This apples to apples comparison often leads us to some
erroneous confidence in our conclusions about how the U.S. and China stack up. The appropriate comparisons
are something more like apples to oranges. But it's sufficient to say, looking at these capabilities
stacked up, that these are the two most capable militaries in the world in almost any respect, and that a conflict
between them would be catastrophic for everyone. Does the U.S. or China have a larger military? You're not talking about the whole force
against the whole force. What we're talking about in respect of China
is almost exclusively. Contingencies in the western Pacific
and along China's littoral. And so there you're talking about more or less
all of the Chinese forces versus whatever part of the U.S. forces would be engaged there.
So just with that caveat as a starting point. On paper, China's armed forces are larger than America
is according to certain ways of counting it and smaller. According to others, the U.S. defense budget, you may and your listeners may well know
is substantially larger than China's reported defense budget at $840 billion, I think is the National Defense Authorization
bill that's just passed Congress in the U.S. And I think the latest estimate
on the Chinese official defense budget was 230 billion. So that's quite a substantial gap. But it's a question of what you get for that
and also what's included in the overall figure. For better and for worse, NDAA details all of the specific line
items for which this $840 billion is allocated. We know just sort of the top lines on the Chinese side
and we also know that they spend more overall on domestic security forces and also have quite an integrated
industrial sector supporting defense procurement and programs. And that that ought to factor in. So the U.S. is bigger there, China's bigger in terms of manpower, 2 million active personnel compared to the U.S.,
I think at 1.35 is the latest estimate. But again, these quantitative assessments
are are not necessarily indicative of what the real balance of military power is. Most of those are just standing infantry forces. The quality of those forces varies quite significantly on U.S. combat. Forces, of course, have exercised that capability repeatedly and continuously
over the course of the last 20 some odd years and longer. Frankly, whereas the play
the People's Liberation Army should have noted, has had very, very limited combat experience and has overall
probably a lower quality of training and caliber of troop from a kind of an objective skills
and tactical capability standpoint, other capabilities that you might reasonably measure in
trying to assess the relative military capabilities of the U.S. and China Are their fleet,
the Navy and in particular, what you think of as the battle force ships,
the ones that are part of any combat operation for a Navy. The U.S. here holds
what I would describe as a qualitative edge. Now, the the PLA Navy, their overall battle force is now over
370 ships, 140 major surface combatants, whereas the United States is now around to 90 and aiming for 355, but not having much of a pathway towards
reaching that given our capacity in shipbuilding and resources. So the PLA Navy is larger from a number of ships standpoint,
but from a gross tonnage standpoint, the U.S. remains significant, larger from a quality
or qualitative standpoint, the capability of the ships. The U.S. maintains a significant edge. You know, U.S. operates 11 carriers, all of which are nuclear powered. These things draft
something on the order of 100,000 tons compared to much smaller non-nuclear powered, much less capable carriers
to now deploying for China. And that's just one particular metric. Submarines is an even more significant example of a major
qualitative and quantitative edge for the United States. So, you know, the fact of the PLA Navy
being larger ship or ship is misleading. I think most naval experts would assess U.S. naval capability to be significantly better. But China has come on very,
very fast and closed the gap in many significant ways. U.S. fields, more aircraft and in particular
more advanced aircraft, about 14,000 total for the U.S. versus only 2800 in China. And the U.S. Air Force is much more high quality composition,
many more fourth Gen and higher fighters compared to China's modernizing and improving,
but still inferior to air forces. The key thing to point out here
is that the role of air forces in a distant theater in which the United States would meet China requires
air basing and requires all sorts of things that allow that air power
to project forward to include carriers. And so there's a there's an asymmetry in terms of the things
that each country needs to do with this air power. Final two things to note A nuclear weapons. United States has a large quantitative
and qualitative edge here. In most respects, about 3700 warheads in the United States
versus an estimated 500 in China. Even though the Chinese figure has increased
dramatically over time and is trending towards a thousand. That's still not an area where they're coming towards parity. One area in which China is arguably superior and it's hard to get exact counts on these,
but you can say in qualitative terms is in missile forces. The play has in fact its own rocket force, a service of the play that controls their ballistic missile forces,
which are both nuclear and conventional capable. And this is an area where the U.S., over the course
of a lot of arms control, as well as fighting a lot of its combat missions that didn't require intermediate and medium range ballistic missiles
basically disinvested from this element of our force, Whereas the PLA has looked at this
as an area of major asymmetric advantage, a way to deny U.S. access to this East Asian theater. And so the PLA has quantitative and qualitative advantages
in a lot of different types of missile forces, particularly those kind of theater range, intermediate
and medium range and short range ballistic missiles, as well as some of the technological advancements in the field,
like hypersonics, for example, where China has actually made some really significant progress
and arguably fields superior capabilities to the U.S. So all of this is a long way of saying is that the U.S. it as a military force on paper
looks superior in most respects. However, as I said upfront,
what we're generally talking about when we think about U.S. and China military competition are contingencies
that are concentrated in East Asia. And so we're looking at a very different way of those forces
engaging with one another. And to really get a sense of,
you know, how would such and such conflicts play out, you really need to dial in some of those specifics
with the presumption that they'll have the same set of strategic objectives
and same set of strategic interests as does the United States. Is the Chinese military
currently an active threat to American held territories? Another challenging question. I'll give you the short answer, which is yes, but two U.S. territories in the Pacific, primarily like Guam and Hawaii on the longer answer is no, not really. It's a threat to that particular set of military facilities that are within the range
of engaging in a fight in the Western Pacific. That's the best that I think we can say about the type
of capabilities that we've been talking about over the course of this conversation is that they are concentrated
on this hypothetical fight in the Western Pacific. This apples to apples
comparison often leads us to some erroneous confidence in our conclusions about how the U.S. and China stack up. The appropriate comparisons
are something more like apples to oranges. When we look at the U.S. Navy and its capabilities and the Western Pacific or the U.S. Joint Force, what we should arrayed against is
what is sometimes called China's anti navy, this suite of anti access area denial capabilities,
most prominently highlighted by the missile forces, but also submarines and a range of other ways
in which China would look at this as an area where it must put U.S. military forces, which include forces based on U.S. territories,
as well as the territories of allies, must put them at risk. And that's what we've seen coming into really full focus over
these last few years. And it is primarily,
if not exclusively concentrated in that Western Pacific region. And so I think we really need to think more carefully
as we make these types of assessments. I don't think you should trust anybody who offers a blithe assertion about here's
how this or that conflict would play out. There are far too many uncertainties
about the pathway to conflict and the nature of the the interactions
between great powers like the United States and China. But it's sufficient to say, looking at these capabilities
stacked up, that these are the two most capable militaries in the world in almost any respect, and that a conflict
between them would be catastrophic for everyone.
