China is provoking resistance to its territorial ambitions and rush to dominate its region and the world. Russia should beware.
China is showing its true face of conquest and dominance too soon:
Eurasia has often been a deathtrap for aspiring hegemons: there are too many nearby enemies that can make common cause with offshore superpowers. For almost 40 years, a rising China avoided strategic encirclement by downplaying its global ambitions and maintaining friendly relations with the United States. But that period is over. As Beijing has become more aggressive in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and elsewhere, it has engendered hostility nearly all around. ...
The United States’ turn against China has contributed to a broader backlash against Beijing’s power.
My worries about China's rise were always muted by the hope that America would be strong enough to rally those countries having a hostile reaction to Chinese power and aggression:
Even if China is one of many great powers, we will remain the dominant power. One reason is that we will still retain the bulk of the world's free military power
Strategypage has a useful site (that link is dead but I did find it--in 2019!--on the Internet Wayback Machine) that provides a single numerical value for a nation's land power, including air power that can support ground forces. The numbers on this site demonstrate why I don't worry about China too much even should they match us in absolute power. In short, China can't escape the logic of our geographical advantage. ...Which is why I don't lose sleep at night over China's rise in power and wouldn't change places with them. Oh, if China is able to focus their power on a localized area, like Taiwan, they can generate local superiority for a short time--perhaps long enough to win that battle--but if we are able to mobilize and deploy our power, we can beat China on any battlefield. And we'd likely have powerful local allies to help us. China is a threat to our interests even now, but only if they catch us off guard.
In only thirteen years my confidence in America's naval dominance has evaporated. But our allies still give us the advantage, assuming we can weld those separate militaries into a coherent alliance effort. And assuming we can counter land-based Chinese air and missile forces that reach out to sea.
And as the initial author states, China's bad geographic position has only been eased through alliance with America. An alliance China has thrown away to challenge America and our allies.
Still, if China wants to make a bid to cement its position as a major power, a war against America is probably too dangerous to risk. Still, you never know what the CCP is thinking, especially now that America seems weak willed in the aftermath of our Afghanistan skedaddle debacle.
But Russia would be a much easier major target for a short and glorious Chinese war. And a target with existing insults to China ready to reverse.
Further, how likely is it that Putin's Russia could rally the world to save Russia? China might as well have ordered Hollywood to have central casting create Putin as the perfect villain.
Putin may have planned a pivot to Asia too late to stop the Chinese and gain Western friendship.
How Putin sleeps at night is beyond me.
