Do you think China cares if they lose a 100 million people?
They have slaughtered that many before, under Mao.
The Three Gorges Dam breaks....eh, less social spending by the communists.
It not the number of bodies (400 million), its the loss of face - not to mention the total destruction of several major cities and the associated loss of income to Party members. That loss of face and money would mean the CCP has to inflict the same or greater damage on whomever was stupid enough to physically destroy the dam.
In other words, that action would trigger a full scale nuclear war and the US would lose 10s of millions of Americans. China has something like 126 DF-41 MIRVed missiles - each with 10 warheads, yielding between 20-150kT each, their range is great enough that the entire continental US is vulnerable. And that’s like 260 more warheads then either the US or Russia - both limited by treaty to 1000 each.
China does not do “social spending” - there is no such thing as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or other handouts. Its strictly up to the family males to provide for the entire family until death.
Knowing the above, how many still want to destroy the dam and trigger a nuclear war?