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The media in our country has been writing about the competition between America and China for years now. Pundits are portraying China as a substitute for the old Soviet Union in a new Cold War. They also portray the United States as very dependent upon China economically and that China is leapfrogging ahead of our country by leaps and bounds and will in a short number of years eclipse as first the dominant economy in the world and then as the dominant country in the world.
Folks, it just AIN’T going to Happen
What gets into people’s heads in all aspects of life is that the future is an extrapolation of the past. And that just isn’t the way life, science, technology, or anything else works. You watch a team win the Super Bowl and the commentators say that team is young, they will be around for years to come and then we watch the very same team collapse next year and they are also-rans for years to come.
It’s the same in all walks of life, now let’s get into why it applies to the America / China rivalry. China over the last several decades has done a textbook job of moving from an agricultural 3rd world status as a country to a world-class economy. Hats off and kudos to them. It also must be recognized that it is so much easier and quicker to replicate success when you have successful models to work from and copy and you can leave out the errors that were made by others.
The Chinese saw the successful implantation of the Marshall Plan after World War II that brought Europe back from the dead. European countries remember, were flat on their backs starving with their industrial capacity destroyed by the ravages of war. China watched the Soviet Union which had lost 30 million people during the war rebuild their country as well along Communist party lines with a planned state-driven economy. It is so much easier to do something when you have previous successful models to work from.
April 1945 – Every major European city was devastated by the war’s impact. Nothing remained standing
But it’s not a Straight Line Extrapolation into the Future
So here’s the spoiler alert. What you are going to see over the next ten years is a complete turn of events. As China evolved over the last 30 years into a vast economic machine, you are seeing the devolution or decline of that machine as we speak. The United States is in the process of reasserting itself as the world’s preeminent economic and geopolitical power with no one even close or getting close or possibly even moving up in the ranks and here’s why:
Japan is the only other Blue Water Navy in the world. We are allies
We don’t advertise it because if we did then our navy would have problems getting all the appropriations that it desires for its maintenance and growth. China’s navy is a COASTAL navy, operating very well within a couple of hundred miles of its shores. We possess a BLUE WATER navy that operates throughout the seven seas and more importantly, dominates the ocean wherever it operates. Our navy is nuclear propulsion driven allowing aircraft carriers and submarines to travel unimpeded for months without concern for refueling. The engines of China’s navy require constant fuel stops and frankly, they don’t have many blue water-capable ships to begin with.
- China’s technology does not exist. Despite what you may be hearing, the simple truth is that China steals every piece of technology that it can from Western sources principally the United States. Their whole semiconductor industry is based on American technology and they completely lack the capacity to make high-level semiconductor chips. They only manufacture cheap simple chips. The advanced technologies are all American-created and manufactured through licensing in other locations like Singapore, and Taiwan. China has no shot whatsoever of ever catching up to the United States in advanced research and its application.
$17 billion advanced chip factory completed in Texas. China has nothing like this and never will
- What about war with the United States over Taiwan. When communism prevailed in China in 1949, China’s nationalist government under Chiang Kai Shek fled the communist mainland and went 100 miles into the ocean to Formosa which we also call Taiwan. It’s been that way ever since. China is FURIOUS about this and wants Taiwan to come under the Chinese banner the way Hong Kong and Macau have been brought back into China’s control. Periodically the Chinese will wage a public relations battle demanding that Formosa be returned. Off and on, China threatens war against the United States regarding this issue. So what’s the truth? China has no shot at getting Taiwan back and here’s why.
China would invade from the west onto the Taiwan Beaches, and then confront 12,000 foot mountain ranges. Good luck with that.
First of all China would have to launch an amphibious invasion involving hundreds of ships across the Taiwan Straits for 100 miles in open water. There have only been a handful of such success attempts in history. Eisenhower’s WW II Normandy invasion is one of them. Douglas MacArthur’s Inchon landing during the Korean War another. To do this involves 6 to 12 months of planning and inventorying of ships, men, supplies, and so forth. Do you think all of this would go unnoticed by our spies, satellites, and simple observations?
The invasion force would never make it across the Taiwan Straits before our navy would rip it up. If pieces of the invasion force made it across, the western landing zones of Taiwan then look upon a series of mountains thousands of feet high that they would have to get across. Good luck with that one. But wait there’s more.
- China is not energy self-sufficient. It gets 75% of its oil supplies from the Arab countries of the Mideast. Without that oil, china’s economy would grind to a halt within months and nationwide famine would occur within months after that. We are talking about a death spiral for them. The only reason why oil flows freely out of the Gulf is because the United States protects and controls the sea lanes of the oil supply routes. We have 2 separate aircraft carrier fleets patrolling those lanes. Those carriers never ever travel alone. Each is accompanied by 18 to 22 warships. Each fleet carries more destructive power than all the munitions used in all the wars in history combined. Nobody on Earth has confronted an American fleet in 7 decades. During the Cuban missile crisis, even the Soviet Union would not confront the fleet.If China began an invasion of Taiwan and sent an amphibious force across the Taiwan Straits, we would order our navy to block all oil shipments in the Mideast that were headed for China. This would be an easy thing to do. No oil for China, the economy SHUTS DOWN. The economy shuts down, FAMINE follows next, and then the government likely fails and falls. We just do not see a Taiwan / China disagreement going HOT for years and years to come, if ever.