Why is China so Dangerous?

H. Numan sends this follow-up to his earlier essay about China.

Why is China so dangerous?

by H. Numan

A response from a reader encouraged me to continue my essay about China. His points are valid, and will be exploited to the max by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the near future. China is a dangerous dragon, despite having fairly blunt teeth and very short claws. It remains a terrible danger, simply because of its size. 1.4 billion people can’t be wrong, though they may not have it right.

Let’s look at the People’s Liberation Army. The whole lot of them, army, navy, air force, rocket force and the auxiliary navy. The last are civilian registered ships, operated by navy personnel under military command disguised as fishing trawlers. Yes, the PLA is a powerful force on first glance. However, first looks are deceiving. What they lack is combat experience. They have no veterans. None whatsoever.

You can train someone to become a soldier, easily. But you can’t train someone to become a veteran soldier. Only combat does that. No matter how hard you try. Lots of very promising cadet officers proved to be worthless under fire. Not just freshly-minted lieutenants; it happens to generals, too. Especially if they themselves avoided any hazardous duties, managing desks from as far away as possible, and got promoted based on their relatives, not on experience. In other words: all Chinese generals, admirals and air-marshals.

The current price for three stars (lieutenant general) is 2.5 million dollars. Any Chinese with the right connections and at least that amount of money can become a general. That kind of corruption seeps through down below. A corrupt general (that’s all of them) isn’t going to promote a bright keen honest colonel over his not so bright but corrupt and therefore controllable colleagues. That would be suicide. That bright keen incorruptible colonel cannot be influenced, and makes everybody look bad. Imagine that pest becoming general! What hell can he unleash? Corruption breeds corruption. Only officers with enough money get promoted. Almost the same goes down the line: you need $25,000 to enter the cadet school. Even joining as a humble private costs you hefty $2,500. Which is good news for us: if need be, you simply buy a few generals! It happened in the past. Sun Tzu wrote about it, as a valid strategy in The Art of War [pdf].

Next, almost as bad, is the total lack of experience. China hasn’t fought a war since 1979. A war they lost. All officers, noncoms and soldiers with any kind of experience have since retired. And… they are treated like dogs**t Chinese civilians. Veterans regularly don’t get their retirement. It’s pocketed by the Veterans Administration. So often, that veterans have to demonstrate to get something. Demonstrating is not something you do for fun and games in China. High-ranking officers have often complained about it to the party leadership. With zero results. You think US veterans have it bad? That’s nothing compared with Chinese veterans.

The only reason one joins the People’s Liberation Army is career advancement and material profits. If a bright ambitious officer cadet longing to die for China doesn’t realize that when his parents shell out $25,000 to get him into the academy, he will long before graduation. He’s got two choices: either he coughs up $75,000 for a nice comfy posting in Beijing. Or he doesn’t, and will be posted to the dark side of the moon (Tibet). Where he remains a second lieutenant, until either he finds the required $75,000, resigns or dies. Whichever comes first. The PLA is truly democratic: the same applies to all ranks. With progressively lower fees, of course. Loyalty does not exist in China, least of all within the PLA.

Remember when Germany invaded Austria, in 1938? People were lining the streets with flowers and cheering the invading Wehrmacht. It was even better than a walk in the park! Of course the official poll where 99.75% voted in favor of unification was rigged. It was not only stupid; it wasn’t even necessary. Almost every party was in favor of unification anyway. At least 60% would have voted yes. Probably a lot more.

However, the Wehrmacht couldn’t take that for granted. It was possible (though unlikely) some units of the Austrian army might resist. Or that parts of the crowd might turn hostile. What do you do then? What if a truck or an armored car breaks down? Do you leave it there or repair it on the road? Or do you tow it? Do you need to post guards around it? Fair questions they simply couldn’t answer in advance. Something you have to experience, and decide on the spot. Only then you can write a combat manual about it. The peaceful invasion of Austria gave the Wehrmacht its first real combat experience since 1919. Something that’s worth gold.

Notice the utter lack of PLA units operating in UN peacekeeping forces. Asians don’t like losing face. That’s worse than stepping into a fat smelly turd with your bare feet. Why do Western units participate? Simply to gain valuable experience. Sure, you’ll make mistakes. Lots of them. Some of them even tragic. But overall they gain lots of combat experience with very little fighting.

Last on the list is equipment. It’s adequate. That’s all I can say about it. Copying and reverse engineering can only get you so much. It will never get you anything better than adequate. Never superb or outstanding. Chinese aircraft are reverse engineered Russian aircraft. They couldn’t reverse engineer the engines. Those aircraft have half the range of the Russian originals. That goes for just about everything. It isn’t really bad, but nothing better than barely adequate. Be it a combat rifle or an airplane.

The navy is even worse. Yes, they have nuclear submarines. Those subs are so noisy a blind man on an Allied warship can point them out. The HMS Queen Elisabeth currently on operations in the South China Sea faced a dilemma: of course they spotted the PLA sub sent to scout them. The question was: how far out would they let them know? A few days later the Japanese navy faced the same problem in the East China Sea. Chinese subs are anything but silent killers. When they move to sea, it’s almost like Barnum & Bailey Brothers moving to another town.

