PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

RoastGooseHKer said:

Current level is sustainable, but it is only a peacetime posture with a total force of less than 2 million. Once war starts, you need to pay for sudden surge in man power, munitions, logistics, and more importantly, payouts and healthcare to the wounded and the dead. You are talking about sudden surge in spending and resources. If the war drags out, not sure how long you could sustain such war economy. Image sustaining a 5-6 million strong PLA for a period of 5 years should a war drags out. And this occurs whilst China’s economy is completely cutoff from the world. And as soon as the war ends, you need provide the huge sums of payouts and healthcare benefits to the wounded and families of the dead. The country’s debt is going to skyrocket.

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I think you're really far off on this point. In most ways, China is the only country in the world that's capable of fighting a long term intensive war. Most countries with advanced militaries have very small munitions stockpiles, and they will run out of munitions within weeks, if not days. For perspective, France ran out of precision weapons in just a couple of weeks when they intervened in Libya, and that's against a country that basically couldn't fight back! The US is in better shape, but even they don't have that much in weapons stockpiles, and these are unlikely to last more than a few months. At which point, there's just not enough production capability to make up for the shortfall.

In comparison, while it's not publicized, we can safely infer that China does make a lot of advanced munitions and keeps large stockpiles. Moreover, it's way easier for China to scale up production on these weapons than for anyone else to do so. A long term conflict is all about who has the most industrial capability and electrial generation capacity, and guess who leads the world in both these metrics? And by a freaking lot?

The other big factors are about control of supply chains, and stockpiles of strategic materials, and the ability to produce intermediate goods. The US and most of the West doesn't believe in any of these so do you think any of them can sustain a long term war?

RoastGooseHKer said:

And this occurs whilst China’s economy is completely cutoff from the world.

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How could Russia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia completely isolate themselves from China?
Your thinking is like that of Europeans today, who believe Russia has been abandoned by the world.
These countries neighboring China have no business opposing China. They can only pray they aren't targets of Chinese attack. For them, being China's ally is their only path to survival.
I don't know who has the courage to fight the largest industrial nation ever created!
Five years? Does China intend to conquer the entire world?
Your understanding of war is truly superficial. Today's wars won't allow the United States to safely hide on the other side of the ocean like World War II did.
Winners take all, losers die without a burial place. And you're still thinking about post-war pensions! Absurd!

RoastGooseHKer said:

If the war drags out, not sure how long you could sustain such war economy. Image sustaining a 5-6 million strong PLA for a period of 5 years should a war drags out.

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I don’t need to imagine it because it won’t happen. The deciding factor will be determined in the air and waters. Not on the land. There is no need to mass conscript millions of soldiers unless you can magically make them float on the Pacific Ocean chasing after ships moving at 35 miles an hour.

Neither is any massive land armies going to be fighting over the Himalayan mountains, South East Asia, or the Siberian region. As Russia will turn to nuclear deterrences. Maybe if North Korea gets invaded by NATO but they might resort to turning the NATO staging grounds in South Korea into a radioactive hole.