Do you remember the days when the complete and utter dominance of the U.S. military could not be questioned? Sadly, those days are long gone. I have written extensively about how the Russian military has now surpassed us in a number of key areas, but it could be argued that the ascendancy of the Chinese military has been even more stunning. At this point nobody can deny the fact that China is a military superpower, and Chinese defense spending continues to soar…
China will raise defense spending by 7.2 percent for a third consecutive year, the country said Wednesday, as it continues a military buildup that a Trump Pentagon nominee has warned is geared toward war with the United States.
Of course when we are talking about China we always need to make a distinction between the figures that are being released for public consumption and what is really going on behind the scenes.
According to Newsweek, some U.S. analysts are convinced that the Chinese are actually spending over 700 billion dollars a year on defense when “unreported outlays” are accounted for…
Some analysts believe China is spending far more than it lets on. Accounting for unreported outlays, some analysts have estimated the true figure is more than $700 billion—not far behind the U.S.
Today, more than 2 million people serve in the Chinese military.
That makes the Chinese military the largest in the world.
Approximately 1.3 million people serve in the U.S. military.
That makes the U.S. military just the third largest in the world.
But at least we have a bigger navy, right?
Wrong.
At this point China has more than 700 warships, while the U.S. now has fewer than 500 warships.
And if a war in the Pacific did erupt, the Chinese could pump out warships far faster than we could.
According to Fox News, China “now has a shipbuilding capacity 230 times greater” than we do…
The Chinese defense industrial base is operating at a “wartime footing,” and now has a shipbuilding capacity 230 times greater than the U.S.’s, making a potential invasion of Taiwan a not-unlikely outcome.
That is nuts.
How did we allow that to happen?
The one bright spot for the U.S. is our Air Force.
The U.S. Air Force currently has more than 14,000 military aircraft, while the Chinese have about 3,000 military aircraft.
But when it comes to missiles, that is another story altogether.
According to Bloomberg, China has the world’s “leading hypersonic arsenal”, while the U.S. is hopelessly behind…
China leads the world in developing, testing and deploying hypersonic weapons, beating out Russia while the US, having already spent $12 billion, has yet to field even one. The weapons can travel five times the speed of sound, making interception by existing defensive systems difficult at best. China, senior US defense intelligence analyst Jeffery McCormick told Congress Tuesday, has the world’s “leading hypersonic arsenal” thanks to Beijing’s two-decade long effort “to dramatically advance its development of conventional and nuclear-armed technologies and capabilities through intense and focused investment, development, testing and deployments.”
What is wrong with us?
Why are we behind both the Chinese and the Russians when it comes to hypersonic missile technology?
The Chinese are also way ahead of us when it comes to missile defense systems. They have been purchasing Russian systems which are far superior to our own, and they have been using Russian technology to improve their own designs…
Similarly, China’s defense industry has bought, copied, and adapted Russian-made air and missile defense systems, apparently with Russian acquiescence. Six years after acquiring Russia’s S-300, China produced its own copy, the HQ-9, which still serves as one of the PLA’s primary surface-to-air missile systems. Likewise, the Chinese HQ-16 missile system was copied from the Russia Buk-M1-2 but appears to have been made in full collaboration with the Russian Almaz-Antey Corporation. This trend continues with even the most advanced systems, as China purchased the state-of-the-art S-400 in 2014, began testing in 2018, and appears to be currently using the system to improve its own designs.
But at least we have more nukes.
For now.
Just recently, President Trump revealed that China will have an “equal amount” of nuclear warheads within four to five years…
The Republican said on Friday: “I know Russia and us have by far the most.
“China will have an equal amount within 4-5 years.
“It would be great if we could all denuclearise because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.”
As for the military technologies of the future, the Chinese are in really good shape.
For example, it has been estimated that the Chinese are about 10 years ahead of us when it comes to drone technology.
I recently asked Google AI about this, and this is what I was told…
Yes, according to current information, China is considered the leader in drone technology, primarily due to the dominance of DJI, a Chinese company that holds a significant share of the global consumer drone market, making them the leading producer and seller of civilian drones worldwide.
