Why does everyone think China and the U.S. are gearing up for war?

No it isn't. Were at a impasse.

 

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He's right you know. After all we are less than 300 years old. We just have a few outdated systems in need of overhaul. Constitution could probably use a few more amendments. We should probably remodel the country to the changing planet.

 

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They are - as you just mentioned, they're huge trading partners.

They are, obviously. Where have you been for the last 30 years?

Moreover, who is this "everyone" who thinks that China and the US are gearing up for war. I don't know of anyone who thinks that.

Lots of questionable assumptions built in to your post as premises here.

 

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The Obvious

In truth, I didn't think "everyone" was.

No, really. A war would the worst possible thing for both countries. Even beyond the usual fact that war is the worst possible thing for all participants.

Again, in truth, I find the question beyond ridiculous. Hell, "stupid" is insufficient.

Or, to be more civilized about it, see String at #20 above.

 

I can think of a few reasons. The u.s is ALWAYS gearing up for war against someone. The u.s. is running out of money, and therefore is desprate. Desprate regimes do desprate things. Think nazi germany. Rather than allowing another country to overtake it as a world power, it will start a war. The u.s regime also has a long history of war profiteering. The u.s has increased the number of troops surrounding China. The u.s regime has announced that it will be moving 60% of its naval power to east Asia. The u.s regime is occupying Afganistan to prevent railways, and pipelines linking China, to the west. u.s regime overthrew Gadafi, and props up a south sudanese regime, resulting in billions in losses for China. The u.s regime is supporting taiwan, a rogue province of China. This would be the equivalent of China arming Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico, and urging for them to split from the mainland. Another reason the u.s may want to go to war is to avoid paying back their debt, but by destroying China, the u.s regime eliminates a serious economic competitor.

 

Also a huge emerging market, so that's insane.

 

China has been building "Carrier Busters", for destroying aircraft carriers, what country has the most aircraft carriers in their fleet? Also China has been building "ghost cities", my thought is they will have cities to populate after theirs are destroyed by war.

 

China is not gearing up for WWIII, which is an economic war. China has already won it. - You will find that out soon, when they stop financing US deficits as they no longer need to sell goods to US, with their rapidly growing intra-Asian trade and trade with their supplier of raw material, food stocks and energy. Like Brazil, Australia, Canada, NZ and several S. African states all of which, except Canada, now have China as a more important trading partner than the US.
S. Korea now trades more with China than the US despite all those Korean cars you see on US roads.

In a few years, US will have a positive trade surplus with China as US sell China soy bean, etc. and China sells very little to the US. Then it will be China buying real goods with printed paper - I.e. paying for the soy it imports with some of the US treasury bonds it holds.

 

Media sensationalism. The idea of war sells papers. There's no motivation there; it would be bad for both parties.

"why doesn't China try and raise its peoples standard of living?"

Where do you get the idea that China isn't trying to raise the standard of living? From what I have read and seen, this is the opposite of the truth. I think you need to do a little more research...

 

Something you need to understand about politics, is that it is very much like chess.

Are you familiar with the concept of being in check? The king can not move such that he remains in check- indeed, no piece can move except to protect the king. The king is never actually killed in chess- there's just a check mate (where the king is captured).

With a carrier buster, China establishes a zone of check around its waters, preventing the United States from even considering meddling in that territory. It's the ability to do something that grants political leverage- it never actually has to be done. China does not intend to ever use the Carrier Busters.

Look at, for example, the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia during the cold war- neither party actually wanted to go to war, and the stockpile of nuclear weapons acted as assurance against that.

This has nothing to do with war. You need to do some reading on China's real estate bubble. It will all become clear with a little background in economics (although it may be equally worrying- bubbles tend to pop... and if it does, the consequences will never be the same).

 

To FTLinmedium:

I think you are correct on both your post 30 replies. According to US Navy intelligence evaluation, China has a now well tested “ICBM” with 1800 mile range that can sink even a high-speed, zigzagging, US carrier with non-nuclear warhead because in the very super sonic last part of the dive it is guided, not ballistic. (Hence my quotes on ICBM). Both radar and optical guidance are strongly suspected to be in use. China also has many orbital assets that tell it where the carriers are with up dates during the “ICBM´s” flight out. However, this will not and does not keep the Seventh Fleet out of the S. China Sea – it just assures it will never fire on China.

