2023: the Third Sino-Japanese War

advill said:

Whether the Japanese "Hawks" will get anywhere have yet to be seen. Yes, I agree IF there is a sudden & sneaky attack against Japan, it would be difficult now for the country to mobilise overnight, BUT under the Japanese-US Defense Treaty the would-be attackers would have to contend with a much greater retaliatory combined force. It would be very short-sighted to give the examples of how "disasters" including Earthquakes are dealt with as reported by Japan & China. News in the media is open in Japan, compared to China which is highly selective, and some attempts of cover-ups had taken place (e.g. the Railway disaster in recent past). Anyway, some would be glad that the "Arms Race" begins to escalate in Asia as countries become belligerant. Lesson to learn: Nations who are the aggressors & tried to bully, coerce or bribe others have FAILED. WW II was a good example. Ahhh! but some political and military leaders have shelved and thrown past history into their "dustbins", as their country believes in the dictum "Rich Country, Strong Military" & the Nation can show-off their Military power indiscriminatly. Sadly, humans can never learn - God protect our future generations from disasters.

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The performance of the Chinese relief effort the wake of the Sichuan Earthquake has been reported by the entire world. Not even usually anti-China media has reported any significant falsehood. Any supposed cover-ups in recent railway accidents have no bearing upon this fact.

It also doesn't matter if you give Japan 10 years to prepare for war. They would still not have the resources and manufacturing capabilities needed, even if you could magically transform the attitude of the Japanese population. Furthermore, a Japan who renounced its pacifist constitution is not going to piss off just China, but also both North and South Korea. It might well serve as a catalyst for further China-SK cooperation, and there is no telling what the North might do.

According to Western media and US Allies, North Korea has

1- Shelled South Korean islands
2- Sunk a South Korean warship
3- Kidnapped and murdered SK and Japanese citizens
4- Developed weapons of mass destruction (i.e. nukes)

Yet, the only reaction NK got was some stern reprimands from US & friends.

Do you *really* think the US is going to fight China for Japan?

advill said:

Whether the Japanese "Hawks" will get anywhere have yet to be seen. Yes, I agree IF there is a sudden & sneaky attack against Japan, it would be difficult now for the country to mobilise overnight, BUT under the Japanese-US Defense Treaty the would-be attackers would have to contend with a much greater retaliatory combined force.

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What is this obsession with Chinese 'sneak' attacks? Since it's founding, the PRC has never resorted to using sneak attacks before declaring hostilities, and there is absolutely no good reason for them to start now or anytime soon. The only reason parts of the western media and bad western bulletporn writers obsess about a Chinese sneak attack is because they want to desperately manufacture parallels between modern day China and WWII Fascist Japan.

If either side really wanted a fight, and maybe even if neither does, the dispute over the Diaoyu islands could very easily and quite plausibly deteriorate and spiral out of control frighteningly fast. Under such a scenario, the Japanese would have very little time to mobilize and prepare for a conflict they are categorically unprepared to fight.

The entire Japanese defense strategy has been based on fighting off a Soviet invasion, and then bottling up NK, and Japan always expected to be fighting as a junior partner to the USN.

On it's own, while the Japanese fleet and air forces are impressive and by no stretch of the imagination a push over, they are nonetheless deficient in many critical areas, often on a national and structural level that would be expensive, hard and time consuming to address. If forced to fight alone, those shortcomings could easily become critically important, especially when trying to control islands so far from Japanese home bases.

It would be very short-sighted to give the examples of how "disasters" including Earthquakes are dealt with as reported by Japan & China. News in the media is open in Japan, compared to China which is highly selective, and some attempts of cover-ups had taken place (e.g. the Railway disaster in recent past). Anyway, some would be glad that the "Arms Race" begins to escalate in Asia as countries become belligerant.

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As the old saying goes, it's not what you have got but how you use it that counts. Responses to natural disasters is a good guide to how decisive leaders are, and how responsive military units are to sudden, unexpected large scale events. A large natural disaster is about as realistic a test one can have of how well a nation's military might perform in a large scale military operation without actually having to fight a war.

Another old axiom of warfare is that wars are won or lost through logistics as much as through military performance. A large natural disaster and a military's response is a very good indication of how well that military's logistical infrastructure works and how well and how quickly the nation's industry and economy can shift gears to aid in any national military undertaking.

In terms of leadership and logistics, it is abundantly clear which military is better prepared for conflict.

