Chinese military is mostly defensive, they might take a few regional territories they consider to be a part of China, like Tibet and Taiwan, but they don’t have much interest in using their military to invade a country like Japan. That said, no one is going to defeat the Chinese in a ground invasion of China, they are pretty fucking tough.
Princess Bride joke about a ground war in Asia stands. LOL
Seriously though, we want to deter China, not invade them. NOBODY wants to invade China. What a fuck hell that would be, and so pointless. Plus right now China is failing badly, with respect to their country’s internal issues. I suspect that’s a big part of why Xi is beating the war drum so hard, in order to distract from domestic catastrophes.
But their military is still in very bad shape, the military purge Xi just did recently is because of all the grafting and corruption and how screwed most of their systems are. They have the tech they’ve stolen from the US, but that doesn’t translate to the ability to manufacture it reliably, manage logistics of a military, etc. They are learning though, and that’s what I mean about giving them time.
Right now their three air craft carriers are literally a bad joke. They’re dammed near useless, and they have scandals with their missile systems and the missiles, and so on across the board. BUT this will get better over the years. I’d rather skirmishes and standing fast on right of navigation, and dismantling of the military islands they’ve created, along with Taiwan independence now—instead of once they have REAL air craft, and missiles they can rely on, and refined equipment designs that fix the subtle flaws that have a huge impact when deployed for real.
I don’t think we’re in any serious disagreement here. Avoiding an invasion of China is a MUST. But pushing for what the world needs, freedom of navigation, Taiwan, and dismantling the illegal military islands… that’s best done now. Where worst case scenario has a far smaller impact on our forces. And if it weakens Xi, then that’d be great. He’s a terrible dictator and I wouldn’t cry if he was gone.
