PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[Serb]

I don't think US is a big threat to fight China either. But I do think Japan, Taiwan, South Korea are big threats. These are delusional western worshippers and do hate China with a passion. I don't think they will accept Chinese dominance without a fight. The most likely scenario will likely be these countries trying to acquire nukes and China will be forced to fight a war to prevent them from getting nukes. I think the probability of China being forced to fight Japan is very high.

But recent Ukraine and Iran wars have shown none of the so called super powers have the numbers necessary to fight a proper conventional war with a competent opponent. When you compare with the past cold war and ww2 numbers, these countries used to maintain armies of several millions and had the arms stockpile to fight an attritional war.

But I think US success in the gulf war in 1991 had a very negative effect, it made countries believe they dont need to maintain big number of troops or weapons to fight war anymore. They thought technology and air power is sufficient to victory.

China also fell victim to that and rapidly reduced its armed force numbers and also reduced weapons stockpile, focusing on quality instead of quantity.

I think modern warfare is again becoming more about attrition. Drones and missiles have leveled the playing field. Now you dont need air superiority to cause massive damage to your enemies. And small countries can again fight against big power using drones and missiles.

China cannot expect to fight a war in the pacific and expect to win easily even if they achieve air dominance. They will face mass drone and missiles strikes and will likely see its strategic factories, radars and other installations destroyed.

Yes, they can also inflict this damage to its enemies. But that is not the point. The point is China cannot gain dominance without massive losses and that will make Chinese leaders reluctant to use force, and thus they will not be able to gain dominance.

How do people still not get that China is the "OG" asymmetric and saturation attack powerhouse?

That is why it could afford more restrained budgets for so long, and why it started building the far seas navy and advanced AF relatively late.

It did not need to copy the US model early because its true regional strength and defensive potential already came mostly from missile and targeting technology, manufacturing scale, and industrial dominance.

DJI is Chinese. The steel is Chinese. The chemicals are Chinese. Sector after sector, China corners the global market share.

It is all about having a nationalized defense sector that can adapt to emerging asymmetric trends quickly, strip out the bloat, and focus on what actually delivers the best results for defense, without crowding out the civil sectors and economy, but working in tandem.

Its state is far more trustworthy to its citizens and more efficient than the joke governments in Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.

By the time those states ever tried to emulate Iran’s or China's kind of political will and civil-military fusion, they would already be choking under a complete blockade and watching their entire critical infrastructure get wrecked.

As long as they are stuck where they are, they have no real chance of ever standing against China.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I don't think US is a big threat to fight China either. But I do think Japan, Taiwan, South Korea are big threats. These are delusional western worshippers and do hate China with a passion. I don't think they will accept Chinese dominance without a fight. The most likely scenario will likely be these countries trying to acquire nukes and China will be forced to fight a war to prevent them from getting nukes. I think the probability of China being forced to fight Japan is very high.

But recent Ukraine and Iran wars have shown none of the so called super powers have the numbers necessary to fight a proper conventional war with a competent opponent. When you compare with the past cold war and ww2 numbers, these countries used to maintain armies of several millions and had the arms stockpile to fight an attritional war.

But I think US success in the gulf war in 1991 had a very negative effect, it made countries believe they dont need to maintain big number of troops or weapons to fight war anymore. They thought technology and air power is sufficient to victory.

China also fell victim to that and rapidly reduced its armed force numbers and also reduced weapons stockpile, focusing on quality instead of quantity.

I think modern warfare is again becoming more about attrition. Drones and missiles have leveled the playing field. Now you dont need air superiority to cause massive damage to your enemies. And small countries can again fight against big power using drones and missiles.

China cannot expect to fight a war in the pacific and expect to win easily even if they achieve air dominance. They will face mass drone and missiles strikes and will likely see its strategic factories, radars and other installations destroyed.

Yes, they can also inflict this damage to its enemies. But that is not the point. The point is China cannot gain dominance without massive losses and that will make Chinese leaders reluctant to use force, and thus they will not be able to gain dominance.

but you have to get past the mental barrier first.

SK, Taiwan and Japan don't see themselves as Iran, they see themselves as Israel.

