China Preparing for a Long War. By David Archibald.

In 1898, the Polish banker Jan Bloch published his book Future War and its Economic Consequences. He predicted that war would become a duel of industrial might, a matter of total economic attrition. His prediction of war as a clash of industrial systems came to pass 16 years later, with the outbreak of WW1. It is just as true today. China, with its civil-military fusion, is remaking itself for its war of choice.

How do we know that China will start a war? China’s President Xi has been saying for years that China’s military should prepare for war. We now know that it’s not just bluster. China is making real sacrifices that would be pointless without a war to justify them. Russia’s war on Ukraine is just about to enter its third year. China thought that war would be over in a matter of days. The fact that it has gone on for so long has upset China’s own war plans. China planned on the basis that its coming war would be short, sharp and glorious.

Now China realizes that it will be blockaded, possibly for years. Which is a problem for a country that imports 41 percent of the plant protein its agricultural system is based on. Nominally, those plant protein imports, mostly soybeans, feed 530 million people on a balanced diet. To get around the problem of a blockade, Xi will make China go vegetarian for the duration of his war. He also issued an edict to increase grain production by 50 million tonnes per annum. To that end, China has hired 80,000 agricultural inspectors who are going around rural areas to rip up orchards and forests and any other ground that can be repurposed for growing grain.

But what confirms without doubt that war is coming is that a recently completed greenbelt around the western city of Chengdu, built at a cost of $7 billion, is being bulldozed to put 40,000 hectares back under the plough. At China’s average annual yield of six tonnes of grain to the hectare, this will produce a quarter of a million tonnes per annum — a meaningful contribution to the 50 million tonne target.

 

The green bits around Chengdu (pop’n 21m) are being plowed up for wheat

 

What is Australia doing to prepare itself to fight 1,300 million vegetarians? We are destroying our industrial base under a policy called Net Zero.

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