Only that’s not logic, that’s ignorant chest-thumping. If half of the population of China were to disappear in mushroom clouds tomorrow, it would mean every major city in China and most of the minor ones were consumed in those mushroom clouds as well. China as a nation or a civilization in any meaningful shape or form would be over. Before you think China has a snowball’s chance in hell at winning a nuclear exchange with Russia, I posted this in another thread in GD just yesterday:
The only reason the vast majority of the Russian civilization and populace would survive and continue is because China has such a small nuclear arsenal (~230 warheads, including both deployable and non-deployable) and only 66 ICBMs with the range to even reach targets in European Russia. Russia, on the other hand, could end China many times over with its current stockpile of 8,500 warheads of which 2,500 are strategically operational if for some bizarre reason China was in a position to take half of Siberia by force, which it is not.