Very well written. This is true.It is rather interesting because within Chinese culture, it has been proven time and time again that people respect, or gain face, when they deliver results and participate in teamwork based solutions. In contrast, in American culture, face is gained when someone acts tough and immovable, forcing others to make way for his superior authority.
One most obvious example is during the recent pandemic, Chinese politicians took to asking from help from the medical community, and humbly deferred to their advice, because there is no penalty in admitting they're not the experts.
Within America instead, every local leader came up with their own ways and advices, ranging from disinfectant to horse dewormer, strict lockdowns to denialism. This happened because admitting wrongdoing and listening to others advice is a severe mistake in US culture, whoever doing it would be seen as "weak".
It is the same pervasive cultural flaw that leads to even the terminology within US documents to be corrupted. For example, in a military war game about an American invasion of Taiwan, the US side can face defeat, yet the paper itself will only be able to say China is a "near peer" adversary. Logically, if your forces were defeated, then it is you who is the near peer adversary. But admitting this fact would lead to severe loss of face, so Americans dare not put it in writing.
Try and imagine how big of a handicap this mentality will be in a conflict. It is not just a hypothetical either. This flaw was visible during the Korean War as well. Really, the outnumbered PVA with less tanks, less airplanes, had no business taking an entire country's worth of ground from America, which was at its peak strength. However, once US soldiers were made to retreat, pervasive fear of admitting defeat caused US NCO to vastly exaggerate enemy losses, blinding the generals from knowing the true situation on the ground, opening up US combined arms brigades to being encircled by basic motorized infantry, because their generals were being fed the information that there should be no more PVA, they're all dead because every US NCO reported their squad mowed down hundreds of commies. This was the difference in quality between military professionalism of the PLA and US army in 1950. Of course, US could have leapfrogged since then, but is that really believable that a nation that can't admit inferiority would be able to achieve any feats of such rapid improvement?
What American leaders should think about is, do they have an army capable of withstanding setbacks? Yes, the number of US military is very impressive, more so than the PLA. But do US soldiers possess the resolve to charge into a superior enemy, knowing many of them will die to achieve an objective? If one or several aircraft carriers are sunk, would the US state media be able to explain to the population?
Because if the answers to these questions are no, then what America has is just a huge rotten shack that collapses whenever any force is applied at them. Or a paper tiger if you will.
Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
- Status
Very well written. This is true.
Not exactly a lesson from Russian invasion of Ukraine per se, but China needs to look at how the US is using the supply of thousands of rounds of rockets, missiles, drones, etc to Ukraine to greatly boost domestic production capability. I wouldn't be surprised if we continue to see massive increases in defense spending because of this, which will be used to increase the production of basically all elements of the United States Armed Forces.
It a very dangerous situation if NATO expand into the Asia Pacific region with SK and Japan as the linchpin.
China will need to retake Taiwan sooner to control Sk and Japan lifeline and break the encirclement
While China has her own timetable to set the pace when to invade. Expansion of NATO is outside their geopolitics calculations. China would need to rethink hard.
China will need to retake Taiwan sooner to control Sk and Japan lifeline and break the encirclement
While China has her own timetable to set the pace when to invade. Expansion of NATO is outside their geopolitics calculations. China would need to rethink hard.
The Ukraine war will last, as the US will supply weapons to the Nazi-backed Ukraine goverment so to make a huge profit, and hopefully will weaken Russia's economy and resolve. Fat bloody hope you money hungry mongrels! Now shift blame to China for buying Russian oil. But this mongrel said nothing about India buying oil from Russia. What bloody hypocrites!
Again, SK isn't going to get involved. There is the NK factor that will prevent them from doing anything. If SK doesn't get involved militarily, how else are they going to help NATO contain China? They are not. The entire NATO challenging China in East Asia is nonsensical. Doesn't work geographically. Aside from complaining, there is not much countries like UK can really do about it. That's why the Quad came about. Does anyone really worry about India getting involved? I don't think so. Too far away and have to worry about Pakistan. So, now the Quad is down to US, Japan and Australia. Australia could be used as a launch point for some USAF air raid, but that would be it and Australia is really far away. PLAN is not going to be concerned about Collins subs.
So, then we go back to the original premise that the possible conflict is just Taiwan, US and Japan vs China. For me, Taiwan will take up a chunk of shorter ranged missiles and PGMs in the first couple of days of the war. As long as the initial round of missiles + follow-on artillery/drone strikes are working, PLA are likely to be slowed down by Taiwan's forces.
As such, you are probably looking at 7th fleet vs all of JASDF/MSDF vs PLAN/PLAAF for the first week of the combat. And then latter on, you are looking at possible raids at SCS bases + a large combined USN/USMC force coming toward westpac.
If you are China, you should think about who you can get help from. You already have a mutual defense treaty with NK that keeps SK at bay. You should talk to Pakistan about something similar so that you can help each other in time of war. Cambodia and Myanmar would be other possibilities. If anything, Russia/Ukraine shows that having more friends does help.
Last edited:
China should assume no outside help in case war happens. In fact, it's better if countries like Russia and Pakistan stay neutral cause it keeps India and EU neutral militarily.
PLA should be prepared to fight alone and against combined JSDF and US forces. Their best option will be a quick air supremacy over Taiwan; at the same time neutralizing their navy and then strikes against anti-ships missiles to pave way for an amphibious landing. Once they land on beaches, they defend their claim with nukes. All this needs to happen in the span of a month or less.
At the same time, they have a major bulk of naval and air forces standing between Taiwan and potential US/Japan forces looking to intervene; only attacking if they are attacked first.
To me there's not much PLA can learn from Ukraine-Russia war cause a Taiwan-US-Japan war will be mostly air and naval. If anything the real lesson from the current war so far is stockpile and build up in ammunition. War depletes your inventory very fast, so it's best to manufacture and build up a huge stockpile before the spark.
This is all hypothetically and let's hope no war ever happens cause it will be devastating to the region.
It’s China vs Quad minus India. Don’t expect Pakistan to help. They can barely keep their own economy from imploding, let alone help China. They are already asking China for the next handout. The same applies to Myanmar and Cambodia.
Even from a purely moral point of view, let me describe the following situation:
"A country is torn apart by civil war and secessionist. On the brink of a breakthrough by one side to unite the country, the other enlists the help of a foreign superpower and seizes power in an isolated border region.
The foreign superpower arms the secessionist regions, grants them diplomatic protection and soon a full scale war is triggered by official recognition."
What am I describing, Ukraine/Donbass/Russia or China/Taiwan/US?
That sounds like the US war of independence! except in that story the border region was larger than the original country... and France got crippled by helping.
- Status