If China captures these regions, US will be unable to replenish advanced weapons and unable to sustain international civilian shipping industry. The ability of US to build ships by tonnage is 230 times less than China and 100 times less than SK.
With these areas under control, China can also blackmail any third party to stop trade with US, or else risk not receiving any vital civilian goods.
China aiming to 'capture' these places would be akin to repeating mistakes of US's attempts to do so in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also quite unrealistic in this day and age. The mistake of Afghanistan and Iraq were huge failures in context of great-power politics.
US spent money, men & attention on these while China developed economically, away from pressures. Without these wars, the kind of actions we're seeing against China now may have started occuring 1-2 decades earlier. Capturing Japan and SK, while possible, tho, they'd just be bleeding wound taking resources away from what really matters - The economy.
The cold war will be won on economic front through innovation primarily and other factors will follow. Luckily for China, CCP knows this and that's the primary focus. They arent screwing there economy to pour crazy resources in to arms race like USSR did. Instead, they're pouring crazy resources into innovation and drive the economy.
We're seeing the results of that, the economy is driving the milltary growth in quality and quantity.
Few months ago, USAF said they'd be lucky to field 6th gen fighter months aheado of China. Since then, US doesnt have funds for 6th gen fighter in it's intended ideal design and it's essentially back to the drawing board. Same thing occurred with Zumwalt. The days of funding bleeding-edge feature creep seem to be over. They're not even able to afford next-gen long range artillery shells these days. Only the printing of dollar is keeping the current order afloat. That also has it's limits and they're approaching that slowly. They're at a critical juncture where they need to increase spending to contain China, but instead they are faced with a situation where they have to cut funding here and there to balance things out. US has had market-driven innovation edge for a lot of decades and it's still a great place for innovation, saying otherwise is putting blinders on your eyes, they still are able to attract the best talent at this point in time. China doesnt has the need to attract as it brews the talent locally and you dont have to be a debt serf to build that talent through education.
However, the current US system is not perfect, and so many of the industries have also stagnated as they pursued short-term shareholder value creation over long-term strategic domination. When threatened, they used their muscle to cut down the competition like it was done to Japan.
It's an interesting competition and we're all alive in this interesting period of time in human history where two powers, stronger than anything before them compete for the top-dawg slot. Grab your popcorns and keep reading sinodefense.
