You would be surprised man.
They basically can pushus out of East Asia, which is a major thing, with Guam being a territory, and our allies down south of there, like Australia and NZ. They can pose a threat there as well, should they kick us out.
They are a lot more powerful then you think.
I've started reading the article you linked, and its fantastical claptrap. Sure, the Chinese Navy has 'more ships' than the US Navy, if you count all 35 of their landing craft, 68 Corvettes (all 1500 tons or less), the 9 'missile boats' that are 500 tons or less, and the 83 missile boats that are all of 220 tons each.
"Achieve a world-class Navy by the middle of the century."
Yes, in
thirty years they'll be capable of challenging the USN past the First Island Chain,
if things continue in the current pattern.
On the whole, the article focuses a lot on the
potential abilities of China. It doesn't mention that enormous amounts of their equipment and doctrine are completely untested in actual battle, or that their officer corps is more politically than militarily trained.
China's big, and they're capable of dishing out a fair amount of hurt. Nothing in the article I've seen so far mentions how much others are capable of hurting them
back.
...
Gasp. A conflict
might have casualties.
Who on earth would have thought military conflict would have
casualties!
"How such a conflict would unfold in the initial hours, days and weeks would depend on how it starts, Herzinger said. "
Is this stuff for real? Is this supposed to be written for people who have no familiarity with warfare or conflict at all?
...Okay, I'm done with this article. It's basically a pack of 'captain obvious' stuff and weird contortions. The only actual hard numbers in it has been the ridiculous fleet number comparison at the start of the article, which was incredibly deceptive.
Yes, China has enough of a military to be dangerous. Yes, they can dish out a lot of hurt. If the US Military lets itself be caught sleeping, they might even win in the first round of regional conflict, but that just highlights the two issues:
1. The Chinese winning is dependent on them showing very high levels of competence, and the US screwing up by the numbers.
2. Even if they win the first round, then they're going to have to deal with the
next 3-5 Carrier fleets that come around to hit back, and they'll have to do it while having suffered losses they can't replace in a relevant time-frame.
They do have a couple straight-up advantages, like shorter logistical chains and more developed cruise missile capability, but they also have a very large stack of disadvantages, such as everything they fly except the J-20 and its immediate predecessor being obsolete crap, and having literally zero friends in the area to support them if they pick a fight.
