The Chinese members here are welcome to bring their military experience and share their insights.
True. We are still waiting. May be China would take the card?
Did I even implied it was? I always find this line of rebuttal amusing, as if somehow pointing out the flaws of something that is significant made its relevance any less.
Sorry, but 'may' does not cut it.
Sorry, but the difference is
THAT big.
I will speak for air power, that is my area of interest anyway.
The US have had a constant flow of air power capability, technological progress, and actual combat experience since WW I. What does China have? Nothing. When China sent up an agile fighter to harass a lumbering American prop jobber, the Chinese pilot collided with the prop jobber and died. That is the extent of Chinese military air combat experience against US.
The PLAAF started its own version of 'Top Gun'. Good for the PLAAF. A wise thing to do. But the Americans already have many levels of air combat training and been so for decades. Not only that, we managed to fly actual adversary aircrafts against our own, not merely having ours simulate the adversary. The PLAAF have not even 1/1000th of that training experience.
The PLAAF against the USAF? That is cattle to the slaughterhouse.
The reason the PLA reformed is because of Desert Storm. I know you do not like to see it again, but it is reality and the truth. You had to perform self criticism, the real and honest kind this time. I never said the US is the only one to perform self criticism. I said we are willing to do so and much more honest about it than others.
There is nothing wrong with considering a potential adversary, no matter his capability to do US harm, as a threat. It does not matter to me if you have a knife or a pistol while I have a machine gun. If I perceive you to be willing to do me and my interests harm, you are a threat.
If China is militarily defeated, it will take a long time for China to recover. Recovery in itself is a sort of containment. A self containment.