With the deterioration of the current world situation, contradictions between China and the United States are also accumulating, and the possibility of war is also increasing.
As a result, everyone has never stopped discussing the question of who will win or lose in a war between China and the United States.
Before 2016, there were many people in the US military who thought that a war broke out between China and the United States, and the PLA could not hold out for even an hour. But up to now, there are still quite a few people who believe that the PLA is inferior to the US military.
This is strange, why is it that the US military still can't recognize reality?
The masses overestimated America's ability to do war
It is worth mentioning that from the Cold War to the present, the public has always overestimated the war capability of the United States.
Note that the U.S. war capability is spoken of here, not the U.S. combat power.
American
If the United States and China go to war, the biggest question for the United States is, what will happen after the war?
War is an extension of politics, and any war has a goal. This goal could be land swallowing, it could be geopolitical.
In the modern "age of financial assets", it may also be all kinds of business agreements that will open your country.
When the U.S. and China go to war, the main problem is that the U.S. doesn't have the ability to get China to accept its war aims.
Suppose the United States attacks China on the Taiwan issue, then what follows is China's unending struggle.
If the United States wanted China to sign an unequal commercial agreement, then I am sorry, but the Chiang Kai-shek government that signed the so-called "Sino-American Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation" with the United States in 1946 has long since disappeared into the dust.
The scene of the signing of the "Sino-US Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation".
It can be said that China will not agree to any of the war goals proposed by the United States, and even if the United States can defeat the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) head-on, the next thing that will greet the United States will be the endless guerrilla warfare of the Chinese military and civilians.
From the Cold War era to the present, the United States has rarely won any long-term war.
After 20 years of fighting the Vietnam War, the United States almost lost the Cold War.
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was fought for 10 to 20 years, and in the end it was found that it could not suppress the continuous resistance of the local people and resistance forces, and finally walked away.
The fundamental reason why the United States was able to win the Gulf War, the most brilliant war fought by the United States since the Cold War, was that the United States fought and ran in this war.
Gulf War
In this war, which lasted only a few dozen days, the US military did defeat the Iraqi army on the frontal battlefield, but the problem is that Iraq still retains strong military capabilities after this war, and Saddam's government still controls Iraq.
So this led to the Iraq War.
When the United States was caught up in a long-term, people-oriented war like the Iraq War, instead of a war like the Gulf War, which attacked the enemy's regular army from the front, the United States performed very poorly in the war.
Therefore, even if China and the United States go to war, and the US military can defeat the PLA head-on, the United States will lose the war with China. Just as Japan invaded China in 1931, Japan finally lost its national strength in this war.
Oil painting on the theme of the Anti-Japanese War
It is possible that the PLA will crush the US army in an hour
What's more, the United States may not be able to defeat the Chinese People's Liberation Army head-on.
It is true that the United States has a far stronger ocean-going military force than China, and the total size of its navy is much larger than that of China, but China has a home field advantage in the western Pacific region.
With the strength of China's naval and air forces and the development of China's rocket force, the PLA's voice in the western Pacific is also getting stronger and stronger.
At present, the Rocket Force has two sets of military forces that directly suppress the US military forces deployed in the western Pacific, one is anti-ship missiles and the other is ground-to-ground missiles.
Pla
China has two anti-ship missiles, the DF-26 and the DF-21D, of which the DF-26 has a maximum range of more than 4,000 kilometers.
That is, when the US Navy fleet is within 4,000 kilometers of Chinese mainland, it will be sunk by the DF-26.
At present, the United States has deployed three island chains in the Pacific Ocean, and the first and second island chains are already within the range of the DF-26.
Guam, one of the most important U.S. military bases in the western Pacific, is about 3,000 kilometers from Chinese mainland. With the range of the DF-26, it can directly sink the US fleet that did not leave the port in the Guam base.
Guam Naval Base
As for surface-to-surface missiles, China has a huge number of DF-15 missiles in front of it and a hypersonic DF-17 missile in the rear, and the entire first island chain is targeted by these missiles.
In the event of a war, there will be no complete US military facilities on the first island chain.
Therefore, when China and the United States started a war in the Western Pacific, the United States had almost no chance of winning. China's rocket force can directly suppress U.S. airfields and fleets, and with the PLA's naval and air forces, U.S. military forces must be deployed outside the second island chain to be safe.
So when the battlefield is confined to the western Pacific, the PLA may defeat the US military in an hour.
China's industrial capacity crushes the United States
In addition to the above, China has another overwhelming advantage over the United States, and that is industrial capacity.
Fighting a war is more than the productive forces, and the larger the war, the greater the impact of the productive forces.
The ancient Central Plains Dynasty was able to suppress the nomadic civilization for a long time, because the Central Plains Dynasty had a large population, and the richer land could produce more food in exchange for more productivity.
During World War II, the United States was able to win the war against Japan because of its own strong productive forces, and it continued to build aircraft and aircraft carriers during the war.
In modern times, China is the most productive country in the world.
Taking steel production capacity as an example, the global steel production capacity in 2022 is 1.8 billion tons, of which more than 1 billion tons are contributed by China. China's steel production capacity accounts for 55% of humanity's production capacity.
In terms of industrial output, China accounts for about 30%.
Considering that Europe and the United States occupy a high-end industrial chain and can obtain a greater proportion of profits in the global industrial division of labor, China's 30% industrial output value actually has more than 50% of the world's industrial scale.
China accounts for half of the world's production capacity in the true sense of the word, and it has crushed the United States in terms of productivity.
Industrial production in China
In the event of a protracted war between China and the United States, the United States will lose all its advantages in the war.
During World War II, the United States defeated Japan by launching warships faster than Japan sank, and when war broke out between China and the United States, Chinese warships would be launched much faster than the United States sank Chinese warships.
Resources:
[1] Economic Observer, "Road Wind: Don't Set Self-Limits on China's Industrial Development"
[2] Observer.com·"Observer.com Weekly Military Review: A New Future Brought by Dongfeng 26"