China currently has three aircraft carriers, with three super-carriers under various stages of construction. It’s questionable if those three will be finished. China ran out of money. Why do two of the three other carriers have ski jump decks? Otherwise those under-powered (and performing) aircraft can’t take of. They can take of either with a full combat and half a fuel load, or the other way around. But not both at the same time.

Last item is the proof of the pudding. The eating, in other words. Who buys Chinese arms? Only very desperate nations who cannot buy anything else. Either vile despotic regimes that are under Western boycotts, or dirt-poor nations that have to accept mafia-like sales conditions. Nobody else. Even Argentina would rather buy third- or fourth-hand F-16s than JF-17s. The UK has blocked every sale to Argentina since the Falkland War. Argentina’s only option left over is China. At the moment they have almost nothing flying. They have been trying to buy literally anything for the last 40 years, without success. That should give you an idea how good Chinese weaponry is.

All I have said is how bad the PLA is. Now for the dangerous part. Because they aren’t just bad, China (not the PLA) is very dangerous.

Nazi Germany had to go to war in 1939, and had to invade the USSR in 1941. They had no other choice, apart from admitting defeat and having Hitler and his NSDAP resign from power. Imperial Germany had a comprehensive social system. It was even the best of the world, for the time. After the war the socialists gained power and expanded that system. From 1919 until 1933, Germany was almost exclusively governed by socialist coalitions.

Hitler gained power partly on promises of a much enlarged social welfare system. As a real socialist (yes, Hitler was definitely a socialist.) he killed the economy immediately. He stopped all exports as far as possible, and tried to convert Germany into an autarky. In other words: he slaughtered the goose that laid the eggs, and demanded that it lay a lot more at the same time.

The German army wasn’t ready in 1939. They needed much more time, materials, training and especially oil to fully mechanize. The navy didn’t get to start plan Z, let alone finish it. At the same time Hitler fulfilled his social promises. Both cost enormous amounts of money that Germany simply didn’t have. Even a genius like Hjalmar Schacht couldn’t perform miracles.

In 1939 Germany was running out of money. Not just out of money, near bankruptcy. They estimated they would run out of oil in September 1941. The attack on the West was essentially mugging on a grand scale. The prime objective was always to get to the gold reserves of the conquered nations as fast as possible. They mostly failed in that. Second objective was to milk the occupied territories for all they were worth. In that they succeeded with an army and an economy not fully geared for war.

The Blitzkrieg was a stunning success. It stunned even the Germans themselves. During the Battle of Britain Hitler was already focused on the coming conquest of the USSR. Operation Barbarossa was more a deception plan than a real invasion. When Hitler realized the UK wasn’t going to fold, he concentrated on what we now know as Operation Barbarossa. Which had to start in June 1941.

Why? He simply had no other choice. He needed oil, badly. Germany didn’t have any. They only could get it from Romania, and that wasn’t enough. Not even remotely. His only other oil source was the USSR, and that was not a reliable source. Arab oilfields were either under development or too far away. America and Venezuela were also too far away. The only oil within reach was in the USSR. He couldn’t attack in 1940; it was far too late for that. The army needed to recover from that campaign.

So the attack had to come in 1941. What most people probably don’t know is that the muddy season in Russia, Rasputitsa, is not one but two seasons. We know about the autumn rains that turned bad roads into mud pools. The other season is the spring thaw, which does exactly the same. Hitler couldn’t attack any earlier, as the roads weren’t ready yet.

Let’s get back on track. We aren’t too much interested in National Socialist Germany here, but in International Socialist China. At the moment they face almost exactly the same problems as Germany back then. A lack of nearly everything. No money. Failing businesses. No oil. Not enough coal. Inclement weather destroyed the harvests. So, not enough food. The Chinese population was already warned before last year not to let food spoil, minimize portions and limit the number of dishes. (Nobody gives a hoot so far.)

The worldwide pandemic was caused by the CCP. The coal shortage is entirely Chinese. The CCP embargoed Australia when it asked questions about what China would do to compensate for the pandemic. They hoped to beat Australia into submission. It didn’t work, and now major industries and half the country face enormous blackouts. The winter (-20 C) has yet to come. Incidentally, the embargo also covers Australian grain. Really clever, when you already have severe food shortages.

The Chinese long-term policy is equally bad. The Belt and Road Initiative proved to be a very costly failure. For two very obvious reasons: shipping goods by rail isn’t going to replace shipping by sea. One single container ship can carry more freight than a rail link between Beijing and Rotterdam can carry in a full year, at a much lower cost. The cutthroat negotiations and mafia tactics warned some nations not to fall for it. Sri Lanka lost a port they had build by the Chinese to the Chinese when they defaulted on payment. Piraeus in Greece and the port of Darwin are/were Chinese owned. Piraeus still is, Darwin was canceled. They even tried to buy the port of Rotterdam.

Right now China is in the same position as Germany was before starting WW2. Not enough money, and too many ambitious goals that cannot be met. There are more than enough grudges from the past that only need a little kindling before becoming a raging fire. The Unequal Treaties. The Opium Wars. The Boxer Rebellion. The fact that China is the oldest existing and continuous civilization in existence. Being subjugated by an upstart of less than 250 years old.

