Opinion: Time to reinvest in defense

[Dill]

(11-09-2023, 02:01 PM)grampahol Wrote: There's one and only one reason China became a competitor to US domination and it had to do with globalization and the services of the US Navy keeping the high seas available for global shipping. They owe nearly all of their newfound wealth to that single fact and it all happened in about 20 years. China's good fortune is drying up really fast. They have no friends in any of the island chains surrounding their coast line and they import or steal nearly all of their industrial inputs, energy, steel, technology and on and on. They import the vast majority of their food to feed their population. In comparison the US is self sufficient in nearly all of the above. It would only take a couple of destroyers sitting in the Malacca Straights to send China into all out famine in a matter of months.. China is FAR MORE dependent on us than we'll ever be of them.. In the grand scheme of geopolitics geography still matters A LOT and China was blessed with terrible geography. The United States was blessed with the greatest geography in all the world.. Two vast oceans and coastlines, massive navigable rivers right through the heartland, some of the best farmland in the world, more than abundant resources and a very diverse population from all over the globe.. Should I go on? 

"Go on" to . . . ?

What are you arguing here? Are you saying that China is not, at this moment, the US' most serious adversary/competitor on the global stage?

Or are you allowing that it is, but telling me not to worry because "terrible geography"? 

I don't think they import the majority of their food, and would hardly fall into famine if the US blocked the Malacca Straits. You've read perhaps that they are the world's largest importer of food, but according to the world bank that's 9% of their consumption, compared to 7% for the US.
 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.VAL.FOOD.ZS.UN?end=2022&start=2019

They still produce a quarter of the world's grain, ahead of the US. Their percentage of imported food has risen, but some say that is in part due to increased demand for luxury items like wine.

Oil is their most serious dependency; lucky they get along with Russia and Iran.  

I hypothesize that at the moment, the social consequences of modernization are requiring the CCP to exert more control of the economy and civil society, and that this is braking their growth, making them more, not less dangerous. Aside from that their main problem is too much saving (a consequence of bad policy--cutting their social safety net back in the '90s). But it is not an economy I could dismiss by attributing its astonishing growth since 1980--10% a year for many decades--simply to "globalization," any more than I would do that for the US.