Re: PLAN submarines Thread II
China's GDP for 2012 is more than 4 times larger than that of India's 8250 billion $ vs 1947 billion $. But what i like to know is what is the status of India's industries. China's current naval expantion for instance is made possible by a competitive ship building industry and a formidable electronics industry. Does India have a similar track record in building these kinds of industries ? Albeit from a lower bases, but i mean do you guys see India going down the same path as China in these area's ? If so they could close in on China. Don't forget that the Americans has been quite dismissive about China's capabilities for a long time, so China should not repeat the same mistakes and underestimate India.
India seemed to have tried to forgo secondary manufacturing and jump straight to a tertiary services based economy. And that shows in the poor basic infrastructure in India and the tiny heavy manufacturing output of the country.
In terms of shipbuilding, in 2008, the top 5 were
1. South Korea - 37.45%
2. China - 33.7%
3. Japan - 17.3
4. Philippines - 1.6%
5. Vietnam - 1.2%
The rest of the world makes up the remaining 9.75% of total global shipping tonnage produced.
There is not a direct relationship between commercial shipping output and naval might as many of the world's top naval countries are not on that list.
When we are talking about military might, one should instead focus on weapons, and in that regard, India and China are not even in the same league.
China makes pretty much all its weapons indigenously for all their services, and the quality of Chinese weapons have improved rapidly over recent years.
Contrast that to the Indians, and its almost an inversion of domestic and imported weapons mix whereby the Indians make about as much of their weapons as China imports, and India imports as much of its weapons as China makes for itself.
American dismissal of China seems to be based largely on American insularity and a strong racist undercurrent against China and all things Chinese. Chinese dismissal of India as a real peer competitor is borne much more out of a cold appraisal of facts and figures.
If and when India gets its act together and manages to grow its economy faster than China, develops a world class commerical heavy manufacuting and electronics industry and starts making top quality high tech weapons by itself and builds up a comprehensive national military industrial complex, China will take them more seriously. But at present, even though the Indian military looks good on paper, pretty much everything remotely impressive about it is bought from abroad. In a real fight, the Indians are going to have massive logistical and attrition replacement problems, and that fundamental weakness alone will loose them any major war they might fight against a top world military power and makes the Indian military tiger a paper one.
