China's SCS Strategy Thread

[plawolf]

Focusing on the Indian Ocean does makes sense, now that you guess mention it especially if China has taken enough control of the South China Sea. Does it mean that the AUKUS coalition will leave Japan and Korea on their own?
Is that maybe why Japan has brought forward a more neutral prime minister candidate?

Once AUKUS can drop their Korea, Taiwan and Japan allies, they actually can effectively block the Malacca straight without hurting important East Asian allies. Because if AUKUS block the Malacca strait right now they will hurt Korea, Taiwan and Japan more so then they would hurt China given China's expanded trade routes with CPEC and BRI bypassing the Malacca strait.

If I were South Korea I would try find some deal with North Korea and ask Russia to expand the power of Siberia pipeline network into north and south Korea. Japan could see if they can fix ties with Russia for their energy needs might the Malacca strait ever be blocked.

AUSKUS represents a massive strategic retreat by the US from East Asia, as it becomes increasingly clear their forward positions there are now increasingly untenable in a shooting war.

SK and Japan almost certainly noped out of the proposal to form AUSKUS, which I’m certain was originally floated as an Asian NATO, and would have included both as not even Boris, Biden and Morrison are so oblivious as to not see how ridiculous their full pink AUSKUS club looks as the Asian NATO.

AUSKUS cannot and will not block Malacca as doing so will end world trade. That’s not the play.

The play is to pick the low hanging fruit of attacking Chinese flagged ships in the Indian Ocean while leaving all others alone. That way they don’t need to try to work out which neutral flagged ships are going where, and also can effectively deter neutral parties from using Chinese flagged ships, which will be the main source of economic pain rather than the few ships they do manage to seize and sink. But even that is just more annoyance than substance in the grand scheme of things, with the main damage to Chinese prestige. At the cost of fully dropping all pretence at being about rules and laws on the part of AUSKUS, so even that is a double edged sword.

 

[hashtagpls]

AUSKUS represents a massive strategic retreat by the US from East Asia, as it becomes increasingly clear their forward positions there are now increasingly untenable in a shooting war.

SK and Japan almost certainly noped out of the proposal to form AUSKUS, which I’m certain was originally floated as an Asian NATO, and would have included both as not even Boris, Biden and Morrison are so oblivious as to not see how ridiculous their full pink AUSKUS club looks as the Asian NATO.

AUSKUS cannot and will not block Malacca as doing so will end world trade. That’s not the play.

The play is to pick the low hanging fruit of attacking Chinese flagged ships in the Indian Ocean while leaving all others alone. That way they don’t need to try to work out which neutral flagged ships are going where, and also can effectively deter neutral parties from using Chinese flagged ships, which will be the main source of economic pain rather than the few ships they do manage to seize and sink. But even that is just more annoyance than substance in the grand scheme of things, with the main damage to Chinese prestige. At the cost of fully dropping all pretence at being about rules and laws on the part of AUSKUS, so even that is a double edged sword.

In such an event China should seriously consider a full scale invasion of Australia with the objective of holding the island continent in perpetuity.

Take Australia and you effectively neuter American global operations, especially once Pine Gap is neutralised

 

[plawolf]

In such an event China should seriously consider a full scale invasion of Australia with the objective of holding the island continent in perpetuity.

Take Australia and you effectively neuter American global operations, especially once Pine Gap is neutralised

No, that’s the kind of overreaction Washington would secretly be hoping for, to allow them to cast China as the expansionist new Nazi Germany like they have always been trying to frame China as.

So far their wild claims have had very little traction even in their own countries as not even the MSM can sell the blatantly made up BS of Uighur genocide.

A Chinese invasion and occupation of Australia will be much easier to use to vilify China with. Just reimagine all the gruesome war footage from Syria and Iraq but have all the dead civilians be pink. The western world will be United in their fury and horror.

Also, Australia is pretty far from China, and is continent sized, so it will be really hard to occupy when you factor in the inevitable US led western liberation push.

Far better that China just builds up Indonesia’s economy and military and have them Red Dawn the Australians instead.

 

[sinophilia]

No, that’s the kind of overreaction Washington would secretly be hoping for, to allow them to cast China as the expansionist new Nazi Germany like they have always been trying to frame China as.

So far their wild claims have had very little traction even in their own countries as not even the MSM can sell the blatantly made up BS of Uighur genocide.

A Chinese invasion and occupation of Australia will be much easier to use to vilify China with. Just reimagine all the gruesome war footage from Syria and Iraq but have all the dead civilians be pink. The western world will be United in their fury and horror.

Also, Australia is pretty far from China, and is continent sized, so it will be really hard to occupy when you factor in the inevitable US led western liberation push.

