Is a Major East Coast War in China's Interest?

Probably one of the more bizarre propositions you are going to read for a while and one that is easy to write off as crazy.

But is it?

We all know that wars are highly destructive and very expensive, both in the prosection and the aftermath, and yet a major war affecting most of China's eastern Coastal Provinces could have long term consequences and benefits which wholly outweigh the short term penalties. Namely, the ability to kick start development in the interior, which is currently ticking along painfully slowly and to stop overheating in the coastal regions which shows little sign of slowing down.

This is the rub of course, the moment any real fighting got underway, individuals and state alike would be keen to move as much of China's production base deep into the interior, taking a large part of the workforce, including most of the migrant workers with it. It would be a fairly safe bet that; once moved, inland these production centres would stay there.

As for the War Torn and Ravaged Post War East Coast? No problem - we all know that these areas can develop and prosper with very little help at all. With the War over and much of the Interior significantly improved, the East Coast would be able to redevelop all over again, only this time assisted by the Interior Economic Base.

Of course it is just a theory. but.......

If we are talking about an event that seriously enhanced China's military standing in the world, probably settled a number of outstanding territorial disputes. Allowed parties involved in those disputes to agree that the past was now settled and tht it was now time to move on, effecting the major state emergency development of the country;s interior and placing the emphasis for future growth back in the easily marketable East Coast Provinces, it may not be such a unpaltable option for Beijing (or other regional nations) as it may, at first glance appear.

Your thoughts?

well i think it depends who , i mean which countries are involved in this fictional war and what weapons woulb be used .

in a nuclear war, you can say the eastern coast regions would be waste land for years to come, so development is nil.

and i think in a conventional war to much is destroyed to fast nowadays with easy air strikes. so your move your industrie into the ineterior lands wil not happen, because a lot would be destroyed before it can moved out

I doubt if anyone could engage in such a scale of Area Bombing of China's coastal provinces so quickly that the vast majority of the Industry could not be moved out the area.

Remember it took the allies 2 years to seriously damage Germany during WW2 and that is just the size of 1 Province. On top of that very few people have signifacnt numbers of Stategic Bombers anymore. Tactical bombers would have a very small effect for the kind of operation you describe.

SampanViking said:

I doubt if anyone could engage in such a scale of Area Bombing of China's coastal provinces so quickly that the vast majority of the Industry could not be moved out the area.

Remember it took the allies 2 years to seriously damage Germany during WW2 and that is just the size of 1 Province. On top of that very few people have signifacnt numbers of Stategic Bombers anymore. Tactical bombers would have a very small effect for the kind of operation you describe.

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But times have changed. With the kind of precision-strike and stand-off weapons today, the USAF can destroy all major infrastructure targets in Iraq or Serbia within days.

In a hypothetical situation where the USAF/USN was to strike PRC's coastal provinces, they'd prolly go from area to area like a grid-like fashion, destroying important targets like power stations, bridges, oil refineries, ports, telecom exchange, etc. It'd prolly take a couple of weeks to go from top to bottom.

I doubt anyone is stupid enough to attempt a land-war in China, so the objective would be to simply destroy enough infrastructure in its most valuable coastal provicnes to damage the PRC economically. It's impossible to destroy every target of value across China by air because there's just simply too many of them. So the best you can do is to bomb enough to take China out of the game and set its development back a decade or two, then enforce economic sanctions and blocade to hamper its effots to rebuild. It'd be a very costly war for US/Japan, but countries like India, Vietnam, and those in South America would jump for joy as they replace China in the manufacturing sector.

Hi Adeptitus

The whole premise of this thread is not about the ability or otherwise of an enemy to destroy the major infrastructure of the main East Coast Provinces (no mean, risk or loss free task in its own right) but about the effect of such a campaign to propel the vast bulk of the Coastal Industrial and Light Engineering base into the Interior. So much of your point in the last post actually supports that hypothesis.

The main point of my last response was to question the assumption of Germanchinese that an AirCampaign could flatten the majority of that Industrial base very quickly and before it could remove itself.

I personally find that hypothesis highly unlikely.

I think you forgot that any industy have to think in economical terms. Even after they have to move industries into the inner provinces, i think a lot of these industries eventually will move back to the coastal lines, because they settle their factories there where the line of supply is short. So these factories needs resources like oil, ore, chemicals, wood, etc..pp

Instead of using long lines of supply and therefore a cost explsoion in transport they move back to their original places.

Of course not all of them but the majority .

A lot of China's manufacturing still comes from Manchuria-that's where most of China's steel comes from, as well as its coal, and a lot of auto manufacturing takes place there, as well as China's oil industy. So just in terms of producing material things, Manchuria still plays a big role in China's economy. Any effort to destroy China's economic infrastructure would also have to target it. In addition to that, a lot of redirected development from the destroyed eastern provinces would go there.

Dont forget the deep belt between the Yellow Valley and the Yangtze Corridor.

There would be plenty of places to choose to relocate. As one quote I read recently put it, "there are twenty cities in these interior provinces which are bigger than Chicago" the same source has also pointed out that "A city the size of Philidelphia is currently springing up each month". Its not as if these firms would be moving onto remote Paddy Fields.

As to the point about the firms just moving back, here is a question for the author: What are the Political Advantages in being an Authoritarian One Party State?

Thank you

IMO in a fictional scenario where US/Japan opt to take the PRC out of the competition, they'd simply bombard coastal areas and select strategtic targets, such as ports, ships, infrastructure, etc. Destroying power plants, dams, roads, and bridges would actually be more important than PLA tanks on the ground.

The "goal" is to set the PRC back in development and hamper its efforts to rebuild via sanctions and blocade, but not push it to the point where the PRC leadership would feel that they have nothing to lose, and consider risking a nuclear exchange. There's no point in trying to be top dog if you commit suicide by exchanging nukes with a nuclear power. You maintain top dog position by kicking others down (and making them poor), not getting yourself blown into pieces.

The PRC can, of course, relocate its manufacturing facilities inland. But there's little point in making products if you don't have customers.

Authoritarianism, with strict social conduct laws (i.e. large fines for littering and not flushing the toilet after use), is a way to force civility onto a third-world country -- Lee Kuan Yew.

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Will an armed conflict occur in East Asia involving the PRC? Sooner or later, yes, but not on the scale that most of you would imagine. I believe it'd be couple of navy ships scraping each other, possibly even a very short shooting war where a few ships get sunk and both sides back off from pushing the skirmish toward a full scale war.

The PRC can, of course, relocate its manufacturing facilities inland. But there's little point in making products if you don't have customers.

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IMO in a fictional scenario where US/Japan opt to take the PRC out of the competition, they'd simply bombard coastal areas and select strategtic targets, such as ports, ships, infrastructure, etc. Destroying power plants, dams, roads, and bridges would actually be more important than PLA tanks on the ground.

Click to expand...

Here is an interesting statistic from an Economist special report out last issue. The value of the Emerging Economies is as of 2005; albeit at PPP, equal to those of the developed world.

PPP or not, it is the passing of a major psychological milestone, in so far that the ability of the developed world to enforce such crippling sanctions on another country is diminishing and will continue to diminish with every passing year.