It’s not the Chinese army that is dangerous. The auxiliary fleets are far more dangerous. They sail to the coasts of Northern Africa, Peru and Ecuador (the Galapagos Islands, to be exact) where they empty the seas of life. Anything edible is fished. The local coastguards cannot do anything about it. They are overwhelmed by fleets of more than 200 ships at the same time. Their navies don’t have 20 ships, let alone the guts to send the full fleet. What do you do? Shoot? Risk a war with China? Some of those Chinese trawlers are armed, just in case.

That’s part of the salami slicing tactic. A tactic also used by Germany in the past. The problem with salami slicing is that you do get what you want, but it is very expensive and takes a very long time. And you run the real risk of losing it all. Germany sliced itself into Austria, Czechoslovakia, and lost everything when they tried to slice the Danzig corridor.

China sort of has the same problems. And it ran out of peaceful options. We’re in a very dangerous situation with Chinese characteristics.

— H. Numan

66 thoughts on “Why is China so Dangerous?

  1. Good essay.

    I would add that Chinese subjects do not like the separations required by sea service, and there are a lot of only sons in the military. If they die, families die out.

    Taiwanese women would be a draw, if they can get through the beach defenses on the few open beaches. Channelized defenses vs frontal assaults. Hmmm.

  2. The Chinese alliance with Russia is a military one. A “clenched fist” strategy. Then the question arises-is the West able to fight a real war or can it only use atomics?

  3. You are completely correct. The Chinese “economy” is utterly reliant on US money and now we are slowly admitting that they really are the same psychopaths that murdered 100 million of their own citizens within living memory to establish Communist dominance there. They can’t let the shining beacon of Taiwan exist as it’s a daily reminder (just a few miles away) of the power of a free democratic Capitalist economy. We are at the break point. Either they take Tsiwan or Xi is toast. And he knows it.

  4. Fascinating and eye-opening.
    It does stand to reason that if an empire is built on lies, seeing is disbelieving.
    And unpredictable.
    When it catches fire, even paper tiger is dangerous.

  5. One of the dumbest, whistling past the graveyard posts I’ve ever read. In war games China wins more often than not. The US military hasn’t been a shining example of military prowess in decades. The USMC has rid itself of an armored force and plans to place small groups essentially behind the lines. Just how long do you think they will last? And how long do you think a carrier group will last against a swarm of YJ-18’s or the Dong Feng-26? The early Type 093 Shang class are as quiet as the US Navy’s Los Angeles Class boats and the Chinese navy has launched 2 improved versions that are undoubtedly even quieter. And if the Type 095 class is as capable as is thought the US carrier fleet is in for a bruising from subs. The Chinese military doesn’t have to as good as the US military. It just has to be good enough.

  6. So invading and occupying Taiwan would give the chicoms almost all the computer chip production, advanced manufacturing, etc to give them the breathing room to shore up their economy?

    Will the chicom compel the Pakistanis to invade Kashmir as a diversion while the former invade Taiwan? How will the neighbours react?

    • If someone had a brain, those chip factories would be blown at the first hint of invasion making the whole effort useless.
      I tell a lie, the grub in Taiwan though [solid waste] is better than the grub on the mainland.
      [engage in coitus with] those pointy heads. They are good at exactly nothing except bluster and bumfluff.

  7. The author wrote, “Hitler couldn’t attack any earlier [than June, 1941], as the roads weren’t ready yet.”

    The attack on Russia was intended for May, 1941, but was delayed because of Hilter’s fractured ego, sated only by his bone-headed decision to attack Yugoslavia (April 6, 1941). Historian William L. Shirer wrote, “This postponement of the attack on Russia in order that the Nazi warlord might vent his personal spite against a small Balkan country which had dared to defy him was probably the most catastrophic single decision in Hitler’s career.”

    This small, foolish attack in the Balkans fatally delayed the big attack on Russia by six weeks, six weeks of better weather and better road conditions that could have been contributed to a successful attack and capture of Moscow. Instead Hitler’s big attack stalled by December 5, 1941, within site of St. Basil’s Cathedral. It was Hilter’s high point though he didn’t realize it; it was on this day that Hitler’s war was lost. Beginning December 6, the Soviets began their pushback.

    • No, sorry. That’s exactly what I thought too, for a long time. You can find some good explanations on Youtube, from experts. Even if you give the Germans an extra 6 weeks, they get stuck long before Moscow. About half way – the point where they ran out of their supply lines – they already ran out of reserves.

      It wasn’t winter that defeated the Nazis, but the USSR army.

  8. I can’t say for sure but I strongly suspect your assessment of China’s military is accurate. I also agree with your assessment of their position and the danger. I think China is on the verge of coming apart.

  9. “The German army wasn’t ready in 1939. They needed much more time, materials, training and especially oil to fully mechanize.”

    85% of their oil came from the Soviet Union. The majority of the other 15% came from Romania, refined at Polesti. Which was under imminent threat from the Soviet Union after they annexed Bessarabia and Bukovnia in 1940.
    The Soviet Union was literally able to completely wipe out Germany’s ability to continue the war against England by cutting off their oil. This move, likely more than anything else, guaranteed that Germany and the Soviets would go to war.

