53 Comments
May 4, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Great article. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if pundits and our govt are thinking in terms of China as Japan but China as the USSR. Could you explore that? In my ignorance, I think they're making a serious mistake. China, unlike the USSR, doesn't pose an ideological threat at all and it poses even less of a military threat to friends in Asia than the USSR did in Europe. The logistics of modern war are so daunting that only the US can put even moderate forces overseas; I know of no evidence that China is making the effort to build up anything capable of conquering Taiwan.

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>>>BUT, if China does end up going to war with the West — or even have a protracted Cold War type struggle — it will be an infinitely more dangerous foe than Japan ever could have been<<<

I've been reading Noah since he first started writing Bloomberg pieces, and I'm generally a big fan. But I find on geopolitics -- which in his case more often than not involves Asia -- his writing is like a teenager who's really, really (really!) enthusiastic about the board game Risk. Several hundred words comparing a potential Sino-US conflict with WW2's Japan-USA theater, and nary a word about the most obvious (and terrifying) difference between the PRC of then and the Japan of now: the former possesses a large, lethal and growing nuclear arsenal (and by their own admission are endeavoring to rapidly grow that arsenal). THAT is what makes a PRC-US war "infinitely" more dangerous than America and Japan's titanic struggle all those years ago. (A single nuclear weapon detonated over a US metro could easily cause more causalities than the country took during the entirety of its 57 month-long war against Japan). A Sino-US war in the Pacific isn't going to look anything like '41-'45. There will be no long, bloody slogs through tropical archipelagos that you can read about in the newspaper from the comfort of your living room. There will be no lengthy, multi-year stage when the economy is mobilized and production is ramped up in preparation for protracted campaigns. There will be no five million man army. And so on. Also, Japan had virtually no ability to hit the US homeland (well, there was a weaponized balloon that blew up over Oregon late in the war). That's very definitely not the case with China.

Very early on in such a conflict, one side or another (probably the side that's on the verge of losing) will either quit or go nuclear. A PRC-USA war (in addition to being as unthinkable* as a USSR-USA war was back in the day) will be short and unfathomably violent.

I suggest boning up on one's firemaking skills.

*Yeah, I know, somebody has to think about these things; but hopefully they do so mostly with an eye toward preventing them from occurring.

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What about the Pearl Harbour analogy? If an attack on Taiwan is planned does China have the same incentives to launch a surprise attack on US Pacific forces? Another analogy would be how war might transform China from within. A lot of the dysfunction of Imperial Japan that you mention rose out of factions in the armed forces or ideologies shaped by imperial conquest. The maximum extent of China's current territorial claims would entail major wars with essentially all of it's neighbors. China is not like Japan in the 30s yet.

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Ignorance is bliss, please read some history books, please read some real news, including foreign sources, and perhaps travel. I've rarely read something so inaccurate even from the ultra-right or the radical left.

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This is a great article. Just signed up!

Btw, I recently started my own Newsletter about Japan and politics 😀https://nihonpolitics.substack.com/welcome

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One thing:

- I'd be curious to hear your critique, review, or whatever of Yuen Yuen Ang's book "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap." She has some interesting propositions about how economic development worked in China, but I'm not a trained economist, so I'm not sure quite how to evaluate them.

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As usual, your analysis on Japan is spot on, but you far underestimate how significant Taiwan is to China. If Biden keeps challenging China’s one nation policy, China will go to war and US will throw Japan under the bus first. That will certainly not be enough to stop China so US will enter the most destructive war since WWII. I like most of what Biden is doing domestically but he is leading us closer to a world war with his aggressive stance against China and dismissing the one nation policy. Americans need to be more informed of this real danger.

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Agree with most of the author's points about the differences between Imperial Japan and China. Of course, China is a far more formidable opponent than Japan could ever be purely because of size. Although Japan is pound for pound punching above its weight, there are no weight divisions in the jungle.

However, i have to take issue with this narrative of internal "repression". Step back and think for a second. If the CCP's aim was to maintain control and suppress its citizens, why would it be developing infrastructure, raising living standards and implementing an explicit policy to eradicate poverty? Does a government who raises 700+ million people out of poverty sound like it's trying to oppress its own people? Of course the "repression" narrative runs counter to what one sees going on in China. Ditto with Russia. The Russian government remains very popular among most Russians. Why are we lying to ourselves with the "repression" narrative?

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>>>The U.S. was able to overcome Imperial Japan alone, while fighting a two-front war...<<

Seriously, Noah? The United States "overcame Imperial Japan" alongside its allies Australia, New Zealand, Britain and China.

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Right. China starts a war, the USN cuts off their oil supply thousands of miles from China's shores, China's economy stops, and the Chinese starve in the dark.

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Is anyone else not getting emails anymore?

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Is looking at the big economic and demographic stats really important when assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a state in modern war? Nukes make total war completely unfeasible; the Soviet (and Warsaw Pact more widely) economy was much weaker than NATO's, but in a cold war gone hot scenario, the Warsaw Pact may have been able to push all the way to the Rhine relatively easily, and at that point it would be very hard for NATO to unstick them. Any further escalation could risk Armageddon, so the Soviets would have effectively won.

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Your first mistake is claiming the Chinese people are "repressed", when the government's achievement of the fastest increase in living standards for 1.4 billion people in history, over the last three decades, has resulted in considerable national pride on the mainland. A big change from the days of the Tiananmen protests. Meanwhile democracy is looking increasingly dysfunctional, even in 1st world nations like the US and France. Biden might not even be able to secure the necessary funding in Congress to modernize US infrastructure, such is the strength of the delusional "individual sovereignty", winner-takes-all, ideology of Republicans. .

Certainly Western values of 'individual freedom' are superficially attractive to the majority, yet individuals who fail to successfully compete in invisible-hand 'free' markets are left behind in the West's 'sink or swim', dysfunctional neoliberal economic system.

Personally I hope the Chinese have enough wisdom to wait until they can give the middle finger to the US...and reunite Taiwan to the mainland without firing a shot....

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deletedMay 4, 2021Liked by Noah Smith
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