China is really going for it no stopping
Unbelievable
As I noted before, I see China going for 3 AEGIS destroyers per year for the forseeable future, which would match the US build rate.
China's is already the world's largest trading nation and largest net foreign investor. It is also going to plough at a bare minimum of $1 trillion (and probably much more) in infrastructure investments over the next 10 years in Asia.
So it clearly has the need to build the world's largest navy to protect its commerce, just as the British Navy and US Navy had the same requirement when they were the world's pre-eminent trading nations. Plus it would mean the world's largest navy in some 20+ years time, which would be one way of solving the Taiwan sovereignty issue.
At the same time, the Chinese economy is already the largest by many measures, and will likely be the largest by any measure within the next 10 years, even with a further growth slowdown. Yet even in 10 years time, the average Chinese person will still be significantly poorer than the average American, so China should be able to sustain a higher growth rate. And also note that China today only spends a modest 2% of GDP on the military, versus 3%+ for the USA.
And from a technology perspective, the Boston Consulting Group noted that back in 2014, China already spent more than the USA on R&D to produce final products and implement process improvements in the commercial realm.
So overall, we can expect the Chinese navy to become hi-tech.
This is simply the new normal.
