New chinese MBT

[PlasmaKrab]

I would never compromise firepower, I would rather increase it (more atgm´s). But a lighter fast moving tank could be effecitve anywhere on the battlefield and be depolyed where ever it would be needed without a enormous logistics train.

Lighter vehicle doesn't mean lighter logistics. If you equip your Light Combat Vehicle (LCV) with a gas turbine, you will have something lighter but as fuel-thirsty as an Abrams. Suppose now you find a way to field effective hydrogen cells or ionic batteries, for instance by quick-changing them and reloading in your rear area. Do you imagine the logistics behind this?

And the price counts as well, also that is easily forgotten in a tactical wargame. One advanced ATGM is about ten times as expensive as an equivalent tank round. Granted, it is also guided. Now there should be an average between one light-armored Stryker brigade and the 2000 T-55 you'll get for the same price ... I guess everyone is precisely looking for that

You can still consider armour the Israeli way... I don't know how mobile could Merkava IV get if needed.

[narwan]

China is no way near superpower status and won't achieve it in the foreseeable future, if ever. It simply hasn't got the economic basis for it.

Statistics can look impressive but don't mean anything out of context. China's economic growth is build on quicksand. Remember the fear of a japanese (economic) takeover of the US in the 80's? The threat of the booming asian tigers in the 90's? Those didn't quite live up to the expectation and neither will China now. For one thing (among many) it's economic progress is kept alive by a government vouching for loans by business (often run by relatives, cronies, etc). However a default percentage of up to 40% is already being expected on those loans. Ouch!
When the chinese economic bubble comes crashing down it'll make the earlier asian ones (japan and the tigers) look like nothing. Especially since china has managed (very cleverly!) to integrate parts of the US economy and US companies into it's bubble.

Narwan

[PlasmaKrab]

Remember the fear of a japanese (economic) takeover of the US in the 80's? The threat of the booming asian tigers in the 90's?

Remember the Thailand crash in 1997 and how some crazed NY traders ran down the Thai currency in some weeks, taking apart the whole Asian economy, like some later did to Argentina? Now THAT ended the Asian boom, for whoever would percieve that as a threat.

Oh, and quite every stock-based economy on the world right now is built on hot air. I won't extend on the dangers of stock-options, and how some more Enron-like affairs could turn it all to ashes precisely because of the US-Asian dependence.
Look how Boeing is trying to sue Airbus on EU-government loans? Where is the difference with China? The Chinese government is horribly corrupt, but the rising generation is bound to make it their own way at whichever cost.

The Asian bubble can plop anytime now, but itis too late for making profit whit it, since that would be at everyone's expense. So I guess everyone will go on filling it up with sheer faith, just like the dollar bubble or any other!

[AB]

PlasmaKrab said:
Pacific coexistence, anyone? No interest? Last bid!

The point is that China is progressing impressively fast indeed, but not enough to stand against the US forces in the Pacific area, let alone invading Taiwan. One practical hing is that they don't have the amphibious capacity for that.

Wow, this really puts a cramp in my current US vs. China campaign in Taiwan!

[AB]

PlasmaKrab said:
Any bump in the fast-lane road to progress could very well topple the country into an endless and bloody continental civil wars.

Oh, well this may be a better topic for a campaign anyway!

[Shadowcougar]

Also the Chinese take the long view to a strategy as opposed to the Western short view. I have to say the Chinese to look at getting Taiwan. Back. But not in the next 25 years. They will work on the Taiwanese people first and go for peaceful reunification as opposed to fighting.

Besides the Chinese have 2 billion people and they have an open land to the north and another nation with 1 billion people who share a border (a small and mountainous) with. Some will need land to expand into and Taiwan is too small and really not worth fighting for at the cost it would take to win.

[SCAJolly]

@Shadowcougar
India and China have a population of respectively 1,1 and 1,3 billion (2004, I think).

@Kevin
What I perhaps did not emphasize, or remember to point out, was that wars aren't fought unless there is a proper catalyst. Before the first world war, there had to be an assassination (remember how quiet and peaceful international politics looked the months ahead). Before the second world war, Hitler had to rise to power.
What I am saying is that at the current level, I (who have no master in anything) don't anticipate the relationship between China and America, and China and Taiwan, to worsen enough for a war to escalate. Something sudden would have to happen, I believe.

