Well, unless I'm thinking of the wrong video, isn't his point there that China's tonnage doesn't matter for the kind of problem Peter is predicting, namely pirates?
Like, sure China has a smaller navy tonnage wise might mean China can't win a head on head WWIII naval war with the US with its current fleet, but Peter isn't saying China's doomed because it will lose WWIII against the US, its that China can't protect its ships from pirates.
Like, sure the US mostly leads in anti piracy activities now (though China does a lot of it) but if the US for some reason stopped (something there's basically no evidence for) there is very little evidence that China depends on the US for anti-piracy operations in some necessary's way. Given their fleet is already big enough to do those kinds of operations when needed. Since the fleet is already big enough to do so, the idea that without the US pirates would just run amok in some catastrophic way is just not plausible.
Those "pirates" have names like Japan and India.
China can generally defend its coasts and contest its immediate naval environment. What it is basically utterly incapable of doing is 1) interdicting shipping to its likely enemies, or 2) defending the shipments that it needs against hostile action.
Japan has a blue water Navy, the second most capable in the world after the United States. It is entirely capable of interdicting ALL ocean going transport too and from China outside of the range of China's weapons systems and the PLAN is incapable of preventing that.
India could interdict basically all Persian Gulf oil flows to China with essentially zero risk or effort, and against China is incapable of preventing that.
The US/USN could end shipping to China essentially by decree. One public comment by the US President that the USN will interdict shipments to China and will sanction everyone involved and the USN seizing so much as a single ship violating that decree and there is not a ship in the world that will trade with China. No port would touch a Chinese owned or flagged vessel and no non-Chinese owned/flagged vessel would go anywhere near China.
The Chinese economy is utterly dependent on ocean going transport for both raw materials imports (oil is the biggest but by no means the only one of relevance) and for moving its products to market.
Vietnam, Australia, Japan, India, South Korea; they all could basically cut the Chinese economy off at the knees with fairly trivial ease.
And that's before you get into the more deniable operations. Piracy against modern shipping is fairly trivial and can be done incredibly cheaply. The biggest limiting factor is that it is fairly hard to find a port that is willing to accept the pirated vessel and cargo; largely because every nation is aware that the US would take a very dim view on openly supporting piracy. But if that changes?
Say Thailand decides that it is willing to let pirated Chinese flagged vessels be disposed of (along with their cargos) in its ports and the US refuses to express displeasure. The next day basically every US, British, French, and Australian special forces veteran will turn pirate because it is incredibly trivial for someone with their training to pirate a modern oil tanker and even selling it (and its cargo) for ten percent of market price would set the entire team up as multi-millionaires.
And China is basically incapable of preventing that kind of thing. It's only recourse would be open retaliation except the PLAN isn't really able to effectively retaliate without going nuclear. And that assumes that Thailand isn't being at least a little deniable and every other nation that doesn't much like China is willing to just stand aside and let the PLAN attempt to retaliate.
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The US doesn't need to convoy its shipping outside of an active war zone. The US is able to track basically everything that sails and, in the event that piracy becomes an issue, park a carrier strike group and marine expeditionary force off the coast of whatever port(s) are disposing of the prize ships and cargos. And everyone who controls those ports is aware of this fact and very much does not want the USN expressing its displeasure on them.
The few nations that could be enough of a hassle/threat that the US couldn't just casually punish for supporting piracy (China, for example) are also one that the US has lots of other leverage over and ones where the US could make the costs too high for the piracy support to be worthwhile.
But what does China do if Japan decides that it is perfectly content to dispose of Chinese flagged/owned vessels?
