Author: Dragon tooth source: a mountain of dragon tooth (id:longyadeyizuoshan)
At present, all China’s industrial capacity has been transformed into military industry and into a wartime economic system. In fact, how much output can be achieved has nothing to do with the current GDP and military expenditure, nor with the “long board”, but only with the “short board” of China’s own industrial endowment. This short board will restrict the further expansion of military production capacity. It is useless to be strong in other places. This principle is very simple. Just like you have a kettle, the speed of pouring water out of your kettle only depends on the size of the spout, but has nothing to do with the size of the belly of the kettle.
In addition, the calculation of military industrial production capacity when it actually turned into wartime should not be based on the total GDP, but on the “surplus of import and export trade” and “total retail sales of consumer goods”, even if it is an estimate? The reason is just as simple. Even in the wartime industrial system, you should also ensure the national demand. If you want the healthy development of wartime industry, you must also produce enough products for the people of your own country. After the war system is completely changed, how much capacity can be invested in the military manufacturing industry? You can simply subtract the current total industrial output value from the current total retail sales of consumer goods, and then look at the proportion of this difference in the total industrial output value. In this way, you can roughly estimate how much capacity can be transferred to the military without affecting the daily living standards.
This is the upper and lower limit of China’s current industrial production capacity after it has been turned into a wartime state:
“Short board” is the upper limit, that is, the ultimate high wartime industrial capacity at the expense of national quality of life;
“(gross industrial output value – total retail sales of consumer goods) / gross industrial output value”, that is, the minimum wartime industrial production capacity obtained under the condition that the national quality of life is hardly affected.
These two figures basically describe the picture of the total capacity of China’s military industrial capacity after the current industrial capacity has been transformed into a wartime system, with both the minimum and maximum values.
Of course, this is at least the topic of the doctoral thesis. To really understand this problem, a doctoral degree is the minimum. Do you want to know the exact number when a network answers? Hehehe, you look up to the Internet too. Of course, I’m not ready to give you a clear calculation. To put it bluntly, to answer this question, at least it’s the workload of a team for several years. I can only give you a reasonable idea in one night.
1. What is a short board?
What are the factors of industrial production? Managers and engineers, industrial workers, plant equipment, energy, raw materials, infrastructure. Short board can only exist in these factors. Unlike civil industry, military industry does not pursue profits, so production relations play a small role in it. In order to ensure production capacity, the contradiction between production relations can even be alleviated to some extent.
Managers and engineers: it is hard for the earth to find a comparable country in this regard. China has qualified engineers and technical R & D personnel who have been strictly trained. There is no doubt that they are the first in the world. As far as I know, many doctoral students are now doing the work of junior college students. In fact, China’s qualified engineers have a very serious “shortage of work”. Once they enter the wartime state, the reserves are still very thick.
Industrial workers: Although the problem of aging is very serious now, qualified industrial workers are also unique in the world. Some time ago, it was said that the population of India exceeded that of China. Unfortunately, 60% of them are illiterate in the practical sense. No matter how many people there are, it is useless. A few days ago, I satirized a group of people who advocated “lying flat”. A group of people jumped their feet and scolded. I think you should save it. If you really give you a place in the system, you will go. You are just playing coquetry and can’t get involved in other people’s results. Let’s not deceive ourselves and others, OK? What’s more, the vast majority of those who swear at the street clearly marked “student” in your profile. Do you think it appropriate for you to take your parents’ money to eat and lie flat?
Factory equipment: the improvement of China’s equipment manufacturing industry is obvious. Now we are arguing about “insufficient precision machine tools” and “no lithography machines”. What was the quarrel 20 years ago? We don’t even have a reliable diesel or gasoline engine. There are still various legends left over from that time, such as a dozen of machines from a certain country dismantled by a garage. In fact, factory equipment, from the source of mining and metallurgy, to the intermediate OEM, to the final assembly and integration, the whole series of production equipment in the whole industrial chain is 100% self-produced, at least 90% of which is no problem.
Energy: many people will think that the weakness lies in energy. In fact, it is not necessarily. China is not short of energy. In fact, the shortage is petroleum energy, which is different. Which factory have you ever seen that uses diesel to run machines? In fact, oil resources are mainly used as “portable energy” and chemical industry raw materials. Most factories still use coal, hydropower and nuclear power as energy. With the development of the electric vehicle industry, the importance of oil in the logistics industry will even be gradually reduced. At the same time, the lack of oil and energy can also be solved. On the one hand, it depends on the international trade between wartime allies, and on the other hand, it is China’s own shale gas and shale oil. I’ll talk about this later.
Raw materials: I think this is the link that is most likely to become a short board. Lack of raw materials is the biggest problem, such as copper. There are some raw materials that we really don’t have, and our allies estimate that they are still in suspense. It is not easy to find substitutes, which will inevitably lead to a decline in production efficiency and an increase in costs. Although the military industry does not count the profits, it does not count the costs. It is fatal to have a large input and a small output.
Infrastructure: infrastructure is mainly logistics. Don’t underestimate the importance of logistics in industrial production. For example, many raw materials are produced in remote places, while the industrial center is in the coastal areas. In this respect, it is difficult to say whether the infrastructure is sufficient or not. After all, we do not know what the geographical configuration of industrial production in wartime is.
