China? respect? (Page 2)

I haven't quite figured out yet what your point is.

Is China a rising power in the world?  Yes
Does China have a large and growing economy?  Yes
Does China have a large military?  Yes
Is China potentially dangerous?  Yes
Is China's military on par with ours?  No
Does China commit horrible human rights violations with its own country?  Yes
Would China win a war against us?  No

Lots of random facts.  The real fact of the matter is that their lack of a passable navy and air force to compete with ours means that they wouldn't have a fighting chance.  We could literally sit there and blockade all their ports and bring the country to its knees if it came down to that.  All of the initial fighting would be done by our air force and cruise missles, making the casualty and damage rate way skewed in our favor.  They know this, and they're not stupid about it.

What is the far more attractive option is that the people of China eventually get fed up enough and organized enough to overthrow a regime that will keep them from being a real superpower in the world.  It's been attempted on a small scale a few times, so you know that that element is brewing.  Hopefully it's only a matter of time.

This is just a "what if" to present a different point of view.

What if China is a country with a much longer history than the U.S. and their general attitude is "Well I guess this 'America' has been around long enough for us to have to start paying attention to them.  If it turns out we get along with them, I hope they aren't gone in another two or three hundred years.  It's so hard to find other nations that last."

I realize that this is not exactly the case, but I'm demonstrating the point that not everyone regards us as the super power we think we are.  Don't get defensive, I'm not saying we aren't the super power we think we are, just that to understand how the people of another country think of us you have to understand their history.  China had well over 3,000 years of history before our country was even "discovered" by the Europeans.  Many people think of China as being mostly rural and backwards (technologically).  And to some extent that is true.  If you were doing something for thousands of years and someone new came along with new ideas and new ways of doing things you wouldn't be in a big hurry to jump on board with them. 

I know I'm making some gross generalizations here and I'm not 100% right about everything, but I'm throwing it out there as food for thought.

I have no idea how this relates the original post.  I'll go flog myself for my second hijack of the day before 9am. 

hangloose has a very good point. The Chinese take the long view.

Not that I think a Sino-American war is even remotely likely at this point, but one other thing to consider militarily was Maos contention that China would win an all out nuclear exchange simply because they could (and if pushed he was willing to) sustain casualties of a billion people and still have twice the US population left. How's that for a mindset?

I'm sure the DoD folks responsible for planning for that contingency have an interesting job.

Any "conventional" war, yes.  It's the "non-conventional" / "assymetric" fights that give *any* conventional force fits.

Colonists vs. the British

Vietnam vs. the French

Vietnam vs. the US

Iraqi Insurgents vs. the US

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Hmmm, in most of those, the side on it's own turf "won".

-C 

MHO.

China is a SuperPower on the in one sense.  But she still have a long way to go before becoming a  SuperPower that has major influence to the rest of the world.  There are LOTS to deal with internally. 

You don't leap ahead 50 years in military technology in 10 years.  I don't think people understand exactly how far ahead we are in that aspect.  We're replacing equipment and technology that is far superior to what 99% of the world has right now.  They have lots of potential in many aspects, but don't kid yourself about the military one.

If we are hit by just a couple nukes all the UAVs in the world will not matter.  The most efficient method we have of stopping a nuke is by positioning a battleship in the water and firing missils at it as its launched.  It has been a while (year and a half) since I took the class where I learned this but if I remember correctly we only have a bout a 1 min window to hit the nuke before it is too high.  This plan could very well work with N Korea, being that they are a peninusla, but China could fire a nuke from far enough inland that we don't have this option.