Lesson to learn: Nations who are the aggressors & tried to bully, coerce or bribe others have FAILED. WW II was a good example. Ahhh! but some political and military leaders have shelved and thrown past history into their "dustbins", as their country believes in the dictum "Rich Country, Strong Military" & the Nation can show-off their Military power indiscriminatly. Sadly, humans can never learn - God protect our future generations from disasters.

Click to expand...

Cast your eyes across the world and into recent global history, which country/countries best fit your 'aggressors and bullies', who 'coerce or bribe' others to get their way as a matter or course, and who 'show-off their military power indiscriminately' the most? It sure as hell isn't China.

solarz said:

According to Western media and US Allies, North Korea has

1- Shelled South Korean islands
2- Sunk a South Korean warship
3- Kidnapped and murdered SK and Japanese citizens
4- Developed weapons of mass destruction (i.e. nukes)

Yet, the only reaction NK got was some stern reprimands from US & friends.

Do you *really* think the US is going to fight China for Japan?

Click to expand...

I agree with the other parts of your post, but you would do well to remember that China is not North Korea as well.

America does not want to respond to North Korean aggression because North Korea has carefully cultivated an image of international nutcase. No one really can say with any degree of certainty just how much of that is just for show and how much North Korean leaders actually believe their own fairy tales, and there is nothing much for America to gain in calling their bluff.

North Korea is a like a crazy bugger waving a rusty shiv around with crazy eye and nothing to loose. Who wants to mess with that?

OTOH, China is regarded as sane, rational and responsible, even if the western war hawks would never admit it publicly. China is also wealthy, and has a very bright future ahead of it. That means that there is an expectation that China cares about maximizing it's own self-interest, which implies it can calculate cost benefit and risk management analysis.

There are two main ways America and China might find themselves in a war with each other.

1) Miscalculation
America tries to second guess Chinese cost-benefit and risk management analysis and thinks that if America piles on enough pressure (ie through the threat of military force), eventually China will back down. If China does not back down, the two sides might find themselves in a shooting war neither wanted yet both cannot afford to loose.

2) Pre-emption
Barring some remote, world changing event, China is going to overtake America as the world's top power within our lifetime. If current trends broadly holds, China will surpass America economically first, then militarily, technologically and politically.

At present, this all seems very far off, and most Americans believe, if not expect that at some point, good 'ld fashioned American ingenuity, democracy, technical expertise, manifest destiny, whatever, will see that trend stopped and reversed.

As time passes and China gets closer and closer, the same kind of insecurities and overt hostilities Americans displayed during the Cold War may well resurface, in which case, there could be a growing popular support for America to wield it's conventional military advantage to prevent China from overtaking America while that is still a viable option.

In which case, it would not be hard for America to engineer a clash, which they can then escalate into a full scale war. One of the ways to do that is to set Japan off to escalate territorial disputes with China, and then involve the mutual defense treaty to enter the conflict on Japan's side.

It would be a mistake to categorically rule out the possibility of American military involvement on Japan's side in any territorial military clash. Just because America does not want to bother with North Korea does not mean America is scared of North Korea, or of China for that matter.

The reason why South Korea and its allies did not react to North Korea's belligerency in the past was because they did not want to escalate the hostility. They also thought China, North Korea's ally could rein-in the DPRK's threatening behavior. Even now, with the recent launch of the North Korean ballistic missile, China's protestation (for PR purposes?) was unheeded by young Kim. Well, South Korea & Japan will almost certainly counter any perceived threats ----- God forbid, even turn to Nuclear Weapons' development to protect themselves. As for the US, I am sure Chinese analysts are now very experienced in evaluating US and other nations' political, economic, social-cultural, technological (inc. Cyber Warfare). Like wise, on balance, the US, Western Countries, Russia and other countries would do the same especially in uncertain world events. Ty_co's fiction story (with improvements of course from some suggestions) would turn out to be factual - dateline 2023!

solarz said:

The performance of the Chinese relief effort the wake of the Sichuan Earthquake has been reported by the entire world. Not even usually anti-China media has reported any significant falsehood. Any supposed cover-ups in recent railway accidents have no bearing upon this fact.

It also doesn't matter if you give Japan 10 years to prepare for war. They would still not have the resources and manufacturing capabilities needed, even if you could magically transform the attitude of the Japanese population. Furthermore, a Japan who renounced its pacifist constitution is not going to piss off just China, but also both North and South Korea. It might well serve as a catalyst for further China-SK cooperation, and there is no telling what the North might do.

