This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog. 

At a time when their economy is really struggling, the Chinese are increasing military spending and ramping up preparations for war.  But who is China preparing to fight a war with?

Needless to say, the answer to that question is obvious.  Yes, the border dispute between India and China could erupt into something significant, but that is not likely.  The only other opponent that the Chinese would be fighting a major war with would be the United States.  And right now, Chinese shipyards are churning out military vessels at a pace that the U.S. simply cannot match…

The US cannot match the pace of building in the shipyards of Shanghai, which have already turned out two new aircraft carriers with a third expected to begin sea trials soon.

The latest vessel, the Fujian, features catapults to launch heavy, fixed-wing aircraft with immense bomb payloads. These shipyards are also building a new type of amphibious assault vessel, and many roll-on, roll-off ferries, which could have a dual purpose – transporting cars in peacetime, and armoured assault vehicles in the event of an attack on a neighbour, such as Taiwan.

Of even greater concern is the vast network of tunnels that the Chinese have been constructing.

We are being told that this network of tunnels makes the Hamas tunnels under Gaza “look like holes scooped by children in a sandpit”…

While the West has been scaling back its military spending in favour of welfare and healthcare, China has been building artificial islands as naval bases and airfields. Less obvious but more ominous, it has also been digging a vast network of tunnels and bunkers that make the Hamas warrens in Gaza look like holes scooped by children in a sandpit.

The Chinese tunnels stretch for hundreds of miles and their plans are so closely guarded that Western intelligence agencies have little idea what is down there.

Domestic spies in the pay of the West, who have attempted to smuggle out information, have been caught and executed.

Nobody knows why China has been putting so much effort into these tunnels.

Are they anticipating that vast numbers of Chinese will need to shelter underground during an apocalyptic conflict with the United States?

In recent years, the Chinese have been feverishly upgrading and expanding their strategic nuclear arsenal…

Most alarming of all is the build-up of nuclear missiles. Throughout the Cold War, though China has been a nuclear power from the mid-1960s, its atomic arsenal was limited. By the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the People’s Liberation Army had only 30 or 40 long-range nuclear missiles – because that, it believed, was more than enough. As President Deng Xiaoping chillingly taunted American journalists: ‘How many Los Angeles can you afford to lose?’

That policy has changed. More than 100 nuclear missiles with multiple warheads have already been built and armed, with production expected to exceed 500 by the end of this decade, if not sooner.

The moment the Chinese invade Taiwan, they know that it will mean war with the United States.

If that war is limited to conventional weaponry, the Chinese will win a war in Taiwan, and every war game that our leaders have conducted in recent years has shown this.

The U.S. could try to threaten China with nukes, but if China now possesses enough missiles to wipe out dozens of U.S. cities our leaders may not want to risk a nuclear confrontation.

The Chinese know that most battles are won before they are ever fought.

So they are trying to position themselves for a positive outcome before the very first missile is fired at Taiwan.

Interestingly, as talk of war with China has heated up, the number of Chinese migrants coming over our southern border has spiked exponentially.

In fact, CBS News is reporting that the number of Chinese migrants encountered at the border is now 50 times higher than it was two years ago…

Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S.…that’s 50 times more than two years earlier.

In many cases, groups of military-age Chinese men all decked out in similar equipment are being encountered.

Of course, they have been trained to say all the right things, and so the Biden administration is letting them in.

Meanwhile, western nations continue to prepare for an all-out war with Russia…

Several European countries have raised concerns that Russia’s war against Ukraine could eventually lead to a greater conflict between Moscow and NATO. The military alliance has taken several steps to bolster its defense systems along its eastern border in recent months, including by conducting trainings in the spring for over 90,000 troops from all 32 of the member states in countries that share a border with Russia, such as the Baltic nations and Poland.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have been some of the loudest members of NATO that have urged the Western bloc to prepare for Russia’s next offensive in the region. Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, for example, has said that Russia is preparing for war against NATO countries within the next 10 years.

All of those NATO troops are not going to do much good if a conflict with Russia goes nuclear.

As Bloomberg has reported, Russia has 10 times more tactical nukes than the U.S. does.

Sadly, the Russians also have the advantage when it comes to strategic nukes.  As I detail in my latest book, the Sarmat is the most sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile on the entire planet.  Meanwhile, hopelessly outdated Minuteman missiles that originally went into service in the 1970s continue to form the backbone of the U.S. arsenal.

The Russians also have the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world by a very wide margin, and we don’t have any anti-missile systems that can handle what the Russians can throw at us.

Considering how the balance of power has changed, perhaps we should have tried to find a peaceful resolution to the mess in Ukraine.

But now that window appears to have closed for good…

A top ally of Vladimir Putin has claimed the relationship between the US and Russia is worse than during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, as the Kremlin accused the West of ‘direct involvement’ in the war in Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comments in a public speech, and added that the Kremlin has ruled out peace talks with Ukraine, as its invasion of the nation entered its third year.

Medvedev said Russia would prosecute what it calls its ‘special military operation’ until the other side capitulated. He said that what he called historical parts of Russia should ‘return home.’

Medvedev was speaking in front of a map of Ukraine which showed the country as a much smaller landlocked rump of territory squeezed up against Poland with Russia in complete control of its east, south and Black Sea coastline.

We really are living at a time of wars and rumors of wars.

On top of everything else that I have discussed, the war in the Middle East could dramatically escalate at any moment, and North Korea’s military has been put in a state of “heightened readiness for war”…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected field training of troops at a major military operations base in the western region of the country on Wednesday and ordered heightened readiness for war, the state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday.

The tour of the base, the location of which was not identified, came after the start of annual combined military drills by US and South Korean forces on Monday in the South. Twice the number of troops took part compared to last year.

I am entirely convinced that 2024 will be a year of war.

Of course, countless others see things the exact same way.

The hot phase of World War III is rapidly approaching, and right now there is a great deal of talk about how to get prepared for such a scenario…

Your phone is out of action, the electricity has cut out and there’s no way to reach food. What’s your game plan?

These are questions people have been urged to explore as the risk of ‘World War Three’ seemingly grows.

With the Doomsday Clock – a scientific invention which measures how close the Earth is to disaster – remaining at 90 seconds to midnight, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chairs NATO’s Military Committee, has warned people to make basic preparations for a potential ‘full-blown war’.

‘You need to have water, you need to have a radio on batteries and you need to have a flashlight on batteries to make sure that you can survive the first 36 hours’, he said. ‘It starts there, the realisation that not everything is plannable.’

Unfortunately, if you are only preparing to survive for 36 hours you are not going to last very long at all once the missiles start flying.

At this moment, most people living in the Western world have no idea how much the hot phase of World War III will change all of our lives.

If they really understood what was coming, they would be loudly demanding peace.

Sadly, it will be way too late when most of the population finally awakens from their slumber.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.