You may recall a few years ago Chinese fighters forced a US resonance plane to land in China. They stripped out all the intelligence collection gear and even one of the motors and then the US got the hulk and the crew back only by agreeing to pay the shipping charges! We may not like to admit it, but China already “owns” the S. China Sea – in part because they have more than twice as many subs as the US does or at least 5 times more than US could ever send into the S. China Sea (US needs to keep most elsewhere.) plus many dozens of mobile shore-launched cruise missiles that were originally built to intimidate Taiwan.

Right on second point too: China gave the peasants right to lease their traditional small farm plots, so about 150 million former “pig farmers” are being urbanized in this and the next 5 year plan. They plan 100 new cities of 1 million population each to house 2/3 of them but can not perfectly schedule their construction so some are not yet occupied.

Letting big agri-corporations form and rent the farms was very difficult to do within the communistic dogma, but they had no choice. They needed more efficient large scale agri-industrial food production like the US has. The CCP also needed millions of new workers to build world largest network of highest speed trains, a new power plant every 10 days, the roads China as world´s largest seller of cars will need, etc.

I intend no insult by calling these farmers “pig farmers” as China already has more pigs than all the rest of the world´s total and needs to about double that as pork is their favorite meat and demand for it is rapidly growing with the double digit real increases in salaries.

BTW, even if I am a little late, welcome to sciforums - we need more posters who know some facts - have their head on straight, etc.

 

Agreed. We aren't going to war since any person with a college education knows that such a war would destroy each nation and likely the planet.

~String

 

Great points. Great reply. I totally agree.

~String

 

That's overstated by far. Increases in capabilities do certainly raise the stakes, but it takes something very, very extreme to justify the binary "zone of check" analogy from chess. The fact of the matter is that China will have to think twice about escalating to strikes against carriers, as the USA likewise has various ways to escalate in response to that. What this stuff changes is to do away with the former situation where China had no real way to respond, and so the USA could "meddle" with almost total impunity. That the USA now has to think twice about such things is just that - it's a long way from barring America from these waters entirely.

They also provided cover for both sides to pursue less direct aggressions against one another, for example the various proxy wars and actions for/against various "spheres of influence." Which is exactly what China wants here - the elbow room to push around neighbors in the South China Sea, Taiwan, etc. Direct conflict between superpowers is not in either party's interest, what they are doing is jockeying for supremacy outside their borders.

 

This basically sums it up. Good riddance.

 

Thanks Billy T, superstring01, and quadraphonics,

It's a stretched analogy, but it's the easiest way I could think of explaining it to somebody who don't understand politics. Of course, what you said is more accurate.

If you have a good, easy to understand analogy, I'd be glad to adopt it for future use if you think the chess one is too inaccurate to be useful. I'm always looking for good analogies to collect

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Absolutely. It promises to be a very... interesting decade.

 

For my money, the best board-game analogy for geopolitics remains Risk.

Maybe, maybe not. USSR was actually a much more formidable competitor for the USA - China doesn't espouse any revolutionary global ideology and - apart from some chauvinism in the South China Sea and Taiwan - seems generally content with the American world order and its ability to prosper within such. Frankly, these implied expectations people have of China, where they're supposed to wrest global leadership away from America, seem like so much projection and insecurity to me. China doesn't seem to want the responsibility or the headaches.

 

I would agree, but everything else is worse. Some world.

 

China will not cause one, but US (or its proxy: Japan) may provoke a limited one in S. China Sea (as US did Asian part of WWII in June 1941 by freezing all Japanese assets and shutting off 80% of Japan´s oil supply, leaving Japan no choice but the disparate attack on US fleet at Pear Harbor, made ASAP, before running out of oil.)

I suggested, seven years ago that China was winning the economic war, wanted to turn the US into an economic colony due to the great production of food crops in the US mid-west. I PREDICTED that Brazil would definitely become an “economic colony” of China here:

Now others are starting to understand at least the part about Brazil / China´s long term relationship:

Brazil is trying not to just be China´s economic colony supplying low value added materials. For example, Requiring Chery Motors to at least assemble cars it wants to increasingly sell to Brazilians, etc. in a large new Brazilian plant. That approach may work for a decade or so - I.e. Brazil can supply cheaper labor than China has now, just as Mexico is doing.

 

Japan is again provoking China:

Both nations should agree that neither sends military forces near the Islands - only monitor them by satellites.