I don’t get why there’s so much antiChina antagonism floating around. I run into more people all the time who are filled with some psychotic mysterious hatred for thee country.
China is one of the oldest culture/nation/thingies around. There was a leader of the land that would become known as China, from who the people in China were descended, long before any white guy set foot on the Americas. There’s a lot of cultural inertia, which the US never had to deal with because it was founded by people who were looking to try something new.
China was ruled by various absolute rulers until just recently, historically speaking. Almost a century after our revolution, America still had slaves. It took 150 years before women had the right to vote. Equal treatment under the law for all races took 200 years before it WAS the law, and we’re still struggling to implement it. It takes time to change old ideas.
I’ve been to China. China is experimenting with capitalism and greater freedoms, and its blown the current system away every time. If the people who care about their country can get past the rabid military freaks and the power-mad ex-Imperials who slipped back in and the power-mad revolutionaries and the spitefulness coming from the US, things might turn around. But it will take time.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, give China a break, huh?
Interesting that there have been a few calls to give China a break or to give the cold war a rest. Oh well I am going to have my fun.
China’s navy is primarily a littoral navy. There was a question about the number of submarines that China has. To the best of my knowledge they have approximately 20-25 subs. The bulk of these are clapped out diesel electric patrol subs. The rest are split, unevenly, between missile and attack subs. All are older noisy models. The US Navy would have no problems sinking all of them. Probably with only a handful of fast attcks. Note, until the US Navy brings the Virginia class sub on line, the US does not have a great deal of experience or hardware (relative) for littoral warfare.
I pretty much agree with Crusoe’s position, though I could not see a reason why either country would invade the other. I could understand minor skirmishes (though more likely of words than armies) over certain events, but that’s about it.
So lets say China makes a try for Taiwan. Unlike, China Guy I don’t think that Taiwan could repel a determined Chinese invasion force. Taiwan may have a modern defense force but they are no match for a determined China. Plus why bother when you can just nuke it. Taiwan could certainly have nuclear weapons to retaliate with, but they aren’t telling anyone so that is no deterrant. The US isn’t about to go to war once it is a done deal. They might park a carrier or two in the Taiwanese Strait whenever necessary, and spread the Missile Defense Shield to cover Taiwan, but I would suggest that would be about it.
I think it likely that The Spratlys will be a major point of contention between the various interested countries. But I doubt that the US would ever go to war based on shifting ownership on the Spratly Island chain.
If the US and China were ever going to go to war, Chinese numbers would definitely tip the balance, no matter how technically superior the US is. I have to disagree with mswas, whose post sounded a little more like patriotic zeal than anything else.
Um, doesn’t this sort of defeat the purpose, though?
An invasion brings it under control. A nuclear attack makes it uninhabitable, ruins your trade, and causes fall out over large sections of the Pacific and China.
In relation to the calls for an end to China bashing, its easy to bash a country which tortures its citizens, just as we bash the US for executing its citizens and we bash Australia for not letting in refugees. Bashing on a diplomatic level is a way of making your citizens that the grass is not greener.
Actually, I read yesterday on this board an old thread with the same question about a war between the US and Europe. And I already read such threads in the past on several other messages boards. I believe it’s more more a mind game (perhaps a bad taste one) than an evidence that a “cold war mentality” is still present. After all, there are a lot of people who like playing wargames, too…
I remember having read an article, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, about the development of neutron bomb in France. I strongly suspect that if France could build a neutron bomb at this time, China certainly can now. Also, as far as I know, the neutron bomb is a tactical field weapon which would wip out the ennemy’s troops without fallouts and long-term radiation, so allowing the allied troops to operate in the area. I don’t think they have the destruction power of strategical nuclear weapons. But I could be wrong…
We lost the Korean war? You may want to recheck your history book. The US, South Korea, and other allies defeated the attempt by North Korea and China to unify Korea by force. The Allies were also unable to unify Korea but the overall goal of the North Koreans and Chinese was defeated. Over 1 million Chinese soldiers are believed to have died while 55,000 Americans were killed. This isn’t the sort of thing that either side should want to try again.
China played a limited role in Vietnam. To say they defeated the US in that conflict isn’t a very accurate statement.
Technically a draw. For what it’s worth, the Chinese point of view is that draw or no draw, they stopped the combined might of the United Nations forces. The Chinese were a peasant army and stopped the most advanced army in the world with barefoot soldiers, antiquidated equipment and little in the way of logistic support. Certainly Mao, Zhu De and the rest of the Chinese leaders thought it was a Chinese victory over the American paper tiger. In addition, the Chinese don’t look at the causualties they suffered as a “defeat” vis-a-vis the losses of the UN forces. When you have so many people, that’s one scorecard they don’t even look at.
I would also point out that the overall goal of the Chinese was to preserve the integrity of their border. They didn’t come into the war until the UN forces were close to the Yalu river. Chinese warned the US via India that they would defend their historic border, and China sure did.
I would agree that China’s involvement during the Viet Nam was war was probably not integral to the US defeat there.
The US can’t successfully invade and hold the ground in China. China can’t even raise an invasion fleet to Taiwan, much less the US.
Can someone link me to a comprehensive cite on this? It has always been my understanding that we (the US) were not completely in charge of the war effort. Apart from that, since the US never declared war we couldn’t (afaik) go all out with it even if we were in charge of the war effort.
