China is on the Move China is on the move, but there are plenty of Chinese who don’t like the direction it is taking. In order to blunt this, most of these people are being cut off from world events. A similar thing is happening in Russia. China has the world’s biggest population with India being a close second. The population of China is 1.44 billion people. The population of India is 1.38 billion people. The population of the world is about 7.98 billion. These two countries make up roughly 37 percent of the world’s population. Unlike India, China is bent on become the world’s biggest superpower, not by just becoming a manufacturing giant, but also by having the world’s strongest military and the most secure area in Asia by taking over huge areas of the South China sea along with other areas. They have been establishing ports not only there but also on other continents such as South America in countries such as Argentina and Peru. It is said the port in Peru is a mega port. Experts are saying one of the targets of China is Panama. Remember, that is where one of the most important canals in the world is, the Panama Canal which is an absolute necessity for the United States Navy. As strange as it might sound, strategic materials are being imported from China and Russia and without these materials our military would be in trouble. China is the world’s largest producer of antimony and Russia is the second largest producer. Here is the kicker, we have to import it from them and it is a necessary component in making ammunition. It is used in armor-piercing bullets and explosives and even in nuclear weapons. It also is used in military devices. An example of this is night vision devices. Can you imagine this? These two countries are certainly not friendly to us and can cut off our supply at any time. If we don’t manufacture this element ourselves, we are just looking for trouble. Congress has finally realized the problem and wants us to become self-sufficient in five years. This is just putting off the problem into the future. There certainly are other areas where we depend on other strategic materials. China is the biggest supplier to the United States of rare earth elements. They are not only found in nuclear reactors, but in weapons and advanced electronic devices among others. Could you imagine if a thousand years ago the Europeans were dependent on the Mongol hordes for their arrows? The reason China is so intent on keeping the U.S. market is the fact we are the richest market for their products. On the other hand, China is the biggest market for U.S. products. So, in a way both countries are dependent on each other. The question is as other countries gain in wealth will there become a point when China will cut us off from strategic materials? Even if this never is going to happen, we have to be prepared for this and for the same happening to the U.S. by Russia. We import the strategic materials of Platinum and Palladium from Russia along with nickel, copper, lead and others. It is time for us to mine this for ourselves and build up a reserve of strategic materials so we can release ourselves from our dependency on China and Russia. China wants to have the strongest navy in the world and has more ships than us, but we have more major vessels. In 2018 the Chinese navy had 498 combat vessels and other auxiliary vessels. The United States had 490 combat ships in the active and reserve fleet plus auxiliary vessels. In nuclear powered combat ships, we lead the world. The Chinese want to outbuild us and have begun to rapidly build more combat ships. They just launched the third aircraft carrier, making it the country with the second most. The United States has 11 carriers and 9 helicopter carriers. All active United States carriers are powered by nuclear reactors. So far none of China’s carriers are. To counter the number of ships the Chinese have we have formed a coalition with Japan, India and Australia. This makes the naval power in the area even more potent. I presume one of the reasons India decided to join was the fact they are at constant loggerheads with the Chinese and have experienced many border skirmishes with the Chinese. The Chinese air force is said to have 9,000 aircraft of which 2,000 are fighter planes. This number changes drastically from other sources and some say it is as little as 3,000. The United States Air Force has about 13,300 planes. The United States Navy has 3,700 aircraft. The United States Marines have 450 aircraft and the U.S. Army has 4,000 planes. There is also the U.S. Coast Guard 210 aircraft. It is noteworthy that some of the aircraft mentioned for the services are helicopters. The Chinese have demonstrated they have a hypersonic missile. It is said by some we do not. I believe we tested one. Anyway, one of the head scientists in China that developed their hypersonic missile defected to the United States so I am sure if we do not have one yet, we will soon. It is said China has between 50 and 75 ICBMs but is building many more. The United States has about 405. If we throw Russia into the mix, they also have a hypersonic missile and 527 ICBMs. The United States has 288 Trident II SLBMs on submarines which have 1,152 warheads. The Chinese have 48 on submarines and are building more submarines. If we throw in the Russian submarine fleet, there are thousands more. What I find sort of amazing is the fact in the past China was the victim of many different powers. One would think once the got onto their own they would have finally been content, instead of wanting to become one of those oppressive powers themselves. They just seem to want to grab everything they can. They might even become a colonial power soon, if they keep on going the way they are, something they always hated. There is one thing about communists and that is they never practice what they preach. They claim everyone will be equal but the ruling class certainly is not equal with the rest of their citizens. They get the luxuries and the rest of their society is lucky if they get enough to eat. Yet, all those prior examples of communism are being ignored by some who wish communism to spread to this country.
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