The slide’s authenticity was confirmed by a Navy spokesperson, who cautioned that it was not meant to be an in-depth analysis.
The slide shows that Chinese shipyards have a capacity of about 23.2 million tons compared to less than 100,000 tons in the U.S., making Chinese shipbuilding capacity more than 232 times greater than that of the U.S.
The slide also shows the “battle force composition” of the countries’ two navies side-by-side, which includes “combatant ships, submarines, mine warfare ships, major amphibious ships, and large combat support auxiliary ships.” The ONI estimated that China had 355 such naval vessels in 2020 while the U.S. had 296. The disparity is expected to continue to grow every five years until 2035, when China will have an estimated 475 naval ships compared to 305-317 U.S. ships.
Another section of the slide provides an estimate on the percentage each country allocates to naval production in its shipyards, with China garnering roughly 70% of its shipbuilding revenue from naval production, compared to about 95% of American shipbuilding revenue.
Because of China’s centrally planned economy, the country is able to control labor costs and provide subsidies to its shipbuilding infrastructure, allowing the Chinese to outbid most competitors around the world and dominate the commercial shipping industry, Sadler said.
Alternative title - “Central planning is more efficient than markets” confirms US Navy
I see some of your other arguments about inexperience in a different reply. Yeah I see what you’re driving at, they haven’t been out there picking fights with smaller countries since WW2. Either way this is a country with a GDP about 67% the size of the US GDP (vs #3 Germany that is 6x smaller). It has 3x the population. It is the world’s manufacturing center and apparently has much much greater capacity for shipbuilding. Meanwhile the US and the rest of the countries who would likely align with them have forfeited their industrial capacity to China in favor of service economies. China’s military inexperience is probably the least relevant input into the outcome. If there’s a war with China it will be long, brutal and fought on China’s doorstep - an awful long way from the US. They have similar technology and much greater manufacturing potential. This isn’t a winnable situation by the US. China won’t go the way of Japan and run short on resources.
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Instead they’ve probably been training for a much larger fight. NATO doctrine at this point is mostly geared around asymmetric warfare against a much poorer opponent. Like we’ve seen how Ukrainian troops given NATO training end up just switching back to their own doctrine.
The PLA on the other hand is concerned with two things: defense against the West and maybe recapturing Taiwan, which would also involve fighting the West.