[B4Ranch]

Does the US support 50% or more of China’s export figures? What would happen if we had a shooting war with China. How long would the Wall Street bankers allow it to go on?

[spetznaz]

I think if push came to shove BOTH countries would suffer. Actually 'suffer' would be an understatement. The entire Chinese economy would be destroyed, which would have social consequences. However, while the entire US economy would not go down, enough of it would be affected to the extent that there would ALSO be social consequences in the US. Already things seem to be just at the brink.

It would basically, in my opinion, be the economic version of mutually assured destruction. MAD doctrine never meant that both countries would be equally destroyed, however it meant that both countries would be sufficiently destroyed to make any such action highly imprudent. For instance, had the USA and the USSR gone hot during the Cold War, it doesn't mean 100% of Americans and Soviets would have died ...just that the damage would have been so prodigious that no American or Soviet would have opted for nuclear war without serious thought.

Same thing with the economic MAD between the USA and China. Any 'winner' will also be a loser. To be honest if the Russians were to be really nasty what they would do is send their newest SSN to launch a Chinese-made ASM against an American carrier, and then another SSN to sink one of the new Chinese AEGIS-esque destroyers. Russia would benefit a lot from an American-Chinese 'problem' (in the same way China would from an American-Russian problem, and America would from a Russian-Chinese problem).