To be Americas enemy is dangerous but to be Americas friend is fatal - Kissinger
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
I am not surprised. I used to visit many mainland forums. At that time those Chinese forums are much less restricted, I still remember many middle class mainland Chinese would talk about how they would surrender to the Americans if the US landed in Shanghai or Beijing. How they would even be a guide for these American troops to liberate China. Their justification is that they don't want war. And the Americans can't be worst than CPC. And that what they do is to shorten the war and save lives. That's the same logic Wang Jingwei used to defect to the Japanese. Wang Jingwei claimed that since China can't win a war against Japan so it is better off China should surrender and cooperate with the Japanese. Wang Jingwei claimed that he doesn't want a war and is saving lives.
If your logic applied, then China should definitely invade Taiwan. When imperial Japan waged war against China, Taiwanese who joined the Japanese invasion are much more brutal than Japanese. There are countless atrocities committed by Taiwanese in mainland China.
OK. So here is the question: what if DPP becomes breaks all the laws anyways? Or just rejects the offer?
Here is an electoral map of Taiwan.
Here is a language map of Taiwan.
Notice how blue = Mandarin = KMT and green = Hokkien = DPP on both maps?
DPP vs. KMT is split on ethnic lines (Hokkien vs Mainlander). DPP can easily become Taiwanese nationalist/fascist. You can trust this? And what makes you think that a fascist party would even agree to these terms? Following the discourse in Taiwan they'd rather fight to the death than accept this sort of 辱台 policy.
In that case why make the offer? It only makes you look weak and indecisive, and gives them information that you are not committed and that since their independence is negotiable so is their neutrality, so is everything, and in fact they'll be even more emboldened.
It's an offer with very serious concession from China without compromising much on Taiwanese 'democracy'. Rejecting such an offer out of hand will weaken Taiwan's international support. The biggest opposition will probably come from Penghu residents, but they all know Penghu is not going to hold in the event of a PLA attack.
Make the offer with a simultaneous massive mobilization if needed. The problem with Putin's demand on Ukraine was that what Putin was offering was strictly worse for Ukraine compared to status quo, where my hypothetical offer to Taiwan includes both positive (independence) and negatives (loss of offshore islands).
Reunification by force poses risks. Economic risks, military risks and political risks. Those are very real risks, not potential risks in the future like a Taiwanese EuroMaiden. Avoiding them is not about making me feel better morally.
EuroMaiden had a specific historical context. It's not re-creatable in Taiwan. Chinese economic pull over Taiwan is incomparably greater than Russian economic pull over Ukraine. Taiwanese Guoyu and Putonghua are the same language, Russian and Ukrainian are not the same language. In any case, what can the West offer to Taiwanese to entice them to start a EuroMaiden? Free working visas to the US? Remember even now TSMC reportedly has a harder time recruiting Taiwanese engineers to work in the U.S. than on Mainland. Remember it has to be something that the West offer, that violates the independence agreement and the Taiwanese want it bad enough to consider violate the independence agreement.
As for your last question, as I said, I talked to my family and friends, all of them pro-government Chinese citizens, and none of them wanted a war over Taiwan now they're watching a real war unfolding in Ukraine. Of course, there's a big gap between rejection of war and acceptance of a negotiated independence, but as long as China's power continues to grow, I think it's quite possible that sometime down the road people will be ready to let go. As I said, why not mark the end of century of humiliation by outcompeting and deindustrialize Japan? By being a major player in European security? By making Americans behave? Furthermore, identities change. Young Chinese are moving left. If Chinese nationalism shift from pure ethno-nationalism toward a hybrid of ethno nationalism and civic nationalism based on socialist principles (which is what the government is currently pushing), it could reach a point where Taiwanese are seen as fundamentally un-Chinese.
The underlying issues are that even if China did absolutely nothing at all, the US ideological perspective demands total submission to their methodology because underpining their power is control of global capital, media and military power. That's the entire reason why Russia is even pushing back in the first place, and of why any concessions only increases the US's pushing on any opportunity they can get to expand their power and influence. Reunification is as much changing the status quo against US encroachments as it is enabling a new cultural continuity between the mainland and Taiwan. Allowing hostile powers to grow their ideological influence in the name of avoiding conflict is suicide to any nation who wishes to have long-term constructive development. This is why in the end nothing less than complete victory will be sufficient.
It is one thing if you were to be advocating maintaining the existing status quo (the one that up to now has more or less been in place for good part of almost 70 years etc) basically indefinitely, to keep sustaining that sort of strategic balance and ambiguity where China doesn't take any kinetic action and Taiwan doesn't cross any red lines in terms of official independence...
I think Chinese government would be okay with not doing an unprovoked kinetic strike in terms of pre-emptive unification by force if that same status quo and balance was maintained more or less into the future in perpetuity. But in order for that to happen, Taiwan has to be likewise constrained in its own words and actions and is responsible for its own part in maintaining that balance and that ambiguity... So if Taiwan wants to keep status quo, then by and through its actions and words or lack thereof it can maintain that continuous status quo and likewise the PRC can reciprocate in kind.