They hire guys to write about how ballistic missiles are literally a weapon of dictators, as in, only dictators use ballistic missiles.

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As a Marxist-Leninist regime, the CCP relies on terror tactics to sustain its power at home and grow its strength abroad. That’s why the regime loves ballistic missiles; they stoke Chinese nationalism and drive foreigners into fits of fright. Yet, contrary to the CCP-manufactured myth, China’s ballistic missiles are not capable of leaving Taiwan a smoldering ruin.

 

[latenlazy]

China barely produces 200 fighter jets, barely produces 100 tanks per year.

Uh huh and how much does Japan and Taiwan produce?

 

[Dante80]

This is a ridiculous editorial.

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[montyp165]

but you have to get past the mental barrier first.

SK, Taiwan and Japan don't see themselves as Iran, they see themselves as Israel.

They hire guys to write about how ballistic missiles are literally a weapon of dictators, as in, only dictators use ballistic missiles.

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The terminally brain dead western ideologues and their propagandists always forget that those who lose trade wars cannot win shooting ones.

 

[Equation]

I don't think US is a big threat to fight China either. But I do think Japan, Taiwan, South Korea are big threats. These are delusional western worshippers and do hate China with a passion. I don't think they will accept Chinese dominance without a fight. The most likely scenario will likely be these countries trying to acquire nukes and China will be forced to fight a war to prevent them from getting nukes. I think the probability of China being forced to fight Japan is very high.

But recent Ukraine and Iran wars have shown none of the so called super powers have the numbers necessary to fight a proper conventional war with a competent opponent. When you compare with the past cold war and ww2 numbers, these countries used to maintain armies of several millions and had the arms stockpile to fight an attritional war.

But I think US success in the gulf war in 1991 had a very negative effect, it made countries believe they dont need to maintain big number of troops or weapons to fight war anymore. They thought technology and air power is sufficient to victory.

China also fell victim to that and rapidly reduced its armed force numbers and also reduced weapons stockpile, focusing on quality instead of quantity.

I think modern warfare is again becoming more about attrition. Drones and missiles have leveled the playing field. Now you dont need air superiority to cause massive damage to your enemies. And small countries can again fight against big power using drones and missiles.

China cannot expect to fight a war in the pacific and expect to win easily even if they achieve air dominance. They will face mass drone and missiles strikes and will likely see its strategic factories, radars and other installations destroyed.

Yes, they can also inflict this damage to its enemies. But that is not the point. The point is China cannot gain dominance without massive losses and that will make Chinese leaders reluctant to use force, and thus they will not be able to gain dominance.

Meanwhile the war in Iran had caused the China haters in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to rethink their hatred. They will be cut off from ANY oil supplies coming in. Forget about Russia or the US providing them any oil to fight against China. No amount of praying to their white Jesus will bring them any miracles against those "vile and evil" humanitarian CPC that uplifted 900 million people out of poverty.

China can cut off rare earths minerals to prevent any chips and drones from producing in such numbers for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Those three won't just be fighting China, they will be facing pressures from North Korea and Russia in ALL aspects.

"The point is China cannot gain dominance without massive losses and that will make Chinese leaders reluctant to use force, and thus they will not be able to gain dominance."
Iran is taking massive military losses against the US and Israel and they're still in good position to win this. China is much much bigger than Iran.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

I think people are putting too much faith in China's production capacity. In a proper high intensity war, those factories could be disrupted very easily. Production could be stopped, material shipment stopped using drones and missiles, the entire factory or critical parts of it could be destroyed.

Putting too much faith on production during wartime is not prudent these days.

Worst case scenario, China loses production capacity and also faces mass drone and missile strikes and is forced to fight like Iran with limited stockpile.

I think they need to have some factories moved underground similar to Iran and how Mao envisioned with his third front strategy.

