Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

FairAndUnbiased said:

So in the event that the Taiwan situation becomes urgent, expect massive waves of right wing, racist propaganda pumped everywhere. Expect Taiwanese to become extremely radicalized and in fact I'd argue that they are actually extremely radicalized, just like Ukraine in 2015 onwards.

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It doesn't matter how radical the Taiwanese are. The only significant factor in the event of an armed reunification is the US response.

There are only 23 million people in Taiwan. That's a smaller population than Shanghai. Once the PLA establishes a beachhead, the ROCAF will be hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, no matter their degree of radicalization.

solarz said:

It doesn't matter how radical the Taiwanese are. The only significant factor in the event of an armed reunification is the US response.

There are only 23 million people in Taiwan. That's a smaller population than Shanghai. Once the PLA establishes a beachhead, the ROCAF will be hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, no matter their degree of radicalization.

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high radicalization will increase the cost and time, which is never good. the solution to high radicalization is very high use of force without mercy.

note that early on in the Ukraine conflict, Russians allowing protests in Kherson and allowing civilian traffic in the north to pass before their tanks, was taken as a sign of moral confusion and low morale, not of restraint.

this is why restraint is a mistake. Currently, Russia has relaxed their ROE. They would've taken less losses if they had more relaxed ROE from the beginning in every theater except Donbass. I believe PLA is learning this lesson.

I also write this so everyone understands what China is up against: radical ethnic nationalism AKA fascism.

FairAndUnbiased said:

high radicalization will increase the cost and time, which is never good. the solution to high radicalization is very high use of force without mercy.

note that early on in the Ukraine conflict, Russians allowing protests in Kherson and allowing civilian traffic in the north to pass before their tanks, was taken as a sign of moral confusion and low morale, not of restraint.

this is why restraint is a mistake. Currently, Russia has relaxed their ROE. They would've taken less losses if they had more relaxed ROE from the beginning in every theater except Donbass. I believe PLA is learning this lesson.

I also write this so everyone understands what China is up against: radical ethnic nationalism AKA fascism.

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It's the Sam's argument that folks in the U.S. Army was arguing about or against what they perceive was very restrictive ROE because it caused great consternation from the troops when dealing with the insurgency in Afghanistan that when they're troops get killed from the ambush, I.E.D. etc..only for the American now bloodlust troops committing counter productive actions as revenge for their lost comrades.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal contrary to his glowing public reputation was hated by the rank and file for his regressive/restrictive ROE that soldiers on the ground felt and saw contributed to the unnecessary loss of lives on their side and the civilians.

I am on the firm mindset that once you commit the use of force; to commit and expend the lives of your country's military people you owe it to them and their dedication, service, and ultimate sacrifice to conduct a war like war. War is hell always was and always will be. To win is to commit one's heart, soul, and single minded focus for victory. If on the other hand the primary concern is how to mitigate, minimize troop casualties or damaging civilian infrastructures, civilian deaths you'll exactly get what you fear happening. And that is when losing happens.

FairAndUnbiased said:

high radicalization will increase the cost and time, which is never good. the solution to high radicalization is very high use of force without mercy.

note that early on in the Ukraine conflict, Russians allowing protests in Kherson and allowing civilian traffic in the north to pass before their tanks, was taken as a sign of moral confusion and low morale, not of restraint.

this is why restraint is a mistake. Currently, Russia has relaxed their ROE. They would've taken less losses if they had more relaxed ROE from the beginning in every theater except Donbass. I believe PLA is learning this lesson.

I also write this so everyone understands what China is up against: radical ethnic nationalism AKA fascism.

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So again, I don't think we should be learning the wrong lessons from the Ukraine war.

The Wanwanese are soft. No amount of propaganda is going to get a TW kid to abandon his air-conditioned apartment to wage a guerilla war in the mountains. That will only happen if TW becomes the kind of economic basket case Ukraine was/is, and that's not going to happen overnight even then.

Unlike the Russian attack on Ukraine, we all know how the PLA will open up the armed reunification campaign: with an ungodly barrage of missile artillery strikes that will make every ROC trooper soil their pants.

Like I mentioned previously, the Wanwanese can hide in cities all they want, the PLA would be in no hurry to flush them out. All the PLA needs to do is hold the beach heads and keep the ground troops pouring in.

The real fight, if it comes, won't be against radicalized Wanwans.

solarz said:

So again, I don't think we should be learning the wrong lessons from the Ukraine war.

The Wanwanese are soft. No amount of propaganda is going to get a TW kid to abandon his air-conditioned apartment to wage a guerilla war in the mountains. That will only happen if TW becomes the kind of economic basket case Ukraine was/is, and that's not going to happen overnight even then.

Unlike the Russian attack on Ukraine, we all know how the PLA will open up the armed reunification campaign: with an ungodly barrage of missile artillery strikes that will make every ROC trooper soil their pants.

