America's Decline Will Destroy China

Japanese Maximalism

Around 2014, China’s navy, at least quantitatively, surpassed America. At that time, Russia also launched a bloodless coup in Crimea, and began to support separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. At that time, it was not clear that the boldness of Putin was backed up by Chinese assurances. However, in hindsight, it is clear that Russia could not withstand the NATO sanctions regime without the assistance of China. Russia’s economic growth and success is almost entirely due to China.

In this sense, the war in Ukraine can be viewed as a proxy war. A proxy war is a war in which two superpowers fund, support, and egg-on opposing regional factions to further their interests, test their technology, and provide a stimulus to their own wartime industry. Vietnam is described as a proxy war between Russia and America, although America fought the war directly, without any proxy. Therefore, we could distinguish between “single proxy wars,” such as Vietnam, and “double proxy wars,” where both participants are proxies.

If we view Ukraine as a double proxy war, then Russia is a proxy of China, and Ukraine is a proxy of NATO. While the latter is undeniable, the former is less obvious. Still, the influence of China on Russia, at least economically, cannot be discounted.

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Japan is not a militarily strong country at present, but in terms of total tonnage, still outclassed China’s navy as recently as 2013. The question at hand is whether Japan’s slide into irrelevance since the stagflation of the 90s is irreversible, or due to contingent factors.

A traditionalist assessment of Japan is that it was culturally humiliated by American domination in 1946, and the soul of the nation has fallen due to the pervasive influence of liberalism and feminism. The family has fallen apart, birthrates are abysmally low, and the fighting spirit is gone. Japan haunts the world as a shadow of its former self, never to renew.

One of the issues with this assessment is that the Chinese population shares many of the same problems, if not to an even greater degree. Although the Chinese state is certainly authoritarian, and even masculine in certain respects, it has entirely failed to maintain a two-child household, and its country is filled with tens of millions of incels who will never marry or even have sex.

There is a popular fallacy that “incels make war.” This truism states that when men don’t have access to sex, they become violent in an attempt to upset the dominance hierarchy. Because they are genetic dead ends already, they have little to lose, and are willing to risk it all.

This truism fails any empirical test. It can be disproven through the inverse — the best fighter pilots were strikingly handsome.

Goering before his political radicalism was a famous pilot.

The greatest snipers, pilots, captains, pirates, and even mythological heroes like Rama, Arjuna, Bhima, Odysseus, and others were so handsome that they often had to beat off women with a stick. These men were not incels. A lack of sex does not breed a warlike spirit. On the contrary, it is the most sexually-spirited, thumotic men who rise to the top in a warrior hierarchy.

The double standards of Chinese propaganda claim that China’s “incel problem” is actually a “warrior problem.” The Chinese are too masculine, and without sex, they will rape the whole world! At the same time, Japan is down-played as a run-down, sexless, feminized society, too weak to reproduce. It must either be one or the other: either both countries are cucked, or both are waiting to unleash their incel rage on the world.

In any case, Japan’s low fertility and sexual dysfunction should not disqualify it from competing with China, which suffers (or benefits, depending on your perspective) from all the same problems. The question remains, then, if Japan can, in material terms, ever recover militarily from 1946 and rival China’s power.

This question may seem absurd, since the controversy is generally whether China will beat America or not. But there are some reasons to consider Japan as having untapped military potential.

Maximalism

There are six countries which can be considered in the “first class” of patents per capita, far outstripping their competitors by an order of magnitude. The first is America, the second is Germany, the third is Finland, the fourth is China, the fifth is Korea, and the sixth is Japan.

This list of countries is significant, because it correlates almost exactly with the most efficient military forces in 1945: the Americans, the Germans, the Finns, and the Japanese (who at that time occupied Korea). The curious exception is China. Has China really gone from being a divided, colonized, and 3rd world power to a first world power? That is the assumed story, with plenty of material evidence to back it up. But there is an alternative story.

There are two opposing views of China. On the one hand, China can be viewed as a country full of brilliant people, who would easily take over the world, but they are being held back by the oppressive CCP, which dulls the Chinese mind and makes it robotic. Proponents of this view point toward Taiwan as a bastion of freedom and intellectual progress, or toward the Chinese population of Hong Kong and Singapore. In this conservative view (held by Steve Bannon, for example), the Chinese people are being stifled by a tyrannical government.