Remember the rockets that were launched off Taiwan, and what this resulted in. Misunderstandings can easily result in a war, the way a rocket with a scientific mission launched from Norway nearly resulted in a nuclear response from the USSR.
My bottom line is that because a cadet spilled some Coke on the control panel he was manning, we might wake up one morning to a war between nations. Be it Indonesia and Malaysia or America and Soviet, war ain't good.

[kevin]

AB, don't worry about your campaign. China vs. US and Taiwan will always be interesting to explore

I agree with Narwan about China's superpower forecast. The Chinese economy has been built by American Consumer's need to buy crappy little trinkets like the piggie figurines that my girlfriend has placed all over my house. Dear lord woman! I don't care if you got it on sale, you didn't need it in the first...... woops wrong forum.

Oh Plasma.... Plasma, Plasma Plasma, let me put my Finance cap on and figure out where to begin. The Chinese currency (the Yuan) is pegged to the dollar. This means that there is a fixed exchange rate instead of a floating rate like the $ to the Euro. This was true of the Asian Tigers before the crash in 1997.

This crash was not the result of "some crazed NY traders." Currency fluctuation is a natural part of the economic cycle. Cash cannot continue to flow in one direction forever. The more the $ goes out of the US, the more its value goes down. If no one buys the things the US has, then US workers loose their jobs, then they cannot buy as many Asian products.

As the value of the $ falls, deflation becomes a problem. Deflation happens when there are too many products and not enough $ to buy them, so prices need to be lowered. Deflation is much worse than Inflation because it is harder to get out of. Deflation is a downward spiral where a company is building too many products and charging too much money for them. So they lower prices and lay-off workers they can't afford to pay. But then, with more workers laid-off, there are even less people to buy products.

Now the Asian Tigers are in trouble. Since their currency is pegged to the $, its drops in value too. A country pegs its currency to the $ so that their currency remains weaker. Having a weaker currency makes your goods more competitive in foreign markets, and imports less competitve at home. For example: China makes a widget for 4 Yuan. They have the Yuan pegged 4 to 1 to the $. You get 4 Yuan for every $. China ships the widget to the US and sells it for $4. They then take those $ back to China and exhange and get 16 Yuan.

The value of the Asian Tigers are falling, pegged to a $ that is sinking. They have no choice, they must float their currency, which allows it to be traded on the open Market. The results are predictable, painful, but neccessary. The Asian Tiger's value shoots up, way up. Their economy and currency offers the best return at the moment. But.... what comes up, must come down. The Asian Tiger's currency is rising, the $ is falling. All of the sudden: Asia's exports become more expensive in America, and America's exports become cheaper. To prevent this, the Asian Tigers started printing money, lot's of it in an attempt to flood the market and lower the value. This happens, but guess what? Inflation skyrockets.

Inflation is the great big brake to economic development (although not as bad as deflation) You have more and more money that is worth less and less. In addition, sales are plummeting so you're taking in less money. And that money is loosing value. Before you know it, you can't afford to pay back your bank loan. Not that this matters too much to the bank because it is already loosing money. The fixed amount of money it collects cannot cover things like bank employee salaries, that have to rise with inflation, so that people can afford to eat.

This is called the bubble bursting.

In regards to China, I have to disagree with Narwan about it being worse than the Asian Tigers in 1997.
1st: China has invested heavily in US bonds, guareenteeing a steady cash flow no matter what.
2nd: In 1997, China was able to take advantage of price hikes on Asian Tiger goods. They managed to establish a foothold in US markets because they could still supply goods cheaply. There is no such entity who can "slip-in" and take advantage of China's misfortunes
3rd: Having wittnessed the Asian Tigers in 1997, the world will approach the situation in a more sytematic way. For example, China will gradually loosen the controls on the Yuan. It will not free float overnight, instead changing the peg slowly to better reflect actual conditions. The bubble will not burst, but gently get smaller.

