The world has known for awhile that things were shifting toward drone warfare, but China just showed off, Air recon/strike craft and VTOLs, Naval surface and subsurface drones, Ground light forces(robo dogs), and heavy forces(mini drone tanks).
They could effectively wage a war without losing a single soldier. Combined with their industrial capacity, and the defensive capability they showed off (Directed energy anti missile systems for example). Its now clear that China would defeat the US in a conventional war. Many of the things shown off in Chinas parade are technologies still in the prototyping phase in the US. The tech gap is closed. Or honestly in Chinas favor at this point.
They had for example drones integrated into their heavy tank forces. With launch platforms on top, and likely piloted from inside. So their tanks can now get a birds eye view of their surroundings at all times. This philosophy is likely an example of how theyll operate in general. With large armored ships, and vehicles acting as mobile control platforms for their vast drone forces. Its the modern equivalent of the air craft carrier. Drone warefare taken to its logical conclusion.
Our comrades in the PLA arent fucking around.
Well from what Ive seen one of the biggest concerns for China is if the US were to just fortify a wide blockade thats out of range of many of their missiles and try to just mess with their ability to trade. Which theyd have to break and put their navy at risk. But with these new unmanned naval assets and air assets they can attack with 0 risk. Pilots and ships are safe they just build more equipment. Meanwhile the US has to defend and takes actual losses. Plus any equipment they lose is going to take longer to replace.
Its a fantastic position for China to be in.
The US enforcing a wide blockade against China would be unfeasible due to the sheer size of the Chinese coastline and the US dependence on Chinese trade. I do agree that better equipment does allow China to reduce losses.
I think by ‘wide blockade’, OP is referring to blockading the South China Sea by way of the rather small straits connecting it to the wider Pacific. The U.S. game plan is to park warships in the Strait of Malacca and the alternative straits (spanning from Taiwan, Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia; notice a pattern with US vassals and regime change attempts?), thereby blockading China.
Yes theyve also got south korea and Japan and their base in Okinawa too. They dont really need to do anything but make it unsafe for commercial shipping. As we saw with Yemen and their blockade companies wont take the risk. China would have to secure safe routes or ships will refuse to move.
These tariffs were imo a shock test to see which areas are hit worst by a loss of Chinese shipping to the US. So they can prepare for it.
AKA the first island chain