Like I mentioned previously, the Wanwanese can hide in cities all they want, the PLA would be in no hurry to flush them out. All the PLA needs to do is hold the beach heads and keep the ground troops pouring in.

The real fight, if it comes, won't be against radicalized Wanwans.

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Don't even take the chance of thinking they're soft. The only way to denazify and deradicalize is with a true shock and awe campaign with not only missiles, but a continual suppression mission.

Missiles are high precision, high power but low volume. As the SEAD campaign progresses, missiles should be kept in reserve more for the real fight, and switch to higher volune dumb bombs instead. When Penghu is taken, wheel some artillery into Penghu and start bombarding with highest volume artillery.

BoraTas said:

The common narrative in Western MSM spaces is China getting shocked by the Western response and the low success of Russia. They miss a lot of things

1- Russia, considering all the factors I listed, is not that unsuccessful. Ukraine likely lost more soldiers than Russia and has been losing territory. And if you disregard the human tragedy part of it, Russia's losses are not at a level that is significant at the national level. For example, the US lost 50x more to COVID-19. So we have Ukraine losing territory without being able to deal significant damage to Russia. Ukraine would be having it much worse without the NATO support they have and the weird decisions of the Russian civilian leadership.

2- As we are discussing here for pages, even if there were fundamental problems with the Russian military it is unlikely that they apply to the PLA. These two militaries were only similar at equipment level and even that was diverging in the last 15 years. And it is fairly easy to conclude that PLA has a lot more modernized and new equipment than Russia thanks to its 4x larger budget. Especially some European analysts look at the PLA brigades in irrelevant places to conclude that the PLA uses outdated equipment. They willingly ignore the modernized part is still multiple times their own country's entire military.

3- I don't think China is shocked by the Western sanctions. We have Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba after all. China itself was always a partially or completely sanctioned country. Though, I believe the sanctions on the Russian central bank and oligarchs surprised China a bit. Because these sanctions severely erode the West's reliability as a place to stash money. Hua Chunying recently tweeted that "Pandora's box has opened" about this. The media missed that but I think a spokesperson saying that is quite significant. And it is not being talked about, but it was actually getting quite embarrassing for the West lately. They can not distance themselves away from Russian natural resources. The EU still buys 1€ billion worth of Russian energy every single day and they are paying it at a premium which is caused by their own sanctions.

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Great analysis!

What are your thoughts about this:

Just two days after Russia recognized DNR/LNR independence and sent Russian peacekeepers to occupy DNR/LNR, Joe Biden announced a US ban on all trade and investment with Russian-occupied DNR/LNR territories. In some ways, it's mute since DNR/LNR is wartorn land with little-to-zero economic activity with US, but in other ways, it is most similar to the Xinjiang cotton bans. The Xinjiang cotton ban was (for better or worse) attempt to devoid all Xinjiang of economic growth in order to maintain low-economic activity, foment civilian discontent and ultimately instigate rebellion long-term.
I can totally see US giving Chinese-occupied Taiwan the Xinjiang cotton ban treatment, but instead on high technology. Meaning US will cut off all trade and investment with TSMC if China occupied Taiwan, with hope of depriving Taiwanese tech of Western market to drive it into poverty and foment rebellion against China occupation. US would be hurting itself in the process, but justified with national security and punishing Taiwan to punish China. Not saying it will deter China, but just saying that US is likely going to use Xinjiang cotton ban as template for occupied Taiwan.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Don't even take the chance of thinking they're soft. The only way to denazify and deradicalize is with a true shock and awe campaign with not only missiles, but a continual suppression mission.

Missiles are high precision, high power but low volume. As the SEAD campaign progresses, missiles should be kept in reserve more for the real fight, and switch to higher volune dumb bombs instead. When Penghu is taken, wheel some artillery into Penghu and start bombarding with highest volume artillery.

Click to expand...

The benefits of modern electronics tech is mass miniaturization and production of even relatively simple guidance systems for bombs and artillery shells including mortar rounds, which makes the likelihood of rapid and total annihilation of static units far more prevalent than previous conflicts, the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict with major drone usage disrupting enemy formation is but a tidbit of this capability in action. I do have to say one thing however, that in any truly dangerous and important situation that the CPC had and has to deal with, it has always utilized any and all necessary means to achieve success regardless of enemy action, and to do so in a complete and decisive fashion. That is why any radical concentrations attempting to fight to the death will end up quite so without ever seeing their opposing force, especially with the arms at the PLA's disposal. It will be unconditional surrender or death, whichever comes first.

solarz said:

There are only 23 million people in Taiwan. That's a smaller population than Shanghai. Once the PLA establishes a beachhead, the ROCAF will be hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, no matter their degree of radicalization.

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There is a given density of combat formations in battle order a given amount of ground can accept. Overdoing it is just increasing losses for no worthwhile tactical gain - troops are too expensive to waste them against statistics.
Basically, if ROCAF is allowed to fully mobilize, they will probably have enough troops to fight it in any sensible configuration.

