Igor Antunov wrote:You of course refer to the military angle, and I better clarify. I was considering total national power, manufacturing, imports, exports, technological, education, expansion of infrastructure (the century long US monopoly on total highway length was ended in 2011 for instance, and will be far surpassed in the coming years), energy expansion, etc.
China does not need the navy the US has, or it's airforce, in order to dominate it's cultural sphere against all intruders, including the US.
An interesting example to illustrate this is the USN Zumwalt DDG. It's a jack of all trades, because the US military has so many environments and areas of operations to consider and must be prepared to move it's assets around, for widely different roles at times. This puts many eggs in fewer baskets as it were and introduces mission specific redundancies. The only alternative would be to have a 1,000 ship navy, with each fleet composed of very different vessels and tailored for each region. Far too unrealistic/expensive so this new class of destroyer is an affordable compromise.
China need only kit out it's navy for regional operations and conditions and maintain limited blue ocean power projection capability like britain or france do, for beating up on small countries far abroad. Thus it's extensive construction of specialized destroyer classes, cheap multi-role frigates, and acquisition of non-dedicated heavy missile cruisers/carrier(s) and it's massive littoral-ship building programme. It need never spend as much as the US on defence in order to dominate it's own region, but it very well may do as a consequence of natural economic growth, but that's decades from now. In short china can concentrate and tailor it's defence apparatus to a far greater degree than the US can in the east asia region. It can have more ships, more specialized ships and thus minimize mission redundancies to reduce costs and thus build even more ships. It can and is sharpening it's fleets/airforce/etc for very specific actions, making it extremely dangerous an opponent for US multirole destroyer/carrier centered outfits blundering into range of the mainland and chinese fleets.
So regionally, China can certainly win a war against the US. Regionally all 3 fleets of around 80 surface combatants and 60 submarines could be put into action simultaneously, supported by 200+ coastal warfare vessels, the 500-strong PLAN air arm, assets of the PLA airforce and 2nd artillery force (anti-ship ballistic missiles) to confront the 60+ ships and 300 aircraft of the US 7th fleet. If Japan were to become involved all bets would be off and the 2nd artillery corps and PLA airforce would see a much greater role (targeting and destruction of US/Japanese airbases and port infrastructure in the region which would prove devastating to long term US presence/military influence in the region-china can rebuild on it's own turf much more cheaply than the US can so far abroad, and if the US gives Japan too much operational responsibility, it sidelines itself into irrelevance once again). The stakes are too high anyway, so it won't happen, and Japan has a defensive fleet with no long range offensive capabilities thus it wouldn't stir the pot.
Further abroad, no, China can't win a war against any modern country with a modern fleet, and probably not for decades. For example, currently, the most China will be able to spare on the Blue Water power projection front would be 2 x Type 052Cs (air-warfare destroyers), 3 x Type 054As (Multi-role Frigates), 1 Type 071 LPD (amphibious landing ship), 2 replenishment ships and 1-2 SSKs for a total of around 9-10 vessels. An advanced fleet with long-range anti-air, anti-ship, anti-submarine and detection capabilities that can be sustained for weeks. A formidable blue-water fleet but not enough to obtain naval supremacy and wrest control from any major fleets abroad. It doesn't quite compare with the British, French or Russian expeditionary fleets and nowhere close to anything the US can muster. It would be merely a support fleet, used to support an intervention force in small coastal countries without real fleets, or it could work with other navies much as it's 3-ship anti-piracy fleet is doing in the gulf of aden presently.
Having said all that, with the inclusion of a fully active carrier, China will have a fully featured modern Blue-Water fleet capability by 2015. With a carrier it will add real power projection to it's 10 ship expeditionary fleet. Sea-Trial testing phase of the present carrier will conclude by the end of this year and carrier air wing to begin testing in 2013 and over the next two years, in the meantime helicopters will be deployed on the carrier and it will be in formal service with the navy. This power projection will grow upon completion of the first 2 indigenous carrier hulls by 2020 and be further complemented by more carriers and helicopter carriers scheduled for the 2020's.
Current serial construction roadmap from 2012-2020 of major surface combatants (not including carriers//helicopter carriers/corvettes/subs/missile craft/etc):
16 x Type 054A
8 x Type 054B
8 x Type 052C
8 x Type 052D
Across 7 shipyards. 24 multi-role frigates and 16 air-warfare destroyers in 8 years. This is VERY slow and conservative expansion. China, as the world's leading ship builder (49% of total 2011 tonnage) could build all these in the next 3 years, but chooses not to in order to not antagonize it's neighbours. Plus it saves resources and money for better end result (each subsequent ship includes improvements, which can't happen if they are all in parallel production). Plus it takes time to train crews. For example the last 4 completed frigates aren't even in commissioned service with the PLAN yet due to crew training.
It is not until the 2030's/2040's that China will begin to directly challenge the US on the far-flung seas. In the context of Chinese planning, this is tomorrow. But as I have hinted at, China does not seek to repeat the mistakes of US military adventurism abroad. It's primary weapon for world conquest is economic. Secure resources, and develop the home base. There is SO much room for development at home, and THIS would assure (to use American military jargon) 'full spectrum dominance' and not just on the military front. The secret ingredient is time.
I have overstepped the boundaries and scope of this thread perhaps, but it is important to put things into the grand strategic context from the perspective of the criticised party. China 'cannot' is a very common theme. It cannot innovate, it cannot win wars, it cannot democratise, it cannot this and that. But as time goes on that theme will become muted as it and reality depart on their separate ways. Realistically it should already be a dead theme, but those little naysayers love to persist no matter what until they're as dead and buried as the empires of yesterday.
Please, the Chinese can't even feed themselves anymore, and their environment is only going to go downhill from here. And there is, in fact, no one in their potential sphere of influence that would be able to provide them the food they require. If it came down to a shooting war, the United States would merely need to wait and shut down international food shipments into China. We could defeat them in the South China Sea without ever fighting in the South China Sea, if the United States were willing to condemn millions of Chinese people to death by starvation (and we've never particularly cared about such costs before). We wouldn't even need to lift our guns, so to speak.
The Chinese economy will not be able to grow at even the rather less stellar rate it has been growing lately--their failing environment and internal resource distribution issues will prevent them from being a serious challenger for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the fact that the United States could basically just torpedo their economy any time we felt like it--we could cut off shipments to and from North America, South America, and Europe. That alone would destroy the Chinese capacity for fighting a war.
There is no way to be a regional power and still try to stand up to a global power; the regional power will always lose in other theaters they aren't prepared to engage in. China will have to gain some serious power projection capabilities to do that, and they're not going to be able to do that without killing off a lot of their economic advantages. China will no doubt be an important player in the 21st century, but it will certainly not grow so strong as to be able to defeat "any feasible coalition of opponents." China's main problem is going to be the insane amount of resources they're going to have to devote to domestic issues; having that many people is a huge overhead that prevents a nation from being able to bring to bear as much in the way of resources as less population dependent states like the United States.
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