October 07, 2026
Ours to Lose
Timothy Birdnow
Why China should stop building a strong navy.
Right now America protects the coastal regions of the world and it costs China nothing. Building a strong navy means China will wind up carrying the burden of protecting coastal waters in the Pacific Rim and that will cost them a lot of money.
I would like to add that it was Kaiser Wilhelm's insistence on building a navy that could compete with the British fleet that ultimately led to WWI and wrecked everything for everyone. Germany was humiliated and its government dismantled. But it was true that all of Europe suffered.
China is now trying to do exactly what Germany did; build a navy to compete with America and allow it to project power around the globe. Naturally America is not going to simply roll over and allow this; at least for now we have Trump and he will compete with them. If America decides to compete we win.
China would be wiser to concentrate on an infantry; they've got enough people. Maybe a submarine fleet. And of course air power. But to try to compete with the U.S. on the water itself makes no sense. The only reason the U.S. does it is to give us mobile bases and to be there to fight piracy or localized operations on the coast. Otherwise we wouldn't even need ships since air power and particularly the coming of drone technology makes it almost obsolete.
From the article:
"China Wants to Challenge Us for Control of the Oceans
A new shipyard in Qingdao is now operational. Groundbreaking on the Weichai’s yacht base started in February 2022, and the final pontoon berths were finished this year. Dubbed by some as "Beijing’s Trojan Yacht,” the new base will boost their shipbuilding capacity. Weichai is wholly owned by Shandong Heavy Industry Group, which answers to China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration (SASAC), the Chinese state-owned asset management commission.
The base is a co-venture with Italian shipbuilding company Ferretti, which is now 40 percent owned by the Chinese. Though that doesn’t make them majority shareholders, it was enough to seize eight of the nine board seats in May.
Now the term "yacht” implies simple leisure craft, but the goal of this base is to start churning out military vessels. Even before that happens, China’s corporate espionage means that they will have access to every connected Ferretti vessel — its engine telemetry, satellite communications traffic, and other user data.
Now that may not seem like such a big deal — all that data is nothing compared to what Meta and Google know about us. But under China’s National Intelligence Law, any Chinese company must hand over the data it holds to Chinese state intelligence on demand."
Since the Cold War days power has not been through guns and ships but through economic power and China seemed to understand that at one time. Japan, with no military at all, was very influential until they adopted Keynsian economics and ruined their roaring economy (built on market principles). And of course the E.U. wields some serious lumber thanks to its economic power (waning, for sure).
But China wants to displace America as the world leader and to do that they figure they need the same level of weaponry. What they fail to understand is their economy is not capable of creating the kind of wealth needed to build so massive and expensive an arsenal. Work smart and not hard seems to have been forgotten by them.
I've long believed China was a paper tiger economically and I further believe that elites in the West wanted them to act as a counterbalance to American hegemony. I remember when Czech born Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted as much; she said it wasn't good the Soviet Union fell because the world needed a counterbalance to America. A SECRETARY OF STATE in America said we needed a counterbalance! It was then the big push began to promote China to American businesses and we began giving them special trade privileges and the like. Even Newt Gingrich got on-board, arguing economic engagement with China would convert them to a free market system. He later admitted he was dead wrong.
China is only a great power because we made them so.
And while they eschewed Communism (as did Russia under Lenin for a time with his New Economic Program in the twenties) they embraced a fascistic style of "capitalism" where the government controls all economic activity and party members own the companies. Such a system can work in the short term but ultimately it will wring the economy dry.
We've been seeing that now as the Chinese economy is struggling on multiple fronts. But instead of reducing spending and concentrating of trade and economic growth they are plotting to build warships.
This is why we are in one of the most dangerous times in human history. The Chinese have said this will be their century. If they see that slipping away they may well launch a war to increase national spirit. They are not going to go quietly into that good night.
Neither are their allies, the Russians. Neither are the Mullahs of Iran.
