China, yo.

[Lago_AM3P]

Between the Grayby boom, rural farmers struggling for landowning rights, the gender imbalance, India's rising prominence, the low defense in Siberia, energy/oil accumulation, and the ties to the neoliberal economies of the West, what's the likelihood and extent of internal or external conflict with China and the consequences of it?

[Neeek]

1196796189[/unixtime]]Between the Grayby boom, rural farmers struggling for landowning rights, the gender imbalance, India's rising prominence, the low defense in Siberia, energy/oil accumulation, and the ties to the neoliberal economies of the West, what's the likelihood and extent of internal or external conflict with China and the consequences of it?

External conflict seems unlikely. The India/China border is simply too hard to invade, North Korea isn't worth the time, there is no benefit to attack the US, and nowhere else makes much sense.

[JonSetanta]

High likelihood. And soon. The consequence is a militaristic push outward in search of a better influx of cash to support the false sense of stability, resulting in the entire world feeling the incompetence of Communism Gone Wild.

Seriously, China has more men than women, a ratio created by widespread practice of specifically aborting girls.
Welp... nature's come to collect her toll. One can only artificially sculpt human behavior so far before hormones and boredom surge back.

That'll be a lot of restless, restrained, mistreated young men out there.
As for what we can do... I haven't a clue, other than to say "look to the past".
Have we ever had any other nation in Earth's history do what China has done? And if so, what happened to them?

IMHO Russia seems to be the only country that actually operates healthily and successfully under Communist rule, but at detriment to tiny border nations like Georgia (and even then.. at least they had steady electricity!)

[Username17]

China has had military conflicts with every border nation since its inception in the late 40s. There is no reason to believe that trend will stop. China is going to start some shit somewhere in the world about the moment that the United States leaves Iraq with tail entwined with legs. Like Vietnam II. Only this time they have no intention or ability to invade the specific country that we failed to take. I would expect them to march into Afghanistan to take control of the pipeline and out-maneuver Pakistan. They'd have to get military agreements in place with Tajikistan to do that, so I would expect them to be having high level talks with the Tajiks real soon.

China doesn't just want to persist, China wants to supplant the US as the world's number one power. And while they seriously are not ready for a head-to-head, the Formosa situation gives them a zero-hour option for that if they ever want one. What they are ready for is showing up the US and Russia and claiming victory in the Cold War. I think there are a lot of people who think that a success (a real success, not "We play kingmaker for the Mayor of Khabul") in Afghanistan would make that happen. I don't know if it would or not - but expect the PRC to saber rattle about opium and terrorism real soon.

Also talks with the Tajiks and investment in Tibetan mountain forces. The Chinese and the Indians are the only peoples who have the kind of army that could actually beat the Taliban on their home turf and I doubt that fact has ever really escaped either country.

-Username17

[Bigode]

Can you elaborate on facing the Taliban at home?

[Crissa]

Mountain trained troops. They can breath the air, are used to fighting in the 3d space of high mountain passes, etc.

Although, technically Pakistan should count as well, but they tend to lose encounters.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I would also imagine that being physically closer and having larger standing armies would help as well.

[JonSetanta]

Chinese can fly.

Oh, and I've been reading about the China/Angolia dilemma recently, y'all should educate yourselves on that 'partnership' too.
At first I thought it was this scary relationship like the US has with Saudi Arabia, but turns out the Africans and Chinese hate each other.
Call each other pigs.. dogs.. hell, Africans claim the Chinese are eating their dogs.
And the Chinese are trying to turn Angolia into the next Israel or something, yet militant thugs are waddling across the borders loaded with weapons, pillage/raping/whatever, and returning home, yet Chinese just ignore it? Go back to work as if nothing happened?
Weird.

The oddest part was the staunch cultural standards for both sides in preventing any mingling between the investors/contractors, and natives.
Anyone caught flirting, associating outside of work, or in any form of non-professional relationship between the two 'races' is deported/banned from working. Completely strict, so as to prevent the (abominable to them?) outcome: children, born half Angolian half Chinese, obtaining rights to each side (or at least some form of racial familiarity where there was none)

Chinese won't even use furniture, food, tools from Africa; they ship everything in shrinkwrapped.

IMO, it's like being invaded by aliens. Seems like such an awful, awkward, forced setup doomed to end with rebellion out of resentment, or some foreign African military (Islamic? Ethiopian?) steps in because of the Chinese human rights violations/ignorance of labor laws.
Question is, when does it all come down?