So either they shouldn't be allowed to mobilize, or the plan shouldn't be aimed at outnumbering them [on the ground] in the first place.

On the other hand - if US lawmakers will force Taiwan deep enough into being smart and asymmetrical - those mathematics may indeed become irrelevant.

Phead128 said:

Great analysis!

What are your thoughts about this:

Just two days after Russia recognized DNR/LNR independence and sent Russian peacekeepers to occupy DNR/LNR, Joe Biden announced a US ban on all trade and investment with Russian-occupied DNR/LNR territories. In some ways, it's mute since DNR/LNR is wartorn land with little-to-zero economic activity with US, but in other ways, it is most similar to the Xinjiang cotton bans. The Xinjiang cotton ban was (for better or worse) attempt to devoid all Xinjiang of economic growth in order to maintain low-economic activity, foment civilian discontent and ultimately instigate rebellion long-term.
I can totally see US giving Chinese-occupied Taiwan the Xinjiang cotton ban treatment, but instead on high technology. Meaning US will cut off all trade and investment with TSMC if China occupied Taiwan, with hope of depriving Taiwanese tech of Western market to drive it into poverty and foment rebellion against China occupation. US would be hurting itself in the process, but justified with national security and punishing Taiwan to punish China. Not saying it will deter China, but just saying that US is likely going to use Xinjiang cotton ban as template for occupied Taiwan.

Click to expand...

I think its well expected that US will prevent export or sales of semiconductor equipment in Taiwan to prevent China from getting their hands on the latest semiconductor tech, but I don't think it'll push Taiwan into poverty or discontent, its pretty manageable problem when we see Xinjiang still growing economically. It might also have a blowback effect of alienating the Taiwanese because of the sanctions and make Taiwan's economy more increasingly intertwined and dependent on the Mainland. Those newly unemployed engineers in TSMC because of the sanctions, can be reassigned into the Mainland's semiconductor industry or what's left of TSMC capacity can be used service the mainland's market for semiconductors.

Phead128 said:

Great analysis!

What are your thoughts about this:

Just two days after Russia recognized DNR/LNR independence and sent Russian peacekeepers to occupy DNR/LNR, Joe Biden announced a US ban on all trade and investment with Russian-occupied DNR/LNR territories. In some ways, it's mute since DNR/LNR is wartorn land with little-to-zero economic activity with US, but in other ways, it is most similar to the Xinjiang cotton bans. The Xinjiang cotton ban was (for better or worse) attempt to devoid all Xinjiang of economic growth in order to maintain low-economic activity, foment civilian discontent and ultimately instigate rebellion long-term.
I can totally see US giving Chinese-occupied Taiwan the Xinjiang cotton ban treatment, but instead on high technology. Meaning US will cut off all trade and investment with TSMC if China occupied Taiwan, with hope of depriving Taiwanese tech of Western market to drive it into poverty and foment rebellion against China occupation. US would be hurting itself in the process, but justified with national security and punishing Taiwan to punish China. Not saying it will deter China, but just saying that US is likely going to use Xinjiang cotton ban as template for occupied Taiwan.

Click to expand...

Assuming TSMC and other important industries on Taiwan somehow avoid getting bombed over the course of an armed reunification, and remain operational afterwards, I think it's very unlikely that there will be a serious effort to boycott TSMC.

The US was happy to ban Xinjiang cotton because while it was good cotton, it's not like it was the only place in the world that produced cotton. The people in the states weren't going to suddenly be unable to buy new clothes and freeze to death in the winter, either (although it still happened, in Texas of all places). This move impacted China more than it did the US, which is why the US was willing to go through with it.

If the PRC were able to reunify, there's not a chance in hell they aren't going to reverse engineer every last scrap of TSMC technology they get their hands on to pass onto their own domestic manufacturers. So if the US wants something to actually happen with such a ban, it would presumably include other Chinese manufacturers as well. It would be incredibly hard for the US to replace this source of chips (TSMC + existing Chinese ones) in the short to medium term, which if my google search is correct, represents over half of global chip production. Not only is it hard to replace, it's also very hard for the US to go without a steady supply of chips. Think about the chip/semiconductor shortage last year, its effects on the US economy, and now imagine if the US decided to just ban over half of the already insufficient supply. Sure, the present US may already manufacture enough domestically to keep its military and government running, but you try telling the people that they can't get their new 3090ti gpus because uncle Joe wanted some international clout, they'll get pretty angry.

Finally, any reverse engineering of TSMC tech would place China at the cutting edge of chip R&D, which would only further increase the demand for Chinese chips. If the US really goes through with such a ban, there will be plenty of other new countries lining up to buy from China. The only way for such an embargo to have a noticeable effect on China is if the US were somehow able to convince its allies and vassals to also boycott Chinese electronics and cripple their economies. To that, all I have to say is good luck.