More generally, Beijing appears poised to translate its growing economic power into greater military strength and geopolitical weight, as indeed a Chinese defense white paper acknowledged last year. Most of the Chinese aims that run counter to U. In addition, Beijing has recently taken a number of steps to cooperate with the United States on security matters: signing the Chemical Weapons Convention and nuclear test ban treaty, terminating its assistance to nuclear facilities in Pakistan, pledging to cut off ballistic missile transfers to Pakistan as well as nuclear and anti-ship cruise missile trade with Iran, and quietly restraining the North Koreans.
It faces enormous challenges in its agricultural, environmental and banking sectors, which its arteriosclerotic central government is ill-equipped to address. Looking at these facts, the new commander-in-chief of U.
Pacific forces, Admiral Dennis Blair, has declared that China will not represent a serious strategic threat to the United States for at least twenty years. Raw size is deceptive. Then, too, the Pentagon estimates that only about 20 percent of those ground forces are even equipped to move about within China. A still smaller number possess the trucks, repair facilities, construction and engineering units, and other mobile assets needed to project power abroad. Morrison Even at the higher estimates, China spends less than 25 percent of what the United States spends on defense, while supporting a force twice as large.
This basic disparity will not change anytime soon. First, as noted, China faces enormous economic challenges that limit its ability to fund a military expansion. Second, even if China begins to close the gap with the United States, it starts from a position of marked inferiority.
China is in no position even to attempt this scale of effort. B Bates Gill Michael E. As Congressman Barney Frank has sardonically observed, China did recently acquire its first aircraft carrier.
But it then immediately anchored it in Macao and transformed it into a recreation center. More detailed assessments of Chinese military capability and readiness tell a similar story.
The rest rely on s or even older technology. By contrast, all of the U. Two additional factors render an even bleaker assessment: supporting equipment and overall military readiness. It acknowledges that Chinese troops are generally patriotic, fit and good at basic infantry fighting skills, but then goes on to say:. Ground force leadership, training in combined operations, and morale are poor.
The soldiers, for the most part, are semi-literate rural peasants; there is no professional NCO [non-commissioned officer] corps, per se. Military service, with its low remuneration and family disruption, is increasingly seen as a poor alternative to work in the private sector. Even that will leave them twenty years behind the American curve—and the remaining 90 percent of the force more obsolescent yet.
Some would argue that this type of analysis misses the point in any case. There is a kernel of truth in this concern—militaries, after all, routinely seek to exploit the weaknesses of their adversaries. Every province has an annual conscription quota, with each conscript required to complete two years of military service. This year, after a delay because of the COVID pandemic, the military began holding recruitment and induction twice a year instead of once. And despite accumulating more advanced weapons in recent years, the PLA still has a large amount of older and more outdated equipment, some of it built using technology from the former Soviet Union, which collapsed 30 years ago, according to analysts.
It has only two large aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong, with the third aircraft carrier Type still under construction. The US has 11 aircraft carriers, the most of any country. Potentially more of an issue, however, according to some analysts, is that the PLA simply lacks contemporary combat experience. The military units still organise various exercises resembling real combat.
In the same time period, the army also conducted ground drills in southeastern Fujian province — directly across the sea from Taiwan — amid increasingly loud assertions over its claim that Taiwan is part of its territory. Lead Over China. June 23 hearing Chief of Naval Operations Adm.
June 24 hearing The facts bear them out: United States vs. United States China Estimated nuclear stockpile in 3, ICBM silos Estimated nuclear weapons deployed on ICBMs or on bomber bases in 1, 20 Combat aircraft 2, 1, Combat helicopters 5, Total Ships and submarines Ballistic missile submarines 14 Ohio Class subs 4 Ballistic Missile submarines Nuclear powered aircraft carriers 11 , with modern aircraft 2 lower capability smaller carriers U. Navy has at least a advantage in tonnage over China U.
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