They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or their trade imbalance can turn violent.

When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.

This is every military in the history of the world.

The US military does not do a lot of domestic work, because it would undermine the private sector.

It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it doesn't.

Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much not get things done very well at all.

That really depends on your definition of "better".

In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more expensive.

In the US is that way less the case.

> In the US is that way less the case.

Day-to-day, sure.

In a national mobilization (even without additional action of Congress) when the President’s emergency powers in law are deployed to enable production? Things change radically.

I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples. Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk you).

In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW and came home after the war.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-da....

China's current production capacity would be eliminated by USA standoff attack aircraft within a few weeks. Pre war production capacity has nothing to do with war time production capacity if you can't defend your factories. How many Chinese factories depend on advanced foreign machining machines (vertical mills, horizontal mills, etc)? Can China constantly replace their capacity of these during sustained foreign bombardment?

China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has a distributed highway system for wartime variability/survivability.

China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil exporter.

US doesn't remotely have the fires to take out PRC MIC industry, they don't even have enough to scratch PRC coastal military installations, we're talking about potentially 1,000,000s of aim points to try to crack a lot of concrete, with a lot of ability to eat attrition / regenerate. Something US projection is not equipped to deal with especially with crippled delivery rates at standoff range. PRC has entire chain of advanced indigenous tooling inudstry. They also have massive capital stock. PRC capital stock have magnitude more installed robots than US has smart munitions.

For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back. Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is massive.

PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to have capability to move MIC underground, see third front.

PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to run military AND industry with transport rationing.

But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables), and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive the attrition game.

'pursuing conventional global strike' AKA they don't have it, I.E. what 'I'm really missing' doesn't exist.

China is massive, but their 'strength' of mass production (what is being discussed here, converting a countries capabilities to war time production, and being claimed as uncounterable by the USA) is concentrated in the coastal areas and associated river shipping lanes. USA industry is spread throughout the country.

Again you completely ignore what I said. It wouldn't be 5 carriers of F-18s over five years, it would be our current fleet plus an additional 1500 stand off attack bombers, allowing those F-18s to focus solely on softening air defense sites, etc. China's installed robots have zero to do with any of this. They don't have automated factories 'spawning' units.

China's oil production just hit a record lows even with them putting their 'limitless resources' into it. China's western oil fields and offshore oil fields (like their billion dollar oil platform) would be scrap.

China's current MIC industry doesn't matter, it's converting domestic production to a war footing that is being discussed here. The claim is conversion of their current civilian capacity would overwhelm the USA. Again, China's civil capacity is concentrated in the coastal areas and associated waterways which make it not valuable as a war production capacity, while the USA is spread throughout the country. You don't need to take out every factory, just enough associated infra. But keep moving goal posts, change the subject to try and get a gotcha.

Edit: I have to add I hope none of this happens. I love China. My dad was a communist hippie and our house was filled all kinds of books on China from historical to modern Chinese thinking. My ex was an acupuncturist so we often talked about ancient Chinese thoughts as well. While I understand it's completely different now, 2010's Shanghai was one of my favorite cities. I'm also old enough to have been friends with a lot of students stranded in the USA after the Tiananmen Square massacre so my heart breaks for the Chinese people and I understand that their government is not them and does not care about their interests.

PRC existing MiC being in land matters because PRC MiC is scaled to operate at war time rates already, hence priority targets. PRC having capex stock (i.e. 300k robots per year) and lots of bodies and history of third front = PRC can move entire industrial base from coastal to interior (and underground) to reconstitute, they've done it before. Hence it is a whole of country / energy mix attrition and resilience game. Same for US, whose potentially going to make 0 oil and 0 lng when PRC hits her 300 refineries and lng plants (that also feeds NATO). Then it's matter of who has most survivable distributed power, most prexisting industrial stocks, human capita to reconstitute and etc to keep going.

US MiC distribution doesn't matter since stand off range of ICBM global strike basically = other side of world, i.e. existing PLARF icbms can already be conventionally tipped can hit any large infra target in US. That's PLA strategy for CONUS attacks, instead of 100m of munitions on 400m (cargo plane) or (13b carrier) delivery platform which needs vunerable/expensive logistics to operate, they're going for more expensive munitions, because they never committed to expensive force projection platforms, which US has to fulfill global commitments.

VS. US strategy for mainland attacks which is hoping very expensive, legacy, sunk cost platforms like carriers can deliver some standoff sorties, against PLA systems destruction warfare specifically designed to cripple logistics system that sustains them. This doubly true for jerry rigged transport bomb trucks, i.e. rapid dragon - there isn't enough airstrips in/around theatre, tanking to make it work at scale. PRC has host of supersonic drones and long range AA that can spam 1IC and take out lumbering rapid dragon cargo planes before they even have chance to deliver, which is going to be within 1IC, where US carrier defensive air won't have persistent coverage. Hence it's not seriously discussed in strategy writings, because anyone can look at the logistics behind it and realize it's not viable. Not like rushing new capability like B21s to do runs from CONUS/AU, recognizing what PRC recognizes as it builds out launchers and 1000s of tunnels, the only supply chain you can depend on is homeland supply chain.

