PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

davidau

Senior Member
Registered Member
Russia intel is not as good but better than China's. Putin used false flag to attack Chechen rebels and retake control of Chechnya. If China is to retake Taiwan, China would require the use of false flag attack and blame the it on Taiwan and deploy carte blanche to destroy the Taiwanese government with no foreign interference.
A load of rubbish. China is not as low as that.
 

james smith esq

Senior Member
Registered Member
It has less to do with proficiency and more to do with immigrant population and reserve currency.

The US has a large segment of immigrant population with can infiltrate back into the host country with ease.

Having the reserve currency, US can always rush in when the host country financially collapse and coopt someone with bailout and or blackmail.

It is simply a measure of short term calculus, nothing really to admire of.

In the long term, all these actions will result in unintended entropy, hastening US departure from primacy.

The Western world has never really understood the core of Eastern thought, that in some/many instances inaction is action itself......
I always do nothing!

Wu Wei is my name.

LOL!
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Vast majority of the US military analysts and policy analysts acknowledge that China has the clear advantage over the US militarily during a Taiwan contingency. Essentially, the US military intervention is unwinnable against China. But more than a few of them now point out supposedly the main Chinese deficiency in launching an all out invasion of the island of Taiwan: lack of landing ships.

Leave aside whether this is true or not (I disagree strongly, as I have argued elsewhere at SDF), this argument feels a bit surreal. You're talking about clearly one of the areas of strength for China: shipbuilding. Ships of all sorts, that is. LPD, LHD, LST, LCAC are not something difficult to build, not for China anyway. They're also not like aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines, which are expensive and take a long time to build. Chinese shipyards can churn out all kinds of landing ships like sausages in no time if that's really the issue.

I suppose that putting up lack of landing ships as the excuse that China can not launch a successful invasion and landing of Taiwan is really just another way of admitting that militarily Taiwan is a lost cause, with or without US military intervention.

So the barriers for China to finally take over Taiwan lie elsewhere, which would be a subject for a different discussion.

Don't forget the 17,000 fishing boats

It's straightforward to beach a fishing boat at low-tide
Then unload troops and supplies
Then wait for high-tide for the boat to refloat

It's only 200km from mainland China to Taiwan, and the supply of Chinese fishing boats is essentially unlimited.
And Taiwan would be an infantry battle fought in urban or mountainous terrain.

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AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yes I did and I still believe they lack the sea lift But as I said before it is not due to lack of technology China can easily built hundred of LST if it so desire They have plenty of small shipyard that can do it I guess timing is still nor right of they still not yet decided on the invasion. I expect they will start crash program to built LST if they decide to invade Taiwan

There are 17000 fishing boats which will work as well.
 

james smith esq

Senior Member
Registered Member
Has the possibility been raised, here, of any military operation in Taiwan being either initiated or concluded by a major drone operation? What Turkey did to Syria and Russia and what Azerbaijan did to Armenia have added new chapters to the anti-armor and anti-A-A battery textbooks!
Or, at-least, new sections to the anti-armor and anti-A-A battery chapters.
 

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
There are 17000 fishing boats which will work as well.
Yea, the world's largest merchant fleet in world history, can be commandeered for any bulk transport movement once air superiority and naval superiority is secured. Once air superiority is established, a beachhead can be secured via armored transports and sealift capability.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yea, the world's largest merchant fleet in world history, can be commandeered for any bulk transport movement once air superiority and naval superiority is secured. Once air superiority is established, a beachhead can be secured via armored transports and sealift capability.

I think they would be useful even before air and naval superiority was achieved.

After all, China only has a limited number of military-grade amphibious warships.
So if possible, it's better for a fishing boat to be hit instead. They are essentially unlimited in number.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Firstly, all of this ‘lack of sea lift’ nonsense is just just nonsense, and seems to be based purely off of the idiotic notion that since Taiwan technically can have a million men under arms, China need to send in two million.

For starters, the China of today isn’t the China of the Korean War where they need numerical superiority to overcome technological deficits. It is actually China that enjoys technological dominance in almost every conceivable and relevant field compared to the ROC.

Only direct American military intervention can bring about technological parity, but no realistic American intervention scenario involves massive US ground troop deployments into Taiwan, so it doesn’t change the calculation at all in terms of the number of boots on the ground needed by the PLA.

Secondly, Chinese military sealife capabilities are only needed to secure the beachhead. Once that has been accomplished, they can make as many round trips as they like with their landing ships to bring in all the reinforcements they want. Hell, at that stage they can use civilian ferries if they want. Let’s not forget that even the British used civilian cruise ships as troop transports and container ships during the Falklands. It really doesn’t matter if you achieve air and sea dominance.

I have always maintained that the PLA has determined it had the means to take Taiwan any time it wanted over a decade ago. It’s only because the base requirement has been met that they can afford to look to true global power projection capabilities like carriers, LHDs, 055s, Y20s and H20s etc.

All of those big ticket items are absolutely not necessary for a Taiwan scenario. Western analysis and punts keep scratching their heads at how China plans to use those assets in a Taiwan scenario and fail because they are making the mistaken assumption that China needs to throw everything including the kitchen sink at Taiwan to take it, so of course it needs to use those new crown jewel assets! But they just cannot square the circle and reconcile the blue water long distance power projection nature of those assets and Taiwan being so close to China. Those assets are for China’s future belt and road investments, because that’s where China has determined America will most likely try to pick a fight once it finally accepts the reality that Taiwan is not only a lost cause, but a total death trap if they are stupid enough to walk into it.

I personally think a primary reason China has not yet moved on Taiwan is because it is playing a far longer game, and for far higher stakes than America realises.

Think about it, how could China continue to massively invest in its MIC and rapidly built a military that can beat America’s and not cause the Americans to absolutely loose their collective shits over?

So long as China doesn’t take Taiwan by force, enough Americans will take that as proof positive that China could not yet do so to hamstring and cripple their Cold War 2.0 efforts domestically. Because something like 90% of America have been brainwashed into thinking China as cartoonish villains who will ponce as soon as it thinks it has a chance at winning. That, coupled with ingrained brainwashing, will mean that no matter how big and advanced the PLA becomes, most Americans will still think USA is automatically better and more powerful.

American political elites are where the late Qing dynasty was in its self delusion and allowing the hard won technological, economic, political, and most critically, military advantages of past generations atrophy away as they peruse pure greed, corruption and base indulgences.

A total and humiliating military defeat over Taiwan is the kind of watershed moment that might trigger a full blown revolution as the people are violently snapped out of the brainwashing stupor the western MSM have been keeping them in for decades. While that might be good for China in the short run, in the long run, it could result in a far more capable and dangerous opponent coming back to get revenge after they have put their own house in order.

China is, in my view, building up the raw hard power capabilities to take full advantage of any American revolution or Civil War 2.0 that may result from a loss over Taiwan to fundamentally and irreversibly reshape the world to its own benefit and lock in all of its gains rather than have it only be temporary and easily rolled back by America once it re-emerges from its own internal purges. At a minimum.
 
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