"If anybody thinks that we should have a national security and defence policy, which ignores the threat of a Chinese Communist invasion – you’re delusional and got rocks in your head. The Communist Chinese military capacity and level of threat to the western world democracies is at an unprecedented and historical high." - Jacqui Lambie.
She also suggested that Australia should double the size of its military to deal with such a threat.
(1942 - The last invasion scare)
As a side-note, I'm reminded of the Tomorrow series of novels by John Marsden, which I read as a kid, and in which just this happens (the enemy is unnamed however). On a website dedicated to the books, I recall reading this great article a few years ago as well - http://www.rsimpson.id.au/books/tomorrow/explore/invasion.html
It explores the question of whether a full-on, high intensity invasion of Australia was a real possibility in the near future, and came up with four main reasons why this couldn't happen -
1. This is specifically the threat that the Australian Army, Navy and Air Force are designed, built and trained to defeat
2. It is just about inconceivable that the US would not honour its treaty obligations to assist in our defence
3. No one in our region has anything approaching the specialized military forces required to launch a full on overseas invasion covering a significant distance
4. The "Tyranny of Distance" cuts both ways.
The article was also written about ten years ago however, and no one would deny that our world is changing rapidly. So let us consider, are these four reasons still valid? And how long can we comfortably assume they will remain so?
China's ongoing economic growth is probably the best place to start. According to the Economist Magazine China's GDP is on track to overtake America's as soon as 2019 -
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/05/chinese-and-american-gdp-forecasts
It is worth noting that these figures use Official Exchance Rate GDP figures, not Purchasing Power Parity, by which measure China's economy is already approximately equal to the US in size.
The sheer GDP figure however, while useful, is just the starting point. The per capita figures (in PPP terms) for the US and China are $52,800 and $9,800 respectively. While many of its cities are booming, particularly along its eastern coast, large parts of rural, inland China remain poor and backwards, and it will surely take generations for this gap to close. The possible instability this causes cannot be ignored either.
Moving closer to the question of an invasion however, we must compare the total military spending and capabilities of both countries as well. Current US military spending now stands at $500 billion annually, plus another $80 billion or so in 'overseas contingency operations' (i.e. bombing brown people).
For China, figures are somewhat harder to come by. The official government budget in 2014 was $130 billion, but other estimates are often far higher. Most tend to congregate around the $200 billion mark, or about 50% higher than the official figure.
In sheer numbers, this narrows the gap between the two countries considerably, with the Chinese budget already 40% that of the American's. Furthermore the figure is estimated to be increasing at 10% annually, somewhat faster than the Chinese economy. At this rate, total spending between the two nations could be roughly equal by 2030 or so.
Spending is just one part of the equation however, and China has a number of disadvantages it will take a long time to overcome. Advanced military systems can take decades to develop, so a country's current military strength is not so much its current spending levels as the total of all it has spent in the last generation or so.
Historically (i.e. since the 1950s) the Chinese have relied on two things for their defense - huge masses of soldiers and nuclear weapons. Only recently have they begun building up the specialized, high-tech conventional forces that lie between these two extremes, and which the Great Powers of the world have possessed since at least 1945. Thus, we can only expect the Chinese to overtake the US a number of years after their spending has reached parity - perhaps by 2050.
Even then, total military spending does not tell you what that money is being spent on. A fair comparison can be made (and I've made it several times before) between the US and China today and Britain and Germany back in the First World War. In both cases the newly rising power (Germany/China) eventually exceeded the waning one (Britain/America) in total spending and strength, but the former are predominately land powers while the latter are protected by ocean boundaries.
What this means is that the Chinese today, like the Germans of 1914, will have to focus their military predominately on land warfare. This means building more tanks and guns and arming more men. Indeed, in a conventional land war, the Chinese could possibly take on the Americans already. The Korean War (1950-53) for instance, pitted a China vastly poorer and more backward than it is today against an America at the relative height of its power. The result was a bloody draw.
In the result of a major land war between the US and China today, its outcome would of course depend on its nature. The high-tech, contentional forces of the US are weakest in terrain where engagement distances are short - think jungles or mountains, as the Vietnam and Korean wars show.
Across open plains and desert however, the US still reigns supreme. The Gulf War in 1991 was a huge wake-up call to America's rivals. In a matter of weeks, the US military destroyed or neutralized the 650,000-strong Iraqi army - then the fourth largest in the world and fielding over 4,000 tanks - while suffering less than 800 casualties (and about half of these to accidents or friendly fire). This Blitzkrieg - the equal of anything seen in WW2 - showed powers such as Russian and China that sheer quantity of equipment can do little good against the best modern weapons.
Against this higher priority, their navy will have to be a secondary one. For a Chinese invasion of Australia to succeed, even looking many decades into the future, their navy would have to be at least comparable, if not outright superior, to the navies of the US and its allies.