China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...

While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which are within the US sphere of influence or far from China.

The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).

Vietnam has faught war with china more reciently than the us. They are also afraid that chian will attack again, while they are reasonable confident the us won't.

Yes, but they do violate the part about being close to China (and hence easier to conquer in a hypothetical war).

If the only supplies of bauxite were across an ocean or a whole continent it would be much easier to deny them supplies of bauxite in a conflict.

Even if they could conquer the territory with it, they'd need to transport it back or move manufacturing to it.

Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct military conflict.

I think this hypothetical is more about once a conflict is imminent.

Also, general consensus seems to be that economic codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine, humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and China poised to attack Taiwan.

The world was also very interconnected prior to WW1.

And already 3x more vehicles.

To what end though? I know Taiwan is the hot button issue at the moment but it's hard for me to think China wants to get into war with the US, let alone the whole "west", over it. Doesn't the war with Ukraine show that any large scale military conflict is incredibly costly and difficult to benefit from?

It's because you know more about the USA's internal politics (and internal embarassments) than about China's. China has plenty of shitshows, but most of them don't reach international news.

They’re also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.

I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one would believe it could be done.

I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.

They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable lauch + mega constellations only started last few years (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it, i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they work with a lot of developed countries with their own launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand. Question is if they find something to justify spamming magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this article, if they did, it's probably going to be weaponinizing space.

Some context for US/Japan WW II:

In 1943, the US built more than half as many Fleet carriers as Japan fielded over the entire war (15 vs 28), while also producing an absurd number of escort carriers. In the last year of the war, the US built about as many F6F (Hellcat) fighters as Japan built A6M (Zeros) in the previous 5 years (the F6F is generally considered far superior to the A6M; the F4F is the older contemporary of the A6M).

> fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s.

The economics clearly justify mass production of widebody aircraft, yet China is unable to produce their own.

And you expect China to mass produce Falcon 9 rockets? How about they start with a simple airplane first.

Military Y20 reached 80+ now within a few years - they have indigenous tech to apply to domestic wide body, and can scale up production of large aircrafts if they want. But taking 929 slow because civilian aviation is _harder_ than space, more international requirements etc, why C919+929 needs to use foreign components for easier certification. The global economics justify it, the regulation/geopolitics makes it hard but they're diligently pursing it.

But economics also don't CLEARLY justify domestic wide body when they can focus on electrified HSR without fossil inputs, AND PRC pop density / geographic concentration limits future of civilian air due to air corridor congestion.

I expect PRC to mass produce domestic F9 if the economics clearly justify it. LM5 already estimated at F9 $3000 per kg, so hard to say how much mass producing PRC F9 tier reusable can drive down cost + add capability. If it's there's clear significant demand for more than sustaining mega contestallations past 2035s, I'd expect them to spam F9 for domestic use, before civil wide body that's going to take longer due politics of international aviation.

Yes, a missle gigafactory is impressive pre war. The USA will remove that single factory within the first weeks of any conflict. China better have large stockpiles if their strategy includes gigafactories.

Of course they'll have stockpiles, they didn't build all these factories to sit idle and have capex depreciate pointlessly, just like they'll have stockpiles for prompt global strike to hit US plants/energy infra on CONUS. Then what? This isn't the 50s-90s anymore, advanced rocketry ended Fortress America, PRC developing conventional strike to hit CONUS strategic targets precisely to deter mainland strikes. This is also ignoring US stockpiles, i.e. 4000 TLAMs... PRC installed ~300k industrial robots LAST YEAR. They have essentially accumulated near bottomless amount of industrial capex that can be redeployed/reconstituted to keep industrial base running, more than the US military was designed / currently designed to meaningfully degrade. There's a reason US military doctorine when from fighting 2 major wars when all potential US adversaries were medium powers, to one major war + hold another war in place, to PRC now a major pacing peer power and US might not even be able to fight major IndoPac war. PRC isn't a 4000 tomahawk conflict, it's a 400,000 one if not more. PRC recognizes regional war with US+CO is at least a 1000 missile per day problem.

Anything going on with Chinese missile forces staff and corruption lately? Just asking :)

Being efficiently punished, as they should be, unlike how fat leonard trials going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. BTW corruption in PRC linked to getting more things built, the side effect is turbo procurement.

I don't agree that China's government corruption is actually a show of strength but interesting analysis.

Again I hope nothing happens. I am quite fond of China, the Chinese people, and historical Chinese culture. The USA made special carveouts to help China industrialize. The USA risked nuclear war with Russia in order to get them to back down against China in 1969. We don't want to be adversaries with China and have demonstrably shown so with fairly large policy choices.

