CN China is building its military on a 'scale not seen since WWII' and is on track to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027: US admiral - China's military has added more than 400 fighter aircraft and 20 warships to its arsenal and doubled its missile inventory in the last three years said the admiral.

China's rapid military build-up is more expansive than anything seen since World War II, which means it's on track with its 2027 goal to be ready for a Taiwan invasion, said US Navy Adm. John Aquilino.

"All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping's directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027," Aquilino wrote in a testimony to the US Armed Services House Committee.

"Furthermore, the PLA's actions indicate their ability to meet Xi's preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed," added the admiral, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command.


Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command holds a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., United States on October 17, 2023. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images
Notably, Aquilino told lawmakers in a hearing on Wednesday that he also believes China still hopes to assimilate Taiwan without war, though Beijing is fast approaching the capacity for an assault.

He and Assistant Defense Secretary for the Indo-Pacific Command Ely Ratner both said the threat of direct conflict between the US and China is "neither immediate nor inevitable," but that the Pentagon must move fast to reduce the risk of war.

His projected timeline aligns with the one given by his predecessor, Ret. Adm. Philip Davidson, and other US military leaders that China seeks to reach Taiwan invasion capabilities by 2027 while not necessarily wanting war.

Aquilino wrote in his testimony that of the three main US concerns in the region — Russia, China, and North Korea — China is the "only country that has the capability, capacity, and intent to upend the international order."

"On a scale not seen since WWII, the PLA's buildup is occurring across land, sea, air, space, cyber, and information domains," he added.

China's military has added more than 400 fighter aircraft and 20 warships to its arsenal and doubled its missile inventory in the last three years, Aquilino said.
At the same time, Beijing has increased the number of satellites it fields by 50% and more than doubled its nuclear warhead arsenal, he added.

Aquilino urged the US to intensify its military development, saying threats in the Indo-Pacific continue to "grow and accelerate."

"We must go faster," Aquilino repeatedly told lawmakers over the two-hour hearing on Wednesday.

He recommended deploying systems in Guam that can defend against hypersonic and cruise missiles by 2027, two years earlier than the 2029 deadline set by Congress in December.


A U.S. Air Force Rockwell B-1B Lancer (L) and a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker (R) sit on the tarmac at Andersen Air Force base on August 17, 2017 in Yigo, Guam. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

This year, the Indo-Pacific Command flagged in a priority wish list that it hoped for $11 billion more than the funds allocated by the White House, with $430 million requested for the Guam missile defense system, per documents obtained by Politico Pro.

China has not officially signaled a coming war with Taiwan. However, Xi has said that he believes unification is inevitable. He's also refused to rule out assimilating the self-governed island by force.

Analysts have debated its ability to successfully pull off an amphibious invasion of the island, and the likelihood and timeliness of US intervention are central to the calculus.

If it were to invade Taiwan, Beijing would have the herculean task of safely moving a mass ground force over the strait. China does appear to be exploring transport options like requisitioning civilian ships to help with transport.

On the other hand, analysts say Taiwan's best bet for defense is likely to hold out for the US to arrive.

Meanwhile, US leaders have been concerned with Xi's mandate to make China's military a "world-class" force by 2027, as the White House fears that Beijing seeks to supplant the US as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific and eventually the rest of the globe.

More recently, Beijing's forces were caught up in a corruption scandal that saw Xi ousting multiple senior leaders — including some from its heavily emphasized Rocket Force.

The purge and reports of graft materially affecting China's arsenal triggered questions internationally about the true strength of the People's Liberation Army, and if Xi's military goals have been delayed.

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[Dick Mason]

They are sitting on a demographics disaster that makes SK, europe or Japan's problems look like a small speed bump.

They do have an advantage that SK, Europe, and Japan lack: they don't have a hostile ethnicity in a superior position working to racially destroy them. If they can repel the Jews' racial projects, if they can remain Chinese, they'll be fine. That's really all that matters for a people. From there an ethnicity can recover, as they still exist.

