USA vs CHINA#1

How would a war between the US and China play out?
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Jon Davis, Everyone needs a hobby.
Updated Aug 6 2016
Nations like China could possibly survive and grow stronger from the experience of an American attack in the style of Shock-and-Awe against the government headquarters. Consider a war conducted similar to the War in Iraq 2003. The Americans could, hypothetically conduct an assault on its regime and topple it in the same way as we did with Iraq. For the Chinese, however, though the buildings may be hollowed, the offices remain. By this I mean that the political structure will remain and they have a ruling class, the Chinese Communist Party, with many who would be capable of filling several roles and replace others once they fall. Second, many of the offices are housed in culturally significant Chinese structures. Destroying any of these would not have the same effect as was the case with the Iraqi Baath Party Headquarters, a modern office building. Bringing down one of these key public works would likely only raise legions of embittered Chinese peasants. This attack would likely only cause a surge of Chinese nationalism from the impoverished majority, giving a profound dose of energy toward the fractured regime. Having a nebulous governmental body with a horde or high quality replacements, backed by the largest land army in the world, backed by a fanatical population, that just so happens to share thousands of miles of border with Russia and Afghanistan and an endless supply of arms is the worst case scenario for fighting an invasion against the Chinese mainland. The Americans couldn't win that fight any easier than the Chinese could win in the United States.

A better scenario would be to challenge the Chinese military directly rather than attacking their government. A worse option would be to blockade the nation until economic and social pressures force a surrender. Both options leverage the United States' naval superiority. Assuming war is the name of the game, our Navy is still overwhelmingly more powerful than theirs, which it should be said before anything else, guarantees the rest of this answer never happens.

The Sino-American War

To begin, we need to say one thing very clearly; the Chinese have absolutely no chance of beating the Americans in a full out war similar to the re-envisioned World War II conflict, with hordes of Chinese troops landing in Oregon to conquer all the way to the Continental Divide. For reasons that will be clear later, China simply does not have the capabilities, either in manpower, diplomatic leverage, nor in naval power to defeat the Americans in a total war scenario. While, yes, the Chinese could deal a devastating blow to the United States at sea, and could push back any attempts at American invasion to the Chinese mainland, they do not have any capability whatsoever to achieve strategic gains through an actual conquest of American soil. Once they reach the overlapping shells of American missile defense and aerial bombings, any force they attempt to send would be sent to the bottom of the sea. In truth, the United States wouldn't prosper much better in an overland invasion, but as I will show, this isn't as meaningful to the Americans as it would be to the Chinese. The only hope of China would be to gain effect through military victories and in gaining permanent control of territory currently under the United States' umbrella of protection. This, however, wouldn't grant China the ability to cut off supply lines to the United States and could not enact the type of crippling economic pressure that they are susceptible to, a fact I will also show later.

War for the Pacific

China has been working prodigiously to grow its military capabilities in the sea. Its interests are to secure its territorial claims in the South China Sea and to project power throughout the region. It wants to dominate the Eastern Pacific thro