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Let's say in a TL in which Mao dies in the early 1950s, and the PRC is fortunate enough to have a Deng Xiaoping equivalent leader to kick start the OTL capitalist reforms in the mid 1950s instead of the 1980s as OTL, while sidelining the hardline Communists who would oppose such a scheme. If China's economic miracle and rise to great power status came decades earlier, how powerful can the Chinese military get by the 21st century? Can China feasibly build up a military that rivals or surpasses that of either the USSR or the USA? In particular, how much power projection can this ATL Chinese navy have relative to the US or the Soviet Union?
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