Think of it this way: historically if nations don't get the resources they need, they get it through force before going for trade. This has been a rather common thread throughout history, even in the 'tradetopia' that some call the Bronze Age or the age of colonial empires that put the first two industrial revolutions on the map (and to be frank, the colonial empire era wasn't a 'tradetopia' in the international sense that the Bronze Age was, it was effectively all internal outside of things like nitrates). Trade, in contrast, is comparatively hard to simply conquer what you need outside of the occasional 'base resource that defines an age' like copper and tin (which caused the Bronze Age to be considered by some as a 'tradetopia' as practically no one in that period has both).
The reason that the 2nd half of the 20th and the entirety of the 21st so far has been so peaceful in comparison to the rest of history? Because the US leadership at the time decided that trade is the only real answer and thus took steps to reduce the cost of trade to effectively nill. The 'Trade or else' strategy that I keep referring to.
China can be considered to be the biggest skeptic of this and is severely resource deficient in what is needed for a modern economy outside of REM elements. The US basically bribed China to get into and stay in the system, thus China didn't go to war to gain resources. The border skirmishes between China and the USSR were as ideological (the CCP inheriting everything that the previous dynasties/governments had in the geopolitical arena) as they were economical as Siberia was once considered Chinese territory and is resource-rich.
If China feels that it can't guarantee its needs via trade (some factions are starting to think in Bejing along these lines, thus the PLAN transforming from a 'Green-Water' navy to a true 'Blue-Water' navy the last decade or so), then it will guarantee it through force.
If China pulls out of this system (and right now the right-wing have been proving these factions political ammunition to do so), then you'll get other skeptics to pull out in succession. With the price tag of trade skyrocketing, nations will start fighting each other over resources... which inevitably become large wars that can span the planet.
See, the thing is, the only reason China's ability to get what it needs through trade is threatened,
is because of their own damn actions.
If they would just accept
playing by the same rules as everybody else, and actually deal in
good faith, they wouldn't have the problems that they do right now. Other nations are trying to stop trade dependency on China,
because China has proven to be an unreliable trading partner.
Beyond that, China is not a 'true blue water navy.' They do have a reasonable number of ships that are capable of proper blue-water operations, enough to be a threat to small nations, but when you actually take a look at their fleet composition...
the Chinese Navy has 'more ships' than the US Navy, if you count all 35 of their short-range landing craft (basically designed for the sole purpose of hitting Taiwan), 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.
Their navy is ~359 ships, of which 195 are either unarmed, or tiny and incapable of projecting power beyond their immediate area. Another 79 are submarines, among which only the 12 ballistic missile subs have shore-attack capability, though the 6 type-93 attack submarines might have some secondary anti-ground capability
Beyond that, what blue-navy assets capable of supporting an invasion of hostile territory, they have:
2 Aircraft Carriers, both about 70k tons, one a refurbished Russian, the other native built. They've never seen or supported combat, and if they perform on a par with a US Carrier of that size, would be a serious threat to small and mid-sized nations, but we don't know how that would actually pan out.
8 Amphibious transports at 25,000 tons each. That's enough to give Taiwan a bitch of a time, especially with all the short-range landing craft the Chinese have, but it's not enough to launch and supply invasion of the Phillipines, much less Japan, India, or other relevant threats.
Purportedly they have 1 Type-55 Stealth Destroyer in service, 5000 nautical mile range, but I'll buy that when it's actually seen to perform. They're building a bunch more, at least according to Wikipedia.
The Type-52D Guided Missile Destroyer has 14 hulls in service, weighing in at 7500 tons, but I couldn't find its service range. There's another 6 7000 ton Type-52Cs, and as the prior model has a listed range of 4800 nautical miles, we'll treat the D as a proper blue-water navy asset as well.
They also have 4 Russian Sovremenny missile destroyers, weighing in at 6600 tons, but only a little under 4k nm range, which is about 1k nm too short to get them to Honolulu, and 2.5k nm too short range to get them to the Arabian Gulf, so at that point, they don't really count anymore.
They have 24 Type 54A frigates, and 2 Type-54 Frigates, massing 4200 and 3900 tons respectively, all of which have a respectable ~8k nautical mile range. Not bad, though they are anti-air and sub support ships, not suitable for naval assaults. To be fair; that's okay, they're not supposed to be.
So, altogether, that gives us 54 actual Blue-water Navy vessels, out of ~360 ships. That's definitely enough to make any smaller nation sit up and notice, but it is
not enough to let them effectively project naval power against any nation they'd want to pick on, aside from Taiwan, which they would be attacking for political reasons, not resource-based reasons.
The thing about the idea of going to war for resources, is that
China has no ability to actually gain resources through prosecuting a war.
Two Carrier Task Forces from the USN could sink their
entire blue-water navy, and any
number of nations have the land-based air, missile, and artillery assets necessary to sink those 54 ships in part or in whole.
Most importantly, the Chinese
do not have any experience waging war on the high seas. They have no institutional experience, their doctrine and training is not tested, and on top of all that, the Chinese military is
notorious for spending more training time and money ensuring loyalty to the communist party, than actual competence at war-fighting.
China could pick a fight, but the instant that any three
non-US nations of real size and military capability (Vietnam, Japan, and India being the most relevant) decide to have a go at them together, China loses. If the US Navy gets involved, much less the
rest of the US military, China loses.
If everybody with an ax to grind against them teams up, China doesn't just lose, China ceases to exist as an independent nation.
Now, to be clear, if it's actually fighting a
defensive war, or manages to solo Taiwan with no nation in the world moving to help the Taiwanese, their navy will do a
very good job of beating the tar out of anyone (aside from the US) that tries to approach China's coast. Even the US Navy would have to very carefully work to wear down China's defensive capabilities bit by bit, or take horrific losses.
But, the Chinese Navy
does not have an effective ability to project military power a meaningful distance from China. It's always possible that they pick a fight with someone who demonstrates colossal incompetence on the level the French did in the opening moves of WWII, but in the long run, that's not likely to help them anymore than it did the Germans.
Maybe in ten years, but if they don't stop their economic BS well before then, they won't be able to support the navy they have now, much less another ten years of build-up.
Maybe I'll do another post later on how the Chinese Army isn't as threatening as some people would like to think, either. Which, to be clear, is not 'harmless,' they have a large and fairly powerful military, but it's a regional superpower, not a world superpower.