The other view, less common, if not entirely unknown, is that while China’s population is generally disinterested in the cause of human advancement, and is content with a stagnant and parochial village life. Against this thousand-year-old tendency, it is the fanaticism of the CCP which has drug China, kicking and screaming, out of third-world irrelevance and forced it onto the world stage.

In this “pro-CCP” view, the CCP can be viewed as a “maximalist” government. That is, the CCP extracts from its population the maximum efficiency, maximum productivity, and maximum innovation. The CCP is, in this respect, the “best” government on the planet. Part of the CCP program is the rapid theft, or adoption, of European, American, and Japanese technologies, which are then immediately implemented on a mass scale.

The “maximalist” view of China sees it as a stone which has been wrung dry of all its juices. By contrast, the liberal governments of America and Japan seem quite inefficient and even self-destructive, “minimalist.” America has systematically outsourced its industries. Japan’s increasing foreign population could foreshadow a future policy of mass immigration.

Or, to give a more convincing example, we could compare North Korea and South Korea. North Korea clearly has a “maximalist” regime, which forces its population to be in a state of constant warlike readiness. By contrast, South Korea appears swamped with foreigners, Christian cults, decadence, feminism, and all of the pacifistic spirits of the modern world.

There is not much more that North Korea could do to better prepare for war. By contrast, South Korea could begin mass censorship, mass conscription, mass propaganda, institute a war economy, execute dissidents, and significantly improve its capacity for war.

In the short term, “maximalist” governments have an advantage. This was also the situation in 1941, when Nazi Germany appeared to dominate Europe, and the American military was caught by surprise in Pearl Harbor. Germany and Japan had already “maximalized” their wartime production. America was far behind. But when FDR was granted war powers, entire industries were turned upside-down overnight.

While America produced over four million cars in 1940, only 139 cars were built in 1943. Although America was not a communist, fascist, or “maximalist” government in 1940, it only took three years for America to beat every other country in the world — combined — in 1943, in terms of war production.

If America disappeared, and there was a war between China and Japan tomorrow, it is clear that China would be much better prepared. China has more tonnage, more firepower, more reserves, more preparedness and readiness. But in the long term, China has little room to improve, whereas Japan appears like a “sleeping tiger.”

China’s current number of patents appears high, but many of those patents are fraudulent or stolen. In peacetime, it is easy for China to spy, bribe, steal, or forge fake patents. However, in wartime, industrial espionage is a matter of life and death, and China will not find it as easy to adapt to the realities of war in the 21st century, should any conflict last longer than expected.

WWII lasted a total of six years, from 1939 to 1945. During those years, technology on both sides improved rapidly, with the development of sonar, radar, jet aircraft, bomber aircraft, paratroopers, tanks, motorized transport vehicles, code breaking, ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, and even prototypes for hypersonic missiles which only saw practical use in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s manpower would have been entirely useless during WWII were it not for the industrial capacity built up by Stalin and augmented by Lend-Lease. Without guns, tanks, bombs, railways, motorized vehicles, or tractors, the Soviets could not mobilize, transport troops, encircle the Germans, or feed their population.

The advantage of sheer population was balanced by the importance of technology in WWII. This balance will likely be further skewed toward technology in future conflicts of the 21st century. China is still a net importer of technology, not a net exporter. China’s fake patents may be impressive during peacetime, but during wartime, Chinese industrial espionage will be decrease.

Since China is a nuclear power, we can imagine that it would simply wipe a small nation like Japan off the map. However, Japan’s lack of nuclear weapons is not due to a lack of ability, but due to agreements with America. If America were to recede from the picture, Japan could rapidly transform its nuclear energy industry and threaten China with a similar level of destruction. For comparison, there are 55 nuclear power plants in China, but 33 in Japan. Essentially, Japan is producing ten times as much nuclear power, per capita, as China. This is despite the fact that Japan has significantly less access to freshwater,¹ which limits the total number of plants which can be built, and also less access to uranium reserves.

Nuclear War

The threat of mutually assured destruction makes any analysis of conventional military power irrelevant. However, that threat may be played up for propaganda purposes.

The only empirical data we have on the effect of nuclear weapons comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1946, after the bombings, Japan’s economy had shrunk to roughly one fourth of its size in 1940, but recovered by 1951. Out of the more than 3 million Japanese casualties, between 0.5% and 6% of these could be plausibly attributed to the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons, since 1945, have advanced in their power by a factor of five.

