	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 1-May-06
China's plans for war with America

Web Log - May, 2006

China's plans for war with America

China is openly making plans for all-out war with the United States, according to documents that several readers referred me to after reading last week's article on Chinese President Hu's visit, describing Hu's gift to Bush, a silk copy of Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War.

Unrestricted Warfare, 1999, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, colonels in the People's Liberation Army

Unrestricted Warfare, 1999, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, colonels in the People's Liberation Army

The book Unrestricted Warfare, published in 1999 by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, colonels in the People's Liberation Army, lays out a complete strategy for a "war without limits" with America, starting with, "The first rule is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden." (A 200-page excerpt can be found here in PDF form and here in HTML form.)

Like The Art of War, Unrestricted Warfare emphasizes the need to win wars without actual warfare, a common theme in Chinese culture. Accordingly, it recommends a collection of extra-warfare technology, such as terrorism, using China's enormous economic power for economic warfare, and technology warfare attacking networks.

The authors have something in common with Osama bin Laden: Like bin Laden, they believed that America had become to weak too fight a war, based on our military action in 1993, where we fled from the scene once one soldier had been killed. OBL believed that America would never respond to a terrorist attack, and Qiao and Wang believed the same.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, these people are all making the same mistake because they don't understand generational patterns. During the 1990s, America was still in a "generational unraveling" period, the era between the awakening and crisis eras. Unraveling eras are the times that a nation's public are the least willing to wage war, even less than in an awakening era.

But that all changed around 2000, when all the people in the Silent generation (the people who grew up during WW II) all disappeared (retired or died), all at once. That's what makes the difference. That's why, after 9/11, President Bush received full support from almost the entire American public for the invasion of Afghanistan.

Today, well into its crisis period, America has virtually no fear of war. A terrorist attack on American soil, for example, would bring immediate demands for a retaliatory military strike.

This doesn't mean that Qiao and Wang's work is wrong, since the lengthy book is still devoted to all kinds of actual warfare. But it means that America will be much more ruthless than the Chinese expect, just as the Chinese will be much more ruthless than the Americans expect.

More up to date is a recent lengthy analytical articled called, "If it comes to a shooting war with China." This article details various scenarios how China could cripple America's armed forces, and go on to win the war.

There's no doubt that China is thinking in terms of war with America, especially over Taiwan. In fact, it was last year in July that General Zhu Chenghu, a top-level officer in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan. Speaking to a group of foreign journalists, General Zhu said,

"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

So, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there's no doubt that a war with China is coming, and possibly quite soon. How is that war going to turn out?

For years, China has been furiously preparing for a major war with America. It has huge and hugely increasing military budgets, rapidly building up its war machine. The money is going for the most advanced high tech weaponry, including sophisticated aircraft, missiles, submarines, and WMDs. The initial objectives are the reunification of Taiwan, the destruction of Japan, control of the Pacific and Indian Ocean sea lanes, and eventually destruction of the United States. The Chinese are smarter than we are and there are a hell of a lot more of them than us, so they will succeed in that plan.

Based on that information, the best we can hope for is to slow the Chinese warmaking down for a while, until the 2020s when the robots and computers will start taking everything over, and war with China won't matter much anyway.

In fact, these books and articles overlook some very substantial advantages that America has, probably enough to protect us for at least a couple of decades.

China is becoming increasingly unstable and is approaching a massive civil war as its bubble economy unravels. With China five times as big as America, they're capable of waging an external war while a civil war is in progress, but at the very least, a civil war will be a huge distraction, and a big help to America.

China will have other powerful enemies, and will also be at war with Japan and India. In fact, analysts in India are also publishing analytical papers on war with China, just as China is publishing analytical papers on war with America.

China has little or no experience with foreign wars, and no experience with overseas wars, since China has been plagued by centuries of civil war. It's true that China is developing the latest high-tech weaponry, including submaries and naval vessels, but there'll be a big learning curve.

By contrast, America has had a great deal of experience with overseas wars. No matter what you think of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, American forces have absorbed an enormous amount of "lessons learned" material from those experiences.

Furthermore, the American forces have been using very sophisticated computer simulations to "practice" war with China for years. Any scenarios that anyone else has thought of has also been dealt with in these sessions, along with all the possible counter-scenarios

I certainly don't wish to give the impression that this will be easy. As General Zhu said, we may have as many as 100 American cities destroyed with nuclear weapons, and that doesn't even count biological or chemical weapons. Worldwide, there will only be 2-3 billion people left of the current 6.5 billion people. So win or lose, the upcoming war will the be the worst the world has ever known.

Because of it's enormous size, China could expect, sometime in this century, to beat America in a major genocidal war and then permanently occupy North America. However, with a takover by super-intelligent computers expected within two to three decades, it's doubtful that they'll reach that point. (1-May-06) Permanent Link
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China's plans for war with America