  10. @ H. Numan

    Thank you for the continued analysis. You raise some salient points.

    Re: “However, first looks are deceiving. What they lack is combat experience. They have no veterans. None whatsoever. You can train someone to become a soldier, easily. But you can’t train someone to become a veteran soldier. Only combat does that.”

    That is true, but it is not necessarily good news for our side. If the mandarins in Beijing sense that they are over-matched in the realm of conventional arms, it may strengthen their resolve that much more to wage total war using WMDs. Or to wage a kind of war at which they have already proven themselves to be very adept: asymmetrical or 4GW. Or as their colonels called it in 1999: “Unrestricted Warfare.”

    Even if the Chinese are as mediocre and inexperienced as you say, they have sufficient numbers of men to feed into the meat-grinder to buy the time to acquire combat experience.

    It is germane to note that the Chinese are not completely without combat experience; they have sent personnel as advisors to hot spots in Africa and elsewhere for years, and have even blooded some of their own in those conflicts and small wars. They have also operated through their proxy, North Korea, in that nation’s perpetual guerilla war against South Korea.

    We are roughly in the same situation as the Germans and Soviets in 1941-1945: A numerically-superior but less-experienced and less well-trained Russian force, pitted against a smaller, more-professional and combat-experienced force of Germans. The Red Army fared badly in the early going, but eventually numbers told and they turned the tide.

    There is also the peculiar dynamic of the teacher-and-student in the arts of war: When the Germans flooded across the Russian frontier in Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941, they were the uncontested masters of mobile operations and combined arms warfare – the Blitz – whereas the Russians were the clumsy pupils. Yet, every victory teaches the vanquished how to best him, if the fight drags on long enough – and that is precisely what happened. Their roles had been reversed 180 degrees by May 1945.

    You will note that the U.S. military, institutionally, has hewed closely to the German model since 1945, in favoring the model of a highly-professionalized, technologically-advanced military which relies upon quality to win, and not the force of sheer numbers.
    The Russians and Chinese, on the other hand, have stayed close to their traditional way of war, which emphasizes numbers to a greater extent than the U.S. military.

    Proponents of the U.S.-NATO model of warfare invariably point to conflicts like the First and Second Iraq Wars as their “proof of concept” that our way is superior to the Russian-Red Chinese model, but Iraq was not a near-peer opponent, let alone an actual peer.

    There is at least one other variable in which the present-day communist Chinese are substantially stronger than the U.S. – unlike in 1945, when the U.S. controlled fully half of the world’s industrial output, today’s the PRC economy is fundamentally the stronger in terms of industrial capacity and potential output.

    It has been said that amateurs discuss tactics, whereas the professionals discuss logistics. Well, by that marker, we are in pretty bad shape. That is not cause for hope from where I am sitting.

    The two “small wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq over the bulk of the last twenty years have exposed fault lines and fissures in our capabilities. An example illustrates the point: Back in 2008 or so, a large rush order went out to Israeli Military Industries (IMI) for SS109/M855 5.56x45mm NATO ammunition. Why? Because U.S. ammunition plants were working at capacity and could not meet the demands of the armed forces.

    If we can’t manufacture enough small-arms ammo to defeat a bunch of jihadists and irregulars in Afghanistan and Iraq, how do we propose to supply – let alone win – a significantly larger conflict with China, and perhaps also Russia and Iran? Alliance plans would have NATO pitching in, but it is by no means assured that NATO would be a part of such a war effort. What if Brussels opts to sit this one out?

    Changing tack, the PRC does not want to fight a conventional war of bombs, rockets and bullets anyway. Which is one reason they are using biological WMDs in the first place.

    Remember, the “old” method of waging war is the mid-20th method of total conventional warfare which devastates the loser and to a significant extent, the winner, too. After such a “win,” the victor is stuck with a huge bill for cleaning up and rebuilding the devastated nation.

    The “new” way is to fight using weapons which are deniable and which do as-little damage to the enemy’s infrastructure and natural resources as possible. That way, when you win, the enemy homeland is still usable and habitable. Above all, the party knows that China needs land – especially arable land – and space in which its huge population can spread out. Thus the appeal of unconventional weapons.

    All the Chinese, or for that matter the Iranians or the Russians, would have to do to cripple us is to park a container ship off one of our coasts, with a few of those mobile intermediate range missile launchers on them, such as the Club-K – which is designed to fit into a standard cargo container. Launch some nuclear warheads high into the stratosphere over key points in the U.S. and detonate them, triggering an EMP.

    Detection methods are such that, if the launch was done properly, i.e., amidst enough sea-air clutter, it probably could not be traced back to its host vessel. Even then, they’re not dumb you know: The attackers, whom ever they are, would have covered their tracks or tried to do so.

    An EMP nuclear attack is de facto a nuclear first-strike, and therefore a legitimate casus belli. However, how do you fight an enemy you might not even be able to identify?

    In closing, we are agreed: The Chinese are extremely dangerous right now. There’s nothing more hazardous than a cornered animal.

    • The problem with the Chinks is thus, they have no oil, thus rely on tankers to fill their very large needs, cut off the oil, China implodes. As for the Russians, they aren’t going to stick their necks out for the Chinks, for the Chinks are eyeing up Siberia and the Russians know this.

