China is top 3 in everything except...

solarz said:

That is extremely misleading. The main source of GDP generated in Europe is from the service sector. That is not going to be of much use to a war effort. The economy in peace time is very different from a war time economy. In this regard, France and UK *are* small players, as they simply do not have either the human or the natural resources to match big countries like China, USA, and Russia. Their only edge is in technology, and that gap is quickly narrowing.

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I beg to differ, neither Brazil (teaching China how to operate a carrier), Russia nor China are on the same level as France or the UK. Technology comes from a well educated population employed in efficient workplaces (to develop these workplaces with all their habits takes generations!) and China is just getting her youth there. China and Russia do make progress to catch up, but especially China's quantity cutting edge on the global market means that countries like UK and France are forced to counter in a technology capability field that China can not match or their economies die (= life or death struggle for economic niches).
As long as UK or France don't fall for the overengineering trap in case of armed conflict, much of the less sophisticated hardware output of Russia or China would be skeet in a mutual power projection scenario (global SLoC conflicts for example). In defense of their home turf Brazil, China and Russia would fare very well, but technology trumps with loss of strength gradient, favouring the economies that have the longer tradition and have been forced to go tech-intense (C4I wins).
That most wealth is created by local services is normal for every economy, including China and Saudi-Arabia. Chinese workers need food, places to sleep and doctors like everyone else and have like everyone else most of their country's wealth created for consumption within the borders. The difference to Europe is the higher rate of primary and secondary sector employes, but do they make the same PPP contribution? Software is still counted as part of the tertiary sector, but it is rather like secondary sector with much higher PPP earnings per "worker".
I have no doubt that China can become a great economy with a well-developed technology, but their status quo seems overstated by your statement. Chinese leadership is quite right that China is still a developing country. My personal opinion is that the current PPP of China is artificially inflated by a housing bubble and will likely drop to a more stable level.
From their abilities to influence decisions abroad, defining great power capability, Brazil, China and Russia are closing the gap to UK or France, but have by no means reached beyond regional military leverage in order to establish the same global influence as these great powers and former major colonial powers (=a lot of softpower). Equating Chinese power level with France, UK or Germany as single countries seems fair, but they are far from having Japanese or US level. That's the reason why Japan is not alarmist about the rise of China and upping their military expenditure (like the US wants them to). The whole of Eastern Asia, except for some Taiwanese, is rather relaxed about Chinese military capabilities because China is still far far away from power projection necesssary to have the military capabilities of a great and not regional power. Even the island chains of Chinese naval defense theory are in my opinion more theory than reflection of any capabilities to use these.

Even with the current changes in military technology I'd say that the PRC's strategic force positioning now is still far better than it was even 10 years ago, let alone 30. My impression is that the PR projection of capability is much of the crux of controversy rather than the actual rate of improvement of PLA capabilities.

As for tech vs mass, organizational adaptability is much more important than tech or numbers by themselves, and tradition is not necessarily a benefit either.

antiterror13 said:

China' nuclear arsenal is bigger than the UK or France ... for sure

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You read this from?

Kurt said:

Comparing China to the "small" UK or France.
Let's look at per capita PPP. Wikipedia says China is around 8,382$ (rough estimate).
France has 35,613 per capita PPP and the UK has 36,605$ per capita PPP.
Food is about 20% of expenditure in Europe, but can be significantly lower. If we assume you need 5,000$ PPP a year per capita to lead a healthy live and contribute to a war economy. Going below that ruins your health and kills you, making it impossible to contribute much to the war effort. A Chinese can now contribute 3,382$ PPP per capita, while French give 30,613$ per capita and British contribute 31,605$ per capita. that is 9-10 times the money China can raise. both have about 60 million inhabitants, thus a financial power available that compares to 600 million Chinese and both combined have the same financial war leverage as the whole of China. If you take into account that China did have a rapid growth, while the French and UK have been rich for decades, then you can deduct that both had much morer capability to build up maginificient armament, development know-how and other things in the past, then they still have quite an advantage because a decade ago they were each as wealthy as China.
The per capita disposable PPP income is even more limited for China because compareably small sums per capita have drastic standard of living repercussions that do not appear for the old industrial powers when they do raise higher amounts per capita to achieve the same sums for a similar purpose. The expected reply is now that Europeans are whimps and Chinese are tough. Well, read more about disposable income PPP per capita before you fall for that hybris.