[narwan]

PlasmaKrab said:
Remember the Thailand crash in 1997 and how some crazed NY traders ran down the Thai currency in some weeks, taking apart the whole Asian economy, like some later did to Argentina? Now THAT ended the Asian boom, for whoever would percieve that as a threat.

Oh, and quite every stock-based economy on the world right now is built on hot air. I won't extend on the dangers of stock-options, and how some more Enron-like affairs could turn it all to ashes precisely because of the US-Asian dependence.
Look how Boeing is trying to sue Airbus on EU-government loans? Where is the difference with China? The Chinese government is horribly corrupt, but the rising generation is bound to make it their own way at whichever cost.

The Asian bubble can plop anytime now, but itis too late for making profit whit it, since that would be at everyone's expense. So I guess everyone will go on filling it up with sheer faith, just like the dollar bubble or any other!

Saying that those traders caused the collapse of the asian economies is like saying that the assassination of archduke Ferdinand was the (sole) cause of the first world war. It was bound to happen and pretty soon too, it was unavoidable. Same thing with asian bubble in '97. Those traders didn't cause it, they flicked over a single domino stone and down came the whole house of cards. It was just as bound to happen.

Stock bound economies aren't necessairily build on hot air either, it's build on 'expectation'. Those expectations can be manipulated and it is that amount of manipulation that determines the amount of 'hot air' (Enron indeed). The chinese are doing just that on a scale larger probably than what caused the end of the japanese boom of the 80's (bank defaults and bad loans/investments mostly).

The chinese will slowly improve their lot, but don't forget that most of them are living in abject poverty, that the country lacks most of the needed (industrial and economic) infrastructure to improve the situation in China as a whole.
At best they can hope for gradual and substantial improvements in some regions, provided they can 'isolate' them from the rest to prevent their poverty from dragging down the succesful regions with them (as they say, China didn't take over Hongkong, Hongkong took over China! ).
But it's unlikely that the masses that will be left behind will take kindly to it. Which is the real problem of the chinese government; they can't improve the whole of the country at the same time, but how to manage localised growth and improvements without triggering revoltes (both by the masses and by the local fiefs running their regions like the warlords of the old days)?

Edit: wrote the reply before I saw yours Kevin; I think the chinese are trying to work around the bubble by joining with others economies (the US especially) as close as possible under the assumption that 1) it will be in the US' economic interest (short term at least) to keep China's bubble alive and 2) the view economic power as a relative; if you can take down the adversary with you you may even end up on top!

[PlasmaKrab]

Alright, economy is not my domain, but you won't persuade me that the current world economic mechanisms can be subject to any level of instability, precisely because no one can tell the level of 'hot air' in the overall 'expectation'. What I meant was that the whole stock trading, where the percepted success of a firm generally leads to a rise in its stock value, which rises its funds and over you go again. This phenomenon encourages equally performance and fraud. And fraud is much easier, particularly when you are persuaded you'll never be caught, and if ever you're caught you'll never be punished (which is what comes up from the general news reports on many of these fraud affairs). And when fraud is uncovered, the percepted value of the stock appears wholly virtual, and then... I think I don't have to explain that to anyone. Anyway I won't try short explanations anymore, I've just seen the result

And (in the same summary flaw of mine) when I talked about traders running down the Thai economy, I didn't envision some crazed traders plotting to take over the world; I think Narwan corrected it alright: the situation was potentially unstable and some guys took advantage of it to make profits, kicking the pebble on top of the mountain. They weren't the single cause of the fall but (as for WW1) there is no way to tell what would have happened if they hadn't.
You can call this behaviour normal or irresponsible, but you have to admit that currencies don't move around and change value by themselves: there have to be people, everyday people whose job is to see that money is made somehow. Don't come and talk about some Invisible Hand of the Market, there are just humans around.

OK, that was the less short explanation (not as long as it should have been maybe), let's hope I won't look like a know-it-all moron this time! Pardon me everyone, but I just wanted to start making things clearer here. I am glad to see that some of my betters have followed the path I have open...

By the way, I think this thread derivates somehow, don't you find? Now that we've all stated WHY the Chinese will NOT attack Taiwan, maybe we can get back to seeing to those who want to make fictional scenarios get info others that "no! you can't do that! can't happen!"