War between the US and China. It would “destructive, ”prolonged,“ and ”ruinous.” Those were the findings of this recent report by the Rand corporation. Even though the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is far behind the US army in terms of technology and war capability, “by 2025, that gap could be much smaller.”
One piece of the gap that China would need to fill is aircraft carriers. The United States currently has 10 functional aircraft carriers. China has one. And it wasn’t even made in China. It was built in Ukraine before the fall of the Soviet Union. It was sold to China as scrap. The Chinese buyer said he was going to turn it into a casino. But then, shockingly, the Chinese government got ahold of it and kept it as an aircraft carrier. After nearly two decades of refurbishing, it set sail in 2012. It’s called the Liaoning. And it’s not even that functional.
