OT: China v. Taiwan?

[Raellus]

This evening, 60 Minutes ran a piece (taking up 2/3 of the entire program) about the state of the USN vis-a-vis the PLAN. From a Western (and, I reckon, Taiwanese) POV, it was rather worrying.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/us-navy-readiness-china-naval-buildup-60-minutes-video-2023-03-19/

Some highlights (or lowlights, depending on how one chooses to look at it):

The USA's shipbuilding industry- both military and commercial- is moribund, compared to China's. China has 3-4 times as many active shipyards as the USA. China's shipbuilding industry benefits from cheap materials, cheap labor, and sizeable government subsidies.

The PLAN has grown from 38 operational warships in 2000 to over 350 today. It's growing faster than the USN, which is retiring more ships than it is launching. By 2027, the PLAN fleet will have over 400 warships and the USN just over half that number.

The last 20 years have not been kind to the USN. Some have taken to calling them the "Lost Decades". The last two surface warfare vessel classes, the Zumwalt "stealth" destroyers, and the Littoral Combat Ship ("Little Crappy Ship") were both expensive boondoggles (mostly due to hull and engine defects- further evidence of the decline of US shipbuilding). The Ford Class CVNs are over budget and behind schedule.

Perhaps more concerning, the backlog for repairs to existing vessels is measured in years. That means a sizeable percentage of the US fleet is unable to go to sea at any given point. This means crews on operational ships are overworked, with longer deployments and less time at home.

Finally, according the piece, the CIA believes that the Chinese government is preparing the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

The good news is that the Congressional defense committee is well aware of all of these issues and the USN's requested budget this year asked for $12b above last year's.

It was a pretty sobering assessment and I urge anyone with an interest in these things to invest 27 minutes into watching the piece.

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[castlebravo92]

There's been a general decline in civilizational capability in the West. It took the US 4 years to build the Golden Gate bridge in 1933 (finishing in 1937). With all of the advances in technology and population, does anyone think the US could accomplish something similar in a similar amount of time

In some ways, China is sitting where the US was at the cusp of WW2 in that they account for a large percentage of world heavy industrial capability, and realistically, it's probably double what the US has at this point.

[Raellus]

There's been a general decline in civilizational capability in the West. It took the US 4 years to build the Golden Gate bridge in 1933 (finishing in 1937). With all of the advances in technology and population, does anyone think the US could accomplish something similar in a similar amount of time

In some ways, China is sitting where the US was at the cusp of WW2 in that they account for a large percentage of world heavy industrial capability, and realistically, it's probably double what the US has at this point.

Unfortunately. This piece from the April 2023 edition of the Atlantic does a great job of breaking down the breakdown in US naval/nautical capabilities since the end of the Cold War. It also proposes specific, practical fixes to get us back on track.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/

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[castlebravo92]

Unfortunately. This piece from the April 2023 edition of the Atlantic does a great job of breaking down the breakdown in US naval/nautical capabilities since the end of the Cold War. It also proposes specific, practical fixes to get us back on track.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/

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It's funny / ironic because one of the "conventional wisdom" items is that the US spends more on the military than "the rest of the world combined", which aside from not being true, only about $150 billion of the $700-800 billion budget is procurement. China's procurement budget isn't nearly as far behind at ~$95 billion as people think. Because of PPP, their training budget goes a lot farther than the US dollar does, they have fewer bases to maintain (which sucks up a lot of US dollars), they don't have to pay their soldiers nearly as well as the US does with an all volunteer army and relative wage differences, and they don't roll the same things into their military that the US does (like health care for service members and pensions/retirement costs).

All that being said, China has some serious structural strategic problems that the US doesn't. It's literally surrounded by hostile countries (with the exception of North Korea and Russia). It's the world's largest food and energy importer, and their lines of trade are easily interdictable.

The US is effectively energy independent, and the world's largest food exporter. We are surrounded by two oceans and two friendly powers to the North and South who happen to be our two largest trading partners as well. We're sort of like Rome in the sense that disunity at home is a much bigger threat than the barbarians at the gates, because our oceans make really strong gates.

[Heffe]

This is just some theorizing, but I imagine that the US's interest in Taiwan will also start to decline quite heavily once the new Micron chip factory gets up and running in Ohio between 2024 and 2030.

There's still the geopolitical angle of China gaining Taiwan's GDP (presuming the island nation is brought to heel in an amicable fashion), exerting more influence over the south China Sea, and resultant impact of greater Chinese economic control in Asia. There's also the reduction of US influence in the area, which will surely have an impact on our relations with South Korea, Japan, Australia, etc. But I'm not sure I see the US as being as willing to go to war with our largest trading partner over our 10th largest trading partner if it comes to that, especially not once we're making our own semiconductors. It's going to take some careful statecraft and diplomacy to work through any potential future handover of the island.