> But now we can't build anything and if china embargoes us, we're doomed.
Firstly there is vastly more manufacturing in the US, Canada, and Mexico than you appear to realize. Secondly China is far more prone to being embargoed than the United States. If China cut us off then the price of certain goods would increase significantly and there’d be shortages of some goods and industrial inputs but we could feed ourselves, keep the lights on, heat/cool our homes, keep our industry going, and crucially our military capacity would be untouched. China would lose its largest and demographically healthiest consumer market which would vastly deepen its economic hole, lose a huge supplier of food which China can’t do without, and the US navy could interdict all energy shipments to China which would result in the country deindustrializing in a few months after its reserves ran out. Depending on how the embargo was effected it might drag in Japan or India both whose navies could single-handedly cut off China from oil shipments.
This is assuming that China's rapidly evolving navy cannot do anything about these blockades. They have massive shipbuilding capacity and currently the most advanced destroyer (type 055) in the world.
> They have massive shipbuilding capacity and currently the most advanced destroyer
The vast majority of their navy and ship building capacity is coastal. Their blue water navy is still minuscule and the challenge isn’t just manufacturing but experienced personnel which is decidedly harder to quickly scale up and is not aided by their terminal demographics.
Most US / global industries wouldn't be going anywhere without PRC supply chains / rare earth processing. Besides PRC is calorie self-sufficient and produces enough raw resources domestically for war economy, and export to west is like... 5% of GDP total, i.e. trivial in total war scenario. Now go look up how much steel, oil and other primary inputs PRC generates domestically... it wouldn't remotely deindustrialize meanwhile PRC military capacity wouldn't just be untouched, it would be allocated the redirected industrial resources to sustain aquisitions multiple times current size.
It's 2022, India and Japan do not remotely have capability to blockade PLAN. Refer to the detailed studies coming out of US wonks recently are questioning the feasibility of whether US can effectively enforce a blockade at all, which btw is an act of war, and in age of networked mutual vunerabilities PRC has options to make US/containment partners to hurt comparably. The amount of oil US produces is not measured in millions of barrels but 130 vunerable refineries and other critical infra that PRC can target in retaliation. Absolutely expect US industrial outputs to come to a crawl, John Deere tractors bricked in the fields, and homes freezing because half the energy grid is compromised in event of PRC blockade. Or that we maybe in or near the timeline where PRC will gain conventional global strike capabilities that places US CONUS at conventional risk.
> go look up how much steel, oil and other primary inputs PRC generates domestically...
China is a massive net importer of oil.[1] I guess they can make steel with coal but they can’t get coal to the steel plants let alone run their whole industrial base if they lose Saudi oil. Russian western pipeline imports might continue for a while but after the super majors exited Russia that isn’t going to last regardless of embargoes.
> US wonks recently are questioning the feasibility of whether US can effectively enforce a blockade at all
What “wonks” are these? The US Navy is by far the largest blue water navy on earth. To disrupt most oil shipments to China could be done anywhere from the Gulf to Singapore and be far out of reach of the vast bulk of the Chinese navy. Just firing a cruise missile or two would do the trick.
> PRC has options to make US/containment partners to hurt comparably
Nonsense. Who precisely? China is surrounded by enemies or frenemies (ie Russia) the US is surrounded by trading partners and ocean and is a naval power second to none.
> 130 vunerable refineries and other critical infra that PRC can target in retaliation
The US has refineries dotted all over the country. The gulf coast refineries and the nation as a whole has one of the best security geographies on the planet. How is the PRC going to attack them exactly?
This is assuming brief embargo (blockade) and inevitable hot war after will last longer than PRC domestic production + strategic reserves + war rationing which is projected to stretch out over a year. 4M barrels a day plenty for war economy and maintaining industrial base for total war, indefinitely. PRC is not Japan who whithers on island resources alone. Which is really the scenario that anyway blockade will escalate to, total war. There seems to be this strange assumption that PRC would just sit there and eat embargo and passively erode away when they will run blockades by reflagging vessels under state and escalate/counter in other means including drawing US into first island chain defense commitments by attacking US forces stationed in JP/SKR.
