PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[Biscuits]

my humble opinion is that if all peaceful means are exhausted and come to a dead end, and Armed Reunification has to occur, there will be inevitable bloodshed in Taiwan no matter how Beijing minimizes it.
The local population will harbor resentment proportional to the amount of bloodshed, and the Western governments and media will all join in a loud chorus to condemn the Beijing Government and castigate the Chinese leader as the "Butcher of Tw, or other diabolical labels", with sanctions to boot.
no doubt, the Chinese leader, under the present circumstances would be President Xi, will be tried in absentia and found guilty as a "war criminal" in the western sponsored International Kangaroo Court of Justice with an international arrest warrant served on him!!
rightly so, it will take a leader like Xi who is strong-willed, determined, and even a little ruthless, and who has a strong sense of mission and history to retake TW at his personal sacrifice and suffers the "inconvenience" of international sanctions. Meaning he can never travel outside of China for the rest of his life, not that he cares......
I agree President Xi is probably the only leader in the current crop who is willing to take the plunge and face the music, not knowing or caring how he will be viewed by future historians.

Who cares. Every Chinese leader has it as their job to defend the country. If there are invaders, then the war doesn't stop until they all surrender. And the surrendered will not be allowed to impose sanctions.

The opinion of the local citizens are important, but not as important as the opinion of all the country.

There is no law that would allow a territory of the PRC to secede. Furthermore, in the surrender written by Imperial Japan, China was bound by international law to maintain it's custodianship over Taiwan. To speak of Taiwan separatism would mean rejecting China's ww2 responsibilities.

Xi and another other Chinese leader would all mobilize everything in the whole country for it's national defense, they're forced to, not just by domestic law but by international law.

 

[solarz]

no doubt, the Chinese leader, under the present circumstances would be President Xi, will be tried in absentia and found guilty as a "war criminal" in the western sponsored International Kangaroo Court of Justice with an international arrest warrant served on him!!
rightly so, it will take a leader like Xi who is strong-willed, determined, and even a little ruthless, and who has a strong sense of mission and history to retake TW at his personal sacrifice and suffers the "inconvenience" of international sanctions. Meaning he can never travel outside of China for the rest of his life, not that he cares......

You realize that the ICC recently issued an arrest warrant for Putin, and South Africa just passed a special legislation giving Putin immunity so that he can attend the BRICS summit.

Western influence is not as great as you seem to believe.

 

[Jono]

You realize that the ICC recently issued an arrest warrant for Putin, and South Africa just passed a special legislation giving Putin immunity so that he can attend the BRICS summit.

Western influence is not as great as you seem to believe.

that's why I used the word "inconvenience" in regard to international warrants and sanctions that may be served on President Xi.
still, what happened to Ms. Meng WanZhou in Canada should serve as an example of how low the US and its western cronies can stoop to demonize China and its leader.
when it comes to hypocritical tricks and traps, no one can beat the US at its game.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

that's why I used the word "inconvenience" in regard to international warrants and sanctions that may be served on President Xi.
still, what happened to Ms. Meng WanZhou in Canada should serve as an example of how low the US and its western cronies can stoop to demonize China and its leader.
when it comes to hypocritical tricks and traps, no one can beat the US at its game.

what limits them is not a lack of will. it is a lack of capability.

 

[CasualObserver]

my mom thinks that Xi Jinping is the only person who can bring Taiwan back into China's fold. I disagree because China is only going to get stronger and stronger. who ever comes after Xi Jinping will be in charge of a country vastly stronger than China today, making it easier to bring Taiwan back.

What do you guys think.

Xi is one of the better leaders but honestly I don't find his foreign policy successful.

 

[HighGround]

Xi is one of the better leaders but honestly I don't find his foreign policy successful.

The jury's not out yet. It's far too early to make that call.

 

[sr338]

my humble opinion is that if all peaceful means are exhausted and come to a dead end, and Armed Reunification has to occur, there will be inevitable bloodshed in Taiwan no matter how Beijing minimizes it.
The local population will harbor resentment proportional to the amount of bloodshed, and the Western governments and media will all join in a loud chorus to condemn the Beijing Government and castigate the Chinese leader as the "Butcher of Tw, or other diabolical labels", with sanctions to boot.
no doubt, the Chinese leader, under the present circumstances would be President Xi, will be tried in absentia and found guilty as a "war criminal" in the western sponsored International Kangaroo Court of Justice with an international arrest warrant served on him!!
rightly so, it will take a leader like Xi who is strong-willed, determined, and even a little ruthless, and who has a strong sense of mission and history to retake TW at his personal sacrifice and suffers the "inconvenience" of international sanctions. Meaning he can never travel outside of China for the rest of his life, not that he cares......
I agree President Xi is probably the only leader in the current crop who is willing to take the plunge and face the music, not knowing or caring how he will be viewed by future historians.

That's why AR is only worth it if the US get dragged into it, as Taiwan is nothing but one many chess piece of US/CN competition. Stop thinking Taiwan; think China vs USA.
Also there are many step to escalation.
-A blockade forcing all trade in/out of Taiwan to pass by the Mainland is a good start.

 

[BoraTas]

American flights over the SCS are frequently surveilled. If even one plane gets caught dropping mines then it's basically right to war. Not even the US is this reckless. As for ships, even if the mines can be rendered inert until wartime via remote activation, I would imagine that they can still be detected with sonar. If the US had been doing this on anything approaching a large scale it would have been detected by now.

I found renewed interest in naval mine warfare by the US quite novel. They ignored it for decades. Look at the fleet of MCM vessels. The Quickstrike is a modified aerial bomb, limited to low-altitude release and shallow waters until now. CAPTOR practically required subs or ships to sail above it despite being a torpedo mine and was retired without replacements in 2001. The SLMM is literally 1950s tech. You can find US sailors talking about how their subs never had any mines as a weapon. The US is believed to have around 10,000 mines in inventory. This is less than 10% of the guesstimates for the PLA's inventory.

An old photo of PLA's mines

 

[TheFoozyOne]

The biggest achievements of Xi are his anti-corruption campaign and military modernization campaign. He certainly set the foundations for a successful AR.

 

[Hood_Rat]

Time is on China's side, why start escalating when you don't have to?

Disagree. There will be a window of opportunity between 2027-2030 where American and Japanese warships and aircraft are retired faster than their replacements as described here:

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. After that, introduction of next generation western platforms like NGAD and the LRASM successor will make the current A2/AD strategy much less tenable.

Building 60% of all Warships in the world in tonnage for the last 10 years is "betting on peace" to you? See my comment:

That statistic is meaningless. Whether the PLA has the production capacity and standing force to shatter the Anglo-Japanese forces within the second island chain and keep the SLOCs open is the relevant question. The answer to that currently is no.

The PLA should've received massively engorged budgets by year two of the Trump trade war. Instead the PRC leadership and population coped, gaslit themselves with empty slogans, and slept walk into these heightened tensions with an insufficient expeditionary fighting capability and lagging strategic nuclear force.

I personally don't blame Xi. He has tried since 2014 to change Deng's slogans to make national security equal to economic development in priority, indicating that he understands that history is trending towards violence in the early 21st century. The vote has failed every time until the most recent Two Sessions. It's the rest of the Chinese party leaders that are asleep at the wheel.