These operations would most likely be accompanied by cyber offensives to disrupt electricity, gas, water, transport, health care and other public services. China has demonstrated its capabilities already, including in Taiwan, where it has waged disinformation campaigns, and in serious hacking incidents in the United States. Mr. Xi himself has championed such subterfuge as a “magic weapon.”
China could also weaponize its dominance of supply chains and shipping. The impact on Americans would be profound.
The U.S. economy is heavily dependent on Chinese resources and manufactured goods, including many with military applications, and American consumers rely on moderately priced Chinese-made imports for everything from electronics to furniture to shoes. The bulk of these goods is transported aboard ships along sea lanes increasingly controlled by Chinese commercial interests that are ultimately answerable to China’s party-state. A war would halt this trade (as well as American and allied shipments to China).
U.S. supplies of many products could soon run low, paralyzing a vast range of businesses. It could take months to restore trade, and emergency rationing of some items would be needed. Inflation and unemployment would surge, especially in the period in which the economy is repurposed for the war effort, which might include some automobile manufacturers switching to building aircraft or food-processing companies converting to production of priority pharmaceuticals. Stock exchanges in the United States and other countries might temporarily halt trading because of the enormous economic uncertainties.
The United States might be forced to confront the shocking realization that the industrial muscle instrumental in victories like that in World War II — President Franklin Roosevelt’s concept of America as “the arsenal of democracy” — has withered and been surpassed by China.
China is now the dominant global industrial power by many measures. In 2004 U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s; in 2021, China’s output was double that of the United States. China produces more ships, steel and smartphones than any other country and is a world leader in the production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics — the basic building blocks of a military-industrial economy.
Critically, the United States is no longer able to outproduce China in advanced weapons and other supplies needed in a war, which the current one in Ukraine has made clear. Provision of military hardware to Kyiv has depleted American stocks of some key military systems. Rebuilding them could take years. Yet the war in Ukraine is relatively small-scale compared with the likely demands of a major war in the Indo-Pacific.