In the next 10-12 years as China continues to grow economically and militarily, what if they decided to use it to build a greater Chinese empire. For 2003 estimates China has about 1.3 billion people, military manpower 15-49 availability of about 376 million, fit for military service 15-49 about 206 million, and 11 million reaching military age anually. China builds its forces, secures it southern flank against India and Vietnam, then marches north and west into Siberia and Russia on its way towards Europe with say 30 million troops. Beyond nuclear or other wmd, what could other countries even do? China does not have to consider opinion polls in its political/military moves. It goes to conquer, not to pacify in occupied territories. What is there to keep them from ending up in France?

For stats:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html

let me ask one question : why should they do that ???

chinas leaders are very wise ; they don´t need the world in chinas hands !

A bigger tax base, more natural resources, more room to fit your billion people in, added security, and the fact that the more they have the less their enemies will. China's had a far worse recent history than the US had and we always get picked on for ours.

China's had a far worse recent history than the US had and we always get picked on for ours.

they don´t tell us they are "the good guys" ;)

empires come and fall ... that was always the case - that will always be the case !
and china knows it :cool:

You mean Clockwood, that the chinese leaders might have the same mindset behind that communist facade about resource-explotation as some neo-conservatives?

The chinese are up to SOMETHING that is for sure, but why settle for earth, they will go for the moon and beyond.

The current situation where people in all the countries buy cheap Chinese consumer electronics is a better tax base than the one that millitary action would bring, but at some point they might feel bold enough to attempt invade Taiwan witout paying attention to American warnings....

I believe this is the time where Stokes and nico step into the thread and discuss the pros and cons of Aegis class cruisers ;)

In the past the US has blockaded Taiwan when China has threatened to invade; naval blockade is hard to argue with or ignore. It's one of the nicer things the US does, actually, although I don't know entirely what motivates it.

The chinese are up to SOMETHING that is for sure, but why settle for earth, they will go for the moon and beyond.

right , i guess that´s their goal !
but they´ll probably never start a war here on earth .... i hope so :D

Truth learn about Chinese history, you would know China expands when she is attacked first, I have never seen China invade pre-emptively. Apart from the 1979 war, and 1963, but they really didn't gain much. If you want learn more about China I suggest you look up my China threads. Just a word from the wise here, China's GDP by 2020 should be around $24 trillion raping the US beyond belief.

Because we have ready-made air, cropland, and radiation protection. Oh... and it costs ~$1000 to lift just one pound of material into orbit. Try and do that with a few million people.

raping the US beyond belief
...and the rest of the world will get the same. And then someone gets desperate and genetically engineers a super-blight that causes massive rice crop failures and much of the world starves. Wheee...

Originally posted by nico
Truth learn about Chinese history, you would know China expands when she is attacked first, I have never seen China invade pre-emptively. Apart from the 1979 war, and 1963, but they really didn't gain much. If you want learn more about China I suggest you look up my China threads. Just a word from the wise here, China's GDP by 2020 should be around $24 trillion raping the US beyond belief.

I am not asking about Chinese history, which btw the Chinese have been fighting themselves and each other for several thousand years making their own conquests.

China is now bursting with people and ripe for Lebensraum and additional resources. I think the potential is certainly there.

I agree that the sheer populationsize in China poses many challenges. Even more so, their economical growth.

I used to worry about the stance of the united States regarding industry vs environment, but if many Chinese trade their bike for a car, than they would produce one hell of a smog that LA and Jakarta would be like breathing fresh air in the Swiss Alps...

What I must hand to the chinese, that they have actively tried to do some birthcontrol instead of borderexpansion.

Estimated is that India in 2050 will have 1,628 billion people, 234 million more than China. This shows that while chinese birthcontrol programs are not adequately succesfull they are doing better than the neighbours to keep some room...

the estimated top 10 in 2050:

India 1.628.000.000
China 1.394.000.000
VS 422.000.000
Pakistan 349.000.000
Indonesië 316.000.000
Nigeria 307.000.000
Bangladesh 255.000.000
Brazilië 221.000.000
Congo 181.000.000
Ethiopië 173.000.000

Most interesting to see how Europe and Russia drop out of the top 10 and how the Africans grow their population despite hunger war and HIV (but that doesn't tell much about quality of life/GDP and could well be some rabbit breeding survival strategy)

India and china have more resources and know-how to accomedate such large populations in a reasonable manner than the africans

Source:

http://www.prb.org/pdf/WorldPopulationDS03_Eng.pdf

provocative thought:
the israelis and the Europeans should be somewhat worried about these statistics , because especially the africans will produce a lot of new hungry and angry muslims and has collision course written al over it. Maybe the socialist and green parties will come the astounding conclusion that we should copy the right wing Israeli government and put a wall around Europe to keep the environment "clean"

With these overall world population growth rates, even full scale nuclear wars might not be enough to take ourselves out of busines
:p :bugeye:

While we're posting hypotheticals, I think this indicates the imperatives of a) multiculturalism, and b) an engineered virus that will sterilize a large majority of humanity. The extremely positive economic and environmental implications of a nonviolent human population decline are worth very serious consideration. But that's another thread (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31173).

Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today.

From a Michael Crichton speech here (http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/index.html) (click on "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club"). It's a fascinating read, by the way, about religion and environmentalism mostly.

China is merely a waking giant at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, throughout its several thousand year history excluding 1500-2003 China, or various states within China, has been the most powerful, advanced nation the world has ever known. I've wondered what the result would have been had China and Rome gone to war with each other, in spite of the immense distances their armies would have to travel. It would have been incredible, I think. Titanic. Or if the Chinese had battled early Medieval Europe, if Urban II had declared a Crusade against the Chinese as opposed to the Arabs. Or both.

So it seems possible at the very least that, finally, when we're back in a period with both East and West being extraordinarily powerful we will witness an actual military conflict between the two, culminating in perhaps, naive people like myself would say, the war to end all wars. Who would win if Europe and North America battled Asia? Would anyone win at all, even?

But then again, if we can see something like this happening, I'm sure the guys up top in America can see it too. There was that airplane crisis thing we had with China a few months before 9/11, where it seemed clear that Bush was trying to stand up to the Chinese, instead of appeasing them, as future U.S presidents may possibly wind up doing to protect the safety of their fading nation. I'm not sure if it was a very good thing for Bush to do (not suprisingly), in any case it didn't seem to do any good. I mean, the Chinese were going to give back our men, they wouldn't be stupid enough to risk a fight with us now when there's still the possibility of a Coalition Victory. It seemed more like some testosterone splooging more than anything else, like the Moors demanding something from Isabella and Ferdinand just for dignity's sake even though they were clearly on their way back to Africa.

What is to keep them from getting to France? I would say, Russia, perhaps. The Russian winter. Who was the last guy to conquer Russia, anyway? How many before have tried? Napoleon, Wilhem, Hitler. Each one was defeated. Each one was also defeated in spite of overwhelming odds and dire situations. It takes time to roll tanks across Russia, because Russia is frickin huge. Time enough to wait for the Winter from any point in the year, I'd say, time enough to recuperate in order to drive the Chinese back.

I am not asking about Chinese history

But you want to talk about China's future...sad.

China is now bursting with people and ripe for Lebensraum and additional resources. I think the potential is certainly there.

What is this? Do you think the CPC is going to become this new Imperial power worldwide? LOL, let's come back the 21st century shall we?. China's goals as someone said here not on earth, they are in outer space in the first place. China will gain, now read carefully. INFLUENCE in those regions you speak of. Why would China want to add more burdens on herself by adding poor regions? What China is doing is moving the masse of China's population in Russia, Central Asia, SE Asia, and even America to gain influence. Also to create a larger sphere of influence in those countries economies and government. China in my estimation doesn’t want all of Siberia, rather China wants to monopolize Siberia. China wants to suck all the resources out, while Russia remains in nominal control. Why does China want to be charged with empire building and face the Russians, Americans, etc in a possible nuke war? LOGICS here ppl! China already is monopolizing Wal-Mart, and the American market. And guess what...no war, no invasion, no nuke attack! Why? Pure and simple economics. China will have vassal states like NK already is, Pakistan, Iran, Burma, Laos, Cambodia. Taiwan will eventually come back into the fold. If peacefully then the Chinese would receive huge amounts of FOREX, and modern American military hardware. In 2001 China had over $350 billion of FDI, and in 2002 in increase to around $52 billion FDI, so around a $1 billion invested every week! Already China has surpassed the US in terms of FDI inflows, and is inevitability going to replace the US as the world's economic engine. Hong Kong has the world's freest economy, China has the world's biggest market. But China has a natural enemy. India is by far the only nation that could challenge the Chinese in this century. India has ever increasing FDI flows, and has a very healthy R&D sector, which is China's greatest weakness. China in comparison to the Indians, aren't creating brands. Instead the Chinese are depending on the West for economic growth. That IMO is the single greatest weakness for China. India on the other hand has successfully created a new silicon valley in Bangalore. India by 2010 should have a true, Blue water navy, and SSBN's. China hasn't even fielded a carrier yet. China is not going to invade anyone (Apart from Taiwan possibly). But China will monopolize which in essence could be significantly worse.

I think it would be very difficult to convince the people of Tibet that China does not have expansionist goals.

