Yeah, We Have Nothing To Fear From China

Recently the Pentagon released a report on the growing military buildup of China and boldly predicted that China most likely would invade Taiwan in the next two years. The United States has quite a few treaty obligations with Taiwan and other nations such as Japan and Australia in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I have previously stated my position on this subject, Taiwan is simply not worth a war with China, and nothing in the latest DOD report (not yet released to the public, link leads to Sec of Def preview of report) makes me even consider changing my mind on this subject. The Chinese have become the number one consumer of oil in the world and starting back in mid 1990’s they began an enormous military buildup to ensure that they would always have access to that resource as well as prepare for a conflict with the United States and others over Taiwan.

The Chinese have also been systematically working to obtain US military and industrial technology at any cost over the last 50 years but even more so since they were given a helping hand in the late 90’s by then President Clinton and his administration. The reports that a state-owned Chinese oil company wants to purchase Unocal and that another Chinese company has made a bid for Maytag coupled with this spring’s sale of IBM’s personal computing division to Lenovo Group certainly signals a willingness by the Chinese to put their money where their mouth is.

As great as this country is, faced with a militarily and economically hostile China we pale in comparison. Unfortunately, it really just comes down to a numbers game. I am not sure what the size of the Chinese standing army is but I would bet a large amount of good old American green that is several times larger then out regular and national guard units put together.

Now that I have laid out the “bad news”, you might be asking yourself what we should do. Well, I am going to suggest a few things that could help even the score. First thing we absolutely must do is convince the Chinese to loosen control over their currency and allow it move with the rest of the world’s currencies on the open market. Second, through our own fiscal policies we have to draw foreign investment to the United States just as the Chinese have been doing for the last 40 years. The American workforce is still the best in the world and if given the chance our industries will dominate the world market once more. Third, we must absolutely reduce our dependence on foreign oil and do whatever is needed to stimulate research and implementation of alternative fuels so that we remove oil from the list of things that could cause conflict between the United States and China. We must lead the world away from oil and diminish the power of Middle Eastern countries to dictate our foreign policy because the Chinese will certainly not take any crap from Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria if it threatens their oil supply. Fourth, we must continue to develop and upgrade all of our weapons systems to try to offset the huge numeric advantage that China has.

If we make those efforts, the Chinese will be forced to continue and deal with us as an equal. However if they feel at any moment that we are inferior to them on any significant level then I am afraid there will be some rough times ahead for this country. The most important factor is that while we deal with other threats around the globe, we continue to press the Chinese for their involvement and not take our eyes off them. Remember the Chinese take the long view on everything they do, sometimes looking down the road decades in advance, and are an incredibly patient people. Well that is all for now, have a great day everyone. Check back during the day as I may be posting on a few other topics I have done a little research on.