[cthulhu]

Internal conflict in china is unlikely. However the regime could come unstuck at any time and collapse in a civil war-ing heap. it's just not particularly likely, but very well could happen.

External conflict with western powers (and by proxy taiwan) is unlikely -> 0. While I have no doubt the chinese could invade taiwan and 'win' the casualties would be so extreme and stomach churning as to unseat the government. The chinese just don't have the force capability to cross the straight in the face of the anti shipping capability in and around taiwan without metaphorically building a bridge of corpses.

Beyond Taiwan the chinese are not capable of meaningfully attacking any western power without attracting a response on the scale of total destruction.

As for a more regional conflict, I disagree with some of frank's assessment, but history has shown that china does like to increase its sphere of influence. I disagree because I'm not entirely sure the PLA is actually capable of maintaining high paced operations beyond its own borders, and I don't think the chinese government really has any particular need too.

The most recent PLA 'invasion', Vietnam, resulted in the PLA getting a broken nose by a vastly inferior force.

While many of issues that the PLA had in 1980 have been fixed, its also worth noting that in an increased period of market liberalization and burgeoning middle class, a war is not likely to help them much, and is instead likely to punish the bottom line (and how!). China is also having internal difficulties with rising food prices, spiralling inflation, weak internal banking (which the government is spending billions on now and it still won't have the internal strength to play with the big boys) and other economic problems.

Given these factors I'd expect them to focus on smoothing over their internal difficulties because a major crisis there could unset the regime, and potentially flex their growing economic muscle with strategic investments and relationships in and with minor regional powers

[Lago_AM3P]

China doesn't just want to persist, China wants to supplant the US as the world's number one power. And while they seriously are not ready for a head-to-head, the Formosa situation gives them a zero-hour option for that if they ever want one. What they are ready for is showing up the US and Russia and claiming victory in the Cold War.

What's really the advantage of being a superpower?

It seems like being a superpower is like being the most powerful country in Risk at the beginning of the game. Sure, you can crush any other army but you can't crush TWO other armies. So you're suddenly a huge target.

Also, once MAD was established, what benefit did we get from supercharging our cold war armies? It sometimes seems as if the US would be insanely rich if we didn't dump all that money into war.

[Lago_AM3P]

I know this is a huge oversimplification, but here are three of the most basic rules of game theory towards winning an ongoing multiparty conflict.

Don't fight unless you have something to gain.
Don't fight alone unless you have to.
If you can get someone else to fight for you, do it.

So why can't we kick back and let China soak up all of the bullshit that comes with being a world superpower?

[cthulhu]

I reckon you're misreading the psychology behind dictatorships like N. Korea or china. The decisions reflect on the people at the top, and no-one else unless they do something so aggrevious to the population as to get overthrown.

But more importantly I don't think China can really become a 'super power' in the sense that we apply it to the US today without significant internal reforms. (Nor am I particularly inclined to think that Russia ever really was, its total debacle in Afghanistan showed the lack of force projection capability)

China is a patchwork state, and it may or may not evolve into superpower, but if it does it will also have to embrace a free market society, democracy blahblahblah at the same time as these systems are just more productive. In which case it won't really be 'china' anymore but more a bigger version of Taiwan.

Edit: But I really cannot give enough emphasis to china's internal economic problems. 15% urban wage growth, food shortages, record pork prices and 6.5% inflation combined with a banking and financial sector that is woeful and internal controls that are just as bad means they are looking down the barrel of a gun in some ways. I'd honestly expect china to focus on dealing with these issues.

Note that this massive wages growth is going to fuck you and me too, because everything I am sitting near except my briefcase is made in china. And some parts of this computer. And prices have no-where to go but up.

Combined with high inflation in Australia and the US, prices are going up and only going to go faster. The US is in a bigger bind than Australia (Australia is totally okay with raising interest rates lots which will increase the valuation of our currency which takes the sting out of the tail) but the US is in a rate cutting mood which devalues the currency etc.

/tangent.

Comparing china to india, because india deregulated (more) services (somewhat) earlier, they are better and more mature to deal with these kinds of internal pressures. However wages growth there is rapidly approaching the point where outsourcing deals suddenly become uneconomical, and they've already started outsourcing outsourcing (sic) work to china, which as you can see is about to have the same problems.