But this is not what is happening here in recent times. It is Taiwan that is taking actions to cross the red line, and to upend the status quo and to pervert the balance that had held together more or less for 70 years. Your proposal including #2 of "Beijing acknowledge Taiwanese independence" is entirely breaking with status quo in a bona fide manner going against Shanghai Communiqué, and if Beijing is forced to deal with a situation in which status quo will be irreparably broken to and by no fault of mainland China itself, then it should break it in its favor, and resolve the civil war once and for good just like any modern superpower would resolve an internal dispute.
You are asking China, the regional if not soon to be world hegemon, to make the ultimate compromise in sovereignty by "acknowledging" so-called "Taiwanese independence" and would even go so far as to allow Taiwan to rejoin the UN, all because Taiwan itself unilaterally made changes in the status quo towards crossing the red line and destabilizing the balance that had held the status quo together for so many decades. This completely goes counter to the reality and dictates of hard power, and is against the grain of nature. Not going to happen
The crux of the matter is this is an unequal compromise and one that the CPC would never accept. Your proposal is backwards/lopsided... instead of granting Taiwan independence and then having it promise it would never switch to the US side (your wording was "Taiwan becomes permanently neutral".) it should be Taiwan agrees to formally be reunified with China and officially acknowledge it is now part of China and that China gives Taiwan certain reassurances instead.
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So it’s a “potential risk” but not a real risk. After the coups attempt in Belarus and Kazakhstan you think the West won’t try something? You are asking what the west can offer and the answer is right there. Freedom from China. What did the West offer the Ukraine. Freedom from Russia. Also Independence agreement do not mean anything once they an internationally recognized as an independent nation. What are you going to do? Take it away?
You have provided no answer to any guarantees to China national security, discard any national security risk that foreign powers can exploit as “potential risk,” and now you hope that future Chinese generation will “eventually let go” to avoid the risk of civil war.
You are avoiding them. Your answer to a risk of civil war is based on the hopes that it will never happen.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Taiwan is not about material gain or interest; or at least it's very very little about it. Taiwan is China's dearest value; the entire country will lose morale if Taiwan were allowed to become independent. The world would laugh at China for failing in its most important issue since China opened to the world. The traitors on Taiwan would endlessly dump salt on the wound for Chinese patriots. No warm-blooded Chinese patriot can live in this kind of world of being an eternal loser and failure. I know I'd rather die than see the day the ROC became independent because nothing in life would give me an ounce of satisfaction if Taiwan were lost. No matter the cost, no matter the risks, no matter the suffering, China must fight to the last man, woman, child to hold Taiwan. Even in MAD with all of Western civilization with Taiwan included, China must never let it go.
Either way I am not replying further since this is going beyond the topic at hand.
Also because reality is clearly not going down that path due to the ever increasing global issues at play.
Also because reality is clearly not going down that path due to the ever increasing global issues at play.
solarz
Brigadier
You clearly don't have an understanding of the strategic importance of Taiwan then.
Taiwan under foreign control is both a dagger pointed at China's underbelly and the lock on a cage preventing China from growing to its fullest extent.
That is totally different from my observation. I talked to my family and friends too, not all of them are pro-government Chinese citizens, but they all think war is acceptable if it comes to the stage when reunification by force is necessary. The general trend that I see is that the general populace is more pro-government, more left-leaning? (if by left you mean paying more attention to equality on a societal scale), and less patient with Taiwan's status of de-facto independence. This phenomenon, I think, is driven by the coming of age of the more confident younger generations who, generally, have the above characteristics. I just don't understand why "sometime down the road people will be ready to let go".
What is more confusing is your correlation between shifting to "civic nationalism" and "Taiwanese seen as fundamentally un-Chinese". Why would that be the case??? In what way will Chinese think of Taiwanese as un-Chinese. They write Chinese characters as we do, they speak mandarin just as we do, they even hold some old-school Chinese traditions that mainland Chinese regard as superstitions. If Chinese people are insistent on Hong Kong and Macau being of Chinese sovereignty, why wouldn't Taiwan be? HK people speak Cantonese, are completely brainwashed by western ideology, and write some f.cked-up version, joking :>, of Chinese character because Cantonese is just so different from Mandarin.
Even if we look at the Chinese government's official stance on Taiwan issue, China, just in recent years, passed a law outlawing the independence of Taiwan, giving the government explicit legal right and responsibility to reunify China (specifically Taiwan). The constitution requires reunification, even the currently pushed narrative- the great rejuvenation of China, is officially in tandem with the reunification of Taiwan.
If you listen to a popular podcast on bilibili, two frequent guests/hosts of the podcast are working in some sort of intelligence agencies of China, and they almost explicitly hinted that there is a deadline for reunification, and that deadline wasn't moved forward or later even with the current situation in Ukraine.
So, for both the Chinese populace and Chinese government, I can only see a trajectory towards not away from reunification of Taiwan, by force or not.