This new access is an existential threat to us, in part from direct military challenges but more in terms of asymmetric warfare and dirty tricksterism (like hacking the web). I doubt China would be crazy enough to challenge us directly but they could well attack us in other ways and in fact have already done so. We know a LOT of illegal aliens were Chinese, for instance, and they now have an army of American-born Chinamen who can come here freely and move about the country because they have birthright citizenship. We know the Chicoms have bought land by airports and military bases. We know they have floated spy balloons over the country and our military bases. We suspect they have hacked our systems repeatedly. THEY have even said war with the United States is inevitable.
We need to fight them. But not with guns and bombs; that is so last century. This is a very different fight and President Trump understands that. We now have Spaceforce, for instance. And Trump wants to build a new agency to deal with AI.
This Chinese Cold War is ours to lose. Sadly, if the Democrats take power or the internationalists retake the GOP, we will.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:15 AM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1075 words, total size 7 kb.
1
From my observations China should stop because corruption in China produces very unreliable products. Good chances are their navy would sink in choppy waters.
Posted by: Mike at October 07, 2026 02:20 PM (r7WVt)
2
You could be right, Mike.
The period pre-WWI was unique in that three heads of state were all cousins. Britain's King Edward, Kaiser Wilhelm and the Czar of Russia were all grandsons of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm always felt inferior to the others and felt that if he could build a fleet equal to England's he might gain the respect of his cousin. His idea was that he'd build the fleet, sail it to England, he and King Edward would parade their fleets in review, then all go in and have a sumptuous feast with plenty of drinking. He had no knowledge of just how vital sea power was to England because of their dependence on it for commerce, and what a threat his fleet would be seen by England as a result.
The period pre-WWI was unique in that three heads of state were all cousins. Britain's King Edward, Kaiser Wilhelm and the Czar of Russia were all grandsons of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm always felt inferior to the others and felt that if he could build a fleet equal to England's he might gain the respect of his cousin. His idea was that he'd build the fleet, sail it to England, he and King Edward would parade their fleets in review, then all go in and have a sumptuous feast with plenty of drinking. He had no knowledge of just how vital sea power was to England because of their dependence on it for commerce, and what a threat his fleet would be seen by England as a result.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 07, 2026 04:54 PM (6r44G)
3
Mike, I think you are right; it's what all Communist countries wind up with in the end. Command economies always end with shoddy stuff and this Chinese fleet may well wind up being no better than fishing boats.
That is true Dana. Britain had a two to one policy, which said that it had to have a navy twice as large as it's biggest competitor. When the Kaiser started building a navy he started an arms race with the British, which pissed off Parliament to no end. They had to keep building and Germany kept building and tensions rose because of it.
The Kaiser never even used his beautiful new fleet in battle except one time - at Jutland, where it came out, fought the British for a time, then retreated back to harbor. That lovely new fleet was never really tested because, as you point out, it was more a vanity project than a serious military effort.
That is true Dana. Britain had a two to one policy, which said that it had to have a navy twice as large as it's biggest competitor. When the Kaiser started building a navy he started an arms race with the British, which pissed off Parliament to no end. They had to keep building and Germany kept building and tensions rose because of it.
The Kaiser never even used his beautiful new fleet in battle except one time - at Jutland, where it came out, fought the British for a time, then retreated back to harbor. That lovely new fleet was never really tested because, as you point out, it was more a vanity project than a serious military effort.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 08, 2026 08:16 AM (oflqW)
4
The Kaiser's fleet was used more than as Jutland. But it was not used as a combined fleet except at Jutland, so what you say is semi-correct. Overall, the German expertise at sea was not quite up to that of the British, although their ships were every bit as good and some of their newer ones were superior.
At Jutland the weather was very poor, and the German fleet managed to escape the British fleet because of the weather, after sinking more ships than the British did.
At Jutland the weather was very poor, and the German fleet managed to escape the British fleet because of the weather, after sinking more ships than the British did.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 09, 2026 12:03 AM (t37eA)
31kb generated in CPU 0.1872, elapsed 0.2576 seconds.
37 queries taking 0.2437 seconds, 192 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
37 queries taking 0.2437 seconds, 192 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