[Username17]

(Nor am I particularly inclined to think that Russia ever really was, its total debacle in Afghanistan showed the lack of force projection capability)

People here in Czech Republic would cut your face for that. The fact that Russia spent 1 years getting shot at by US and Saudi funded guerillas and eventually had to leave Afghanistan does not mean that they had no ability to project force. They projected force into Czechoslovakia just fine.

France, the United States, and China all got their penises chopped off in Vietnam. Russia and the US both faired fairly poorly in Afghanistan, and the US is getting its balls roasted in Iraq. There are tactics to fighting a super power, and none of those tactics involve stopping said super power from conquering your country in the first place. Russia took a total of four days to conquer Afghanistan straight off - and they stayed there getting shot at for about fourteen years. If that sounds awfully similar to our situation in the Vietname conflict (1959-1975), that's because it is.

The question of how a Super Power should fight a guerilla war in the 21st century is an open one. It's blatantly obvious that the Bush Administration's "limited forces" plan is a complete failure. Both the US and Soviets tried "overwhelming force" in their respecting conflicts in the 60s, 70s, and 80s - and that was a dismal failure as well. Military theorists have come up with a number of plans including:

• Astounding Attrocity It worked for Assyr! The idea is that if you are having a problem with a minority you should kill them. All of them. Unrest will be at 100% but in 30 years those people won't even exist. According to this theory the reason that the Soviets were unable to hold Afghanistan is because they were unwilling to slaughter sufficient numbers of civilians to wipe out the demographics which supported the Taliban.
  
  
• Periodic Withdrawal It took the United States 36 days to take Khabul. It took the Soviet Union only 4. In any case, the theory is that you can just walk in and conquer the place every time it pisses you off and then withdraw completely between invasions. After getting kicked over a few times the country will ideally stop bothering, and in any case you won't be "at war" in the meantime so you won't be accumulating war fatigue or casualties.
  
  
• Complete Apathy to the Lives of your Soldiers Both the United States and the Soviet Union sold their people a line of shit about how they weren't going to lose many soldiers and blah blah blah. One theory is that if you just tell your people that you'll lose huge numbers of people in a gruelling house-to-house conquest of the place and that the war will drag on for years, the relatively low intensity of guerilla fighting will actually seem a welcome surprise. If you just don't bother to throw rank after rank of helicopter gunships you won't impoverish your nation, and if you just accept the losses of thousands and thousands of troops - then the guerillas can't really do anything to you. As a super power, it's not like you can't lose the people - it's just that traditionally you don't want to.
  
  
• Genuine Rebuilding The idea of making a profit off of an invasion is more than a bit silly. If instead of looking at an invasion as an investment which is supposed to "pay off", you look at it as an ideological change where you are invading the country "because you want to" and then look at the red numbers coming up as an expected expense - then you're fine. You just spend a generation treating the uprising as crime and you don't even give a damn.

Would any of these plans work? I don't really know. But they might. And China may well emply a number of them in its occupation plans of various hostiles.

-Username17

[SunTzuWarmaster]

China has some serious things going for it if they want to do things right. They have more people than anyone else. They have more soldiers than anyone else. They have more manufacturing capability than anyone else. They have a government that could go to war tomorrow if the people wanted it (the people have to not rebel, so it has to look like you are doing it for them). Couple all of these things with the fact that China has decent technology, a space program, communications satellites, an excellent oceanic fighting force, and a death-grip on the media and censorship.

Seriously, China can do whatever the fuck they want. What do we do about it?

• Buy victory/insurance - borrow money from the failing bank system, significant amounts of it. If you owe the bank a million dollars then the bank owns you. If you owe the bank 3 billion dollars, you own the bank. If they decide to have any direct conflict with your country, you simply pull the economic plug and the riots start.
• Peace Talks - make them see the light that wars suck. Wars make your people poor, your money worthless and your people die. Then they start hating you. Take note that this is especially bad when you are a communist country and telling the leader to fuck off is significantly more difficult.
• Bread and Circuses - entertained people are not pissed off, as I'm sure most of us have learned from a Sid Mier game. Give them color TV, American Idol, and the Olympics and all of a sudden they don't care so much about international conflict, rising cost of living, and monetary inflation (the people, in mass, don't really want to care about these kinds of things anyways.)

[cthulhu]

Yeah the Czechs might get pissed off, but china doesn't have the air and sea lift capability to sustain operations at the end of a long supply line. I suspect the problems they'd have in Afghanistan would be pretty bad to due to the low quality infrastructure which would make the logistical problem a real nightmare.