      • @ G

        Re: “As for the Russians, they aren’t going to stick their necks out for the Chinks, for the Chinks are eyeing up Siberia and the Russians know this.”

        I’d be a heck of a lot more comfortable right now if the idiotic and myopic U.S. foreign policy establishment hadn’t spent the last thirty years reigniting the Cold War against Russia, rather than trying to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow, which would have been the smart play all along anyhow.

        You’re absolutely right about the PRC and Siberia. Though relatively few westerners remember it today, the Chinese and Russians very nearly went to war following some sharp skirmishes in the contested Amur (or Black Dragon) River region back in the late 1960s and 1970s.

        But thanks to our idiotic foreign policy “experts,” those who should have been our friends, or at least not our adversaries, are now tet-a-tet with the Communist Chinese. What a Charlie Foxtrot!

        • Georgiaboy, The bloody US foreign policy establishment has licked the boots of that rat bastard Kissinger who has been wrong on everything he touched and his fan boys took over from him and screwed it up worse. They have not called anything right in over 40 years. If the policy experts(LOL) call for an action, rule of thumb is do the bloody opposite.

          As for the Russians, they will be typical Russians and let the Chinks hang themselves, for the Chinks are not friends with the Russians and never will be, the Russians are smart enough to know it and act in their own interests as they always do.

          • Everyone keeps saying that. But that is not the only strategic calculus. If USA and China go to war, is Russia, who has conducted numerous exercises with them to stand idly by while China is defeated just to watch the West re-group and then come after THEM. The western hatred of Russia, and the decades of vitriol mean that Russia will not be left ‘untouched’ by the West. Why would Moscow allow China to be neutralized…just to face the Western powers on their own. It makes no sense. Russia has a current military superiority. If they simply let Bejing ‘drown’ on their own, that superiority is lost and their vulnerability soars. The Western play is try and pick them off one at a time. Russia would be an idiot to allow that to take place. This leads to the conclusion that Russia will stand with China and try and “settle all scores” across the globe in one single war.
            There is no strategic calculus that makes sense for Russia to sit by while China is destroyed. It would be akin to suicide.

    • Mate, name one product, even a meal that these [epithets] can make properly.
      I dare ya.

    • The book “One Second After” is the aftermath in America after EMPs from cargo ships on both coasts put us back into the Stone Age. All though there are the usual suspects, it’s unknown which nation attacked us.

      • TedW, I wouldn’t matter, the US military would strike the usual suspects back ten fold since they put us in the dark ages anyway.

        • I’m doubtful, that a strike would occur given the current crop of geldings at State and DoD.

  11. I would have added to this list the awful water problems they’ve had that destroyed the farm lands. Their attempt to harness the Yangtze River have been disastrous. The Three Gorges Dam is cracking and will fail at some point. They made enemies of the people whom they relocated. Rather than an engineering marvesl, it’s an engineering disaster. Grain is nonexistent, they can’t feed the population. Pollution is awful (my son, who has visited China) tells me that people walk around wearing masks anyway due to the need to filter particulates. Chemical sewage is dumped into rivers, and drinking water quality is the worst in the world.

    And yes, because of all of this, China is very dangerous. They need the money, food and technology of Taiwan, and so expect a war any minute. Also expect the U.S. to stand down in said war.

    • I know, I know. Water is probably the reason India will have to go to war with China. But I can’t address everything in one essay.

    • My Marine Corps is in Taiwan as we speak training and equipping the Nationalist, if the Red Chinks attack Taiwan with US troops there, the US military will defend itself.

  12. Excellent analysis.

    I don’t think China will start a war, but they certainly are being provocative enough to rub someone the wrong way enough.

    Either WWIII or China falls into civil war with rival PLA generals fighting for control of Beijing. This would be the best scenario. It may be good for the Tibetans & Uighurs giving those two an opportunity for extensive autonomy or independence again.

    • Make no mistake, the Chinks hate the Uighurs because they are muslim, and will use any excuse to eliminate them all.

  13. As my WW2(Germany) Korea(US) and Vietnam(US) Vet Father said about the Chinks, there are more Chinks than we have bullets. Can you imagine our armed forces facing waves of Chinks even with inferior weapons and the damage they would do? Our casualties would cause the do gooders of society to have a bloody meltdown. The men and women who would be taken prisoner by the Chinks would be treated with the upmost contempt and be brutalized to the point none would be sane if they survive.
    The Japanese have taken an interest in modernizing and expanding their forces that makes the build up before WW2 look tame, they know the Chinks are on the move and are preparing accordingly. They know how to fight them, we don’t, especially with the insane rules of engagement and risk averse military we now have. We do certainly live in interesting times.

    • Napoleon made it clear that artillery and heavy munitions are the way to kill combatants and win battles. Every army since then has focused more and more on artillery and heavy weapons while overlooking the role of the combat rifle. Looked at in another way, artillery and heavy munitions can destroy rifle toting soldiers before the rifles are within range of the launch points.