Short board, on the one hand is to find alternatives, on the other hand is to rely on the trade of allies. At present, it is known that Russia and Iran may provide considerable support, so no matter how many times you brush the Internet to support Ukraine, you won’t have any use for blowing up the Internet: This is where your family lives. If you want to be so easy to cheat, China has long disappeared.
2. (gross industrial output value – total retail sales of consumer goods) / gross industrial output value
This figure is easy to calculate. I won’t check the specific data. I’ll just turn it over.
In fact, the ratio is not an absolute index, but a trend judgment basis, which is very fuzzy. The smaller the value, the lower the people’s living standard; The larger the value, the more similar it is to that before the war.
In previous articles, we discussed the issue of maintaining military discipline in wartime. In fact, maintaining public order is also a truth. It is a management issue. Managing society and managing troops are essentially the same. With the collapse of social order, industrial production is also difficult to sustain. There is a very key thing in this is the “social management cost”. How much cost do you need to invest to maintain social stability.
Is it to invest in keeping living standards from falling too much?
Or invest in building a police society?
Obviously, East Germany has provided us with a model. It is inefficient and ineffective to invest in simple and strict social control. Relatively speaking, maintaining a high standard of living is far better than strict control. Personally, I am inclined to maintain the wartime living standard at least 60-80% of the normal level. The decline in living standard is inevitable, but the range of decline should not be too high.
In fact, we have a model at hand, that is, our country’s own reality and history. We won’t start talking about this.
One problem here is the shrinking consumption caused by the war. When I was in Lhasa, I felt this very deeply. Every year, for a period of time, all troops in Lhasa leave the urban area for exercises. During this period, the Lhasa market can obviously feel the shrinking consumption. After the opening of the Qinghai Tibet railway, the influx of a large number of tourists was relieved. On the one hand, the effective consumption population is decreasing; on the other hand, the expectation for the future tends to be pessimistic, and people are more willing to save than consume.
In short, if China’s current industrial capacity turns to wartime, the ceiling is very high and the lower limit is not low.
Some people may question: why not use the total retail sales of consumer goods to reduce the total GDP? But the gross industrial product? Because it is difficult to say about agricultural production, the GDP produced by agriculture does not count a large number of agricultural products produced and used by farmers, which will be omitted here; Agricultural products are included in GDP, and many of them are used as industrial raw materials, which will cause repeated calculation, which complicates the calculation. It is not necessary to calculate the rough estimate so accurately.
In addition, the tertiary industry should not be simply included in people’s living standards. It is difficult to accurately calculate the impact of the tertiary industry on the retail terminal price of consumer goods. However, in peacetime, this part of the added value has been basically covered in the total industrial output value. You can directly subtract the total retail sales of consumer goods from GDP, and there is a double calculation.
In addition, there is the issue of foreign trade. In peacetime, some foreign trade commodities entered the retail of consumer goods, which should be deducted.
As stated at the beginning, this article only provides a way of thinking. Accurate calculation methods and even mathematical models are not the focus of this article. This is a matter of the Academy of Military Sciences, and I do not study their doctoral students.
The above two important indicators:
1. “Short board”, the main military industrial raw materials that we cannot master, that our allies cannot provide, and that are difficult to obtain in the occupied area in a short time, will be the decisive factor for our wartime industrial production ceiling.
2. (gross industrial output value – total retail sales of consumer goods) / gross industrial output value, that is, the extent of the decline in people’s living standards during wartime, will be the decisive factor for the lower limit of our wartime industrial production.
Although we do not calculate the exact value here, it is certain that the ceiling is much higher than that of the United States, and the lower limit is much higher than that of the United States. The biggest constraint of the wartime industrial system of the United States lies in industrial workers and infrastructure. This is a completely unsolved problem. We can only hope for a high level of automation and artificial intelligence. At present, there will be no fundamental change for at least 20 years.
The lower limit of wartime industrial production in the United States is much lower. In terms of the current U.S. GDP structure, the total industrial production is quite low and the total retail sales of social consumer goods is quite high. I estimate that if measured by purchasing power, the difference is likely to be negative
This is the hard wound of deindustrialization and the “post industrial era”.
This is the essential reason why the United States does not dare to open the war in an all-round way. It is also an important time window for China. If we make good use of this time window, the world hegemony will change hands. From the perspective of the United States, in the short term, we can only temporarily build an industrial system composed of operational world allies, replace Chinese goods with overseas production, and include the total industrial output value of this newly included “world factory” into our own computing system, so as to maintain the level of production and provide military production capacity.
However, it requires a peaceful environment.
We seem to be talking about war!
It is hard to imagine that the United States can maintain such a global industrial system that excludes China in the event of a full-scale war. Even if China does not make it clear that using military force to “break diplomatic ties” is just a deterrent, who is willing to work for you?
Based on this, I judge that the United States actually lacks the motivation and courage to carry out a war on the scale of “general mobilization”. Once the war reaches this level, the United States will undoubtedly lose, and it will be inundated by industrial products. On the contrary, China and countries dependent on China’s industrial capacity, including Russia, Iran and a series of countries in Southeast Asia, are not afraid of war.
The current world situation will not develop into an all-out war or the need for “general mobilization”. It will always maintain the balance between conflicts in local hot spots and basic global peace. China, Russia, Iran and Southeast Asia will gradually encroach, and the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea will fight against encroachment.