I don't understand why people are dumb enough to continuously bring this up. This has been debunked numerous times through hard numerical/statistical analysis. Yes, Chinese production facilities WILL be hit - but the rate of ordinance required to make a 0.1% impact on Chinese war production is 3-4 magnitudes greater than the total ordinance (including all ordinance, even dumb bombs) available to the US, which is about 5-6 magnitudes greater than US annual rate of ordinance production. And a lot of core Chinese industrial production is in fact located deep within the Chinese heartland, beyond the range of any current non-continental ranged missile possessed by the US. IE - Shenyang's aircraft production can be hit - but not to the extend required to delay/slow production, while Chengdu's aircraft production is out of range of US strike capabilities. In a real conflict, the US will be heavily constrained by the availability of launching platforms and basing options, which is going to further limit delivery options available and the rate of ordinance that can be fired. Have you not learnt anything from the Iran war?

But cannot really produce it in huge numbers due to its much lower military budget.

The problem is always money. China's adversaries are spending without limit while China barely grows its budget each year.

How are you still this dense? Money is a MEANINGLESS measure of state/military capacity - only hard production capabilities matter. The official defense budget of Iran is $10 billion. Weapons are expensive for the US because 1) manufacturing capacity in the US is priced at premium 2) R&D costs are very expensive due to high wages and lack of STEM talent 3) heavy MIC corruption. For items like missiles and drones, the cost of production for China is 1/10th that of the US.

China barely produces 200 fighter jets, barely produces 100 tanks per year.

Yes, China has developed plenty of new missiles and drone designs but they are iterating fast and do not have the time to acquire sufficient numbers.

Where do you think China's very limited 300 billion military budget goes? It mostly goes to research of new weapon systems rather than actual mass production of those systems.

Its clear China is prioritising rapid advancement of tech rather than stockpiling numbers.

So, no they dont have a massive stockpile because they never spent huge budget to acquire it. They purposefully kept their military budget low, and spent most of it on rapid catch up to US defense tech rather than mass production.

How many air forces in the world even have 200 fighters? The only other country in the world that is even able to produce 100 fighters / year is the US. Sufficient number of drones? Did you miss the news where China placed a single order for a million drones last year? Also, most of core military related R&D does NOT come from the defense budget - it comes from the R&D budget so the idea of spending going to research taking eating away from production of weapons is again wrong. In terms of R&D, the US has to spend many times more because for every 3 Chinese engineers being paid 300k RMB a year, the US has to employ 5 American engineers each being paid 120k USD a year - which means for each $1 spent on R&D by China, the US has to spend $5 to match it.

 

[PandaAI]

China will learn lessons from this Iran war.

1. Use of deep underground tunnels for weapons production and weapons storage will be critically important. Having all your production facilities above ground is not wise as it can be damaged or destroyed by missiles or drones.

2. Mass production of suicide drones is an absolute must. Suicide drones can be mass produced in far greater quantities than ballistic and cruise missiles. You can exhaust interceptor missiles using suicide drones and once the interceptor missiles are low the suicide drones will do a lot of damage and be the workhorse instead of exhausting valuable missiles.

3. Without its forward bases, the US military’s abilities are significantly curtailed. US aircraft carriers are reluctant to get close as the risk is too much from drones and missiles to lose such an expensive weapons platform that takes multiple years to build.

4. Japan and Taiwan are islands, they don’t have strategic depth and depend heavily on energy and food imports. Their ability to last a long war is limited.

5. It’s pretty much impossible to defeat modern China in a conventional war with the weapons and production capabilities it has. This is why it’s imperative China modernise its nuclear weapons capabilities and increase the number of nuclear warheads. US will know it can’t defeat China in a conventional war so its only option is going nuclear. This is why the US is trying desperately to get China to agree to nuclear arms control.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

1. Use of deep underground tunnels for weapons production and weapons storage will be critically important. Having all your production facilities above ground is not wise as it can be damaged or destroyed by missiles or drones.

Been done as part of 3rd front project since the time of Mao, further expanded and modernized under Deng. Just the inland MIC is able to self sufficiently outproduce US MIC several fold.

 

[Maikeru]

Been done as part of 3rd front project since the time of Mao, further expanded and modernized under Deng. Just the inland MIC is able to self sufficiently outproduce US MIC several fold.

AIUI the PLA is basically obsessed with UGF, from the Underground Great Wall to dozens of smaller facilities springing up all along the LAC after 2020.