[EA-3167]

I would certainly expect a country with 4x the population of the US, which is used as the center of global manufacturing, to need a lot of power.

I’m not sure that’s something that anyone should be concerned about from a geopolitical point of view. Likewise expecting Japan to have ever done the same is… silly.

[esafak]

You're not concerned about the biggest army in the world flexing its muscles?

[EA-3167]

If the size of an army represented a reliable measure of its ability to project power, we’d all be trembling at the might of North Korea.

[mghackerlady]

Not really, china has never started a war and overall seems to understand it as a pointless yet necessary endeavour

[Lio]

China has 100% started wars. The Sino-Vietnamese War for starters.

[tartoran]

Not in the same sense the US or Russia. The Sino-Vietnamese war was brief, about a month. Compare that to US or Russian wars. Now, Im not saying that China won't start wars since they've become a lot stronger. Just looking at it through a historic perspective.

[EA-3167]

I'm sure that the people of Tibet at the very least would feel strongly about the notion of a peaceful, non-expansionist China. You could ask the people of the Philippines as well, or for an admittedly more complicated answer the people of Japan and the RoK.

China is also happily supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, which makes the "not waging war" distinction a bit academic.

[mghackerlady]

I never said they were peaceful and non-expansionist, just that it's unlikely they'd turn to war for those gains.

They also have fought wars, and my wording was admittedly bad. They haven't fought a serious war in a long time, and their military activity in general has been limited to a few border standoffs which I certainly wouldn't take as an indication of its willingness to fight for something like expansion