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Notes -
China has possibly the most credible no-first-use policy of all the nuclear powers. They traditionally maintained a very weak deterrent and only recently started to get serious about MAD. As far as I know, they are still debating about going up to launch-on-warning, which the US and Russia have been at for ages. It would be illogical (and very out of character) for them to launch a nuclear first strike when they're outgunned at least 10:1. The US nuclear deterrent is very hard to crack, the meat of it is all in submarines. Going counterforce (targeting launchers) would do very little and invite a devastating counter-attack, going countervalue (targeting cities) would result in massive and disproportionate retaliation.
I suspect that China's advantages are still increasing, it makes sense to keep waiting and reduce the costs and risks of any war. The US Navy will keep shrinking till 2027. The Chinese Navy grows continuously. Their nuclear forces are growing rapidly. Western munitions stockpiles will remain depleted for some time and it's not like US munitions production could be anywhere close to Chinese munitions production, considering the sizes of the industrial bases involved. India remains weak.
The US seems to be increasingly distracted by the Middle East situation, further dispersing strength away from Asia.
China is pulling ahead in most scientific fields. More and more ethnic Chinese scientists are migrating back to China.
They're producing more and more energy domestically, though imports are higher than ever. Huge stockpiles of food and fuel have been built up. The sanctions weapon seems to have bounced off Russia and hit Europe, there is reason to think it will be ineffective against China as well (and/or cause incredible pain to the West): https://en.thebell.io/inside-russias-budget-taxes-borrowing-reserves/
I'm frankly staggered that this anti-Putin outlet is putting out these numbers and trying to spin them as bad news for Russia. Likewise, Chinese real disposable income per capita keeps rising at a pretty respectable 4-5%. That's pretty good economic performance. The US is at 2%, most of Europe is below 2% and Australia has sunk to 2018 levels.
Anyway, China may expect further positive surprises in the future. If the US gets dragged into a struggle with Iran, if the political crisis in America heightens further, if Ukraine goes under and Russia ties down more troops in Europe...
The biggest uncertainty for China is some major advancement in AI where the US seems to be retaining an edge.
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