It’s true if you just count ‘naval vessels’ because China and NK have a lot of small boats:
Top 10 Largest Navies in the World (by total number of warships and submarines - 2020):
China - 777
Russia - 603
North Korea - 492
United States - 490
Colombia - 453
Iran - 398
Egypt - 316
Thailand - 292
India - 285
Indonesia - 282
So maybe not the most useful metric for comparison of relative might. Maybe tonnage is a better metric of that?
Top 10 Most Powerful Navies in the World (by total tonnage - 2014):
United States - 3,415,893
Russia - 845,739
China - 708,886
Japan - 413,800
United Kingdom - 367,850
France - 319,195
India - 317,725
South Korea - 178,710
Italy - 173,549
Taiwan - 151,662
Taiwan even makes it on the the top ten list that way. And you can clearly see that the USA has the most massive navy by a wide margin. You can get into aircraft carriers and subs too if you want to see how lopsided these stats can appear.
China has 20x the manufacturing power of the US and a bigger PPP (more efficient use of their military budget) , and they have known the US will one day come for them since Mao. Their recent ships are lighter in tonnage but newer than the American fleet by several decades, carries better equipment, radar, with greater fire power that makes them more equal to traditional ships one category higher in tonnage.
Finally, they aren’t building a navy to project power around the globe like the US navy does. The PLAN intends to have the capability to defend their home waters and to protect their economic interests abroad, that’s it, so it will never need to have as many ships as the US navy, so a tonnage or ship number comparison would not be an accurate measure of the PLAN capabilities.
2014 data is really old when it comes to the PLAN since it’s been on a building spree in the last 5 years or so. According to Wikipedia, the Chinese fleet totals 2.2 million tonnes in 2022, which is still less than the US fleet but 3x the 2014 number you cited.
Tonnage is a good data point, but can be misleading. The US has more bases and long range policing commitments, which means that on average they tend to design bigger ships to carry more fuel/provisions for longer voyages. The US auxiliary fleet is also a proportionally larger chunk of its tonnage since it had to project power all around the world. China mostly only cares about its back yard so its ships can worry less about range.
Despite what I just said about the US being focused on projecting power, US naval power projection has only been demonstrated to be effective against people who can effectively fight back. Consider this: when a modern ship has fired its compliment of missiles, it can’t reload at sea. It has to go back to a base and get topped up there. A Chinese ship can withdraw up one of China’s many rivers or heavily defended coastal bases for resupply. If Chinese missiles take out bases in Japan and Korea, American ships have to sail all the way back to Guam or Hawaii for reloading.
Many of China’s small warships are dedicated ship-killing missile boats instead of anti-submarine or mine warfare auxiliaries like Western navies favor. These were the exact kinds of boats that gave the USN such a headache during the Millenium Challenge.
A head to head comparison of naval strength is only relevant if both fleets are going to sail out to the middle of the pacific and have a fight. In reality, you also have to consider Chinese shore based anti-ship missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles, aircraft, etc. The US can maybe call upon bases in Japan and South Korea in a Taiwan crisis, but that’s a few bases versus the strategic depth of all of China.
China’s navy along with the vast majority on that list follow or followed a Green Water doctrine, meaning most of their ships are tugs, small patrol boats, corvettes, fast attack craft, with the biggest ships usually being destroyers. All of those have very low tonnages so that’s why their numbers are pretty slanted.
Plus North Korea’s navy are mostly WW2 vessels given by the Soviet Union and China.
Note that this list include auxiliary ships. China have a lot smaller ships because PLAN is a defensive navy so they build a lot of mine trawlers and short range missile corvettes, patrol boats and conventional submarines. While USN is build specifically for acting as a long arm of imperialism, therefore they have less small ships but they need a lot of huge ones. Their carriers make up for a lot of that tonnage, and their auxiliary ships also needs to be huge for the reason they need to operate on a long ranges to perform their gunboat diplomacy. Even their frigates are 4000 tons and underarmed because they need that operational range.
