# If We Went to War With China, Would The Chinese Continue To Supply Us? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 25, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391 "2010-08-25T13:25:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/1 "2010-08-25T13:25:01Z")
I find all this talk about a possible war with China absurd. Quite apart from the financial weakness we have (China holds a large amount of US debt); we depend upon Chinese firms for a lot of stuff we need to wage war: -tungsten (for anti-tank shells)-we import 95% of our needs from China -rare-earth metals (for advanced magnets and gyroscope motors): 95% dependent upon Chinese sources -electronic components: most of our capacitors, resistors, and transistors are made in China -ferrites (transformer cores and inductors): the last USA firm closed down years ago (the entire line was shipped to China)-over 90% dependent upon China -leadframes for microchips: over 70% dependent upon Chinese sources So it seems to me that a conflict with China is most unlikely-if China really wanted to hurt us, they would just put out sell orders for their American stocks and bonds-this would trigger a crash on Wall street that would dwarf 1929! So why do we keep a large fleet in east Asia? Do we really think that a war with China would ever happen? ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/2 "2010-08-25T14:00:28Z")
China is just as dependent on the US as the US is dependent on China. If all ties were severed both economies would collapse. China holds an estimated $800 billion in US Treasury securities, and the US imparts some $300 billion+ to China purchasing their goods annually. Factor in the US’s allies and China would be left with virtually no one to purchase their goods. Someone will surely be along shortly to pull that completely apart but that’s how I see it, I could be wrong. As far as the reason for maintaining a fleet there, I’m not sure it’s necessarily for China specifically. More likely they’re keeping closer tabs (militarily) on North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, and other unstable countries. And of course we want China (an everyone else in the area) to know we’re keeping an eye on them as well. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/3 "2010-08-25T14:06:02Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I find all this talk about a possible war with China absurd. Well, then maybe you should stop it. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone apart from yourself discussing it. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/4 "2010-08-25T14:18:30Z")
The US military is not supposed to buy anything from a non US supplier but that really means the end product , not parts of the product like a chip or resistor. There are some cases where items were developed outside the US and now are made in the US - some guns for example. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/5 "2010-08-25T14:22:05Z")
> [@](#): > > The US military is not supposed to buy anything from a non US supplier but that really means the end product , not parts of the product like a chip or resistor. There are some cases where items were developed outside the US and now are made in the US - some guns for example. the point here is that the raw materials themselves – I’ve read about the Rare Earths many times recently, and not in a context of war – are virtually a Chinese monopoly. That is certainly of concern to many people. I doubt if China has a lock on electronic components any more – there must be lots of other asian suppliers of resistors and capacitors, but it’s true that a lot of that comes from China. Look at the Alibaba website sometime. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/6 "2010-08-25T14:29:08Z")
Countries can change their economy to stop importing certain products. For example Brazil no longer imports any oil and it’s not a small country. They were able to switch a lot of cars from Gas to Ethanol which they make from sugar cane. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/7 "2010-08-25T14:44:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Countries can change their economy to stop importing certain products. For example Brazil no longer imports any oil and it’s not a small country. They were able to switch a lot of cars from Gas to Ethanol which they make from sugar cane. That’s true when you **can** substitute. There’s not really any substitute for tungsten or rare earths. Most people reject the possibility of the US seriously substituting plant-derived ethanol for petroleum. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/8 "2010-08-25T15:05:27Z")
There _are_ other sources for rare earths. It’s just that China has both the supply _and_ the lack of environmental consideration to make its mines the most productive. The Chinese are limiting production now, so new mines are being opened anyway. Same goes for most of the other stuff the OP mentions: the Chinese mine it more cheaply than others, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get it elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/9 "2010-08-25T15:41:32Z")
Not that I think that war with China anytime soon is likely, but the refutation to arguments like this I’ve heard before is to point out that France was Germany’s biggest trading partner before WWII. That didn’t exactly keep the Germans from attacking. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/10 "2010-08-25T15:46:34Z")
[quote=“Bijou\_Drains, post:4, topic:551391”] The US military is not supposed to buy anything from a non US supplier…QUOTE] _Old_ Navy, however, would be devastated if we put an embargo on Chinese goods. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/11 "2010-08-25T16:48:55Z")
It’s also worth noting that the US maintains the Defense National Stockpile of a bunch of materials just in case we get into a big war and US industry needs various metals. It’s not a comprehensive, one-stop-shop for anything that may be needed, but we do have on hand enough tungsten, for example, that would comprise about 40% of China’s annual exports to the world. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/12 "2010-08-25T23:59:29Z")
Look at the Thomas Friedman maxim that no 2 countries with McDonalds have ever had a war. China has a lot of McD’s. when the hainan plane incident happended, I walked into my local china stock brokerage in Shanghai and the reaction was ‘why are you messing up my stock piece?’ Eg, why is political hay being made of this when we just want stock prices to go up! There is definate demogogery and playing to the cheap seats in domestic chinese politics, but the reality is no one wants to upset the economic growth. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/13 "2010-08-28T07:41:29Z")
You could always buy them on the gray or black market. Like buy the tungsten from another country importing from China. China would have to stop the exporting of tungsten and other such minerals all together. Otherwise, another country would buy it and resell it to the USA. Spain did well in WWII supplying both sides with balance enough to keep both sides needing to buy but to stop either side from making it worth the effort to invade Spain to get them. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/14 "2010-08-28T12:11:02Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I find all this talk about a possible war with China absurd. But nobody is talking about a possible war with China… ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/15 "2010-08-28T14:29:53Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I find all this talk about a possible war with China absurd. I’ll be the third to say it. What “all this talk” about war with China? We’re not the closest buddies, but we are not even close to a war with China. It would be foolish, unnecessary, and devastating to both countries. 😕 Has all this talk been going on in Great Debates, or is the poster just way off? ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/16 "2010-08-28T15:16:32Z")
Besides, even if we had a war with China, we’d just want another one an hour later. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-we-went-to-war-with-china-would-the-chinese-continue-to-supply-us/551391/17 "2010-08-28T15:37:40Z")
The answer to the OP thread title is, “No, if we went to war with China, they would not trade with us while the war was ongoing.” How likely or unlikely that war is, is another thread. And if Chince and the US suspend trading, that doesn’t necessarily mean either will not have access to the other’s goods. We will both continue to trade with other countries, and there will be countries that trade with both of us, and we may get Chinese goods indirectly through these other countries and vice versa.