I’ve noticed that nothing ever seems to work out for a century the way people truly believe it will at the beginning of the century. Who in 1800 (okay, 1801) could have even remotely predicted what would happe? And in 1900/01? No, I think all these reports of China rising are going to be proved false.
Myself, I think it will be India’s century. India has the English-language skills that China lacks. Of course, it’s often fractured English in India, but still a couple of legs up on China. It’s got the labor pool. I think India is worth watching; I’d put my money on it, not China to emerge on top in the region this century. China just seems like it’s ready to implode.
Another reason for India over China is demographics. At a lecture I attended last year the speaker showed the population pyramids for China and India along with projections for 20-50 years on.
I can’t recall the exact details but China has far too few young people and in a few decades they are going to have a lot of problems. India on the other hand had a much healthier population pyramid and thus was far more likely to do well in the long run.
I agree on principle – China has gone a very interesting route with their arsenal. Note this image of a typical U.S. missile’s reentry vehicles. Those are Mk21 RVs, and they are more or less representative of every nuke in our arsenal. Each one could levy unimaginable destruction (alright, about half a megaton of destruction) on a target. Now check out this photo of China’s idea of a good reentry vehicle size – those are Dong Feng 4 ICBMs, and the truck in front is carrying the reentry vehicle. The itty-bitty things in the foreground are people, for scale[sup]1[/sup]. :eek:
Sure, we could nuke the Three Gorges Dam in a brilliant but understated pinpoint strike – but they’d pay us back by bouncing blast waves off the walls of the San Fernando Valley a few times. We could do one of their big port cities, but they’d just pay us back with all of Hawaii[sup]2[/sup] at once, ensuring that we never project carrier power into the Pacific again. They don’t need more than three or four nukes.
Any weather or reconnaissance satellites that pass anywhere over China’s territory would also be forfeit due to their ability to do ASAT kills in low earth orbit – and the resulting debris would prevent reestablishing an orbital presence at that altitude for years if not decades.
And yes, they would probably also put in a “sell” order on all of their U.S. Bonds. By declaring that they believe us to be bankrupt, China could effectively bankrupt us.
Yes, they’re probably average Chinese-sized people, so the scale is a little off. But still: :eek: !!
Do you nuke the big volcano and hope for earthquakes and/or lava rain? Do you aim just off the coast and go for a boiling tidal wave? Maybe airburst over Pearl Harbor? So many decisions!
My money is China invading Alaska when we steal their oil reserve, which will happen to be the last one in the entire world. We’ll annex Canada, and everyone will nuke everyone else.
Luckily by then, we’ll have quite a few self-sufficient vaults set up so that our population will live on, even though it will probably have to deal with mutants, ghouls, etc.
Oh wait, that was Fallout. Nevermind.
Nah…we just move back into Taiwa—er, the Republic of China while the PLA POWs are rebuilding Pearl.
Seriously though, yeah, I do agree that, while we might be able to take China right out, we’d still get badly f’ckd up ourselves.
That is, of course, assuming we can’t take out their nuclear capability in a sneak attack. It’ll be tricky, and I’m not saying we wouldn’t still get our hair mussed, but we might be able to…uh, “It would be tricky.” That’s what I meant to say. Yes.
Could the Chinese use space debris (solar system type not man made)as a weapon ?
We all know that a fairly small asteroid would take out planet Earth :but theres plenty more lesser rocks floating around out there not too faraway that maybe could have their orbits amended to cause heavy damage on the U.S. below.
China is advancing its space programme as is India ,Japan and even (if it ever really happens ) the U.K.
Fanciful I know but theoretically possible if nothing else.
