- China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence
- Xi seeking to root out corruption, prepare military for combat
US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.
The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.
Mmm.
Hopefully.
Unless you think war is inevitable.
The current Chinese doctrine in a theoretical conflict with America relies heavily on saturation of missile defenses to take out things like carrier groups.
If they didn’t know they’d have a 10% failure rate or whatever it could have completely invalidated their tactics.
But it you accept both that war is inevitable and that China will be the aggressor it would have been better for them not to discover this and thus be unprepared for the conflict, like we see with Russia and Ukraine.
War isn’t inevitable. Back in the cold war it was averted multiple times, and the USSR had a much more closed economy than China’s. China going to war with NATO would lose them all their largest trading partners.
No one builds a trillion dollar navy without intending to use it, but sure.
It might not happen.
In a world that solves its energy crisis and stops climate change.
Surely they intend to use it the same way the US does - projecting force to cement soft power?
While having China’s rockets fail at a high rate during an invasion would be good. They may be weaker by the time they rebuild their arsenal and an invasion is not possible. They are going to have to check a huge amount of rockets then start rebuilding. A lot can change in 2 years.