According to Western media and US Allies, North Korea has

1- Shelled South Korean islands
2- Sunk a South Korean warship
3- Kidnapped and murdered SK and Japanese citizens
4- Developed weapons of mass destruction (i.e. nukes)

Yet, the only reaction NK got was some stern reprimands from US & friends.

Do you *really* think the US is going to fight China for Japan?

Click to expand...

plawolf said:

I agree with the other parts of your post, but you would do well to remember that China is not North Korea as well.

America does not want to respond to North Korean aggression because North Korea has carefully cultivated an image of international nutcase. No one really can say with any degree of certainty just how much of that is just for show and how much North Korean leaders actually believe their own fairy tales, and there is nothing much for America to gain in calling their bluff.

North Korea is a like a crazy bugger waving a rusty shiv around with crazy eye and nothing to loose. Who wants to mess with that?

Click to expand...

I think you're forgetting the real reason the US does not attack North Korea.

If acting crazy could prevent an American invasion, then Saddam would still be in his palace today.

It's not NK's nuclear capabilities either, as the USA had ample opportunity to mount an attack on NK nuclear facilities long before they got a bomb working.

I think it's pretty obvious, the USA doesn't touch NK because China is standing firmly behind it. Any US attack on NK is equivalent to a war with China.

So if the US is not willing to go to war with China over a rogue nation that has repeatedly (according to the US at least) attacked its allies, how likely is it that the US would be willing to go to war with China over the Diaoyu Islands?

plawolf said:

I have only read the first couple segments so far, interesting fiction and well written. But a lot of the details are bugging me.

Firstly, no pilot worth his wings would ever forget to leave himself enough fuel to get home plus a healthy margin for emergencies. Even if he was near 'bingo fuel' at the start of the incident, there was no way such a brief dogfight could possibly exhaust his fuel reserves to the point where he would only have a few minutes worth of fuel left at the end of it.

Secondly, there was no way the JSDAF or USAF could possibly have scrambled fighters fast enough for them to be only a few minutes away after the shoot down. Realistically, it would have been a minor miracle for anyone to have even managed to get fighters off the ground so soon after an unexpected incident.

Thirdly, there is simply no way any commander anywhere would ever order his pilot to ditch a perfectly good airplane for fear of him being shot down. It would have been incalculably better to have the fighter and pilot in your possession, where you can use the audio logs, mission computer logs, gun camera footage etc to support your version of events and have your pilot present his version of events to a friendly press than having no proof to support your story, have your man in hostile hands where he might be coerced into changing his story and potentially have a hostile power get their hands on a near pristine example of one of your top end fighter jets after they had fished it out of the drink.

The time scale also does not work. In order for the pilot to have delivered a proper verbal debriefing over the radio would have taken at the very least 15 minutes for a the most basic outline of what happened when you take into account the inevitable demands for clarification from the base operators, the highly excited state of the pilot etc. It would not have been unusual for debriefings to take days or weeks before investigators are satisfied they have a good accounting of what happened in realistic terms. Even if the pilot managed to get his story across in 5 minutes, he would still have been well outside of disputed waters.

The amount of information that was gathered was also too good to be true. For one thing, there is no way a tip from a 'friendly fishing boat' would ever be patched directly into command level tactical briefings without at least some confirmation from military sources first. At best such a tip would only make some lowly analyst divert UAVs or OTH radars or other assess to check out the claim, and even that is being very generous. In all likelihood, the fishing boat won't have a clue who to call with such a tip, and even if they did get a message out (perhaps using the texting function of the Chinese BeiDou GPS network), it would take a lot longer for anyone in any position to act upon that information to be notified of it. The only way information could be so quickly and directly fed into the PLA tactical network would be if it was a PLAN asset that spotted the F22s taking off.

The key to good fiction is to make it believable, and the key to making fiction believable is to see if you can poke holes in your narrative.

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Hey, good points. Would it make this more realistic if 1) Captain Kang's J-31 got clipped by some 20mm Vulcan rounds, which made him ditch, and 2) the jets didn't get scrambled?

Sometime in 2001

"Three fingers and a jawbone. Guess what didn't burn down to ash dissolved in that puddle of... hy-dro-chloric acid and red phos-phate."