  14. Wow! Excellent observations and conclusions. The socialists/Marxists always fail spectacularly on the bones of hundreds of thousands of victims that they slaughter in furtherance of pursuit of a fantasy paradise. In the end the communists, driven by personal emotional wounds are just shabby, ignorant bullies too devoid of a sense of self, too filled with rage and blind ambition to recognise that their ideology is the problem, that is is not virtuous or noble, and that socialism is an atavistic return to barbarism about which they will never see the truth.

  15. The latest news here in Australia is that China is now taking the coal which they had embargoed last year. The mountain has come to Mohammed.

  16. Trying to think back when the last time America has won a war? Couple this with the military’s investment into Critical Race Theory and we all seem to be in the same boat.
    Any comments on PLA troops training in Canada/Mexico? Lots of rumors and not sure what to believe.
    Underperforming equipment for sure, but then again, they aren’t projecting power globally, just locally, so maybe its enough to bully the neighbors while the US is weak.
    Finally, more talk of Russian/Chinese cooperation; will this play into future events?

    • The Russians are going to let the Chinks get slaughtered, for the Chinks want all of Siberia and the Russians know it, therefore they will let the Chinks get slaughtered by the millions.

      • …not even necessary anymore. China’s decreasing birth rate has neutralized the threat to Siberia. There is so much oil in Siberia there is no way anyone is getting near it. And exactly how would the Chinese survive an attempt to control it? ….let alone invade it.?

  17. Truly outstanding essay, kudos.
    Batten down the hatches, prepare for heavy weather. Very heavy.

  18. Sorry, Numan, but the Weimar Republic had a social democrat coaltion in goverment for 1,5 years over all. I have seen your info frequently here but repeating doesn’t add truth. All the Weimar parties did was keeping the socialists away from power by all means. Oddly enough, ” national socialists” were welcome in, but only after 1930.

  19. A very interesting essay, and I hope that China is as weak as presented. Unfortunately, a weak power may lash out to give the appearance of strength. This is what Argentina did with the Falklands in 1982, will China do the same with Taiwan?

    Typo alert: I think the first time you mention “Barbarossa” you must mean “Sea Lion”, the plan to invade Britain. I wish they had tried. It would have failed and seen off Nazism before 99% of the deaths in WWII ever took place.

  20. Is Taiwan a slice of chopped liver that is too far or too tempting? Is Burma/Myanmar too close or too costly? Is Afghanistan too Uyghur friendly or a step in the westerly assimilation? Is Somali land too far in order to undermine Taiwan’s ally while fostering African adventures?

    Who has lots of coal available?

    In order to resist rebellious peoples, does the communist party have the resources to buy off descent?

  21. Germany did not invade Austria, but that’s a different story.

    China’s current ideology is imported, it is not their own even though they poured buckets of their own paint over it. Communism comes from… where?

    Every single Chinese person I ever met, and there were quite a few, is smarter than that actually. They are not religious nuts, they are more like us than the other class of die-hard foes. They are also not very keen to get into any kind of conflict at all, short of callimg them cowards, it’s actually a good thing. But when you try discussing things, they get all defensive. You can’t criticize their leadership, it’s like family to them no matter how bad it is objectively. You are the aggressor when you do that, not them. Admitting fault means losing face.

    This is a riddle they have to solve themselves, no outside force can achieve that. Should they slide into armed conflict as a country, however, I believe there is a chance they won’t have it to the bitter end. They like to think reasonable and long-term, building their lives, wealth and future. War will destroy a lot of them. I can’t predict what their threshold really is, but at their hearts they aren’t really our enemies. Unlike those unholy-book-wielding barbarians, they can recognize that their own politicians are equally stupid as ours. All their ancient philosophers have something to say about that, communism hasn’t. They just have to get over the shame hurdle and acknowledge that it only means more loss of face the further they let it glide out of control.

    I do have hope for the Chinese, not without some bad troubles ahead but we’ll all come around eventually, in a few generations maybe. I have no hope for the islamic world to come to its senses and bin that evil book for good.

    • You need to stop going to the local Chinese restaurant.

      Do some business with these people. They are crude, rude and knowingly use their lack of laws to [do harm to you].

      Not one chink is trustworthy. Lying is part of their DNA.

      I would torch the lot in a heartbeat.

      • No commie or leftie can be trusted, anywhere. But not all of them are dumb or don’t know what’s good for them, mostly where cultural roots still exist. This doesn’t mean they’ll agree with us on everything else, but they are at least capable of knowing what’s a good or a bad reason to fight.

  22. No, my friend. China is dangerous because it’s china. Wouldn’t matter if it was other than commie. The history of china is a history of short-sighted edacity and [fundament]-licking obsequious ineptitude several orders of magnitude worse than the democrats on a really bad day.
    China is magnificently dangerous because of the greed and avarice of our own leadership caste. Since that evil natsoc Kissinger started licking the gook ring, I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs – ‘ What is the Sam Hell are We doing!?!’
    China is dangerous because the United States was the guarantor of relative world lethality reduction, and has been taken in a klepto-marxist coup that is entirely the fault of lazy-[tush], negligent citizens, damn their black, flabby hearts.
    ” Oooh! That sounds like politics. I’m out!”
    There is not a faster way to get dead slowly than this statement that came from fully 90% of the populace over the last 40 years.
    Now they’ve no choice but to cope.
    The storm is here.
    My hope is that 260 million rainbow-alphabet-marxo-triggly creatures, and trudeau… get barbecued when that greasy used moonbat soup salesman Xi looses control of his sphincters.
    Despair not! A general nuclear exchange can only improve the species.
    I used to be aginit, now I am all for it.
    Twist the keys, kill them all. I’ll take care of the survivors myself.

