Quora Answer: What Keeps China from Completely Taking Over Asia Militarily?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What keeps China from militarily completely taking over Asia?”

In case it never occurred to you, Asia is the largest continent on the planet.  Asia is 30% of all land area on Earth, with 60% of the population.  That is almost 45 million square kilometres.  China itself is just under 10 million square kilometres.

To the north of China, very much in Asia, is the nuclear power, Russia.  Turkey, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam are some of the countries with populations well in excess of 100 million, some by several magnitudes.  They all have large militaries.  India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.  And then we have to consider East Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, which all have powerful militaries with air and naval superiority over China, which is primarily a land power.

China, for all its population, does not have enough men to take on, and pacify the countries she shares borders with, let along consider places further away.  She can barely pacify Xinjiang, and Tibet, as it is.  She does not have the lift capability to invade Taiwan, which she considers a renegade province.  She definitely does not have the capability of securing Singapore and the Malacca Straits, 4,000 km away, where 80% of her energy needs pass through.

We have not even considered the effects of international treaties and alliances that would be in force should an entire nation go crazy.  However, long before the first shots are ever fired, the monumental logistics of this endeavour would already have this campaign filed under “Pipe Dream”.