I wonder if you really know how the world works today.
I've given my opinion and that´s it.

Surprisingly similar to what Churchill was repeatedly told in 1937 and 38.

Es ist hoffnungslos!

One should not fear China. They will not start a war that can criple their economy. The biggest enemy China has is China itself. Also, the lifelines of China are very vulnerable and their navy is (not yet) strong enough to protect them.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

Surprisingly similar to what Churchill was repeatedly told in 1937 and 38.

Sam, it's a different world today. We have a global economy. The big ones aren't going to hurt each other, but the militaries need a threat otherwise the Generals lose their jobs. The Middle East is much more dangerous than China for the world peace.

There's been a global economy ever since the intense Phoenician commerce in the Mediterranean and since the silk road, and rather than preventing, it has fueled dozens of wars.
For example, the famous steel of Damascus was made with Indian ingots containing a little tungsten that were transported to Africa and then to Damascus. It doesn't get much more global than that. A Muslim Indian nobleman could make out a check to a horse trader in Andalusia and receive his horses maybe one or two years later, long before Italian bankers claimed to have invented checks.

Japan attacked the US because it desperately needed oil to keep fighting in China, not because it felt like it.
China will attack as soon as a really big drought threatens with major famine or when the depressed economies of its trade partners cannot support its economy or when a natural disaster weakens the US or when oil reserves dwindle.

The Middle East has a few hundred million people without any industry and so incompetent at fighting that they prefer to blow themselves up. As soon as oil reserves approach depletion (as Chinese, Indonesian and Indian demand explodes) or the US develops fission, its only source of income will disappear and chaos will develop. The only cement that binds it is Islam, but they have managed to weaken the bond with bitterly opposed branches (Shiite, Sunny, etc,).

Didn't they decide major Wars were just too expensive to fight back around 1900....
China has been expanding its holdings in the various island groups of the South China Sea ever since they grabbed a few @ the fall of South Vietnam. With a rapidly modernizing military they have been ramping up the saber rattling v Taiwan.

Yes, supposedly wars had also been rendered moot by the invention of the machine gun and quick firing artillery.
Once Taiwan falls to China and South Korea to North Korea and China, Japan and the Philippines will be open hunting ground.
With the Taiwanese, South Korean and Japanese industry under its control, China will be far more formidable than Hitler after gaining the Austrian, Czech and Polish industries.
China has even been courting its former enemy Viet Nam, which would make a powerful ally to help to occupy Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Beam me up scotty.

Originally Posted by samneanderthal

The capacity of a country to conquer relates little to its position as a world leader. Attila or Genghis were far from being world leaders when they began to expand. Rome was much less of a world leader than Carthage and had a much less powerful navy when it started copying the Carthaginian ships and soundly defeated Carthage in Sicily, starting its downfall.

Many of Hitler's soldiers were inexperienced teenagers, which defeated France boosted by amphetamines in record time. The same teenagers achieved the most impressive advance in history in Barbarossa.

Minorities have long been allowed more than 1 child by law in China, it is the Han who can only have one child. However, when you have over a hundred million people between 18 and 30, you need not worry about running out of troops.

2 years of conscription for a huge number of people seems infinitely better than no conscripton at all for far fewer people, most of them overweight and addicted to at least one drug.

The Chinese educational system is too demanding, the American system teaches almost nothing until college, to which an ever increasing number of Americans can not aspire, because of ridiculous costs.

The idea that the Chinese have little creativity and only copy things ignores the fact that many of the most important inventions came from China and that China is issuing more patents in many fields than the US. Aside from the fact that most of America's scientists, engineers and doctors are foreigners and if the depression intensifies in the US, while the Chinese economy grows, they will flock to China.

Germany, Germany, Germany, the British, French and especially the Americans were feed up of hearing about it (and about Japan) in 1938. After all, the Germans were civilized people, simply improving their economy and too smart to go to war after the destruction and massacre of WW I.

Greater military spending in 2009 does not necessarily imply a stronger military. Each soldier in Afghanistan or in Iraq was estimated to cost 1 million dollars a year. Contractors (why not call them mercenaries?) had a lower maintenance cost but much higher salaries, so they ended up costing the same of more. The main reason they were used is that they did not figure in the casualty lists, so attentively followed by the press and the public. In Iraq alone billions disappeared and have not been accounted for.
The American soldiers had much higher salaries and required tons of supplies each in WW II, but fought no better than the Japanese soldiers, who had to survive with a few pounds of supplies each and low wages.
Look at the French and British military budget for 38, 39 and 40 and the size of their armies, ari forces and navies, yet all that spending and people little reflective their fighting ability.
Just because an American aircraft carrier costs billions to make and maintain, doesn't mean that a Chinese carrier, built and maintained for a fraction of the cost cannot perform just as well.

Your lack of practical experience amazes me. I've held my tongue so far but when you're so far off the mark, I can't help but to open my mouth.

You make all these arguments on the modern age simply from using history from 60+ years ago. The world is a changed place, and so is modern warfare.

Those Chinese inventions you were talking about came centuries ago before Western imperialism and Communism. It isn't the same place today.

The fact that you think that American scientists doctors and engineers would give up their liberties to "flock" to a place like China amazes me. Have you ever been to China? Do you know what it's like there? Their economy might be growing but their people live in horrid and depressing conditions. The fact that they lack even the most remote form of safety and health standards is already a reason to not live there.