If we were to assume a brutally simplistic model, we could say the following:

1. Each kiloton causes 10,000 deaths.

2. The death of 1% of the population is equivalent to the loss of 1 year of GDP.

In WWII, assume two nuclear bombs caused 1% of all casualties and (if casualties are equivocated with economic loss) with the destruction of 1% of the Japanese economy. Assuming a five-fold increase in potency, we can assume that a single nuclear weapon is capable of killing 500,000 people. Since China has 500 nuclear weapons, this is equivalent to 250 million deaths. It is hard to imagine Japan surviving such an onslaught.

However, if Japan were to mobilize its nuclear technology for military purposes, it is reasonable to assume that Japan could assemble an arsenal similar in proportion to its number of nuclear power plants: around 300 missiles. This represents 150 million deaths, and would reduce the size of China’s economy and population by at least 10%.

There is a problem, in both cases, of diminishing returns. The first nuclear warheads are likely to concentrate on the highest population cities, such as Tokyo and Beijing. However, after these targets are destroyed, the remaining cities, which are much less densely populated, will likely yield lower casualty numbers. Less than 50% of the total residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki died. Most of the survivors were in outlying areas. Nuclear war would require either a “carpet bombing” strategy, where an entire city would be thoroughly destroyed by multiple missiles, or an “epicenter” strategy, where many cities would have their centers destroyed, but have their outlying areas left intact.

If China launched 500 nuclear missiles at Japan, striking 500 of its most populous cities, Japan’s untouched smaller cities would still total 12 million people. The Japanese would not be in a position to continue the war, but would strike at China’s cities, eliminating over half of its population. At the end of the exchange, China’s population would be reduced to less than 500 million, while Japan’s would stand at more than 12 million. Neither country would be in a state to continue fighting.

It is also possible to imagine that some countries have developed missile defense systems capable of intercepting nuclear missiles and reducing casualties. The most aggressive defense would be offense. In other words, Japanese defense systems could intercept Chinese missiles at the point of departure — within their nuclear silos. Japanese detection of launch points could be accomplished by satellite surveillance, espionage, laser technology, or plasma technology. If Chinese weapons were detonated over Chinese airspace, rather than over Japan, the nuclear fallout would be more destructive to China than to Japan. Such defense systems are top secret and their practical capacities are unknown.

Conclusion

Israel built its first nuclear weapons before 1967, less than 20 years after its founding, and is estimated to possess between 20 and 400 nuclear weapons. It is likely that in a similar time frame, Japan could build a much greater arsenal more quickly, since it is more than 10 times larger in population than Israel. Israel warns that Iran is months away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but it is likely that Japan could assemble a formidable arsenal in the next 10 years.

If effective nuclear defense systems exist, then conventional warfare again becomes relevant. Although Japan has an extremely small military today, China has a “maximalist” government which is stealing patents and technology from first world nations, including Japan. In a wartime scenario, Japan would be able to halt industrial espionage, forge its own “maximalist” government, and provide a significant counter-balance to China.

Japan’s current motivations for keeping its military small are to avoid a resumption of competition with America, which resulted in a devasting defeat. Japan has been coerced into peaceful economic cooperation with America, in exchange for a diminished military capacity. In the absence of American global power projection, Japan would resume the course it charted in 1940 of regional dominance. Although China has advanced significantly in recent decades, Japan’s potential has not yet been “maximalized” in the way that China’s has. While China has little room for growth, Japan is a “sleeping tiger” which has not yet begun to build up its military forces. Both countries are experiencing extreme, unprecedented demographic decline, with the rise of “incels” presenting a potential challenge or opportunity.

The potential of Japan to resume an independent and sovereign development as a regional military power, in partnership with countries hostile to China (South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Laos, Mongolia), will hamper China’s “free reign” in the region, let alone its “global domination.” The decline of America will not result in the ascension of China, but could destroy China’s export market and expose it to a resurgent Japan. Because of these consequences, China still has many incentives to accept the role of America in suppressing Japan, so that it faces a less immediate threat to its regional dominance. Contrary to popular or surface level assumptions, a receding American empire could result in a regional conflict between China and Japan which would result in China’s containment, rather than expansion.

1. Japan’s longest river, the Shinano River, is only 228 miles long, while the Yangtze is 3,915 miles long.