Is China’s Military Really So Frightening? Three Constraints Identified by a Military Analyst

The other day, I was watching a military analyst’s commentary on YouTube.

The subject was the military threat posed by China. At a time when China’s military buildup and the possibility of a Taiwan contingency are widely reported, the analyst argued that there was no need to be excessively afraid of China’s military power.

He gave three main reasons.

1. Starting a War Would Wreck China’s Own Economy

China is one of the world’s leading manufacturing powers and is deeply dependent on exports and international supply chains.

If it launched a large-scale military operation, damage to its own economy—from sanctions, reduced trade, and the flight of foreign capital—would be unavoidable.

Even a military victory would be meaningless if the price were economic collapse.

Moreover, occupying another country’s territory and holding it for a long period would carry an enormous cost.

Having a military and actually being able to use it are two different things.

2. A Society Shaped by the One-Child Policy Cannot Afford Heavy Military Casualties

Another interesting point was the impact of the one-child policy.

China’s long-running one-child policy created many families in which an only son carried all of the family’s hopes and expectations.

What would happen if that generation were sent to the battlefield as soldiers and suffered heavy casualties?

For parents who lost their only son, it could mean losing the future of the family itself.

The analyst believed that tens of thousands of military deaths would provoke considerable public backlash.

Military power is often compared in terms of weapons performance and troop numbers, but how many casualties a country’s society can endure is also an important condition.

3. Historically, China Has Prioritized Domestic Rule Over Foreign Invasion

The third point concerned the historical character of the Chinese state.

China has a vast territory and an enormous population. Governing them is a formidable task in itself.

Successive dynasties devoted much of their energy to dealing with domestic rebellions and regional powers.

Under the traditional tributary system, moreover, China did not necessarily need to rule neighboring countries directly as long as they recognized a regional order centered on China.

In other words, the explanation was that China had focused more on maintaining a regional order with itself at the center than on sending armies around the world to occupy territory.

History Becomes History Because the Unexpected Happens

The explanation so far is reasonably persuasive.

But when you think about it, all such analyses of international politics use past examples and present conditions to infer the future.

History is full of events that defied expert predictions.

Take, for example, the issue of casualties resulting from the one-child policy. One possible alternative would be to use mercenaries rather than regular forces. Russia has been fighting the war in Ukraine in a quasi-mercenary fashion by offering high pay to members of ethnic minorities. China also has impoverished ethnic minorities and could potentially pay them well to serve as mercenaries.

The claim that China has not historically emphasized foreign expansion is also only a matter of general tendency. To begin with, the Chinese government regards Taiwan as part of its own territory. From China’s perspective, the use of force against Taiwan would not be an invasion of a foreign country, but a matter of national unification.

Above all, the most frightening point is that a country under pressure does not necessarily act rationally.

We need only remember the Pacific War.

Japan understood the disparity in economic power between itself and the United States. Even so, it went ahead with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Knowing that it could not win economically did not prevent it from going to war.

The same could be true of China.

What if its leadership concluded, “If we occupy Taiwan quickly, other countries will eventually resume trade with China, even if they impose severe economic sanctions at first”?

Whether that calculation would be correct is a separate question. What matters is that if the leadership believed it, China could start a war despite knowing the economic cost.

Ultimately, economic power, population structure, and historical tendencies may all discourage war, but none of them guarantees that war will not happen.

So my response to this video is simply, “I see—that is one way of looking at it.”

The ability of a historian to explain the past well and the ability to predict the future accurately are entirely different talents.