If China and the US went to war who would win?

Great Debates
21

“The U.S. would almost immediately achieve air supremacy. And that’s pretty much all she wrote, these days.”

I don’t think the Chinese air force would be a match for ours, and we would have pretty strong air superiority, but I wouldn’t say we’d necessarily have air supremacy. Though the North Vietnamese fielded a tiny air force, they managed to throw up some decent anti-aircraft at our bombers over Hanoi, enough that a bombing mission was NOT a “you push the button, we do the rest” exercise. (Ask Senator McCain.) And with American pilots in enemy hands, the reason for the war comes into the picture. If we were pissed at the Chinese for some terrorist or Pearl-Harbor-style attack, having our pilots in enemy hands would only stiffen the American people’s resolve. But if it were a war over Taiwan or something that the home crowd doesn’t feel THAT strongly about, the prospect of long and painful captivity for the bomber crews would cause the public to call long and loud for a quick end to the war to bring the prisoners home.

As to comparisons between a hypothetical war with China and the Gulf War, just remember that Iraq had to buy its tanks, rockets, etc. from other countries, while China makes its own. (In fact, China probably supplied a lot of Iraq’s weapons in the years before the Gulf War.) That makes a BIG difference in how long the Chinese could maintain a war effort compared to the Iraqis.

22

I don’t think Vietnam counts as a demonstration of American power. We didn’t have full reign in that “war” to just run around and blow shit up. Come on, America couldn’t take Vietnam? That’s like saying New England could successfully leave the union even if everyone agreed.

The factors that took place in our “loss” there were a gross misuse of human life on both sides. We weren’t there on our behalf, and we weren’t completely running the show.

I think we could probably take China after a long, long struggle, but it wouldnt be an unconditional surrender. Everyone here has brought up some excellent points, though, so no need for me to join in.

23

The Inchon Landing allowed the UN Forces to push the North Koreans up to the Yalu River, which then led to China entering the war.

I think most historians would agree that the war was a ‘draw’, not a loss for the US. However it was a loss that cost the US some 40,000 casualties, while China paid with around a million casualties.

As for the original post, I think the US would win over the Chinese in say another Korean War. The Gulf War demonstrated the technological gap that we have over Soviet military hardware.

24

Don’t count on Canada to defend anything. Our military ‘force’ is currently on the short side of 60,000 strong, which might just defend downtown Toronto from rampaging shoppers (but then again, perhaps not). Our technology is so up-to-date that we just replaced our entire submarine fleet, which was three Oberon-class subs commissioned in the 1960’s (two were still seaworthy) with four hand-me-down 1980’s Upholder-class (now Victoria-class) subs from the Royal Navy that were so effective they’d been mothballed since 1993 (after serving for five whole years). Our Coast Guard uses increasingly unreliable 40-year-old Sea King helicopters for search-and-rescue.

The Sea Kings are not scheduled to be replaced until 2005, and it was really impressive what we could do with them 30 years ago, but it’s really pathetic what we can do today. Good luck us fending off any Chinese without our NORAD neighbours.
(That said, I don’t mind having a pathetic armed force. I’m more of a passive-resistance kind of guy; Eric Frank Russell is my guru.)

25

Just out of curiousity, I think the Geneva Conventions prohibit us launching missiles from space onto other countries (though presumably not launching them into other countries’ missiles) but is there anything that says in the event of a war with, say, China we’re not allowed to send up a space shuttle and ram the hell out of their satellites? Ok, maybe ramming things with the space shuttle isn’t a great idea, but you get the idea. A little space walk with a pair of needle-nose pilers could really hurt hi-tech reconnaisance.

26

Not entirely true. Air superiority by a couple of thousand aircraft is not the same as pinning down 2 million infantry on foot. You could knock out every tank, bunker, AAA and SAM position in China and still be faced with ten times the number of infantry. And I don’t believe China places such reliance on C3I and armour as the US or other western nations does.

27

American air superiority depends on airfields. Without airfields, the only air superiority we can count on is what our carriers give us, which is nothing to sneeze at, but won’t be anything close to what we had in the Gulf War. Carrier aircraft would be very busy protecting the carriers themselves. They’d probably tear up any Chinese air or naval assault force sent against the carriers, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything like what Desert Storm did to the Iraqis.

If the Chinese are smart, at the first sign we’re getting involved, they’ll launch massive air strikes against the airfields of whatever country has offered to host us. That will buy them a lot of time.