Gu Zhenlun, thirty-five, balding, lit a Hongtashan filter, then resumed reading from the thick manila folder spread on the table. Next to him, a twentysomething man sat, watching him quizzically. He spoke.

"It's not our apartment, Gu."

Gu fidgeted a moment, then put out the cigarette. "Poor girl. How much are we paying her?"

"A hundred and twenty five thousand."

"That's a lot of money. Maybe we could just scare the shit out of her. It'd be cheaper."

The younger man shot him a look.

Gu ignored it. "Back in the day..."

The young man spoke. "Back in the day, people who fucked up knew enough to shut the fuck up."

"Aww, look at you. First field trip out of the office, and you're gettin' all uppity. Bet you're just sayin' that 'cause she looks so cute." Gu pointed at a photo of a smiling, twenty-something girl clipped to the bundle of files.

"Maybe I'm saying that because you look so ugly. And I just got engaged."

Gu stopped, a little surprised. Then he smiled. "Son, not everyone thinks I'm ugly. And not everyone cares that you're engaged."

Click-clack. From the door: a crack of light from edge, now opening. A stunning young woman walked in, bag of groceries suddenly clattering to the floor beside heels. One, sudden, gasp.

Quick--to his feet: Gu and the younger man, who extended his hand in a polite handshake, as if this were a corporate meeting, not a B & E.

A polite, if puzzled, handshake. One hand wide, confident, long-fingered--an air-element hand--the other a thin-fingered, delicate water hand. "Hi, this is Gu Zhenlun. I'm Zhang Shenghan. We're here from Jia Li Group." The woman's hand wrenched away, became a quick five fingers across Shenghan's face. Gu stood to one side and fought to control his laughter.

Shenghan rubbed his sore cheek and continued without missing a beat. "Anyhow, we believe in fulfilling our social responsibilities, and we are deeply sorry for the passing of your husband, Mr. Feng Yixian."

She spoke. "He wasn't my husband. We were... we were due to be married in..." She cut herself off mid-sentence, then ordered the two men to perform an anatomically impossible sex act with each other and leave her apartment.

Gu shrugged, starting for the door. Shenghan stood, unmoving. Gu--a look at his partner. Shenghan ignored it, instead keeping an intent stare on the gorgeous lady. "Miss, we really want to help you. We've prepared compensation for the loss of your husb--I mean, your fiance. We'd like you also to sign this document absolving--"

Her long hair shifted slightly under sagging shoulders. "How much?"

Shenghan, quickly. "A hundred thousand." Gu, offscreen, raised his eyebrows.

"Was he really that cheap?"

Shenghan didn't know how to respond. She stared into the young man's eyes for a long minute. Then she signed the document.

Gu and his partner left the apartment in a hurry. Shenghan expected the door to slam shut behind him, but when he turned around, he found her standing, still looking at him. Shenghan looked away, eyes lowered.

---

Daylight, fighting through blinds, spilling over a crowded desk onto a scuffed beige carpet.

Wang Baosen, forty-three, sat. Hanging limply off only one shoulder, an army greatcoat hid twenty years of fat and searched in vain for an arm left on the hills outside Lang Son.

In front of him, his VP of Finance--Zhang Shenghan, county valedictorian, three years out of Harvard Business School, the only Harvard MBA in the entire province--stood, waiting to be judged.

"You gave out all the money?"

Shenghan glanced out the window, then to his boss. "Almost. I've still got fifteen thousand left for Doctor Zhao. Any reason we're paying more than the usual rate, sir?"

"Skipping right to the point, aren't you? Well, let me be frank. The team from American Bromide that's coming to visit next month--it's going to include their head of Asia ex-India."

Asia ex-India. A single inward chuckle. Asia, minus the one time we gassed ten thousand people.

"Is something about that funny, Xiao Zhang?"

Shenghan shook his head. "No, sir." His thoughts drifted back to snippets of a vodka-soaked conversation with a corporate strategy associate in a dumpy Shanghai bar. We're looking for a way into the Chinese market, but the regulators keep giving us hell with a complete buyout. My boss is in Beijing right now trying to sort it all out.

Baosen continued. "Anyhow, get this. Their Asia head just finished meeting with the Premier as part of a business delegation for the WTO negotiations. He changed his schedule and is flying straight back to New York, then flying straight here."

"Their headquarters are in Michigan."

"Yeah, but what was it you said about America? All their banks are in New York?"