  23. All you have stated, Mr. Numan, I believe to be true. However, you seem to have omitted the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, the nuclear one. ANY nation so armed that thinks they are about to lose a war, will start flinging nukes, and you know it. Every armed force of every nation worldwide has problems, and it usually amounts to not enough training, poor leadership, and underfunded troop supports, and all of it is based on corruption. And I think maybe just about every nation has this problem. Veterans are good for an army, but if you [defecate] on them in peacetime, you can forget about their value in war. The bottom line here is that the nukes are the ace in the hole for nations who have been playing social reconstruction games with their forces, as well as the ones with corrupt practices exceeding even that. That is why China is so dangerous. They can kill half or more of our people even with ragged, second rate equipment, and poorly trained and led troops. They won’t have to invade.

  24. China is so dangerous because USA and Britain are so dangerous they interfere in Hong Kong and Taiwan they have no business there

    Us Britain destroyed Iraq Afghanistan Syria Libya in the name of freedom and democracy as if there is democracy in the West

    There is no democracy and freedom in the West there is subservience and stupidity towards Islam that’s what is there cowards and cowardly actions they dare not put criminal Muslims in prison no matter how horrible the crime

    This crash of puppy love towards Islam is terrible the meaning one-sided stupid debased this honorable unvirtuous

  25. “A corrupt general (that’s all of them) isn’t going to promote a bright keen honest colonel over his not so bright but corrupt and therefore controllable colleagues. That would be suicide. That bright keen incorruptible colonel cannot be influenced, and makes everybody look bad. Imagine that pest becoming general! What hell can he unleash?” Sounds like the same modus operandi in the modernist “catholic” novus ordo college of cardinals and episcopacy.

  26. ” from 1919-1933 Germany was almost exclusively ….”
    Sorry Numan and with all due respect for your work, but this is wrong.
    The Social Democrats were in a government coaltion during roughly 1.5 years of the Weimar Republic. The other parties ( up to 32,by number) did everything to keep socialists away from power. Only in 1918/19, the ” real” powers let them sign the Versailles treaties so they could put all the blame for future decay on the left. Desastrous, but a smart move. Those same powers made Hitlers reign possible, again by a coalition which is in contradiction to the often publicized opinion that Hitler was a socialist. But dicussing this matter would disgress from your topic.

  27. If every red army cadet can come up with $25,000 how is Red China broke? America on the other hand? Economic surveys have shown that 27 percent of Americans have less than 400 dollars in ready cash. The US governent is 30 trillion in debt and this doesn’t include the debt of thousands of local government entities or individual debt like student loans.

  28. Most Enlightening and Encouraging when 330 million Americans are facing an Arch Enemy of 1.4 Billion Hungry but I’ll Equipped CCP cronies. IF America can greatly reduce or eliminate the theft of our Intellectual Property (are you listening Scumbag Whore Monger Eric Swallwell and his putrid ilk ?) we can further strengthen our military firewall . Now just to awaken the hordes of dem-socialist Zombies who remain comatose to the danger both domestic and foreign Threats…a Huge Task given the msn propaganda and the dem Communist “ flight plan” ⚠️⚠️⚠️

  29. “They hoped to beat Australia into submission,” but soon realized the Australians were doing that already.

    • We beat ourselves into submission just for fun.

      Slabs of VB and XXXX make it an enjoyable pursuit.

  30. What I fear is China falling apart and warlords with nukes. An internal nuclear war would be a world wide disaster, once started, who knows where it would end.

  31. As for chinese military, I missed one point: the mentality of losing face. In the chain of command this factor can not be underrated, as in arab armies, and academia too. You can never ever correct a superior, even when grave errors are committed.
    May I illustrate this by an example from everyday life?
    In my town, there is a chinese restaurant. The owners daughter was a student at my school. This proves that they apreciate education. The menu was full of idiotic vocabulary and grammar for dishes, words that even cannot have been found as translations in a dictionnairy. The „ man of the house“ could not ask his 15 year old girl , because he knew better. Allright, I ordered „ chicken with the much crunchy“.

  32. I’m skeptical of the public explanations for the electricity shutdowns in China. Imports of coal are less than 10% and they should have abundant hydro this season. I doubt domestic mines are at 100% capacity nor have I heard of land transport constraints. Sure came on quickly – nobody thinking ahead 6 months for fuel procurement?

    I suspect that a national power shutdown is just a way to monkey wrench the economies of the West. No juice for Foxconn and no iPhone sales globally. No juice for semiconductor factories and F150s sit unsaleable. Perhaps the CCP thinks this will hurt us more than it will hurt their power.

