China is preparing to take on the USAF; you think the Vietnamese Air Force is gonna be an issue?
Yes. Being capable of one fight doesn't mean being capable to fight another. Especially when you never actually tried.
If the US failed, - and it did, - there are very big reasons to think twice about "easy".
Inconvenient geography and political configurations matter as much as pure strength numbers.
For pure numbers doesn't matter, what matters is what you can apply effectively.
But history actually has many more examples of the Vietnamese being successfully conquered and subdued.
Different examples. Some of them were succesful, some were not. More often than not, though, it wasn't exactly simple. Especially when significant parts of Chinese forces weren't local southern ones.
Warn the citizens to get the F out because twenty H-6 are on the way and air superiority was gained within the first few hours and all Viet SAMs are bombed if not jammed due to being 60s era technology.
Carpet bombing cities? Ok. Smart choice. Do you really want only Zimbabwe to support China?
And btw, mentioning h-6 in context of ancient technology is an interesting choice. Vietnam has more modern SAMs, what these bombers can not realistically hope to handle. I mean s-300s and spyders. There are strong rumors about s-400, too.
Please don't forget, what Vietnam was excluded from sanction list for buying weapons in Russia, too.
It means what the US. are really intended to improve their relationship. Weapon deliveries have already started.
Vietnam's meager modern military assets can definitely be hunted down and killed quickly.
Geography matters.
simple stand off hunting/killing small assets in a hilly terrain covered by thick forests is a thing of the future, as is hunting out dispersed small surface combatants in an extremely unsuitable coastline, with necessity to fly quite far in a hostile airspace to even rich them.
Admittedly, not a very far future, for a first time in history, but definetely not "now". Any degree of certainity in easily hunting down submarines in contested waters is delusional. asw effors are never certain. Especiall so, when your own asw assets are easily targetable.
Whatever LACM they have, China has much much more
Of course. Question is, what to hit with them. Viet military learned in a hard way how to disperse and blend with the ground.
China has much more obvious targets, some of which won't run away(Island military infrastructure), and others will find unavoidable to risk themselves to fight Vietnam due to the geography.
Or bomb civilians, like Ougoah proposed? This has too many consequences to calculate, depending on the scenario.
Up to intervention of third parties with the worst possible configuration for China.
to put it bluntly - Russia, as obvious of a Chinese ally in any anty-US effort as it is, will be almost guaranteed to be put in the corner by this mess, for pro-Vietnamese nostalgia is still strong there(not against China, but simple friendliness). And we are talking outright about the only REALLY meaningful Chinese ally(sorry, Pakistan). Is it worth it, to show off 20 bombers with design tracing itself back to Stalin era?
Region already is full of strong militaries with close ties to the US. Depending on political configuration and public outcry, they can become openly hostile, tying a big chunk of Chinese forces elsewhere.
So, in summ:
Conflict mustn't be protracted, must be limited in its scale, and must whenever possible avoid producing a bad picture. At the same time, other nations must be kept in check.
Is it winnable for China under suc restrictions? well, yes. Is it desirable to avoid such a conflict, because its results are not nearly as certain as many want to think? yes, too.
and, btw, current war history gas an exact example, when even a very weak military managed to hold away unproportionally strong coalition, covered by full power of world media. With much worse force ratio, much simpler geography, and in much starker tech level imbalance. Yemen.
Crafty buggers the lot of them. Can't win the real fight, must win the trashtalking so they lick their self-inflicted wounds through words of mutual encouragement and self-assurance and try to convince themselves and each other that they can continue to mistreat and bully China. Humans are truly pathetic worms. An honest and decent man among that group is hard to find. Even the US knows all bets are off in a war so trade war is their most daring effort to date. It's worked against Russia in the past so they are trying to replicate it with China.
