your contention that the truly strategic thing would be to unwind centralised government in China is just that - a contention. Citation please? :wink:

It is likely the leadership has made some (in hindsight) ‘stupid’ mistakes. It is possible they looked stupid to us but are not in fact stupid to them, because we misinterpret - we impose our western world view on what they must surely be doing. I think the CCP leadership gets plenty of feedback - Xi may look like a dictator blindly pursuing his whims, but he is just implementing in a personal style the things China has been about for a long time. And if and when he deviates from that too much, be assured the CCP will replace him. He is not a dictator in person, it is the CCP that ultimately rules.

Do not misunderstand me - I loathe and detest the Chinese regime as much as anybody. They are a serious long-term threat to the West. Our mistake for far too long has been to assume that they are less of a threat than they really are, to assume democracy must arrive there as they become more ‘developed’ and affluent, and so on.

If you cannot see that, well, let’s talk in 10 or 20 years and see what the world looks like then.

G’night - bedtime here.

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Understand Captain America GIF

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In a nutshell, any hardware or task that hasn’t had enough real-world testing to make sure your simulator will be an accurate recreation of the experience.

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China is extremely wasteful of its resources. Its leadership is thoroughly corrupt and its economy is run by an oligarchy. A government willing to and has killed millions rather than admit mistakes.

Their economy is opque and starting to come apart at the seams.

Their strategy is simply not giving a shit about normal metrics of effective government.

The average Chinese person is not living at a developed world standard.

China is engaging in the modern equivalent of Cold War diplomacy and supporting any developing world dictatorships that will allow them to extract resources.

I would consider the governments and economies of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan as being better developed and run.

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They still have quite a few resources to waste.

Ironically, their greatest resource (a huge population/labor force) is the first pillar of the house of cards that will likely fall, as they kept their One Child Policy going for at least a decade too long.

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A lot of that wealth is being plowed into American, Canadian and European real estate as a way to launder it. Done by oligarchs who consider the GDP their personal piggy bank.

It doesn’t speak well of a government or economy when there is such organized drain of wealth

The one child policy being a half-assed measure to avoid real governance. Populations decrease with education, gender equality and increases in per capita incomes. But that involves giving a crap about your people. So instead they institute an autocratic law that just creates new problems.

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They have also put a lot of that money into infrastructure. Even third-tier and fourth-tier cities are now served by high-speed rail, not to mention brand-new highways and airports. It is hard to overstate the difference that this kind of infrastructure makes compared to countries that have struggled to modernize their infrastructure over the past few decades, like India.

Even with all that infrastructure, the shrinking younger generations won’t be able to generate enough to support the ballooning older generations, who also do not have the generational wealth to support themselves (unlike other aging counties in Asia and Europe).

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China is going through very similar “bubble economy” efforts Japan went through, but on steroids.

Massive investment in construction for its own sake leading to ghost cities and half assed urbanization efforts. Spending on prestige projects with little utility, an economy with no notion of accountability or transparency.

Your average Taiwanese person lives far better than their mainland counterpart.

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And that comes back to the One Child Policy. They kept building all of these new cities even as population growth reached an inflection point. Had they eliminated that policy in the 90s, all of that new construction might have been sustainable. I am saying that they really shot themselves in the foot with the One Child Policy.

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It stand to reason that anyone who is contemplating facing the US is going to think about how to sink carriers. That is the primary mode of force projection for the US military in Asia.

At one point Dreadnoughts were the primary mode of naval force projection. That ended with u-Boats and aircraft carriers. I suspect hypersonic missiles and/or drones will end the age of the aircraft carrier. Automated drones will at some point signal the end of the boomer sub as well (IMO).

Of course current military structures are human institutions, and their occupants have built their careers based on current systems. As always, it will take some catastrophic lesson learning before changes are made.

Hopefully the US and China will never come to blows, because it would be horrible for many millions on both sides of the ocean. If they do I suspect one of the first things that will happen is x number of Pacific US carriers being targeted in unexpected ways that may or may not work. If they work I sincerely hope there is a grownup in the White House, because anyone like 45 would sooner go nuclear than admit to a setback of any kind.

Ye gods I hope that the two countries never have a war.

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The one child policy is a perfect example of how autocratic solutions to societal issues are by nature ineffective, lazy and create tons of detrimental unintended problems.

A democratic nation with a transparent economy would be using its resources to raise average standards or living reducing its population organically. Its why the developed world have aging populations.

The link between education, general prosperity and population was recognized by the time China started its capitalist reform.

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Interestingly Pearl Harbor was not the death knell of battleships that people claimed it was.

The presence of battleships and heavy cruisers at Midway kept the US fleet at bay preventing the complete destruction of the Japanese fleet.

China doesn’t want to waste its new very expensive, irreplaceable toy, a deepwater navy, on people far more experienced at that game than themselves. Even Japan and South Korea’s naviee

It would rather use it to bully neighbors like Vietnam, Taiwan, and Philippines.

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I find fighting wars at all to be the height of folly.

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Where’s that?

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