At this stage, DJI pretty much dominates everyone else. According to MIT’s Technology Review, DJI actually has “more than a 90% share of the global consumer market”…
Whether you’ve flown a drone before or not, you’ve probably heard of DJI, or at least seen its logo. With more than a 90% share of the global consumer market, this Shenzhen-based company’s drones are used by hobbyists and businesses alike for photography and surveillance, as well as for spraying pesticides, moving parcels, and many other purposes around the world.
Okay, so what about AI?
The good news is that the U.S. still has a lead in AI technology, but Time Magazine recently published an article that discussed the fact that our lead is shrinking fast…
But fast forward to today, and a flurry of impressive Chinese releases suggests the U.S.’s AI lead has shrunk. In November, Alibaba and Chinese AI developer DeepSeek released reasoning models that, by some measures, rival OpenAI’s o1-preview. The same month, Chinese videogame juggernaut Tencent unveiled Hunyuan-Large, an open-source model that the company’s testing found outperformed top open-source models developed in the U.S. across several benchmarks. Then, in the final days of 2024, DeepSeek released DeepSeek-v3, which now ranks highest among open-source AI on a popular online leaderboard and holds its own against top performing closed systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Before DeepSeek-v3 was released, the trend had already caught the attention of Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO and one of the most influential voices on U.S. AI policy. In May 2024, Schmidt had confidently asserted that the U.S. maintained a two-to-three year lead in AI, “which is an eternity in my books.” Yet by November, in a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School, Schmidt had changed his tune. He cited the advances from Alibaba, and Tencent as evidence that China was closing the gap. “This is shocking to me,” he said. “I thought the restrictions we placed on chips would keep them back.”
That is certainly alarming.
If we fall behind in the technology race, it is just a matter of time before we are no longer the leading global superpower.
According to a very shocking study that was released in 2024, “China dominates the US in 57 of 64 critical technologies, up from just three in 2007″…
A comprehensive, 20-year study released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2024 calculated that China dominates the US in 57 of 64 critical technologies, up from just three in 2007.
The US, which led in a whopping 60 sectors in 2007, now leads in just seven.
ASPI based its rankings on cumulative innovative and high-impact research published and patented by national universities, labs, companies and state agencies.
Wow.
We were soundly defeating China in 2007, but now the Chinese have pulled way ahead of us.
During a recent Senate hearing, one of President Trump’s nominees openly admitted that China has become “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security”…
In responses to questions submitted ahead of a nomination hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Elbridge Colby, a security analyst and President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy, gave a warning about the trajectory of U.S.-China relations.
“I agree that China is ‘the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security,'” Colby said, citing the Pentagon’s 2022 National Defense Strategy.
So what are we going to do if China invades Taiwan?
It has always been assumed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan, but it is not likely that we would win such a conflict.
China is much, much closer to Taiwan than the United States is. If a war over Taiwan erupts, that would give the Chinese a major advantage.
Hopefully China will not decide to pull the trigger on an invasion any time soon, but Chinese officials continue to make ominous statements about Taiwan. Here is just one recent example…
Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Chinese defense ministry, said Sunday that U.S. arms shipments would not stop the inevitable end of “Taiwan independence.”
“The more rampant ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists become, the tighter the noose around their necks and the sharper the sword hanging over their heads will be,” he said in remarks delivered during the ongoing annual legislative session of China’s rubber-stamp congress.
Over the past couple of years, the Chinese have been conducting military exercises around Taiwan over and over again.
Admiral Samuel Paparo has accurately pointed out that these Chinese military exercises are actually rehearsals for an invasion…
“Their [China’s] aggressive maneuver[s] around Taiwan right now are not exercises as they call them. They are rehearsals. They are rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland.
“Beijing’s military build-up, their gray-zone operations, their military coercion against Taiwan, grow more concerning every day. The People’s Liberation Army’s increasingly complex, multi-domain operations demonstrate clear intent and improving capability.”
Of course Taiwan is just one of the flashpoints that could cause a war between the U.S. and China to erupt.
The Panama Canal is another one.
Our relations with China have been rapidly deteriorating for a long time, and this should deeply trouble all of us.
As I write this, new tariffs have already been imposed on both sides as our ongoing trade war with China continues to escalate.
And throughout human history we have seen many trade wars eventually evolve into shooting wars.
The Chinese are preparing for war because they can see where things are heading.
But most Americans are not concerned about the possibility of war with China at all, and I believe that is a tragic mistake.
Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.