Furthermore, as the Chinese are having to build their navy from the ground up, its unlikely the Americans would ever let them catch up. The British in 1914 had a policy of building a navy at least the equal of the next two largest powers combined. When the British and German fleets clashed in 1916 in the only large-scale fleet action of WW1 - the Battle of Jutland - 99 Germans ships were still facing 151 British ships, a ratio of 2:3.
The Americans are likely to be thinking along similar lines. At the moment their navy has a tonnage of 3.4 million tonnes. This is equal to the next eight or nine navies combined. The Chinese and Russians both have around 900,000 tonnes each, while the next four powers - Japan, India, Britain and France, fall around the 300-400,000 tonne mark. Even if the Chinese doubled their tonnage, the Americans would be likely to increase theirs by a similar margin, thus maintaining their superiority.
Considering the specific ship classes involved, the American lead crystallizes still further. A single Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (of which the Americans have 10) has a displacement of just over 100,000 tonnes. This is approximately equal to the entire tonnage of the Greek or Australian navies. Each carries approximately 100 aircraft.
No other power on Earth maintains capital ships of this size and power.While about a dozen other navies do maintain aircraft carriers (including the British, Italians, Russians, Indians, Brazilians and so on) they are usually only of the 'STOVL' kind (short take-off and vertical landing - i.e. helicopters and jump-jets akin to Harriers). The French Carrier Charles De Gaulle is one of the few exceptions, but at 42,000 tonnes it is still less than half the size of the Nimitz class, and carries a proportionally smaller number of aircraft.
The Chinese currently have one active aircraft carrier - the refurbished Soviet ship Varyag, now renamed the Liaoning. However the ship is thirty years old and obsolete by modern standards, meaning it is only ever intended as a training ship.
Based on their experience with the Liaoning however, the Chinese are planning a further 5 or 6 carriers. Depending on how the construction process goes, these should be operational around 2025-2030 and are expected to have a tonnage similar to the Liaoning's 60,000 tonnes. This would still give them a total carrier tonnage only about a quarter of the American's however, with their 10 Nimitz-class carriers and 9 Wasp and Tarawa 'Amphibious Assault Ships' - which are similar to the STOVL carriers of other navies.
As for other major warships, the Americans have 22 Ticondederoga-class cruisers and 62 Arleigh Bourke-class destroyers, with displacements around the 8,000-11,000 tonne range. These are indisputably very powerful warships. The Arleigh Bourke-class maintain an arsenal of over 90 missiles, which can be either Harpoon missiles in the anti-ship role or Tomahawks to strike land targets hundreds of kilometers away. They are also effective in the anti-air and anti-submarine roles.
In submarines - the weapon resorted to by the Germans in both world wars, the gap appears to be somewhat smaller. The Chinese have 65 submarines of all types. This includes 8 nuclear and 51 diesel-electric attack subs, plus 6 ballistic missiles submarines capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles on a strategic basis.
In sheer numbers, the Americans are only slightly ahead, with 54 attack submarines - mostly the Los Angeles-class, and the 18 ballistic missile subs of the Ohio-class. Numbers don't necessarily mean everything however, and it seems the Americans have a huge technological lead over the Chinese.
Up until the 1990s the Chinese still utilized the 'type 033' submarine, which was basically a copy of the 1950s era Soviet Kilo-class submarines, which were in turn largely based on late-WW2 German submarines. When you contrast the armor and firepower of modern tanks and the speed and accuracy of modern aircraft with their WW2 counterparts, one begins to see how big a lead the Americans have opened up.
The type 033s have since been retired and replaced with newer designs, but most of these are still likely to be greatly inferior to their US counterparts. In submarine warfare noise is everything, and the Chinese will probably take decades to catch up. Recent news reports indicate that even their latest submarines are as noisy as 1970s Soviet era subs -
Furthermore, the naval strength of America's allies are worth mentioning as well. The Japanese and South Koreans between them have another 38 Destroyers and 21 frigates, and combined could probably take on the Chinese navy in its present form even without American help.
Thus, while China's economy may very well overtake America's in the near future, and its land forces may be of comparable strength, in terms of their starting fleet strength, we can assume continued US naval dominance into the foreseeable future - at least until 2050. As long as this dominance continues, and unless for some reason the US failed to honour its obligations under the ANZUS treaty - a treaty Australia has sacrificed hundreds of soldiers to over the decades from Vietnam to Afghanistan to preserve - such an invasion could never succeed.
However, while the strength and number of your warships is one thing, it may not be the end-all, and after 2050, the future grows cloudier -
Part #2 - http://futuredemons.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/on-possibility-of-chinese-invasion-of_21.html
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