    Official Chinese sources have already threatened nuclear first strikes again Japan and Australia. Even a counterforce response would kill millions of Chinese non-combatants. A sure way for the CCP to lose the Mandate of Heaven is to cause Heaven to rain radioactive fallout

    • Or the trains are moving something else.
      There is lots of coal on the docks in china. It’s just not moving. No trains.
      Interesting.
      Where are the trains?

  33. Odd repeated misarticulation “take of” instead of “take off”. No grammar checker ?
    Distracts from the message when the medium is garbled.

  34. “The western plandemic was caused by the WHO (a UN organization, the UN headquarter is in NewYork). As a consequence we have the coal (and other energy resources) shortage which will continue thanks to green and sanctions economy.”

    this is more correct in my point of view.

    What I fear is US falling apart and warlords with nukes. An internal nuclear war would be a world wide disaster, once started, who knows where it would end.

  35. I don’t believe we’ll start a war with China. Great article, by the way.

    My firm belief is the US can not afford a war with China, because as soon as we give the Go order, China will activate all their hacked backdoors into our infrastructure and turn us off.
    No power, no water, no trains, no planes, no ports, no tunnels, no stock market, no internet, no phones, no GPS, etc. You don’t even need to launch an EMP attack when you’ve hacked your opponent for years and rarely been caught. Not even talking about all the (thousands? millions?) of 5th column moles they’ve infiltrated here and the gangs, commie traitors, college radicals, and others they’ve armed. The sabotage and chaos they could unleash is unimaginable. Our intel/federal LE is not that good, so don’t expect them to be rolled up anytime soon.

    Also, look at the enemies the US likes to pick. If you start with the 1980s following the rock-bottom low morale after losing in Vietnam, the US has tried to pick much weaker enemies t0 trounce. I don’t think the US has the power or gumption to fight an actual peer or near-peer conflict. I’m afraid at this point the US military is largely a paper tiger.

    Our troops are veterans at this point, but they’re worn out and tired and demoralized and committing suicide in droves. They know their leaders are weak, spineless PC traitors who are secretly calling China to betray them and forcing social experiments on them to please the communists in their government. Their equipment is worn out. They fought for 20 years for absolutely nothing and ran away from the fight in the most embarrassing way possible. The whites among them were all called out as racists and they are forced to attend “extremism training” where the instructors can’t even clearly define “extremist.” The clot shot hasn’t helped with readiness, either, and huge #s of them refuse it.

    In fact, I suspect the next threat the military will be dealing with is its own people, both angry demoralized troops and civilians. The US seems seriously destabilized right now and it feels like we’re going the way of the USSR in the 90s. I don’t know how long we’re going to be united states. I think we’re actually in a low-grade rebellion right now and it’s not getting much attention or coverage.

    Also, if anyone in the US is anything like me, the idea of defending the US is not a high priority at this point. I served with pride in my day, but I wouldn’t do it again now. I wouldn’t want to serve under the current puppet or any of our corrupt and obviously retarded so-called elite. I sure as hell wouldn’t tell anyone else to serve. I won’t be telling my grandkids to serve- For me, and probably many more like me, Civic Nationalism is dead. Our rulers have made it abundantly clear what they think of America. They don’t serve, their kids don’t serve, and they showed us they’ll abandon us overseas when it’s convenient. It’s kind of hard to look at the US collapse in Afghanistan and believe that’s a military you want to be in and these are rulers you want to follow. And it’s not just the Clown in office right now-I don’t trust either side.

    I know China is a basket case, too. We’re all suffering from global entropy. I can’t help wondering if the diminishing possibilities and failing energy, trade, and capital systems will see us all retreating into our respective corners to lick our wounds and rattle sabers at each other while we’re busy terrorizing our own people?

  36. All you have stated, Mr. Numan, I believe to be true. However, you seem to have omitted the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, the nuclear one. ANY nation so armed that thinks they are about to lose a war, will start flinging nukes, and you know it. Every armed force of every nation worldwide has problems, and it usually amounts to not enough training, poor leadership, and underfunded troop supports, and all of it is based on corruption. And I think maybe just about every nation has this problem. Veterans are good for an army, but if you [defecate] on them in peacetime, you can forget about their value in war. The bottom line here is that the nukes are the ace in the hole for nations who have been playing social reconstruction games with their forces, as well as the ones with corrupt practices exceeding even that. That is why China is so dangerous. They can kill half or more of our people even with ragged, second rate equipment, and poorly trained and led troops. They won’t have to invade.

  37. I’m wondering how China can be described as ‘broke’ when they hold the trillions of dollars in securities and gold, and the largest trade surplus and industrial base in the world, by a wide margin?

    They may not have their own natural resources in sufficient quantity but they can easily buy whatever they need.

    Sure, this would be cut off in time of war (unless they could seize those assets), but today, they have no such concern.

    So how exactly are they broke right now?

  38. I don’t believe there will be a kinetic war with China. China already owns us and our perfidious elite. Just look the reaction of our elites to China unleashing an altered biological agent on us. Somehow the onus and societal rage has been turned on the deplorables and unvaccinated.
    China knows our leaders are weak and compromised. They will take back Taiwan and we will do nothing that could impact Harvard’s endowment. I think I’m OK with this reaction actually. No young person on either side should have to die for Harvard/Yale Inc. ever again. Lord I hope Karma is real.

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