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I really don't like this type of death number calculating. In order to measure what and how much someone can afford, you have to take into account many factors. For example foods to survive or foods for luxury. The NK starves their people to develop military power (of course, we don't expect China to do the same), and many, many other factors.

SteelBird said:

I really don't like this type of death number calculating. In order to measure what and how much someone can afford, you have to take into account many factors. For example foods to survive or foods for luxury. The NK starves their people to develop military power (of course, we don't expect China to do the same), and many, many other factors.

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I totally agree that the issue is more complex than the "death-match" I presented to make a point about capabilities, but it was a valid argument in order to highlight that France or the UK can not be compared to one of the many Chinese provinces in their global power and influence role.
Being an independant country has many influences on outlooks and solutions from which derive influence abilities. Singapore, Hong-Kong and Shanghai can no way be compared in their role in global politics. The sinocentrism above of looking at UK and France as insignificant because of population numbers and thus qualifying them as something akin in importance to some province within China is incorrect. Population numbers don't say much about capabilities. How much of the power of modern China is derived from Hong Kong and Shanghai and what percentage of the population is responsible? Many of the inhabitants are currently, from this perspective, mouths to feed who contribute little wealth gains, but do have future potentials. In a conflict scenario they can be more of a liability than an asset if self-sufficiency becomes impossible.

Kurt said:

I totally agree that the issue is more complex than the "death-match" I presented to make a point about capabilities, but it was a valid argument in order to highlight that France or the UK can not be compared to one of the many Chinese provinces in their global power and influence role.
Being an independant country has many influences on outlooks and solutions from which derive influence abilities. Singapore, Hong-Kong and Shanghai can no way be compared in their role in global politics. The sinocentrism above of looking at UK and France as insignificant because of population numbers and thus qualifying them as something akin in importance to some province within China is incorrect. Population numbers don't say much about capabilities. How much of the power of modern China is derived from Hong Kong and Shanghai and what percentage of the population is responsible? Many of the inhabitants are currently, from this perspective, mouths to feed who contribute little wealth gains, but do have future potentials. In a conflict scenario they can be more of a liability than an asset if self-sufficiency becomes impossible.

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Perhaps, but in the context of nuclear armageddon, population and land size matters far more than GDP.

I forgot to mention one thing in my earlier post. China is nowhere near the top 3 in helicopters, in terms of related R&D, production, and operation of helicopters China is very much behind the top players.

As much progress as China has made, I think a lot of posters on this forum underestimate how advanced the real top players in all of these military and technological fields are.

Not only has China made a lot of progress, it also has a realistic chance of someday catching up and becoming a top player in all of these fields. But that day is at least years if not decades away assuming everything continues to go as well for China as it has in the recent past.

PanAsian said:

I forgot to mention one thing in my earlier post. China is nowhere near the top 3 in helicopters, in terms of related R&D, production, and operation of helicopters China is very much behind the top players.

As much progress as China has made, I think a lot of posters on this forum underestimate how advanced the real top players in all of these military and technological fields are.

Not only has China made a lot of progress, it also has a realistic chance of someday catching up and becoming a top player in all of these fields. But that day is at least years if not decades away assuming everything continues to go as well for China as it has in the recent past.

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Helicopters are perhaps overengineered, for many tasks autogyros could replace them.

Kurt said:

Helicopters are perhaps overengineered, for many tasks autogyros could replace them.

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How's that, just curious about the technical aspects of it all?

China being a big country enjoys the advantage of scale. Although it does lack behind in most technology sectors compared to Western countries, it has a lot of "complete" systems/network/infrastructures that most smaller countries don't have. For example, the ejection seat in fighter jets can only be manufactured by four countries in the world, UK, US, Russian and China. Another area is space industry. China is one of only few countries that has a complete infrastructure.

Right now China isn't top 3 in most technology sector, but it has all of them, especially that it has active programs in all of them. What China lacks isn't scale but quality.

And NO. I don't think China is top 3 in everything. All you have to have is a huge military with immense long distance projection ability. Just look at the USSR, they are lacking behind in so many technology sectors, but everyone fears them.