Far better that China just builds up Indonesia’s economy and military and have them Red Dawn the Australians instead.

In a specific scenario (decades in the future) where China has built up a GDP twice the size or at least equal to the size of the entire Western World, and is self-sufficient in areas of high-technology and competitive or superior to the West in those aspects, and an Anglo-led Australia still exists on China's doorstep and is potentially or actually hostile to Chinese domination in the region, then this could present a real threat.

Something like Iran or North Korea to the US, but actually in their neighborhood, and vastly more powerful. The Australians have the largest houses in the world and extremely high living standards, they have an incredibly low population density and can still afford to fill up the continent with vastly more people. And are they? Well, they have the highest population growth rate in the entire Western or White-majority world (only Israel is higher if you count them as Western/White and only marginally higher). Chinese would be cursing their luck at the generations of Chinese before them which didn't deal with this problem when there is literally a second America in the form of that future Australia and would be much harder to deal with.

Better to nip this in the bud as they say before it becomes an intractable problem. At such a time when China is so dominant they'll be "united in fury and horror" at every action China takes anyway so finding a justification to limit their growth potential permanently will be of the utmost importance.

 

[AndrewS]

I have long been saying that the motivation for the US to escalate the SCS dispute back in the Hillary days was to create both the pretext and the means for it to take military control of the SCS. That is because the SCS is the only place on earth where a trade embargo against China could be implemented without nuking world trade altogether.

But that was another massive strategic own goal by the US, because in doing so it alerted China to its intentions and so China didn’t waste any time or expense to counter with its SCS island bases. That move their has in essence won China the SCS and also nullified the whole AUSKUS move before it even got started.

Had Hillary not jumped the gun moving on the SCS so early, the PLAN would have a real hard time going toe to toe against the USN there even after 003 becomes operational. Because in a pure carrier vs carrier fight, the USN still holds a significant, if not overwhelmingly advantage in both quality and quantity of carriers, carrier fighters and subs.

The SCS island bases adds unsinkable carriers to the equation as well as home ports for swarms of 022s, 056s, SSKs and ASW aircraft; but even more importantly, it allowed China to build up a vast and comprehensive sensor and intel gathering network in the area that will give China information and intelligence dominance in any shooting war in the region.

The geography of the SCS makes the Australians AUSKUS deal even more stupid because their planned future SSNs are going to have to travel significant distances in very shallow waters; which will almost certainly be thoroughly laced with Chinese underwater passive detection networks; all the while being well within range of land based ASW helicopters and MPAs and future ASW drones; before they could reach the deep water core, where the PLAN is building is SSBN bastions.

It would be suicide for them to try to move directly north into the SCS. I think they would need to instead go around all the way up to Taiwan and swing down from that way. But that strategy depends on Taiwan remaining out of Chinese hands for at least the next two decades, which seems increasingly unlikely. If. China takes Taiwan, it shuts that door as well and the SCS will become a true bastion and Chinese lake for PLAN SSBNs to operate with a high degree of safety.

The SCS is essentially a lost cause now for the US.

I think the future US military plan is to try to drag the PLAN into a fight in the Indian Ocean, away from its current SCS meat grinder bastion.


This explains why they have rebranded everything from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. And it is in the Indian Ocean that the future Australian SSNs are expecting to fight and where they might actually make a meaningful difference.

This shift in geographical location will also mean a shift in strategic objectives away from total embargo to opportunistic harassment.

Without the geographical limitation of the SCS, the USN could not hope to stop all traffic heading towards China. Instead it will probably just try to inflict as much damage as possible by attacking Chinese flagged merchant ships and conducting legalised piracy by seizing those ships where it can and sinking them where they can’t.

It won’t stop all shipments to and from China, hell, it probably wouldn’t even make that much of a dint in terms of numbers and volumes, but it will be highly politically damaging to China’s standing both internationally and especially domestically. And the US is hoping that will force Beijing to send the PLAN into the Indian Ocean to try and stop the USN and where the USN would have home field advantage in the fight due to Diego Garcia and no doubt the Indians being all over such a mission.

Yes.

Given that a long-range blue water fleet will take at least another 2 decades to build, it makes more sense to build up forces to contest air superiority over the US bases in Japan and South Korea.

South Korea is essentially an island which is only 400km from Mainland China.
The Japanese Home Islands lie 800km from Shanghai.

For that, a lot more J-20 stealth fighters, Y-20U tankers and AWACs are needed

This forces the US military to operate closer to mainland China, where China has a relative advantage.