So yeah, USN have huge margin of tonnage advantage, but the questions is, will it be able to use this advantage vs PLAN in west Pacific, and here the answer is way less conclusive, especially that latest Chinese hypersonic missile drill point out that carriers can be as well useless.
Yeah i meant the Perry and Knox classes, around twice as big than most other contemporary projects (except British ones). Even the LCS which should be light ships are over 3000 tons.
I recently saw someone cite the ‘China has the world’s largest navy’. So I looked it up.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-navies-in-the-world
It’s true if you just count ‘naval vessels’ because China and NK have a lot of small boats:
Top 10 Largest Navies in the World (by total number of warships and submarines - 2020):
So maybe not the most useful metric for comparison of relative might. Maybe tonnage is a better metric of that?
Top 10 Most Powerful Navies in the World (by total tonnage - 2014):
Taiwan even makes it on the the top ten list that way. And you can clearly see that the USA has the most massive navy by a wide margin. You can get into aircraft carriers and subs too if you want to see how lopsided these stats can appear.
So China has about 500 grams of navy per capita, vs 10.2kg per capita for USA and 6.3kg per capita for Taiwan.
How can we not be scared of the yellow peril?
I really like this metric of tonnage per capita.
China has been working to increase the PLAN’s power and reach this past decade. They are nearing to a blue water navy at this point, and have broken through the first island chain, within which they are no longer considered to be defeatable without extreme cost.
The US has withdrawn their concentration back to Guam (previously, they didn’t bothered to arm the second island chain).
China has 20x the manufacturing power of the US and a bigger PPP (more efficient use of their military budget) , and they have known the US will one day come for them since Mao. Their recent ships are lighter in tonnage but newer than the American fleet by several decades, carries better equipment, radar, with greater fire power that makes them more equal to traditional ships one category higher in tonnage.
Finally, they aren’t building a navy to project power around the globe like the US navy does. The PLAN intends to have the capability to defend their home waters and to protect their economic interests abroad, that’s it, so it will never need to have as many ships as the US navy, so a tonnage or ship number comparison would not be an accurate measure of the PLAN capabilities.
A few points
Big ships = small brains
They can’t defend missiles. Big tonnage few ships means temporarily floating artificial reefs
China’s navy along with the vast majority on that list follow or followed a Green Water doctrine, meaning most of their ships are tugs, small patrol boats, corvettes, fast attack craft, with the biggest ships usually being destroyers. All of those have very low tonnages so that’s why their numbers are pretty slanted.
Plus North Korea’s navy are mostly WW2 vessels given by the Soviet Union and China.
Did…did whoever made this consider a frigging river patrol boat equal to a guided missile frigate?
Yes
We will fight them on the beaches… We will fight them in the rivers… We will fight them in the aqueducts…
Damn, why does Colombia have so many vessels? Anti-narcotrafficking missions?
It’s small police boats used by the coast guard for fast attack operations against narcotraffickers.
So they’re counting speedboats, and other small vessels.
Note that this list include auxiliary ships. China have a lot smaller ships because PLAN is a defensive navy so they build a lot of mine trawlers and short range missile corvettes, patrol boats and conventional submarines. While USN is build specifically for acting as a long arm of imperialism, therefore they have less small ships but they need a lot of huge ones. Their carriers make up for a lot of that tonnage, and their auxiliary ships also needs to be huge for the reason they need to operate on a long ranges to perform their gunboat diplomacy. Even their frigates are 4000 tons and underarmed because they need that operational range.
So yeah, USN have huge margin of tonnage advantage, but the questions is, will it be able to use this advantage vs PLAN in west Pacific, and here the answer is way less conclusive, especially that latest Chinese hypersonic missile drill point out that carriers can be as well useless.
You haven’t seen the newest frigate they’re building, I take it.
Yeah i meant the Perry and Knox classes, around twice as big than most other contemporary projects (except British ones). Even the LCS which should be light ships are over 3000 tons.