“The Power of Quantity,” and nowhere is this more evident than in China. From its vast manufacturing capabilities to its enormous population, China leverages sheer quantity to exert global influence and achieve remarkable feats. In this article, we explore how China’s focus on quantity shapes its dominance on the world stage.
Tomorrow, a new post for paying subscribers: Idiocracy, Here We Are. In the meantime, some food for thought.
When Josef Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all of its own,” he was referring to industrial warfare. Russia recently demonstrated the truth of his observation in Ukraine, and our leaders would do well to remember that nobody understands quantity better than the Chinese.
When they get a revolutionary new hypersonic missile like this (developed by a university team for peanuts) that takes down planes 1200 miles away,
they turn it into this:
And mass produce the missiles in unmanned, automated factories running 24×7 producing 1,000 missiles a day. That’s 365,000 missiles a year. Per factory.
A Chinese engineer friend told me that, in a shooting war, China’s first salvo will be at least 30,000 missiles–enough to cripple every US base east of Guam–and more than America’s entire missile inventory.
Quantity indeed.
