China unveiled a host of latest military technology and weapon systems in the Zhuhai Airshow last week.
These include 5th generation fighter jets (J20S, J35A), enhanced 4th generation fighters (J15T, J16D), uncrewed aerial combat and ISR drones (WZ-7, WZ-8), uncrewed swarming drone mothership (Jiutian), unmanned deep-penetration stealth bomber (CH-7), uncrewed surface combat ship (Killer Whale), extra large uncrewed submarine, new hypersonic glide vehicle with sub-munitions (GDF600), directed energy weapons, long range air defense system (HQ19) and a concept 6th-gen stealth fighter prototype (White Emperor II).
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of the weaponry presented at the show, a few themes are quite clear -
China is accelerating its mil-tech leads in hypersonic, stealth, unmanned systems, swarming technology, and related fields. And it is experimenting with a variety of combinations of such technologies in the air, sea, land and undersea domains (very likely also in space). New weapon systems are being developed and tested for different mission profiles with these features.
The underlying core technologies that cut through all kill chains include material science, communication technologies, radar system, AI, robotics and more. China is investing heavily in all these areas (both for civilian and military purposes) and leading in multiple fields (reference Harvard Belfer Center China US technology competitiveness report 2023 and ASPI critical future technology tracker reports 2023/2024).
Such technological advances are serving as the common chassis for weapon development for different domains and mission types. The Zhuhai Airshow put some of the latest innovations on display. It’s highly likely more are still classified and being fielded.
China already has a large lead in missile technology, especially in the hypersonic field. Numerous hypersonic models are already deployed that can neutralize enemy carrier groups and military bases within the second island chain. Declassified models include DF17, DF21, DF26, DF27, CJ100, YJ21 and more. These hypersonic weapons are exceptionally difficult to defend against currently. Combining hypersonic tech with the new stealth and unmanned aerial, marine and space attack platforms (many with swarming features) will be game changing in the battlefield.
China has a proven track record of fast product iterations, low cost prototyping, deep manufacturing capacity, and scale-based low unit cost mass production. This is so in the civilian sector and is likely to be a reality in the military domain as well when the country’s military industrial base is mobilized. Chinese military will overwhelm any adversaries with vast quantitative and qualitative advantages. Here, peer level technology plus the “China Price” and “Overcapacity” the west likes to complain about will have deadly consequences in the battlefield.
In contrast, the military industrial complex in the US is privately owned. Its primary goal is profit maximization, not winning wars (as any good business student and economist will tell you:). This leads to an approach to weapon system development featuring long dev cycle, limited capacity (high return on assets), high unit cost (cost plus pricing), small production batch, and high operating and maintenance costs (life time value).
In the end, a Chinese US kinetic war in the western Pacific will be a fight between an industrial powerhouse and a deindustrialized financial empire as well as a contest between goal-oriented state will and profit-oriented private greed.
I often hear people say that confrontation with China is a bi-partisan consensus among US political elite. It seems somehow this will increase its chance of defeating China and achieving its hegemonic goals. To that argument, I say “so what?” that this is the political consensus in the US. Remember it is also the national consensus among the 1.4 billion Chinese that China will not be pushed around by an imperial bully ever again and will reunite Taiwan and end the last vestige of the century of humiliation. Let’s see whose will is stronger and whose power is greater.
If the US provokes a hot war with China, it’s virtually assured it will suffer a debilitating defeat and a casualty level unseen since Vietnam war. The Zhuhai Airshow is a clear demonstration that China is ready for war. If the US is bellicose enough to make a wrong move, see you on the battlefield.