[ravenstine]

@komali2 You're kidding, right? China is a world power, for sure, but even they know that the US would kick their assets in every way. They have potentially more foot-power, but the US could get away without ground troops at this point. The GPS satellites, the ones that the US owns and are used by every other nation, could be easily shut off or locked if China started a conflict. Sure, they might try to launch their own, but that takes a lot of time and money, and wouldn't be too difficult to sabotage. The US has like, what, 11 aircraft carriers? Last I read, China had 1 and it was a hand-me-down from Russia. The US, as of this last year, has laser technology to shoot down missiles, and I don't think even Russia has this yet. China owns part of the US's debt in treasury bonds, which only the US can honor; so if they want their money to start building up to a war, the US could basically say no and there'd be little that China could do about it. China will do what they can to stay a world power, but it doesn't make financial sense for them to compete militarily with the US when they can profit from competing with the US economy. While the Chinese economy has waxed and waned, like anything else, they have done exceptionally well being an economical force rather than a militant one. I think this can be shown in the fact that many quality products are being produced by Chinese companies, which wasn't really happening a decade ago. Now they are at a point where they can take advantage of certain foolish decisions that the US has made that have stalled it's scientific research, like dismantling large portions of the space program and putting heavy regulations on stem cell research, to name a few. I am making a prediction here, but I think far more scientific advancements will be coming from China in the decades to come. And I think that's a very good thing.