Will China Trade War Morph Into Hot War

Written by Chriss W. Street

China understands that President Trump’s trade battles with Mexico and Canada are pre-game exercises for the global Trade War showdown with China. Since Trade Wars can become Hot Wars, the Mountain Top Times offers this analysis of China’s military capabilities as the temperatures rise.

China hosts the world’s largest standing military with over 2 million active-duty soldiers and 500,000 reserves. Its navy now operates 3 aircraft carriers, has a fourth under construction and plans to build a fifth.

The Rand Corporation, in its annual war game simulations, rates the People’s Liberation Army, Air Forces, and Navy as a powerhouse. They see the risk of a Taiwan decapitation strike with Chinese missiles raining down on airfields, radar arrays, anti-aircraft batteries and naval vessels.

Rand expects cyber-attacks silencing command and control, 50,000 paratroopers floating down, a helicopter-borne second wave helicoptered shock troops securing D-Day amphibiously landings of 500,000 marines.

All this ignores the fact that Communist China today is vulnerable as the world's largest importer of food and oil. The nation’s food self-sufficiency rate has decreased from 93.6% in 2000 to 65.8% in 2020, and its oil self-sufficiency rate fell from about 32.3% to about 23% during the same period.

With 22% of GDP being export and 60% of exports by sea-routes, China’s Belt and Road global initiative looks like the British coaling ports. If the U.S. Navy closed the sea-lanes, China’s economy would collapse.

China’s troops are already widely distributed to respond to internal issues and national defense across its 13,954 mile land and 13,954 miles borders. China’s historic enemies to the East are Japan and Taiwan; to the South is Vietnam; to the North are Mongolia, Russia and Korean Peninsula; and to the West are India, Tibet and its Muslim Xinjiang province.

The Chinese military is also untested since their last war that was with Vietnam in 1979. The two-month war saw China suffer twice the number of casualtiesand be fought to a draw by the battle-hardened Vietnamese.

The current People’s Liberation Army that is partially conscripted and partially volunteer. The PLA must recruit 400,000 better-educated urban volunteers for technical positions, and about 1.1 million rural conscripts.

Because the PLA’s top-officer corps is thoroughly corrupt, there are regular scandals and prosecutions for purchasing sub-standard weapons and personally pocketing the savings.

President Xi launched a PLA anti-corruption campaignlast year that investigated and humiliatingly purged over a dozen top generals. On November 28, 2024, China’s Central Military Commissioner and head of its Political Work Department was suspended for disciplinary violations.

China’s reunification with Taiwan is the most important flashpoint with the United States. President Xi has called recovery of Taiwan and its 24 million residents the “essence” of the Middle Kingdom’s “great rejuvenation.” But Xi’s published target date is no later than the 2049 centenary of the People’s Republic of China.

According to a Heritage Foundation report, Beijing believed America is in terminal decline due to left-liberal ideas that are “profoundly corrosive and destabilizing” to the ability of the U.S. to ability fight a war.

President Trump 47’s administration flipping the cultural, economic, technological, and military scriptover the last two weeks be causing extreme angst for the China Communist Party.

Trump already has faced down Venezuela and Columbia to take back deported illegal aliens, and Panama not directly lease the Canal to a PLA owned business. Trump’s 25% tariffs launched today against Canada and Mexico will quickly force a renegotiation of NAFTA to be more in balance.

Once President Trump signs a long-term balanced trade deal in America’s backyard, there will be a real Trade War against China that may turn into a Hot War.