I think saying the US lost Viet Nam is a bit disingeniuous. What was the stated goal of our involvement in VN? Who led the war effort? Again, it is my understanding that we were there as an additional force for a police action, not war by any reasonable definition of the term.
Please correct me if I’m wrong since so many here would seem to disagree.
Second, China just doesn’t have the naval capability to travel across the sea. They don’t scorch Taiwan because they see it as a rebel province, just as we would not scorch Florida if they chose to rebel.
As for patriotic zeal, it’s funny that you put it that way as most Americans accuse me of being a communist when I get into these types of discussions. My point is just, that no single country could win in a war of aggression against the Continental US. While the United States would not be capable of occupying China, it would be more able to disable China’s ability to wage war. If that is patriotism, I guess I’ll choke down that insult.
Does China have one. I know approx how many missiles they have and how far they can go. But I don’t know what kind of weapons they are.
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Contrary to popular belief, the Neutron bomb does have a nuclear half-life that would make the area uninhabitable for centuries. Though I have no cite, from what I understand the neutron bomb was meant to neutralize tank units as tanks can survive a nuclear blast, so it was meant to kill the organisms that pilot the tank.
We didn’t go all out? The number of years we were there and the fact that more ordinance was dropped in Vietnam than in World War II, doesn’t say we went all out? What is going all out then?
The point is, if a people does not want an occupier in it’s country then the country cannot be occupied. Read “The Prince” by Machiavelli which is more or less a treatise on how to make a populace less aggressive to it’s foreign occupiers.
Yes, I think all here can safely sit back and agree the cold war is over. Looking back to the OP however, I see a simple query regarding a hypothetical no-holds barred outbreak of hostility (y’all can call it war, if’n y’all like)'twixt China and the US. Accent the hypothetical.
Our military performs these “wargames” constantly, right?
Analalysis of threat, enemy strength, likely actions, likely responses. That’s simply what we’re doing here. Haven’t seen anyone bash China yet. No “Evil Empire”, nothing. What I have seen is an serious assessment of China’s likely behavior based on current attitudes as displayed by the Chinese government. Please don’t insult our intelligence by suggesting they’re simply misunderstood by the western world. While that may play into the misteps they sometimes make on the world scene, it in no way accounts for their deliberate acts against their own people, and talk of force to control and restrain Taiwanese moves toward independence. While there are other hot spots around the world, that isn’t the subject of today’s debate.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by mswas *
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We didn’t go all out? The number of years we were there and the fact that more ordinance was dropped in Vietnam than in World War II, doesn’t say we went all out? What is going all out then?*
No, we didn’t go all out. We did drop a lot of ordinance, but most of it in a failed attempt to cut supply lines. We limited our involvement to defending the division of Vietnam. There was never any strategic plan aimed at ending the force projecting capability of the North. North Vietnam was never invaded by the US. Obvious targets of supply and manufacture were placed on “no strike” list because of an understandable fear of drawing China and the Soviet Union directly into the war. But the failure to take such action left us without any chance of actually winning the war. The obvious conclusion is that we should never have been there in the first place.
I think our biggest problem lay in the government of South Vietnam failing to assert itself. Americans didn’t have an extra hard time holding back communist forces; in fact, it learned excellent tactics for air strikes, river raids, and other warfare techniques. But because of the seeded Viet Cong influence that always lied in wait, any attempt to do more than secure borders from the Viet Cong would result in a counter-counter insurgence from Viet Congs in hiding.
If the government of South Vietnam did its part like it said it would there would be little questioning of America’s involvement, and Siagon wouldn’t have fallen into Communist hands.
Anyone interested in readin a ton of data about the Vietnam Conflict check in here. Keep a special eye out for the link about US forces in Vietnam, which gives a semi-chronological semi-tactical based explanation of what the US troops did while there. It is pretty comprehensive, totalling 15 pages of information (well, more actually but on page 15 the US pulls out of Vietnam).
Indeed I think the roots of the ultimate outcome of the conflict can be found in the corrupt South Vietnamese government. The Viet Cong were South Vietnamese after all who believed they were fighting to overthrow what was indeed an oppressive corrupt regime. If the South Vietnamese government had actually been worth something to its own citizens I doubt that it would have had as hard a time in getting its soldiers to fight and its people not to join the opposing side. The way to defeat guerrillas is to offer the people a better way of life and the South Vietnamese government never did that. The US backed the South Vietnamese government purely on the basis that it wasn’t communist, not seeing that it was just as flawed as the North.
In that link above s/he/they mention that there was, in fact, quite a bit of rallying and such (can’t really call it nationalism) after the incredible Tet offensive, but South Vietnam fucked that up too and didn’t use the momentum to keep it up. On top of that, the US commander of the forces over there had requested more troops; had we (or anyone!) delivered men then to aid the SV government’s police efforts we might see a different world history today.
In the end I do agree America should have never been there in the first place; we helped French imperialism, then after we disagreed with the French we helped Ho Chi Min, then when he went commie we went against him :rolleyes:
Typical.
At any rate, I must agree that a US occupation of China is laughable; we could bomb the shit out of them, kill a lot of people, and then still not be able to sit down comfortably on the rubble without having to wrry about punji stakes.
I think successful occupation of a country requies the Roman tactic (put your flag up and leave), a drawn out war where the citizens no longer want to fight and would take anything other than warfare, or complete decimation of life. As none of those are likely to occur in modern warfare, the US could probably never take China on its own. Hell, even with some “friends.”
