In recent years, the United States and its allies have been shouting for decoupling from China, and some high-level officials in the United States and Western countries have even said that China is an unsafe supplier.
The United States is also arrogant in always sending its naval fleet around China, which has had a considerable impact on Sino-US relations.
However, the United States and Western countries do not seem to realize a problem, that is, their own military industrial enterprises are actually highly dependent on China.
As long as China is willing, even the United States is likely to not be able to fight a war, and this is because many of the weapons of the United States are actually using parts from China.
If the United States wants to decouple from China, then America's own arms production will certainly be greatly affected. How exactly does China have such influence?
1. China's arms exports are not large
First of all, from the level of the arms trade, in fact, our country does not export much arms.
After all, China is peace-loving, and we are not willing to export weapons to those countries that would threaten international security.
According to a study published by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute in Sweden, China's arms exports account for only 6.6 percent of the total international arms trade.
There is no advantage over the United States, Russia, and France, which together account for more than 60 percent of the global arms trade.
In other words, the value of our arms exports is only 1/10 of that of the United States, Russia, and France combined. As a military power and a scientific and technological power, China's export of such a small amount of weapons and equipment proves that we are in fact very peace-loving.
However, invisibly, the military industry of the United States and Western countries has instead formed a dependence on China.
Including a lot of weapons and equipment from the United States, they use parts from China in their production.
Because the United States and Western countries have long been hollowed out of their industries. The hollowing out of their industry was so complete that even some military enterprises went bankrupt and moved their industrial lines abroad.
As a result, the U.S. side now has to buy parts from all over the world when designing and producing equipment.
Even on their F35 fighters, there are a large number of parts that are not produced by the United States itself.
According to the data released by Lockheed Martin, the designer and manufacturer of the F35 fighter, their fighter uses more than 300,000 parts. The number of suppliers of these parts reached 1,700.
Only the top tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers of the parts can be guaranteed to be sourced from the United States. But the total number of these parts may add up to only a few thousand.
The remaining hundreds of thousands of parts come from third-, fourth- and fifth-level parts suppliers.
And a considerable part of these parts are made in China, such as lithium-ion batteries used in airplanes, and some special alloys and so on.
Because these parts come from China, although the U.S. government has been clamoring for decoupling from China, the military and military industrial complex simply can't do it.
Without Chinese parts, they can't even build an F35 fighter.
Previously, the Pentagon had seized 18 F35 fighter jets produced by Lockheed Martin on the grounds that the components of these fighters did not meet the national defense regulations issued by the US Congress.
Because some of the technical parts in the F35, including magnets, come from China.
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This incident caused a lot of trouble at the time. But the end result was a separate exemption bill that would allow Lockheed Martin to continue buying parts from China.
Because they have come full circle around the world, there is no second country that can produce military components that meet the relevant standards of the F35 fighter.
Isn't this enough to prove that the current US military-industrial system has become a reverse dependence on China?
If the United States really wants to decouple from China, the final result is that although they have the technology, they will not be able to build advanced weapons in the absence of an industrial system.
The name of the world's factory on China's head has brought us unimaginable benefits.
Second, China also controls a large amount of resources
In addition to spare parts, the mainland also controls an important resource for the production of advanced weapons, and this resource is rare earths.
Rare earth is a very precious resource, which has a wide range of applications in the military field, because the conductivity of rare earth is relatively strong and the characteristics are very special.
The mainland contains a large number of rare earths.
In addition, the mainland also attaches great importance to the mining and purification of rare earths, so the mainland is indeed in a monopoly position in the global rare earth trade.
Even in the United States, more than 80 percent of the rare earths they use were once imported from China.
If it can't get enough Chinese rare earths, the United States may not even be able to build an advanced radar.
And now we have also taken action and decided to restrict the export of some precious resources.
This is very fatal to the United States, but the United States can only eat Coptis dumbly, after all, the trade war was provoked by the United States first.
In addition, the United States has always controlled the export of certain key resources and key equipment, and does not sell them to China.
Now China is just doing the same thing as the United States, and no matter how much the United States tosses, China can ignore it.
Moreover, these resources themselves are in China's hands, we can sell them to whomever we want, and it is also China's own business if we don't want to export them, and any coercion by the United States against China is meaningless.
Today's China can already counteract the United States and Western countries at the high end of the industry from the middle and lower reaches of the industry.