According to the Chinese historically they never granted Tibet independence. The British recognized the Tibetans yes, and they got recognition from most of the world's countries. But Tibet was never really legitimately a independent state. China does have historical claims to the land, as she does Taiwan. Surely China wants to regain what was hers, you know China was the country that suffered the worst from Imperialism. Also in 1958-9 who was going to stop China, from invading defenceless Tibet? What Truth is saying China to confront Nuclear superpowers here... let's be realistic.

FROM MICHAEL CRICHTON:


Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

A rather critical look at how many of the environmentalists think, and I agree wholly with what is being said. Many people approach environmentalism with a happy-peace-love perspective, feeling safe at the end of the day when they can crawl back into their houses and avoid the real horrors of nature (not that these horrors are 'negative', but they are an integral part of nature that most humans don't feel comfortable around). To truly accept nature, you must accept the destructive and amoral forces that come with it, not the imaginary human pretense applied to it.
Environmentalists must also realize that technology is not evil, it is a gift of human genius given to us BY nature herself. It can be used responsibly by those who are responsible enough.

I have never thought that a historical claim to land should supercede the choice of the people living there.

That land was never independant from China, it was always in some way under nominal or direct Chinese control. It's like Taiwan, Tibet was just another renegade province. So really China didn't violate any territory, but her own. Also most Tibetans now would rather like with the CPC then with the Theocracy before. Also the Han Chinese I believe outnumber Tibetans now, so it's well within China's control.

Everything I see in China leads me to believe that they plan to rise through economic initiatives, not military. As has already been pointed out here, despite the size of their military force in manpower, they have not squandered a huge chunk of their GDP on military hardware. They watched the Soviets make that mistake and it's arguably what brought them down.

They're taking their first post-Mao baby steps into a hybrid capitalist-communist economy, learning as they go. So far they've diligently managed to avoid ruining Hong Kong, which is a big conduit into the Western economy. They're doing a lot of things right, things that futurists like Toffler were championing decades ago, like jumping directly from an agricultural economy into the Information Age instead of covering the continent with steel mills and filling the air with smoke (except of course for their universal tobacco habit). Building cell phone towers instead of telephone poles.

I think the key to this question is how the Three Gorges Dam project works out. A lot of us are holding our breath because the fate of the world could literally hang on it. The world's largest engineering project ever, planned by socialist dreamers, built by foreign mercenaries, and inspected by Third World bureaucrats. I wonder if Las Vegas has a line on this?

If it works, they'll have (one of?) the world's longest waterway navigable by oceangoing ships, turning cities as far inland as Chengdu into seaports, which throughout the history of civilization have always been economic powerhouses. And they'll have hydroelectric power "too cheap to meter," as every engineer has always said of his pet power generation project. Rather than conquering Russia, they'll be wealthy enough to just turn Siberia into their breadbasket, drawing Russia into their sphere of hegemony by economic rather than military colonialism.

If it fails, on the other hand, they will have wasted all their momentum on it. Destroyed much of their tourist industry by covering archeological sites with water and causing the extinction of popular ecotourism species like the freshwater dolphin. Ruined tens of millions of backyard gardens that allowed a substantial chunk of the population to at least feed themselves. Caused huge social upheaval by relocating entire cities. Not to mention the incredible damage that could be wrought depending on the failure mode of the dam. If it waits until it is filled to the brim and then breaks, the flood might kill more people that World War II.

If Three Gorges succeeds, China won't need a war machine. If it fails, then we'd all better duck and cover. There will be a billion angry, hungry, Chinese people.

If it waits until it is filled to the brim and then breaks, the flood might kill more people that World War II.


:bugeye: I know the burst of that dam won't kill more then 52 million people.

If Three Gorges succeeds, China won't need a war machine. If it fails, then we'd all better duck and cover. There will be a billion angry, hungry, Chinese people.

I don't think that 1 billion will starve if the dam fails either. But yes there will be lots of angry Chinese, and the quite possibly the future of the CPC is at stake. This is a huge project, with huge implications. It's like opening up the American west, look at California, and the world's 5th largest economy in her own right! If this dam works then China's coastal cities will be relieved of some pressure, (Shanghai's population has been revised, now 20 million inhabitants). Eventually you will have cities in the middle of China with ports, and not dependant on the coast anymore. 1/9 of China's electricity will be generated at the dam, and will largely eclipse any other dam in the world. But the dam has been called into question, a lot of nepotism, and some say even sub-standard building methods have put the project into doubt. Also the Yangtze river is I think only second to the Amazon in terms of silt build up. So the pressure on the dam could be significant. As FR has said, China is not depending on her military-industrial complex to further her cause, hardly ever in history has that worked. China is going to pose a threat to the US, India, Russia, etc. But I don't think China is stupid enough to fight a war she can't win.