South Korea and Japan could easily look like Canada by 2040. As we've seen with other small nations, they are remarkably easy to pervert and conquer in that typical judeo-genocidal style.

They know it's now or never to project power

I don't think China is in any hurry. If they can retain their borders and executive control of their people, they can dazily sleepwalk into the 22nd century and be fine. China's relative ethnic homgeneity, its high level of racism, and their confidence in their own racial supremacy is probably their biggest strengths. Russia does not have that.

Maybe civic nationalism works better there, but in the west that been the harbinger of civilizational death/murder.

Iran and Russia would feel/be empowered to do.

At this point both of them just want to survive. Neither are likely to win in the long-term. I don't think Russia can keep the west from conquering them in the next 10-20 years. Who follows Putin? Can he be bought? Can his luck hold like Putin's? If they fall, they'll be treated like any other hated-enemy-turned-vassal that Jews create. Now that the West has sunk their teeth in Ukraine, and shown that they're not letting go, is Russia not against the wall?

It's good to keep in mind who is bombing whose major cities in this war. Russia wouldn't dare attack Europe unless all-out war were declared; and even then they know they could not win. The West is not going to stop bombing civilians in Russia unless made to stop by force. Who's going to stop them? So, that's just going to be a normal thing now. How long can Russia hold out? Longer than the West, which is choking on its DEI projects, can remain functional enough to press?



- Isn't Japan already well-packed? Is reduced population a bad thing for Japan if they can remain Japanese?
- What happens to Iran and Syria if Russian assistance/mingling/interference is eliminated from the Middle East?

but they're not doing shit to the Republic of China on Taiwan.

The Ukraine war, for me, is kind of predictable. The war in Taiwan, now that's fascinating. How would that go? After the West has shown with Ukraine that allowing a wedge their enemies' border could mean total downfall, can China not act? I think, like Russia, they have to.

We know that the West was baiting Russia into that war for nearly a decade, right? Are they baiting China similarly? What is going on over there? I would like more China v Taiwan content.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Considering how good China is at building shit, should we really be worried?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Surely massively increasing the size of an army who's weakpoint is logistics, insane adherence to chain of command and ever increasing paranoia of rebellion within the ranks will increase effectiveness!

 

[cybertoaster]

The problem is that if it becomes a Russian invasion of Ukraine level fuck-up, the CCP loses that mandate of heaven and a civil war may erupt.

Nah, my guess is xi will get ousted+suicided and the chicom will go back to deng levels of diplomacy.

Don't think china will just go into civil war over a failed mission, they certainly didn't after getting humilliated in their invasion of an already war torn vietnam.


Consider the military is not the armed forces of china, its the armed forces of the chicom party, not even the soviets did this.

At any sign of war, it needs to be nuked immediately. You just demolished a significant portion of their infrastructure and recruiting base from the resulting flood.

"How to get nuked"

That's a lot of potential trouble makers sitting idle, better to get them into the Army and keep them busy and out of trouble.

Most of that "youth" are POC (people of cornstarch) so good luck wrangling them into the barracks.

The US Navy is, arguably, the worst hit of the "Manpower Crisis" that has affected most of the branches of the American military.

I thought it was the army that couldn't make even the bare minimum of recruitment goals.

 

[Breadbassket]

I thought it was the army that couldn't make even the bare minimum of recruitment goals.

The US Navy missed all recruitment goals in the 2023 Fiscal Year.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

They know it's now or never to project power, regionally or locally, or to achieve their political and empire goals. That's what makes them so dangerous

This is truly the heart of the matter and a reason why I generally disagree with shrugging off the PRC as a nonexistent threat that will resolve itself naturally through an inevitable economic and sociological decline. China has undergone a drastic economic change into an influential middle power in the Asia-Pacific region, but that power base is built upon a house of cards and decades of unwise political decisions.