Moreover, China is also constantly climbing up the industrial line, rapidly realizing high-end industry and manufacturing independence.
In the future, the military industrial system of the United States and the United States will only become more and more dependent on China, and they are simply unable to prevent the rapid rise of Made in China.
Once China and the United States completely decouple, the United States will immediately fall into the dilemma of reducing the production efficiency of weapons and equipment and reducing production.
It is true that the United States can be politically hostile to China, but their military-industrial complex is designed to produce weapons with cost in mind.
With inferior parts from other countries, it costs more money, and the US military is not yet satisfied. It is better to use cheap, high-quality parts and components from the Chinese side, so it is only the Chinese blood in the equipment of the US military.
This problem is already something that the Americans cannot solve, unless the United States can rebuild its own industrial lines.
This has been exactly what the United States has done in recent years, and both American administrations have put forward plans to revive industry.
But now that eight years have passed, the US plan to revive industry cannot be said to have not been implemented, or it can be said that it has not been effective.
Therefore, in the future, the United States will rely on China for a long time in military production.
3. The United States may import Chinese weapons in the future
Objectively speaking, the US military now has an advantage over us, but this advantage is mainly concentrated in the stock of weapons.
Because during the Cold War, the United States invested a lot of resources to build its own armed forces, so the American army was huge in size and strong in combat.
There are more than ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers alone, as well as a large number of fifth-generation fighters.
However, if we talk about the top military technology, the United States is not much ahead of China, and China has even surpassed it in many fields.
For example, the electromagnetic catapult of aircraft carriers, now there are only two types of aircraft carriers in the world equipped with electromagnetic catapult equipment, one is China's Fujian, and the other is the American Ford.
Speaking of hypersonic missiles, China's hypersonic missiles have already been put into service; And the American hypersonic missile system is still in the advanced stage of testing.
At the same time, the destroyers of the People's Liberation Army have been equipped with active phased array radar systems on a large scale; Many of the old Ali Burke-class destroyers in the United States still use passive phased array radars.
Therefore, with the further upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, we are fully capable of leading the trend.
When the PLA's weapons stock reaches the same level as the US arms stockpile, the balance of power between China and the United States will change dramatically.
In this game, we have a big advantage.
Because China's weapons are all using its own technology, we still have a huge production capacity, and we can build as much as we want.
But the United States is different. The United States also has its own technology, but in the case of the decline of domestic industry, their military-industrial production capacity cannot be compared with China.
And many of the U.S. weapons have been in service for decades and are on the verge of retirement, including some early versions of Aegis ships and cruisers in the U.S. Navy.
Therefore, if it continues, the development of the military strength of China and the United States will show a process of eliminating the advantages of one and the other.
When China completely surpasses the United States militarily, there will be a big change in Sino-US relations at that time.
Perhaps the United States will also import complete sets of weapons from China to maintain its military strength.
Even if it can't fight China, the United States still has the objective need to maintain regional hegemony and the status of a regional power.
So what we have to do is to continue to complete the upgrading of the manufacturing industry, so that the United States and Western countries are more and more dependent on China, then we will be completely invincible in this Sino-US game.
Epilogue:
Many Chinese people may be a little confused about the speed of development on the mainland, after all, China's development is too fast.
15 years ago, the main force in the PLA Navy was several modern class and primary versions of the 052; Fifteen years have passed, and the PLA already has the most advanced naval warships in the world, and the number of advanced weapons in the major branches of the PLA is also increasing.
This is actually very normal, after decades of reform and opening up, we have accumulated a lot of resources and scientific research strength.
Now, in the past 15 years, only these accumulations have undergone a quantitative change to a qualitative change, and the speed of China's scientific and technological and military development will only get faster and faster in the future.
Resources:
Zhang Xuefeng looks at the sky2024-06-19 The West is aware of the terrible consequences, as long as China is willing, the US military may not even be able to fight?
Remembering the Scholar2024-06-20 The West is aware of the terrible consequences, as long as China is willing, the US military may not even be able to fight?
Little Stone Entertainment2024-06-19 The West is aware of the dire consequences, as long as China is willing, the US military may not even be able to fight?
Straight News2022-10-09Chen Bing: Why do American F-35 fighters have to use Chinese components?
No. 3 Global Reference2023-11-03The U.S. military's nuclear weapons accidents continue, the ships are old, and the actual combat power is doubtful