PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

votran said:

doubt it , after decades of soft and weak propagranda about peaceful reunification , mainland population (hell ...even military personal) right now just don't have enough blood thirsty will to agree and support the idea "take the island not the people"

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I am sorry but do you read Chinese at all? The sentiment in the general population towards the Taiwanese population deteriorated significantly over the past decade. I might agree that some party leadership does not want to go that far but the same definitely cannot be said about the general public. The difference in sentiment can be large enough that sometimes the public fury needed to be suppressed, and we saw quite a few backfires on the leadership's part (i.e. Nancy Pelosi incident) as a result of that.

Recent revelations indicate Japan has successfully infiltrated the Philippine leadership, making the Philippines an unofficial ally of Japan. Should the ultra-right-wing Liberal Democratic Party secure over 300 seats as polls suggest, Japan is likely to deepen its infiltration of Taiwan's leadership. China must not only strike back at Japan economically and guard against its nuclear strategy but also develop sufficient countermeasures against Japan's efforts to infiltrate Taiwan's high-level circles. The coming years will be the most tense and confrontational period in Sino-Japanese relations.

GulfLander said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2019601832126132376

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New mega $20 billion arms package prepared for Taiwan.

Will we see a meeting or a XACO?

Overbom said:

New mega $20 billion arms package prepared for Taiwan.

Will we see a meeting or a XACO?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2019903972090187976

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Its always CACO, not just XACO.

If China had any kind of "red line", they will be announcing Arms donation, not sales, To Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

China still doesn't have the guts to openly Challenge US, even in its own backyard. Its disappointing but sad reality.

tamsen_ikard said:

Its always CACO, not just XACO.

If China had any kind of "red line", they will be announcing Arms donation, not sales, To Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

China still doesn't have the guts to openly Challenge US, even in its own backyard. It’s disappointing but sad reality.

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Well in the long term, let’s see how badly Trump ruins the USA first in the next half year. It’s not like China doesn’t know where those weapons are, nor does China not have agents all over Taiwan to act at a time when China is ready. Not to mention the more weapons they send to Taiwan, the less weapons the USA has for itself provided the rare earths ban is still in play.

Also all those weapon sales on paper and yet we don’t see much in terms of delivery to Taiwan. Is Taiwan bankrupting itself from buying downgraded weapons that will never make it to Taiwan because at the end of the day, Taiwan is lead by a stupid bullshit artist that has yet to deliver anything Tangible in terms of results ever since the DDP party is first in power.

In the long run, if China reclaims Taiwan through peaceful reunification, these weapons would be utterly useless. In fact, even if Taiwan possessed weapons dozens of times greater than its current arsenal, it would directly bankrupt its economy and strain its military structure. China could employ military deterrence to destabilize Taiwan's internal politics.
The cost, however, is that China would be unable to bear the price of an armed unification in the future. This effectively resembles another form of high-risk accelerationism, plunging Taiwanese society into chaos amid an arms race between the mainland and Taiwan.
China's ability to prevent continued U.S. arms sales is limited. For the United States, it is more acceptable to avoid deploying its own troops and instead rely on Taiwan's own forces to resist the mainland's People's Liberation Army. This allows the U.S. to avoid assuming defense responsibilities while continuing to profit from arms sales.

tamsen_ikard said:

Its always CACO, not just XACO.

If China had any kind of "red line", they will be announcing Arms donation, not sales, To Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

China still doesn't have the guts to openly Challenge US, even in its own backyard. Its disappointing but sad reality.

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This is just an interest free loan from Taiwan to the US. There is a 10 year backlog on Patriots, something like 5 years on NASAMS (no other SAMs in US inventory besides Naval based). It took 5 years to deliver 100 M1s, and they paid 300M to Palmer (very) Luckey for drones that by recent reports do not work. And if you are worried that 20b is a lot of money to loan to the US, just note that Trumps tax cuts to the rich will cost trillions.

Nevermore said:

In the long run, if China reclaims Taiwan through peaceful reunification, these weapons would be utterly useless. In fact, even if Taiwan possessed weapons dozens of times greater than its current arsenal, it would directly bankrupt its economy and strain its military structure. China could employ military deterrence to destabilize Taiwan's internal politics.
The cost, however, is that China would be unable to bear the price of an armed unification in the future. This effectively resembles another form of high-risk accelerationism, plunging Taiwanese society into chaos amid an arms race between the mainland and Taiwan.
China's ability to prevent continued U.S. arms sales is limited. For the United States, it is more acceptable to avoid deploying its own troops and instead rely on Taiwan's own forces to resist the mainland's People's Liberation Army. This allows the U.S. to avoid assuming defense responsibilities while continuing to profit from arms sales.

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In a perverse way it makes more strategic sense to resolve the Taiwan question by force, simply because China has prepared for it. If the assumption is that a war will happen at some point, better to fight one that you have been preparing for. Taiwan theatre is also at China's doorstep, much easier logistically. If the US does not join in, then it will lose its strategic reliability in the region, if it does join in, then the contest over west pacific can be decided all at once.

tamsen_ikard said:

Its always CACO, not just XACO.

If China had any kind of "red line", they will be announcing Arms donation, not sales, To Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

China still doesn't have the guts to openly Challenge US, even in its own backyard. Its disappointing but sad reality.

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this is true , but china will be better equipped in 2030s to deal with these kinds of things , as its self sufficiency goes up in both tech and the currency it imports its raw materials in , allowing it to impose restrictions short of war on those that cross its red lines without having to worry about any vulnerabilities that the west may exploit in retaliation

Overbom said:

New mega $20 billion arms package prepared for Taiwan.

Will we see a meeting or a XACO?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2019903972090187976

Click to expand...

tamsen_ikard said:

Its always CACO, not just XACO.

If China had any kind of "red line", they will be announcing Arms donation, not sales, To Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

Click to expand...

You guys are giving the US too much credit for Ameria's low-hanging fruits. All the US has to do to "win" in this situation is ship items to an island that is not under embargo and wants to accept them. What does China have to do to "win"? Prevent this shipment in maritime AND offer no concessions at all to the sender. That's a very difficult task for China and a very easy task for the US. So let's say that the US "wins". What does it win? If China decides to use military action to take over Taiwan island, those weapons will be destroyed along with others in the oppening barrage. So the prize is just optics. I would much rather China offer nothing for this than to expend any energy preventing it.

So why doesn't China do the low-hanging fruit and arm America's small enemies? Because as a declining hegemon, the US still dominates the international order so it routinely invades other countries. To send these items to them, China may "win" a small optics prize when it is done, but they also don't matter in any conflict but would just be seized, destroyed and ridiculed as failures because they couldn't save a third world country smaller than a US state from being invaded by the US.

So the main differences for why China doesn't do what the US does while the US does do it:
1. Despite making no difference in actual conflict, the US gets paid premium prices while China's basically donating or heavily subsidizing them.
2. The chances of China actually deciding to invade Taiwan island abandoning hope of peaceful reunion is extremely low compared to Trump ransacking some small country to vent frustration that the US can't compete with China.

tamsen_ikard said:

China still doesn't have the guts to openly Challenge US, even in its own backyard. Its disappointing but sad reality.

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You still don't have the brains to figure out anything than exact reciprocal answers to challenges. That's the disappointing and sad reality. Every country answers to its own strengths; the US in international politics and China in technological innovation. Only the foolish answer his enemy's strengths with his own weaknesses just because they are in the same type of action.