1/ This week's @deepforestsci post dives into China's powerful China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), the world's biggest shipbuilder and the backbone of China's growing navy. American shipbuilding is undersized, producing a fraction as many ships https://deepforest.substack.com/p/china-state-shipbuilding-corporation https://twitter.com/deepforestsci/status/1376996014297542657

2/ CSSC has impressive manufacturing capabilities, able to produce giant oil tankers on the double quick, from contract signing to delivery in 15 months. CSSC reuses the same dry docks to manufacture China's aircraft carriers as it does oil tankers

3/ In any future conflict with the US navy, Chinese forces could very conceivably win by attrition. Take heavy losses to destroy American ships one at a time, then just rebuild rapidly while slower US naval shipyards can't produce new ships to replenish the US fleet

4/ Executive order has placed CSSC on a forbidden list for American investment as a military supplier, but CSSC continues to do brisk trade as a civilian ship supplier. The US has no equivalent to CSSC and can only produce a fraction of the ships

5/ In the novel, "Ball Lightning" by celebrated Chinese sci-fi writer Liu Cixin, Chinese military planners race to produce weapons to defeat the US fleet. In the novel, Chinese forces almost succeed in crippling the US fleet. (Spoiler, China basically wins in the end)

6/ I was shocked when I read the book since I'd been a big fan of Liu Cixin before. I found out after that Cixin has also made statements supporting China's atrocities in Xinjiang https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/25/netflix-liu-cixin-adaptation-uighur-comments-the-three-body-problem

7/ China's naval planners and civilian scientists and engineers are reading Cixin's stories and other even more nationalistic material. CSSC is far superior to any American shipbuilder. China's navy has aggressively pushed out to the Philippines recently https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/29/china-militia-maritime-philippines-whitsunreef/

8/ The Pacific fleet is America's shield against another Pearl Harbor. We need to make sure that we can build ships at a rate sufficient to keep America safe from Chinese naval aggression. /End