>What “wonks” are these
Naval War College Review, something along the lines of "tactically tempting but strategically flawed". There's host of other recent literature that basically concludes that it's not viable at strategic level. Or that USN is large but not nearly large enough to maintain an active blockade for long without abandoning other important commitments. Amount of shipping going through Malacca is massive.
>Who precisely
Every US ally in first island chain is a few cruise missiles to ports/energy infra from regressing into developing country. They're all islands for functional islands _much_ worse food or energy security than PRC, which incidentally is what makes blockading PRC strategically flawed, because it can't be done without crippling US partners. Consider actual scale of force deployed in theatre (overwhelming in PRC favour and growing) and in actual war, US and allies aren't so much as surrounding PRC as being trapped within PRC's growing A2AD bubble. Surrounding PRC works fine for peacetime containment, but during wartime it forces US to go near PRC shores where USN is most vunerable due to security commitments. As for vaunted US naval power, it's limited to what US can deploy and sustain in theatre vs whole of PLA arsenal that's designed to dismantle US sustainment systematically.
>PRC going to attack them exactly
Cyber attacks on critical infra - there's a reason Biden communicated to RU/PRC despite all recent military sheningans and literal war against UKR that attacks on US critical infra = same as physical war. It doesn't matter how offensively capable US power projection is if US is defensively existentially vunerable on the homefront. Which flies over head most Murica strong and can blockade PRC relatively cost free proponents, sure, US can punch hard but like everyone else in networked infra era, US (likey) can't take a punch, but more historically importantly US isn't so out of reach by geography and technology anymore that it cannot be punched anymore. US want to blockade 10M barrels of imports a day? What if PRC takes out 10 million barrels of refinery infra. The scenario is not US can just starve PRC imports, but US and PRC will go balls out in escalation spiral to cripple each other's homefronts to the point of being unable to sustain modern life.
Or look at where PRC conventional hypersonic development and bulk of R&D/aquisition effort is trending. PLA is not rushing to catch up on 11 carrier groups or strategic bombers, they're focusing on precision strike conventional icbms that is able to hite every strategic node/asset in CONUS. Really around the world, i.e. Pinegap in AU. Every major strategic US platform like CVNs, SSBNs, B21s, have to sit still for maintenance sooner than later. Like entire USN runs on like 8 fast combat support ships for high tempo operation that rotates in theatre keep up replenishment. The MO behind PLA systems destruction warfare is to negate US military advantages and cripple US ability to operate at all. Of course PRC is similarly vunerable as well, but at the end of the day US loses much more being unable to defend global commitments because she can't support her blue water fleet than PRC who barely has any blue water obligations in the first place.
Without IPR restrictions, most of manufacturing can be quickly scaled up in places outside China. Also remember, India is nuclear power and understand Mutually Assured Destruction working between India and China.
Quickly is more likely decades to reach appropriate as in case of rare earth processing. There's 20 years of supply chains entrenched in PRC that's not going to be replicated without substantial effort or time. That means allocating resources so strategic companies can survive while everyone else that relies on those inputs die. Btw, most of those experts needed to scale up elsewhere? They're from PRC in PRC building out PRC capacity for last 20 years. There's not enough experts globally to do such a task "quickly".
>Mutually Assured Destruction working between India and China
Yes, which is why the idea India would blockade PRC is fantasy. They fight with fists over barren rocks to prevent escalation spiral, and India has been firm in preventing QUAD into becoming a security alliance. They're not going to escalate to full scale war with PRC while eastern theatre command can shower most of India with missiles from barren Tibet while India has very limited ordnance to reach PRC strategic east coast or XJ. At least not for decades.
There will conceivably be a time when PRC is disentangled from global supplies chains or PRC neighbours have built sufficiently capabilities to target PRC cost free, but it won't be in short/medium term.
".. and the US navy could interdict all energy shipments to China .."
Generally, agree with your points, but the US Navy simply does not have the capability to do this any more. Might have been possible in 1990 but not today. US Navy would get its backside kicked.