28

Europe.

29

I don’t think the US has any good reason to attack China in a military campaign. However, if the Chinese wanted to attack and destroy American military, political and cultural targets, for whatever reason, it would probably be done via terrorism and guerilla tactics. The only Chinese invasion force the US should worry about are the fleets of merchant ships docking in US ports on a daily basis. The Chinese aren’t stupid; they’ve worked out the numbers too. They definitely would not be landing on the shores of Venice beach. If they were adamant about destroying American property, they would smuggle nuclear weapons into the US through a myriad of routes. I’m sorry for bringing nukes into the discussion, but lets be realistic the Chinese have them, and they’re probably not above using them given the need. So,aren’t nukes about the size of a breadbox these days? Not to mention all the weapons grade uranium/plutonium out there; it keeps me up at night just thinking about it.

So what is the US to do after a bomb takes out lower Manhattan? Where would the evidence be that would point to the Chinese? All the FBI could do is shrug their shoulders and mourn the dead. And if you say that well, they caught Timothy McVeigh in a relatively short period of time. He was one man (small group of men), the Chinese have an intelligence network and operatives; undoubtedly some of them residing in the US. Given that, who knows how many mushroom clouds we would be in for. What could we do? How could the feds possibly investigate such a horrific act of shear evil with all evidence and eyewitnesses vaporized?

Now to say who the victor is becomes a much more difficult question to answer. There may come a point where the US says to hell with this and starts nuking everyone who has an A-bomb. I don’t even want to think about (or type) what that could mean.

Any who, just my 2 cents….

30

Let’s not rewrite history shall we? Ask any marine, do a google search or alternatively you can look at this link:

http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/TimeLine.htm

The Inchon landing saved the South Korean troops from being driven into the ocean. The amount of territory gained by the UN troops to the north after the Inchon landing was relatively small and the Korean war basically stalemated on the 38th parallel from 1951.

31

[ol]

[li]Once air superiority is achieved over the ocean, it is not particularly neccessary to send bombers inland. Cruise missiles are increasingly showing that they can take up the slack.[/li]
[li] Once Chinese bridges & rail lines are destroyed by Cruise missiles, & communication, Command & Control are disrupted, comventional air strikes can begin against troops. Modern cluster bombs can kill large numbers of infantry with frightening ease.[/li]
[li]The keys to China are it’s rivers. Barges, & shallow-draft naval vessels can easily navigate the major rivers of China. This affords us a convienent & efficient way of moving troops & supplies into the heart of China.[/li]
[li]Units of People’s Army troops can then be killed piecemeal, without large-scale confrontations.[/li]
[li]Many of China’s ethinic minorities would love independent nation status.CIA reps could help arrange this.[/li]
[li]Psy Warfare could quickly sap morale in underfed, underpaid (or unpaid) units.[/li][/ol]

Not a cakewalk, but maybe do-able.

32

Times change, but those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Food for thought, check out this site on the Korean war.

http://rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/chosin.htm

Except:
The accomplishments of the CCF (Chinese Communist Forces) against an army which was far better armed, and which enjoyed total air supremacy, are truly remarkable. Although the NK had been well armed by Russia, and carefully prepared for their invasion of the South, the CCF were so ill-equipped to challenge a modern army that it is almost understandable why our Far East Command initially thought they were an ineffective rabble of “volunteers”. Armed with a bewildering mixture of British, US, Japanese and other weapons, presenting an incomprehensible logistics problem, without heavy artillery or tanks, and no air power, it was difficult for high command to take them seriously. Plus, they gave no obvious sign of their entry, let alone their large numbers, until they first attacked.

Trained and battle hardened in guerilla warfare, the CCF carried none of the baggage of a modern army. Masters of concealment, they moved and fought best by night. Wearing thick, padded, green or white uniforms, caps with a red star, carrying a personal weapon, grenades, 80 rounds of ammunition, a few stick grenades, spare foot rags, sewing kit and a week’s rations of fish, rice and tea, their working day began about 7 pm. They marched until about 3am, then prepared camouflaged positions for the day. Only scout units moved during daylight, to determine routes for the next night’s march, and they were ordered, under penalty of death, to freeze motionless if they heard aircraft. Their only heavy weapons were mortars, but they came in increasingly vast numbers.

33

Uhh, maybe you should read your own link.

