Could the US take China as they did Iraq in a conventional war

MooseJam

What do you think folks could the US invade and take red China in a conventional war

Rew

not a hope

Manic Moran

Invade? Not easily. Defend someplace like Taiwan against invasion, should do.

NTM

minidazzler

nope, They would end up with a very large insurgency. They'd be Fecked.

Steyr

Not a hope, then again tactically dropping Nuke's might help.. didnt you know all those internet cafe's are Op's!:p

Prolatarian

There's not enough bullets for a start,and the only way to get enough bullets would be to have them made in China,and they might smell a rat.:D

crianp

The U.S could so take China, they may not have the numbers but the Chinese military is ineffecient and when was the last time they fought a war? The U.S has a boat load of veterans after Iraq and Afghanistan not to mention a state of the art navy, airforce, etc... They would need to hit a couple of key cities and the Chinese would be sent back to 5000BC

Prolatarian

They may be able to defeate the Chinese army but they could never hope to hold the ground due to insurgency.

Manic Moran

It would be interesting. Despite the fact that they invented gunpower, there's no firearms culture in China, such as there is in Arab nations. Private ownership of firearms in China is a bit of a non-runner: The Party finds it a lot easier to stay in power when the People have no guns. As a result, whilst maintaining civilian compliance would be almost impossible, I don't think the insurgency would be that huge.

NTM

Prolatarian

Where do you think the weapons from the army would go.

Cato

If any group would contest American occupation it would have to be the die hard communists, but in a conventional war i think America would win even without tactical nukes, American technology, intelligence gathering and surgical strikes at strategic locations would be one of the main factors in chinas defeat i would say.

MooseJam

I don't think there would be much of an insurgency if any if the US invaded China, I'd imagine they might get the welcome that they expected but didn't get in Iraq

Manic Moran

Prolatarian wrote: »

Where do you think the weapons from the army would go.

US Storage.

If the People's Liberation Army takes offense at the US incursion, and fights its damndest against the invaders, the arms will be found amongst the bodies and those who have surrendered.

If the PLA decides it's going to rebel and generally do an Iraq-1991, they're going to surrender right off the bat.

And do you think the Party thinks it is so loved by the People that if it hands out SKs left, right and centre before the conflict, that they are totally confident they will not be used against them?

NTM

Riddle101

I think it would all lead to a stalemate basically. China has more numbers and also has nukes so if USA did try to nuke them you can be sure China would counterstrike. The US on the other hand have trouble dealing with Asians as we've seen with Vietnam and Korea(I'm Not trying be racist) but The US army has changed over the years, and so has the Chinese army as well

delos

Not a chance.

Where do you think any staging area for the build-up to invasion will be? Looking at the land borders I don't see any that would be friendly so your talking about an airborne / amphibious attack. Even if a viable beachhead was established the logistics of deploying and supplying the forces required to break out would be incredible.

While you might not get so much of an armed insurgency you could get civil disobedience on a huge scale (there is no guarantee that American troops will be seen as 'liberators') and I'm not sure how well equipped the US forces (or any army) are to deal with unarmed protesters without losing public opinion big time.

Steyr

crianp wrote: »

The U.S has a boat load of veterans after Iraq and Afghanistan not to mention a state of the art navy, airforce, etc... They would need to hit a couple of key cities and the Chinese would be sent back to 5000BC

Arent they already there?:p

geekGirl

The US in Vietnam with Korean and WW2 veterns couldn't beat the NVA. They were also fought to a stalemate in North Korea, again with an army with a large number of battle hardened troops. They would be screwed if they fought a conventional war in China. They would kill a lot of Chinese people but that alone doesn't ensure victory.

The Chinese themselves would get aid from all those countries who would like to see the US get a royal screwing. The Chinese people, in a soecity that is more repressive than anything in the west but not more so than any other Chinese government in history would definately not welcome the US as liberators. I reckon the communist party wouldn't have too much to fear from arming their people in an emergancy situation like a full blown US invasion. What have they got to loose. Its all pie in the sky anyway, if the two ever fight it will be in a proxy war like Vietnam or with nukes.

Re Gun control in China (a seperate issue in itself but interesting when thinking about any potential problems controlling a newly acquired civilian population.)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-04/21/content_856308.htm

"Official figures show that from last June to September, police confiscated about 178,000 illegal guns.....Wu said at a press conference last year that although the production, sale and stockpiling of guns and explosives had been decreasing nationwide since 2001, the problem was still "severe" in some areas, such as in Hualong County in Northwest China's Qinghai Province."

