China's meteoric economic rise in the last three decades has seen the world's largest
nation pick itself up from its agrarian roots to become a robust and modern economy.
While not more powerful than the US economically, China's is the only economy in the world to
truly rival the US's.
Yet all of China's economic expansion has created a crippling national achille's heel-
it's overwhelming reliance on naval trade routes to export its trade goods and supply
its ravenous appetite for oil.
If China is to truly become a peer competitor to the US, it must secure and defend its access
to the world's most important shipping lanes.
In today’s episode of the Infographics Show, we're taking a look at the Asian powerhouse,
and asking: Is China Ready to Take on the US Navy?
For decades China focused primarily on maintaining national sovereignty by establishing a large
ground force capable of fighting off another Japanese invasion or their former Soviet rivals.
As China's economy expanded though, its reliance on maritime trade grew to a staggering disproportion.
While every nation relies on maritime trade, China's economy depends on the sea for 60-80%
of its imports and exports, and almost all of its oil supply.
This has placed China in a precarious situation where it is uniquely vulnerable to disruption
of those trade routes, and forced a shift in focus from a ground army to a growing naval
and air force.
China's maritime strategic position is unique, and completely stacked against it.
With the bulk of its oil passing through the Indian ocean, another of China's long-time
rivals- India- is in a position to easily disrupt and even completely shut down Chinese
shipping.
While China maintains a larger and better equipped naval force than India, Indian ships
would enjoy land-based support and quick resupply, while China would have to find a way to forward
deploy a sizable battlegroup to the Indian ocean that could fend off not just the Indian
navy, but the land-based Indian air force as well.
Not only is this currently strategically impossible for the limited Chinese navy, but China also
lacks the supply and logistics ships needed to keep a task force out at sea for extended
periods of time.
War against the US would likely involve India as an American ally, but even if it didn't
China would still have to face America's formidable Pacific Fleet.
With 2,000 aircraft and 200 ships, to include 33 nuclear attack submarines, America's Pacific
Fleet alone is more than a match for China's entire navy- which numbers at 193 combat ships
and 710 aircraft.
In any conflict the US Pacific Fleet would also quickly be augmented by other American
naval forces.
So could China hope to fend off the US Pacific Fleet in the event of war?
In 1996 in response to the US granting a visa to Taiwan's President, Lee Teng-hui, China
launched massive military exercises meant to intimidate Taiwan, beginning with live
fire missile and artillery firing just kilometers from Taiwan's shores.
This was followed by a widely publicized amphibious assault exercise meant to signal that China
was ready and willing to cross the Taiwan strait and invade the long-independent island.
In response, the United States deployed three aircraft carrier battlegroups to the area
and an amphibious assault ship- the largest display of American military might in Asia
since Vietnam.
This brief confrontation forced the Chinese to admit that they could not hope to stop
the US from defending Taiwan, and internally Chinese military leadership doubted the possibility
of defeating the US navy in any combat scenario.
Humiliated by the US's response and their inability to prevent it, China reshuffled
its military priorities, placing a much greater emphasis on its naval, missile and air forces.
Two decades later, their efforts have paid off in spades, with China boasting the largest
ballistic missile force in the world and a competent, if still limited navy.
Yet China is still saddled with a great deal of internal issues, the most pressing being
the systemic corruption that has for decades thrived amongst the Communist party leadership
and the armed forces both.
Despite Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption purges, the damage to China’s military by a long
legacy of corrupt and ineffective leadership could take years to reverse.
China also faces a serious recruitment, training, and experience problem with its armed forces.
Unable to meet military recruitment quotas, China's armed forces have been forced to lower
their recruiting standards several times since 2010.
This has resulted in a crop of recruits who's current capabilities are questionable to say
the least.
As noted by Chinese observers, in 2012 a People's Liberation Army unit became so stressed out
in the midst of a 15-day wartime simulation that the ongoing exercise had to be put on
pause, and time taken out for movie nights and karaoke parties.