Sept 15 '50 Inchon Landing
Sept 16-19 '50 UN breaks the Pusan Perimeter cordon
Sept 27 '50 MacArthur given permission to cross the 38th Parallel into North Korea
Oct 14 '50 Lead Elements of CCF 38th Field Army crosses Yalu at Andong to begin China’s support of North Korea
Oct 19 '50 NK capitol Pyongyang falls
Nov 17 '50 US 17th Regiment reaches the Yalu

So what’s your point this time China Guy? I was wrong in making it sound like China only got involved when UN forces reached the Yalu, but I am still right. The Chinese did not get involved until after the Inchon Landing. The North Koreans pushed the UN forces to the Pusan Perimeter alone. The US forces were very badly equipped. Their bazookas were plinking off the Soviet made tanks

Read much? Comprehend much? Argue with Koreans about Korean history much?

Also there is no denying the guts that the Chinese had. However to do mass charges against soldiers armed with M1’s is very different from them trying to do mass charges against soldiers with M16s

34

This is a disturbing post–the related idea that the Chinese may have already prepositioned a few nukes in the U.S. for just such a scenario, unlikely though it may be.

Does anyone think this is plausible?

35

[hijack]
Actually, according to their website, the Canadian Coast Guard do not use Sea Kings. The Canadian Navy does, however. While the aircraft is plagued with problems as the fleet ages well beyond its planned lifespan, the crews I’ve spoken with definately appreciate the Sea King’s workhorse nature. Canada uses Sea Kings heavily for ASW (anti-submarine warfare), with their big payload capacity (a couple of Mk 48 rev. 5 torpedoes, for instance) and 100+ knot speed.
[/hijack]

36

This just ocurred to me. The policy is not universally enforced, but you get my point. They might have not lost any sleep in the past about sacrificing a million troops in the Korean War, but I would think that in a future war most Chinese would have qualms about sending their only son off to fight in a war. If they are fighting to defend China, I don’t think they would mind, but to fight in a far away land?

Different cultures but consider if the USA had a One Child Policy. How many Americans would protest their only sons being sent off to fight a war?

37

We’re like another state of the US.

Unfortunately for us, in War, the US has all there Southern Hemisphere monitoring and relay stations in Australia. So in the Chinese vs USA war would very quickly move into and around Australia. We gave your navy a good run for your money in the war games we had recently (for the number of ships and subs we have). So we might have a good place in providing naval support before you get all Trillion of your fleets out here. Lucky for us the area between the Northern Territory and South Australia is a huge desert, and we have AWACS and other ‘ghost’ airbases littered all over the continent where in a war situation allied airforces could quickly turn our several airbases into (I think it was around 100).

Anyway… not saying we could beat China by any means what I am saying is we could hold them off coming through Indonesia (Which would give them a headache), Malaysia (Tough blokes), and the other ones… long enough for the USA to mobilize their forces into Australia and use our ‘ghost’ airbases. Also I forgot to mention we have a really HUGE reserve of oil in Australia in case of war.

PerfectDark

38

Meant to say we have AWACS and ‘ghost’ airbases. (Sound’s like AWACS we an airfield LOL sorry bout that I’ll proof read next time).

PerfectDark

39

Uh, yes I should, guess that’s checkmate.

For what it’s worth, my father told stories about when he was in the infantry near the Yalu river when the Chinese came in. One night his unit had to move the 50 cal machine gun emplacement several times because there were too many bodies blocking the line of fire.

good point about the one child policy, but don’t underestimate the Chinese nationalism card. There are a billion peasants in China, and they would provide the cannon fodder.

If the US were silly enough to try invade China, it would face guerilla warfare by a country that produces silkworms, anti-tank missles, anti-aircraft missles, has satellite communications. Not sure if you could knock them out, but China’s mobile phone users will exceed that of the US very soon (forget when, within the next 2-3 years).

40

I agree with you China Guy, but like I said if we were to invade China, One Child or no, they would fight like hell.

I have always maintained that China’s One Child Policy will have consequences that no one can foresee. I think one of them will be the ability to field a professional army. You live in China, so I am sure you know of the importance of sons in Chinese culture. They have to continue the family line. They have to keep the custom of ancestor worship alive. I am hearing reports that these only children are being spoiled terribly, because they are the only child. What type of soldier would these “Little Emperors” make? How many parents are actively steering their only child away from a career in the military? Lots of interesting questions.