The other problem is that estimates for training an infantry man in the modern 'high intensity' warfare environment takes about two years, based on Australian and US estimates (the offical history for GW1 is a good starting point). And if that training is maintained, but they are not 'active' (like national guardsmen in the US), it takes about 120 to 300 days to give that infantry man a refresher (based on US estimates) to combat standards.

Now china does have professionals - a third of the corps is officers, a third of the corps is NCOs, and the rest is conscripts. Note that the conscripts are not the best because due to corruption the top classification of people don't actually go.

But this highlights the next problem with a chinese occupation scenario - boots on the ground are primarily conscripts (and you can bet if there was a war on no-one would want to go, so they would be conscripts who cannot afford bribes, but intrestingly china has the same 'poor people make up more of the conscritps' thing going on)

Now conscripted armies are a big problem, because you need lots of infantry men (to 'win' iraq US state departments and JCoS estimates ran to 300k total US force strength), and if we look at say, the russians, as a historical reference, most of the russian army was completely ineffectual. They'd done the same thing as the chinese now, and as a result when divisions where mobilized, a whole bunch of completely ineffectual conscripts turned up and bogged down the under equipped divisions with dead weight. Accounts by soviet insiders reckon that the majority of the soviet army could never actually fight a war.

Anyway thats a diatribe against conscripts really, but I think the point (about their complete uselessness, especially at demoralizing low intensity warfare) stands.

But really china has huge economic muscles, as well as serious economic gastro problems, and I think after the the Vietnam thang it finally figured out that influence weaving is a much more efficient solution.

As for the 4 point thesis, I think the only two methods that have ever worked are the first and last one. There is actually another one though that is the classic 'British empire' plan and worked for them for a loonnnggggg time. Basically you invade a country with strong ethnic divisions, then put the minority in charge and just kill whoever they ask you too. This works brilliantly, because the minority knows they'll be wiped out as soon as you leave so they have strong incentives to help you, but because they are locals and know how it works and speak the language etc they can actually get the job done.

[JonSetanta]

I like your summary of Russian tactics, Frank. There's some good info there that I've never known... now I'm reading up on past Soviet conflicts, since there are lessons to be learned (like what works, what doesn't..)

[Koumei]

Clearly the best solution is to find a way to return them to internal conflict. There is a saying:

The world under Heaven, long united, must divide. The world under Heaven, long divided, must unite.

We could argue that it's hardly united, but it's united enough that there isn't a massive China-wide war. So it's about time it divides again and we see another Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Where are Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang when you need them?*

*Answer: Clearly dead. It was approaching 2,000 years ago.

[cthulhu]

Sigma: Check out Viktor Suvorov's work, he's a russian defector from the GRU who used to be an armoured company commander. He generously puts a spin on events and was convienced the soviets could win, but his tales of the actual performance of the soviet military machine are quite farsical.

He was actually a participant in the invasion of Czechsloviakia and has some black humourous tales about it.

[JonSetanta]

OK will do.
Not to de-rail into Soviets here, but it's also interesting that Russian spies were caught in Georgia within this year, and now Russia is doing "military tests" on the northern border.
Like dud missile launchings, landing hundreds of feet away from houses.

That, and the ex-KGB spy killed in the UK recently... by KGB assassins.
The Cold War is still going on, it seems; maybe that most people appear to have exclaimed "it's finally over!" and Russia just kept doing it's thing.

[Crissa]

Why would KGB assassins use the one thing that would say 'KGB' all over it?

Whoever killed the reporter was not a pro. They basically left breadcrumbs all the way back to Moscow. I'm not saying the guy killed himself, just that it's highly unlikely that it has anything to do with a government spy.

-Crissa

[technomancer]

Or is that what the spy wants you to think?

[Jacob_Orlove]

Whenever I have to decide between two explanations, and one of them is "a government was incompetent," I have a hard time giving the other explanation much weight. Especially when it starts to sound like a conspiracy theory.

Bonus points for applying this to 9/11, or pretty much anything else.

[tzor]

1197076349[/unixtime]]Why would KGB assassins use the one thing that would say 'KGB' all over it?

Because they can fucking get away with it? No seriously if this is true then the one responsible for the act has just been elected to the fucking Russian parliment.

[Crissa]

They could've just shot the guy and left less evidence.

It's more likely some mobbed up capitalist did it than some government conspiracy.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

Eh I dunno, some reports mentioned the death as a result of retaliation for leaked secrets.... It's not proven fact, though, sorry... I should have mentioned that.