China has a huge merchant navy and has made significant investments in its navy.
The difference between you and Stud is that you aren't stupid.
China is trying very hard to learn "how to military". You have to understand Chinese military tradition, going back a thousand years, has been based on one farce or another. China has no military experts or innovation because they have never had an innovator. Maybe go back far enough and you get cool guya like Sun Tzu and rocketry, basically mythical legends at this point.
For them to actually operate with any sort of logistical stability and operational lethality they have to shake off a century of the military being an anti-rebelion propaganda machine. They are seemingly self aware of this at least, but their determination to change is an open question.
They truly are starting from scratch in terms of running operations and tacticaly relevent factors.
China right now is solving its problems the best way it can. Plugging holes and trying to create tactical over match. For example:
"We need missles that shoot further then theirs."
"We need more boats then they have."
"We need modern uniforms and camofluage."
"We need stealth and landing craft."
"We need over seas bases."
But they have no idea how it actually plays out so that they can force these (extremely short term) advantages. The best they can manage is to plug gaps they see, but have no clue on exactly how and why we do the things we do, all the way down to basic soldiering and training.
