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ZeliG · 09-13-2005, 07:24 AM

well since this thread no longer has anything to do with the original intended purpose lets keep going with this China-US military discussion.

Daniel_,
Now you bring up total population into question for the military conflict. Dunno why you guys have done that because it is meaningless what you should look at is availability of manpower, which the Worldfactbook does list by the way.

so we have:
china: males age 18-49: 342,956,265 (2005 est.)
US: males age 18-49: 67,742,879 (2005 est.)
( I take it we are assuming total war for this and assuming that the US wasn't commited to any other military engagements ie Iraq )

We have a ratio of 1 US soldier for : 5 Chinese soldiers.

Now we have to take a look at the ability to mobilize an army to strike the other while discounting any nukes cuz that would be MAD therefore a loss for both sides. For a very good look at the capabilities of US's moder military abilities I suggest looking at "Nova PBS - Battle Plan Under Fire". If you are familiar I am sure you are aware that US's fighting ability is superior enough to "many many many people with a rifle and 15 bullets" that you seem to think is China's advantage, certainly I think that 1:5 is very possible. We could also take into consideration that the US has allies in the area with bases near China allowing the US immediate strikes on Chinese soil while China would have to travel the ocean first before being able to strike at US soil.
One also has to account for the fact that US's current military is a proffesional army while China's current army is moslt made up of "compulsory military service, with 24-month service obligation" dont know if you have seen any people from compulsory military duty ( they are no better really than militia really ) and this makes a big difference for an army because when you start calling up regular people you can distribute the trained personel and bolster the entire army so that each company at least has a certain amount of people that know how to do things.

Any comparison with the current situation in Iraq or guerilla warfare are misplaced. The reason they are different is because the US supposedly was to liberate Iraq from Saddam's rule not just destroy the military power of the country. This means that the US has maintain control of the country with military forces until it was reformed except that some people ( Rumsfeld most notably ) wholly underprepared for this and did not commit enough troops for this goal.
In the imaginary US-China conflict this would not be the case it would be more of an attack at the China's military instalations. No need to secure and hold terrritory to then turn it into a democracy ( remember that this is scenario is around the pretense of total war ).

Now I am not predicting a victory one way or the other because that is kinda stupid, but arguments that China would win because it has so many people are flawed. It only works in extremly massive numbers and 5 to 1 isnt it. So china could overwhelm the US if it had 1/10th the available manpower ( I belive a 1 to 50 ratio there ) and nobody came to aid the US. By your argument it would mean that a country like Brazil could win over Canada ( Ratio of 1:5.5). To me it seems obvious that numbers is not all that counts.

09-13-2005, 07:24 AM	#124 (permalink)
ZeliG Upright	well since this thread no longer has anything to do with the original intended purpose lets keep going with this China-US military discussion. Daniel_, Now you bring up total population into question for the military conflict. Dunno why you guys have done that because it is meaningless what you should look at is availability of manpower, which the Worldfactbook does list by the way. so we have: china: males age 18-49: 342,956,265 (2005 est.) US: males age 18-49: 67,742,879 (2005 est.) ( I take it we are assuming total war for this and assuming that the US wasn't commited to any other military engagements ie Iraq ) We have a ratio of 1 US soldier for : 5 Chinese soldiers. Now we have to take a look at the ability to mobilize an army to strike the other while discounting any nukes cuz that would be MAD therefore a loss for both sides. For a very good look at the capabilities of US's moder military abilities I suggest looking at "Nova PBS - Battle Plan Under Fire". If you are familiar I am sure you are aware that US's fighting ability is superior enough to "many many many people with a rifle and 15 bullets" that you seem to think is China's advantage, certainly I think that 1:5 is very possible. We could also take into consideration that the US has allies in the area with bases near China allowing the US immediate strikes on Chinese soil while China would have to travel the ocean first before being able to strike at US soil. One also has to account for the fact that US's current military is a proffesional army while China's current army is moslt made up of "compulsory military service, with 24-month service obligation" dont know if you have seen any people from compulsory military duty ( they are no better really than militia really ) and this makes a big difference for an army because when you start calling up regular people you can distribute the trained personel and bolster the entire army so that each company at least has a certain amount of people that know how to do things. Any comparison with the current situation in Iraq or guerilla warfare are misplaced. The reason they are different is because the US supposedly was to liberate Iraq from Saddam's rule not just destroy the military power of the country. This means that the US has maintain control of the country with military forces until it was reformed except that some people ( Rumsfeld most notably ) wholly underprepared for this and did not commit enough troops for this goal. In the imaginary US-China conflict this would not be the case it would be more of an attack at the China's military instalations. No need to secure and hold terrritory to then turn it into a democracy ( remember that this is scenario is around the pretense of total war ). Now I am not predicting a victory one way or the other because that is kinda stupid, but arguments that China would win because it has so many people are flawed. It only works in extremly massive numbers and 5 to 1 isnt it. So china could overwhelm the US if it had 1/10th the available manpower ( I belive a 1 to 50 ratio there ) and nobody came to aid the US. By your argument it would mean that a country like Brazil could win over Canada ( Ratio of 1:5.5). To me it seems obvious that numbers is not all that counts.