"So it's true. They do want to buy us." It was as good as done, Shenghan knew. They wanted in, they had a green light from Beijing, they had three months to get the deal done before the WTO train would choo-choo out of the station and leave them behind forever. There's blood in the water, let's go kill'em, his boss at DLJ used to say. Shenghan smiled.

Baosen, nonplussed. "Anyhow, I think this is a great opportunity. Not only for Jia Li Group, but hell, for the town, the entire province--and for you." Wang took a deep breath. "After we're acquired, I'm sure your education will let you excel in the new company."

Shenghan got the message, but fought it. "Sir, I'd like to manage the acquisition process."

Baosen's face clouded. "Gu Zhenlun will be running the acquisition." He leaned forward. "Xiao Zhang, you're smart--but principled. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach."

Shenghan looked directly at his boss. "You're wrong, sir."

"Would you be willing to bribe bankers, in order to make them less likely to finance your rivals?"

"Boss Wang, we've been over this."

Baosen, firm. "Yes or no, Xiao Zhang."

Shenghan, emphatic. "No."

"Would you be willing to help entrap an honest government official on false charges, so that his more flexible colleagues may gain power?"

"No."

"Would you be willing to cause an incident, or even a fatal accident, at the production line of a competitor, to--"

"No!"

Baosen shook his head in exasperation. "Then for heavens' sake, stick to assignments where you won't have to make those choices. Don't be a leader. Especially not in China."

Shenghan stood his ground. "I know you mean well, Boss Wang, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father."

A long, mutual stare, like mantises--then the tri-tonal beeping of a cheap plastic push-button phone. Baosen, annoyed. "Yeah?... alright... well, thanks for the advance warning."

He put down the receiver. "Okay. You're in luck. Gu just called. His aunt's sick."

"You mean he has a new mistress." Shenghan snorted, bitter. "How could you even think of letting an philandering idiot like him--"

A quick smile. "Because he's a man who can answer yes to those questions I've just asked you. Anyhow, you need to take his spot at a dinner tonight with our bankers."

"I'll need to meet Zhao at the hospital first."

Baosen nodded, then turned to his computer. Shenghan left.

Wow, had no idea this story might ever be nonfiction...

solarz said:

I think you're forgetting the real reason the US does not attack North Korea.

If acting crazy could prevent an American invasion, then Saddam would still be in his palace today.

It's not NK's nuclear capabilities either, as the USA had ample opportunity to mount an attack on NK nuclear facilities long before they got a bomb working.

I think it's pretty obvious, the USA doesn't touch NK because China is standing firmly behind it. Any US attack on NK is equivalent to a war with China.

So if the US is not willing to go to war with China over a rogue nation that has repeatedly (according to the US at least) attacked its allies, how likely is it that the US would be willing to go to war with China over the Diaoyu Islands?

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Chinese support for North Korea is hardly iron clad. I seriously doubt China would have lifted a finger if South Korea or America launched punitive military strikes against North Korea in response to any of it's major provocations for example.

Chinese support for North Korea would only become a factor if regime change was the objective of any military operation.

What deterred America and South Korea from launching any such strikes is the fact that no one can be sure just how sane North Korea's leaders really are.

If America or Israel bombed Iran, they would expect some blowback, but they would expect Iran's leaders to think of the bigger picture and not do things that might cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of their citizens just to get a little payback. Can you say the same of North Korean leaders? That uncertainty is what swayed American and South Korean hands time and again, not the imagined threat that the PLA will pour across the Yalu if they dared to touch a stone in North Korea.

plawolf said:

Chinese support for North Korea is hardly iron clad. I seriously doubt China would have lifted a finger if South Korea or America launched punitive military strikes against North Korea in response to any of it's major provocations for example.

Chinese support for North Korea would only become a factor if regime change was the objective of any military operation.

What deterred America and South Korea from launching any such strikes is the fact that no one can be sure just how sane North Korea's leaders really are.

If America or Israel bombed Iran, they would expect some blowback, but they would expect Iran's leaders to think of the bigger picture and not do things that might cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of their citizens just to get a little payback. Can you say the same of North Korean leaders? That uncertainty is what swayed American and South Korean hands time and again, not the imagined threat that the PLA will pour across the Yalu if they dared to touch a stone in North Korea.

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This. I think this is the clearest enunciation of China's NK policy I've heard, anywhere.