By day nine of the exercise a “cultural performance troupe”, PLA parlance for song-and-dance
girls, had to be brought in to entertain the homesick soldiers who's morale had plummeted.
Further reporting notes that this is likely not an isolated incident, and Chinese watchdogs
have long observed that China engages in little comprehensive training of its troops in comparison
with their western counterparts.
In fact, China's confidence in its own troops is so low that it was only in the early 2010s
that Chinese units began to take part in UN peacekeeping deployments, long refusing to
take part out of fear of international embarrassment.
To further compound China's challenges in waging war against the US or another peer
power, the nation has not fought a major conflict since a brief skirmish against Vietnam in
1979.
The modern Chinese military has absolutely no experience in modern combined arms warfare,
and to further compound China's problems, it also lacks a joint command structure amongst
its various military branches like the US employs.
This means that in war it would be difficult to coordinate Chinese ground forces with their
air forces, or naval forces with their missile forces, etc.
Given the fast pace and chaotic nature of modern war, this would leave China unable
to quickly respond to and defend from threats.
After the humiliation of the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, China began to invest heavily into
its missile forces with the goal of threatening American aircraft carriers from deep within
the Chinese mainland.
Maintaining the world's only missile service as a separate branch of its military, China's
commitment to long-range stand-off weapons is not to be underestimated- yet despite boasting
that its new DF-21 'carrier killer' ballistic missiles could shut the US out of the West
Pacific, the truth behind these boasts is dubious at best.
A ballistic missile strike on a moving target in the middle of the ocean requires a long
and very complicated 'kill chain' involving land-based radar, airborne radar, satellites
and command and control nodes to all coordinate tracking and targeting of an enemy ship, and
to date China has not displayed the capability to successfully execute every step in this
complex kill chain, or to protect the individual links from attack or interference.
Yet even the most optimistic American naval commanders acknowledge the threat that China's
ballistic missiles present to a carrier battle group, which is why the US has responded by
engaging in the most ambitious ballistic missile defense program in its history.
Testing everything from airborne to ship-installed directed energy weapons such as lasers, to
a new generation of the Standard Model anti-air missile, to classified anti-satellite weapons
projects, the US has taken the Chinese ballistic missile threat very seriously.
China's missile forces are its best tool for keeping the US Navy at bay, but unproven as
they are its doubtful just how effective they would ultimately be.
However, the one thing that China (and most people in the US) tend to forget about are
the US's submarine forces, and that's no coincidence.
Secretive by design, the US's 'silent service' is the most advanced submarine force in the
world, and it maintains a constant rotation of 18 subs forward deployed in the Pacific
with another 8 loitering in potential conflict zones.
For the US navy in the Pacific this means Chinese coastal waters, and with China's very
limited anti-submarine capabilities and notoriously noisy subs, this underwater force alone would
be enough to choke China's trade completely and sink the entirety of China's very small
amphibious assault fleet should it try to invade Taiwan.
Immune to China's ballistic missile forces, America's nuclear attack submarines are its
best weapon in any conflict against China, something both China and the US are keenly
aware of.
In response, China has installed underwater listening sensors across the South China Sea,
and for its part the US has increased annual production of its new Virginia-class submarines
to 2 a year through to at least 2030.
China is not yet ready to take on the US Navy and win, yet this is a deficiency it has clearly
identified and is working to address with a huge expansion of its own navy, the building
of two aircraft carriers, and building new diesel-powered submarines.
But with a looming population crisis set to explode a demographic timebomb by 2030 where
over 65% of its population will be of retirement age, China may find itself pressed for the
economic resources it needs to continue expanding its military.
The US also faces challenges in maintaining its global peacekeeping naval fleet, but with
a strong network of alliances and access to financial networks China does not, it will
take some serious and very focused investment in its Navy- perhaps at the expense of its
other branches- for China to ever truly challenge America in the open ocean.
So, Can China’s navy take on the US Navy?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called China vs the US!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!