I think Xi knows this, understands that he faces a demographic decline, a system of authoritarian capitalism without any real potential for citizens to own capital assets without the consent and involvement of the Chinese government, hence why the overall health of the Chinese capital markets are intrinsically linked to its real estate market; citizens had literally no other choice.

The PRC is either going to do something very stupid, or will accept that underlying structural instabilities in their society will contribute to the decline in power that the Xi regime can ultimately project. Either a war with it's neighbors, or internal divisions contributing to the collapse of the CCP and dissolution of their government, much like what happened with the Russian SFSR back in 1991. Unlike the collapse of communist Russia, however, the CCP will fight to hold onto power and there will be blood spilled in an attempt to maintain the system as it is, they've demonstrated that they would go to such lengths before; I have no reason do doubt that they will do it again.

The real question is to what response will there be from the United States and other countries in the region? We can postulate what could possibly happen, but I don't think any of us will know until something happens, whatever that may be. Outside of the immediate response, how will the world be affected in the years and decades to come?

 

[JosephStalin]

So the Chinese have X more new fighters and X more new ships.

The Chinese have no combat experience earlier than 1979. They have no experience carrying out a combined-arms invasion through a defended strait/defended airspace against a defended shore.

You just don't wing such an operation. In WWII, it took us until mid-1944 to carry out a large-scale combined assault across a much shorter body of water. By that time, we had digested the debacle at Dieppe, and had carried out amphibious operations in North Africa, Sicily, two landings in Italy, and a bunch of landings in the Pacific. We had also largely reduced the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to near-impotency.

The Chinese are going to be much more casualty-averse than might be thought. The 'one-child policy' is biting away at China with a vengeance. Nearly every man in the Chinese military is the product of a one-child family. In China, since there's no national Social Security system the son is expected to be the primary support of the aged parents. Lose thousands of sons in an attempted landing and you have a shitload of very angry parents. And also keep in mind, as an aside, you already have situations where the son of a one-child family is lucky enough to find a daughter of another one-child family to marry. Could mean that this guy needs to support himself, his wife, any kids they have, and as many as four in-laws. What's wrong with this picture?

China has problems we should be very happy not to have.

Have said all this before, saying this again as a reminder.

 

[pot of sneed]

The Chinese have no combat experience earlier than 1979. They have no experience carrying out a combined-arms invasion through a defended strait/defended airspace against a defended shore.

Haven't they been squabbling over territory with India? I could have sworn I read they had and the chinks didn't fare that well against the street shitters.

Off-topic but an obligatory funny.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Haven't they been squabbling over territory with India? I could have sworn I read they had and the chinks didn't fare that well against the street shitters.

Off-topic but an obligatory funny.

Yeah there's a whole eastern province, Arunachal Pradesh, that's disputed between the two based on differing British treaties re: the border between the Raj and Tibet. There's also Aksai Chin up by Kashmir, but India's basically let China have that one

 

[Devout Muslim]

If they besiege Hanoi, then it'll make the Ukraine war seem like a toddler fight.

If they go south again they’ll get their shit kicked in again lmao. They launched a surprise invasion of Vietnam in retaliation for Vietnam getting rid of their favourite retard, Pol Pot. It was a surprise attack on an extended smaller neighbour and all they got was a few border towns and 10 years of SEETHING while the Viet Cong pranced around Cambodia stunting on them.

The Chinese cannot fight. The only reason they have a chance in Taiwan is because it’s against other Chinese.

 

[FieldPiece]

I expect utter anarchy in Chinkland if they do invade and get met with any resistance. Every chink that dies is 2 families that are now shit out of luck. China is already in a bad economic position as companies have realized places like Mexico and Vietnam can provide more skilled labor for a smaller price and fewer risks. They also have a problem similar to Russia where people in the big cities would not be happy being conscripted. But unlike Russia people in the outskirts of China live in areas that won't become utterly inhospitable if Beijing collapses.