Chinese militarism

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1. Christian Gates says:

   2005/07/22 at 00:39

   History in fact does agree with you. Commerce is at the core of military power. The most commercially powerful states have almost always been superior militarily to their less commercially successful counterparts, particularly over anything other than the immediate term. You can overwhelm someone initially, but you might not be able to sustain your advantage (The WWII Germans & Japanese are good examples).
   My unstudied gut reaction is that China’s military power is an unsustainable sham, too, as it always has been. Why do I say this? Their best weapons are imports from Russia. And their economy is largely based on exporting low-tech goods. In a real war, with no commerce, their economy tanks, and they lose their access to high-tech developments. China lacks the internal resources to develop unique high-tech stuff.
   Just like the Persians at Lepanto – unable to face down the tiny Italian city states – the Chinese in a conflict with Taiwan would likely suffer exorbidantly to succeed.
   Also, keep in mind that China is internally unstable and only exists in its present form due to fairly massive repression of its masses. With a large external abnormality, such as a war, it’s not clear that there wouldn’t be significant internal struggle. If you review Chinese history, which I’m sure you’ve done, you’ll recall that peasant uprising have basically ended nearly every Chinese dynasty, with the exception being, of course, the Mongols, who weren’t peasants. Some, if not all, of those uprisings were coincident with war or conflict.
   cdg
2. Fresh says:

   2005/07/25 at 11:56

   Gen,
   Excellent piece to blog about. I am catching up on some serious blog hopping. Hope all is well with u. That TM Star Wars mix…I MUST download it tomorrow.
   peace, my friend.
   F!