Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[CBH99]

If I was in charge of anybody's anything I would not buy Chinese goods.

All the mecanical and electrical goods of Chinese origin that I have had the misfortune to cross have performed equally as well as the tires they supplied their Russian mates.

How cheap Chinese tires might explain Russia's 'stalled' 40-mile-long military convoy in Ukraine

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Nothing like buying a condo on like the 44th floor of an 80-story highrise only to have the concrete walls crumbling & foundation shifting on their own...and living in an Earthquake prone region at that

I'm with ya on the quality control issue

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That being said, Chinese J-10 fighters were used by Pakistan in their recent dustup with India and seemed to hold their own against Rafales just fine

Many argue it's because the Pakistanis were using AEW&C aircraft and the Indians weren't, but that isn't the point here.

The point is that Chinese built fighters squared off against western built fighters & arguably won...and THAT will be a huge PR victory for China as it looks to sell fighters in the future


It will be interesting to watch their space program in terms of hardware quality. Their plans are much more ambitious than NASA's, so it should be interesting to see how their hardware holds up.

 

[CBH99]

I seem to remember reading at the beginning of the Ukraine war that the Chinese made tires that the Russians used were absolute dog shit.

Oh probably!! I have no doubt

Made under contract by the lowest bidder, most likely. And in China I think 'lowest bidder' goes lower than we would think...

 

[GR66]

I think we should be careful to assume that just because the Chinese produce a lot of cheap, disposable consumer products to dump on Western markets in order to keep their population employed, that they are not also capable of producing high quality products when required/desired.

With a population of 1 billion and lots of highly educated (often in the West) scientists and engineers it would be unwise to underestimate their capabilities.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Chinese arms exports are quite interesting, I find...

Have there been many instances over the last few years where Chinese kit has catastrophically failed a client state? Or any instances at all?



Russian air defence systems don't seem to be all that reliable lately, not against the west's new war toys anyways...

(Re S300 & S400 seeming pretty outmatched by the F-35 & all those dark little tricks they bring to the fight.

I don't know if a single S300 or 400 has been able to even effectively release a single munition against the high tech lightning warfare the Americans have become so darn good at.



Maybe sales are down because Chinese export military tech is largely just reverse engineered & modified Russian export military tech...and countries have been watching that equipment perform pretty poorly during these short recent campaigns?

A lot of countries are probably observing western military kit vs eastern military kit these days & are being given pause to keep on waiting and watching, and quietly keeping their eyes out for any alternative solutions to their security challenges...


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I think MANPADS have become the bigger threat in most theatres these days, as they can literally be anywhere & can't really be targeted specifically by aircraft. And their effective.

This is partially because the level the S300 + S400 is supposed to play at has been dominated by the Americans for a long time now, and those Russian systems are basically just coffins at this point.

Not that the system is a bad system, it's just the tools of the game have been being revolutionized far more by one side than the other...



It's no longer bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Now it's bringing a knife to a fight against a network of advanced sensors + interconnected advanced platforms among all 5 domains (air, land, sea, space, cyber) advanced electronic warfare & cyber warfare enablers + a wide variety of directed energy weapons + sonic weapons + precision strike weapons + hypersonic space shit

Caveman vs Terminator + Star Trek levels of tech overmatch most of the time


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If I was in charge of some country's military procurement, and I'm watching the various active wars happening right now where Russian and/or Chinese AD systems are supposedly active in those theatres...I'd probably be noticing a common theme among them all...

Those systems have been so outclassed they don't even get a chance to fire. And they probably don't need paperweights that big?

Maybe because it was five years ago trudeau banned most of the pistols, rifles and shotguns Canadians bought from Norinco