While the United States and its allies were distracted, entangled for 30 years in costly endless wars in the Middle East, the People’s Republic of China has made a true military leap forward worthy of the utmost attention, perhaps even fright, from the rest of the planet. The figures still place the first American superpower at the top of defense spending, technology and capabilities, but Beijing already has the largest land armed forces on the planet, the largest war fleet and the largest air force in the region. , third world.
Three recent pieces of news reveal the speed with which China is closing in on the United States with the goal, formulated by its president Xi Jinping, of becoming a world-class army by mid-century. Now it has become known that tests were carried out in August with a hypersonic missile, which orbited the planet at low altitude, a technology until now only used by Washington and Moscow, with which it is possible to evade enemy defenses to deliver a first nuclear blow . The test has surprised Western intelligence as much as the discovery of the construction of more than two hundred long-range missile launch silos in Xingjian and Gansu, in the territorial depth of the country, which will allow the current nuclear arsenal to be tripled.
If Beijing lags behind the current superpowers, recent statements by former Pentagon cybersecurity chief Nicolas Chaillan at the Financial Times, indicate that it is already in the lead in weapons of the last generation linked to artificial intelligence. Western rivalries between big technology and the scarce cooperation between administrations and companies, which does not occur in the hierarchical and disciplined relationship between economy and army in China, are the explanation of the overtaking that will culminate in a decade.
The struggle for world military leadership is becoming a reality in the region, where Beijing applies the so-called Anti-Access-Area Denial (A2 / AD) strategy to remove maritime and air fleets from the surrounding seas, especially at sea. Southern China and in the air-maritime environment of Taiwan. Its 79 submarines outnumber, though not yet in technology, Washington’s 68, as is the case with the arsenal of maritime mines and anti-ship ballistic missiles.
The only capability it lacks for a land invasion of Taiwan is an amphibious landing force, an element that will be ready, according to evaluations by the Taiwanese army, in 2024, when the fourth Chinese aircraft carrier will also be launched. The first-class military power that Xi Jinping wants should serve to defend Chinese interests around the world and serve his own base system, but his immediate objective revolves around Taiwan, where parity and even overcoming is perfectly within his reach. of US forces so far dispersed in bases and missions all over the planet.