 

[weig2000]

Well here we all are.
After years of discussing the hypothetical, it looks as though the real purpose and strategy is becoming a lot more clear.
For years we have all assumed that this wholly revolved around an armed conflict for Taiwan and the Territorial possession of the South China Seas.
While much of this is clearly the case, it is also becoming evident that it also just as much a smoke screen for a more simple and critical operation. In short to ensure the Chinese SLOC for the duration of a long conflict with its strategic competitors.

Taiwan remains of course a flashpoint, but looks less and less like a battlefield. I say this as we now understand that the US no longer has confidence in winning such a conflict or be prepared to sustain the crippling losses of a victory, both in the initial conflict and inevitable operation to try to hold the Island against sustained Chinese pressure.

It know looks more like the West has moved to a Strategy of long term economic strangulation which would force the PLAN to have to engage much further from its home waters and where the advantages it enjoys there, rapidly diminish.
The role of Taiwan remains the flashpont, but now, not for a conflict for the Island, but to provoke a Chinese Invasion which would justify a full Embargo against China and military Interdiction against its Merchant Fleet.

Yes, lots more to discuss and will do later.

Reasons China must have dominance in SCS:

* Territory and resources - This is easy for everyone to understand and almost always come up in any reports on SCS
* Bastion for China's strategic nuclear submarines - The US cares a lot more about this than any territorial disputes or resources
* SLOC - critical to China's trade route particularly energy trade with ME and trade with Europe

 

[ansy1968]

The first step for BBM and Sarah Duterte tandem, the daughter declare her intention for her mayoral reelection and Senator Bong Go the family friend filed for VP on behalf of the President owned Party. You may say WHAT!!! where will Sarah fit in....LOL Well there is a provision in the electoral law called SUBSTITUTION, where you can switch candidate within a certain period of time 45 days after the last day of filling which is next week.

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32 minutes ago — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday he was retiring from politics, a surprise move that fuelled speculation he was ...

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1 hour ago — ... President Rodrigo Duterte has said he will not stand for vice president in next year's election, and will instead retire from politics.

 

[FangYuan]

In such an event China should seriously consider a full scale invasion of Australia with the objective of holding the island continent in perpetuity.

Take Australia and you effectively neuter American global operations, especially once Pine Gap is neutralised

China will not invade Australia. But China needs to prepare for the worst. That's why China should buy Russian Tu-95M and Tu-22M with TOT. Russia-China relations are on their honeymoon, but who knows what will happen in 50 years.

 

[plawolf]

China will not invade Australia. But China needs to prepare for the worst. That's why China should buy Russian Tu-95M and Tu-22M with TOT. Russia-China relations are on their honeymoon, but who knows what will happen in 50 years.

China doesn’t need Cold War era soviet relics like those.

Australia’s only real defence is distance. Even today H6s can spam LACMs on them all day long with minimal to zero risk if it was just China vs Australia.

If we throw America into the mix, then that complicates things for the H6, but it would be exactly the same for the Tupolev's.

But the core question of military action is, what are your SMART objectives that you are trying to achieve through military action? What does success look like? What is your endgame and exist strategy?

The core reason why recent America military misadventures abroad have all failed so miserably is because they didn’t think or plan beyond the initial shock and awe fireworks show.

What would be the precise measurable objects to China bombing Australia? How will those be achieved and how does China plan to cease hostilities after it has achieved those objectives?

Your Russian bomber purchase suggestion fundamentally misses these core points.

To put it bluntly, China will have to be stupid to initiate kinetic hostilities against Australia, and Chinese national leaders don’t do stupid these days.

The only way China and Australia will get into a shooting war is if Australia comes to fight China as part of America’s little pink gang. But Australia is pretty far from China, so it’s utility as a base of operations for any such campaign against China is really rather marginal at best.

That means there is no pressing need for China to strike at Australia itself in any such fight, and it is perfectly capable of winning said fight without laying one finger on Australian soil.

Any Chinese strikes on Australian soil will either be highly limited and strategic in nature (pine gap for example), which could be hit with existing ballistic and cruise missiles easily and effectively enough; or it will be punitive and about setting an example. In which case that will only become an issue after China has already destroyed the US-Australian expeditionary forces attacking China. In which case it can just use H6s all day long with almost zero risk and minimal cost.

 

[FangYuan]

The core reason why recent America military misadventures abroad have all failed so miserably is because they didn’t think or plan beyond the initial shock and awe fireworks show.

I don't think the United States lacks the brains to deal with issues related to pre-war, during-war and post-war. But somehow, history always repeats itself. From Vietnam to Afghanistan. Maybe the problem is not with the American experts and senior advisers, but with the American political, industrial and economic system, which is on a bicycle, must pedal continuously. That is why the United States continues to wage wars regardless of the cost, the American people may suffer, but their elites do not.