I also wanted to commend this post by David Roza at Task & Purpose on the present assessment of China’s air force to your attention. Here’s a snippet:
For years, U.S. Air Force leaders have sounded the alarm about China’s increasing power and America’s shrinking technological edge. But what are the specific forms of power and technology that have U.S. officials so worried? Considering the language barrier, cultural differences and the lack of transparent governance or a free press, it is difficult for average Americans to know what threats service members may face in a possible conflict in the western Pacific.
But not to worry, the Air Force prepared several easy-to-read briefings and videos to bring you up to speed. Though some of the videos date to late 2021 or early 2022, their general observations still hold up.
“[W]e must accelerate learning across the Air Force to stay ahead of the pace,†said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles ‘CQ’ Brown Jr. in a memo published on Thursday, alongside a series of “toolkits†put together by the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI).
Were it up to me I would not be overly concerned about Chinese air power but Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Philippines don’t have the luxury. India in particular should take note.
China is a problem only because our Ruling Caste has de facto repudiated the One China Policy of 1972, and is trying to get Taiwanese independence.
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, which currently controls Taiwan, is a nationalist party that wants independence. The main opposition is the Kuomintang, which is the historical Chinese nationalist party once led by Chiang Kai-shek. They want reunification under their rule. They just won the most recent round of local elections.
China’s military, and its capabilities, becomes a problem only if our Ruling Caste succeeds in instigating Taiwanese independence. The main result of that is a large-scale East Asian war, which would involve four nuclear powers: China, Russia, the US, and North Korea. North Korea and the US are the jokers in the deck.
No country in East Asian supports our machinations in Taiwan. China is the main trading partner for each and everyone of them, even Australia and New Zealand. Even if the war could be contained to Taiwan and the East and South China Seas, their economies would be devastated.
The obvious parallel is Ukraine. The Russo-Ukrainian war was instigated by our Ruling Caste with the coup in 2014, and they are actively preventing negotiations to end it. Specifically, they forced Poroshenko to repudiate Minsk I and II, and Zelensky to repudiate the March, 2022, negotiations in Istanbul that would have implemented them. That was the point of Boris Johnson’s unschedule trip to Kiev. [Merkel has since said that Minsk I and II were a scam intended to give Ukraine time to build up its forces.]
The result so far is devastation of the European economies and Russia occupation of about 20% of Ukraine. The potential is a nuclear World War III. You won’t be able to blame Germany and Japan for that one. It would be entirely on the US.
Now explain China’s encircling actions on its border with India in terms of aggressive U. S. policy.
The Shanghai Communique was never an affirmation of China’s view. It was always an agreement to disagree which included a statement of China’s view. Here’s the relevant part of the communique:
Agreement is an overstatement of what that says. As I said above: it’s an agreement to disagree. I also wonder if it continues to be true that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China” or, indeed, if it was true 50 years ago.
I see matters somewhat differently. Whatever stupid things the U. S. has done, China like Russia is irredentist. That presents threats to all of its neighbors and there’s nothing reasonable we can do to change that.
Like all of China’s military, the air force is untested.
And, as we’ve seen in Ukraine, modern surface-based air defense currently dominates.
But any war with China would primarily be fought in the maritime domain. That’s good for us but also bad because China’s precision missile strike capabilities mean that regional airfields we’d use would be attrited quickly. So naval air defense and carrier air power to control the air domain over the litorral areas will be crucial in any conflict with China IMO.