> The USA will remove that single factory within the first weeks of any conflict.

I don't think it's clear that a war would necessarily escalate to attacking industrial targets because there is a kind of MAD at play.

From America's point of view, the problem with escalating the war to industrial targets (which I am sure US military planners realize) is that the US has an Achilles' heel in it's reliance on petrol. Almost all US petrol comes from only 130 domestic plants. If those are disabled, most US supply chains will crumble, including food. No need to disable all the factories when there's no way to transport stuff and workers aren't fed. That weakness might be enough to deter the US from striking Chinese industry.

EVs might be one of the bigger bulwarks the US could pursue toward greater national security.

This is mutual.Any attack on mainland China will invite immediate retaliation on American soil.

The Soviets had 40,000 nuclear warheads, which didn't enable them to achieve any kind of dominance over the US or Europe.

Nukes aren't meant to used in conventional war unless things go dire, cruise missiles are. Advanced munitions are bread and butter in peer war. USSR had doctorine for tactic nukes but it never got to that and it certainly effected US/EU esclation strategies even now.

Power will be projected in the future through alliances with Australia, Japan, and Great Britain. The problems you listed are real, but they are solvable.

Absolutely. I think the prime problem is large swaths of the American populace has lost hope, confidence, and resiliency. OTOH, people in China have a much more of a "can do" attitude buoyed by achievements and rapid progress. America needs younger politicians and leaders out there delivering projects and emanating positive vibes of hope and possibility.

> America needs younger politicians and leaders out there

Not just America, the world needs younger politicians who don't want to send the whole world to hell when they die. We really have a shitty geriatric crew right now--Putin, Xi, Modi, Biden, Trump.

And Orbán, Erdoğan, and more.

The people are hurting but the establishment isn't listening, and so conspiracy theorists, cranks, racist nationalists lite, and brash jerks are seen as ways to lash out against a system that doesn't appear to be helping them.

There are a holistic set of overlapping problems:

- Failure of the mainstream left to empathize properly with both working people and small business owners while pushing back against unreasonable demands of the very rich

- Failure to mentor young leaders in 4 domains: academia, industry, political parties, and community orgs

There are no quick or easy solutions, but require sustained, organized, and collaborative efforts to nudge the needle over years. This is quite difficult when a large fraction of the demographic voting for absurd leaders either don't have free time to volunteer, are unable to prioritize civic participation for whatever reason(s), or don't see the value in it.

I'd add at least two points to your list:

- Inability of the intellectual and political elites to define and enforce basic rules and norms for a coherent society. Diversity is great, but it ought to be paired with engagement with the country's history, culture. We have citizenry who are increasingly more detached from the society they live in and more connected to groups that transcend borders.

- Rise of religion. We should be done with that thing by now, but its back and growing in strength, undermining democratic institutions. We are making concessions to religion on the grounds of religious freedom.

Personnel of the mainstream news media (fourth estate) are richer than average and live in megacities, and so their interests align to their own bubbles, celebrities, and the political class they're unable or unwilling to hold accountable. It creates a situation where dissenting voices who don't condone beating the drums to war are excommunicated as pariahs like Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader.

Yeah, it's important to remember that the US has friends. - and the list of friends is very long!

My favorite example of how good friends the US has is that the primary objective for Norway in Afghanistan was quote:

    "The first and most important objective throughout was the Alliance dimension:
     to support the US and safeguard NATO’s continued relevance."

source: https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/09faceca099c4b8bac8...

You have good friends if their primary war objective is to support you.

I think that these days, a lot of Europeans are being reminded that the US is a friend. So long as US politics can avoid undermining NATO the US won't be short on friends.

"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests" -- Henry Kissinger.

The same applies to other countries. Those who subscribe to the democratic principles, rule of law, and individual freedoms will typically align themselves with US interests, at least where it is beneficial to them.

This is true, both cynically and literally. There have been many complete and partial defections recently as China swoops in with B&R foreign direct infrastructure and industrial investment.

The US needs to adjust with more competitive foreign economic policies because tariffs aren't it. All of those trillions wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq for diesel power plants to nowhere could've been sprinkled around the Global South to advance economic development resulting in greater wealth elsewhere able to afford American goods and services, source raw materials, and develop manufacturing relationship in various countries in, say, Africa... like China is doing.

The US and Western Europe have to adjust their eyesight if we are to have peace and prosperity worldwide. The war in Ukraine, for example, is the result of Germany and the rest of the old West pandering to Russia and making deals over Eastern European heads whilst lecturing Eastern Europe on European ideals and the need for them to catch up with progressive Germany and France. Going forward, large players on the international scale have to work with smaller players. We also need to take a look at the basket cases of Austria and Germany and ask them to explain how their actions square with what they preach. Germany was given gren light to unify and generally rule the EU and the results aren't that great.