China is a serious, long term threat to American strategic interests.

Cultural HegemonyPro claims in regard to cultural hegemony that causation, in the sense of how economics, politics, society, and culture relate to each other, is irrelevant. This is ridiculous; his argument has everything to do with that. An Islamic China (which he has yet to demonstrate is even a remote possibility in the next century) will not make much difference if the interests of the of the regime and the population are incongruent with a Pan-Islamic alliance. In response to his examples, none of them prove a broad assertion that the world is politically divided by religion or culture. Each one may have been motivated by religion, but they were brought into action for political and economic purposes. Pro must prove that all of these are solely the result of cultural factors, and that politics plays a minimal role in these interactions. Indeed, he seems to be under the impression that I don't think religion plays any role in international relations, which of course is impossible. Pan-Arabism, which my opponent misinterprets, was a political agenda that used ideology only as a tool. We did not, for instance, see Nasser supporting unification with Morrocco or Mauritania, despite them both being ethnolinguistically Arab nations. It was impossible to form a unified political structure over such a vast distance. Pan-Arabism and radical Islam are products of the disunity and percieved Western aggression in the Levant, Mesapotamia, and Arabia. It is not belief systems that create political and social structures, but the other way around! The people and government of China, even if they converted to Islam, could not possibly share an ideological or strategic outlook with the people and governments of the Middle East, given how fundamentally different the geopolitics, economies and mentalities of the two regions are. Pro has completely ignored the examples I gave in the previous round. He cannot simply assert that culture and ideology control foreign relations- he absolutely has the full burden to prove this extraordinary claim. Economic HegemonyPro asserts that since China's purchasing power parity is almost as high as the United State's, China must have an economy as good as the United States. This is not at all true. Recall that in R2 I demonstrated that China's growth was dependent on exports, limiting its ability to use that strength. No country can simply decide to allocate all of its concrete to build nuclear bunkers or have all its factories produce guns because the government feels like it. China's economic flexibility, however, is even more limited as its export-driven growth must stabilize the regime. It is consequently dependent upon the United States and the Western world as its buyers, meaning even low tariffs imposed in those countries could severely harm China and that gives the US much more leverage in economic affairs than Pro believes: [1. . http://www.bloomberg.com...]). Furthermore, I pointed out that China's growth was artificially stimulated by the government in order to prevent domestic instability, and as such it does not generate much real wealth. Pro completely ignored this critical point. The fact that China's export have an average profit margin of 1.8% illustrates this quite nicely. Some have also argued very convincingly that the size and health of China's economy is being exaggerated by the data: [2. . http://www.heritage.org...].Pro also claims that China being the world's largest producer of metals and automobiles makes it a threat. This is nonsense on stilts. I have already explained why China cannot simply do whatever it wants with its resources; it must funnel them into products for the US and Europe. The fact that the Chinese population is confident in the Chinese economy tells us nothing about its actual health and certainly does not have anything to do with my argument. I have no idea why Pro brought it up. South Korea's and Taiwan's growth was facilitated by the United State's policy of free trade and their economies are much healthier than China's. They also do not have the enormous domestic stability problem that China has. And again, Pro has entirely ignored my critique of China's growth as I showed that their domestic consumption was extremely low. Political HegemonyThe Korean War was not China "withstanding" the might of the US by any measure. It was a purely limited-scale war in the Korean peninsula. The war was fought close to the Chinese mainland, and even so, the logistical and technological limitations of the Chinese military severely handicapped them, giving them four times more casualties than the UN troops took. Their army is more advanced today, but my points still stands that the Chinese ground army is not designed for power projection. While China does indeed have a nuclear deterrent, this is only useful in the event that the US military would pose an existential threat to China and so is irrelevant to my case. I have no idea what Pro is talking about when he claims that China's steel and aluminum will allow it to build a modern military. Building an advanced navy, army, and air force is much more than simply having the materials to do so. It isn't as if the United States's military buildup has been slowed because of any lack of metals. And did I not do an analysis of China's future military potential in my last round? Pro notes that China conducted an anti-satellite test. This is true, but it tells us nothing about China's capability to shoot down America's military and intelligence satellites, as well as the defenses they may have. The publicly available information on this is extremely limited. Information on cyber security is even more difficult to come by- for all we know, the recent exposure of hacking by the Chinese military is simply due to the incompetence of their program. My opponent also claims that China is building an advanced blue-water navy, and his source only gives examples of anti-piracy operations undertaken by their ships and their goal of having a fully-developed navy by 2050. However, anti-piracy operations do not inform us about the actual strength of the Chinese navy. 2050 is far past the date that I predict China will enter a crisis and fragment, and so this is only applicable if we accept Pro's assertion that China will keep on growing and getting more powerful. Furthermore, note that, once again, Pro completely ignored every single one of my R3 points! While he says he "reserves the right" to rebut them later, he seems to be making arguments about the exact same subjects that I did. He needs to address my arguments directly if he wants to be able to make any sort of case for Chinese hegemony. That having been said, I don't think it's wise to argue so many points you have to fit them across two rounds, especially when I can go on the offensive myself. One last note- provisional control means that the army is in charge of the occupied space and physically controls it. As I pointed out, if the country irrationally chose to expell the troops from their soil, the US would be unable to respond. They do not do so because of the political control the US has over them. Any further discussion should be done in the comment section as it is entirely irrelevant to the debate and wastes valuable character space. Thus far, my opponent has made bare assertions with insufficient sourcing about China's military (while I gave descriptive analysis), posited an entirely conjectural cultural attachment to its neighboring countries and the Middle East which is not even remotely evidential, ignored basic facts about how China's economy works, and the burden to refute my all of my own arguments now rests on him. I hope that the next round will be more productive.