Redbrickbear said:
nein51 said:
China isn't looming. China is going to be in a world of hurt. Their one child policy has likely doomed them as a society to the annals of history.
Not only are they not having enough children (leading to population collapse)
But even worse the older population (non-workers) are living a long time.
It's gonna break the budget to care for them.
I'm 30 years almost 30% of China will be old…not long after that it will rise to 50%.
It will be older than even Japan
It's laughable to think China will be a super power (economic or military) with the most geriatric population on earth
Their demographic problems are if anything even worse than what you cited. But they'll still be the most serious economic and military threat the USA faces for the remaining lifespan of everyone reading this thread. They still outnumber us, and will for at least a century. They still have substantially more industrial capacity than we do, particularly the hard manufacturing infrastructure needed to build armies & navies & air forces, and will for the remaining lifespan of everyone reading this thread.
You're making the same miscalculation that you make on demographics of Russia & Ukraine. Doesn't matter where things will be 50-100yrs from now, or even a decade. You have to make it work day by day. And if you don't gear up your policies to win for today & tomorrow, you won't make it to the 50-100yr timeframe.
China wins almost all the wargames done at DOD........ Granted, the wargaming is done for long-term planning to identify FUTURE threats and shortcomings, to give us head start on technology and procurement, but it does show that China is in most senses of the term a peer-rival. And they're perhaps a bit more than that in the first island chain.