Thats a lot of guns for any potential insurgancy to use a base

TerrorFirmer

Not a chance in a conventional war. China maybe behind the US, but they're not remotely as behind as some people seem to think. Not to mention, both the size of China and the sheer impossibility of building up an invasion force large enough to sufficiently make headway without drawing attention or capable of defending itself.

Kaiser_Sma

The outcome of this depends largely on the objective, in a pure invasion with the intent of waltzing and walking out, the americans have a good chance. The reason vietnam and iraq look so badly is because they are a stationary force defending themselves from an illusive insurgency.

The numbers game looks in chinas favour but there are a number of issues that the figures don't show.
China is a massive country and military is spread around it with a number of maratime duties and as a result is largely unspecialised.
The technology gap is still large and isn't getting any smaller, alot of chinese weapons are slightly poorer copies of soviet and russian hardware. In straight up combat this really shows.
As i understand it the chinese military is still structured in a very old fashioned way, with the majority of people on the fighting end and very few relativly in logistics. The US army is the opposite.

Before the war the US will largely cut off the chinese economy, the two countries have a very symbyotic relationship (china invests primarily in america and the US borrows from china. A huge proportion of chinese investments are in the US doller) in this department and although it will hurt america, it is generally assumed that the effects in china would be catastrophic in comparison. This would severly weaken china before an invasion.

If the americans only have to take the economic and urban centres on the east coast, they have a good chance of winning, however if they undertake the ridiculous objective of swanning through the whole country engaging every part of the peoples army and conquoring every town, they will be overstretched and there supply lines long and vunerable to partisans. The result will be another humiliation.

delos wrote: »

Not a chance.

Where do you think any staging area for the build-up to invasion will be? Looking at the land borders I don't see any that would be friendly so your talking about an airborne / amphibious attack. Even if a viable beachhead was established the logistics of deploying and supplying the forces required to break out would be incredible.

South Korea and japan already have substantial amounts of american troops and could both make suitable staging areas. Although it would depend on the political climate.

headzilla

It'd be the equivalent of the Germans invading Russia in WW2

Prolatarian

headzilla wrote: »

It'd be the equivalent of the Germans invading Russia in WW2

That was a very close run thing.

Manic Moran

If it wasn't for the fact that Hitler was such a lousy commander, they might have pulled it off.

NTM

MooseJam

I'd say the pentagon would have contingencies for this, they have plans for everything just in case, have probably played a lot of war games

Prolatarian

Manic Moran wrote: »

If it wasn't for the fact that Hitler was such a lousy commander, they might have pulled it off.

NTM

He was going well until he got fixated on stalingrad

MooseJam

Prolatarian wrote: »

He was going well until he got fixated on stalingrad

yea he should have just encircled stalingrad and head for Moscow, bit silly trying to take it just because of the name

Cato

Prolatarian wrote: »

He was going well until he got fixated on stalingrad

and moscow

Prolatarian

MooseJam wrote: »

yea he should have just encircled stalingrad and head for Moscow, bit silly trying to take it just because of the name

You woudent mind only he said it himself that it wasent important and that all that materd in the south was the cacuses oil fields.

purple'n'gold

MooseJam wrote: »

What do you think folks could the US invade and take red China in a conventional war

Absolutely no chance, the very idea is laughable.

Manic Moran

geekGirl wrote: »

The US in Vietnam with Korean and WW2 veterns couldn't beat the NVA.

There was no end of political constraints in that war. I get the feeling the military's hands would be much less tightly tied in a hypothetical against China. It wasn't a military failure, it was a political one.

NTM

purple'n'gold

Manic Moran wrote: »

There was no end of political constraints in that war. I get the feeling the military's hands would be much less tightly tied in a hypothetical against China. It wasn't a military failure, it was a political one.

NTM

I agree, and don’t forget North Vietnam had the backing of the entire communist world, in some shape or form.

spank_inferno

Even in an invasion the US would win.
Obviously the nation is too large and populous to occupy.
But in a straight up war the US military is too well equiped.
From what I've heard (limited enough) the chinese military structure is poorely organised with poor logistics, training, moral & a command structure based too closely on officers/generals climbing the communist party ladder.

But it would make for a hell of a lot of war movies!