Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis
- Thread starter sndef888
- Start date
- Status
TSMC is one of China's important infrastructure pillars, equal to some of the major SOEs in importance if not even slightly more, if US tries to move portions of it to their country without establishing a clear deal with Beijing over it first, it could easily be interpreted as a direct attack and be met with force, or at least by having the deal sabotaged, which wouldn't look good for USA.
Not sure where this fits in.
In AR scenario, the logistics / escalation potential over evacuation of 750,000 foreign nationals from TW is going to be interesting, especially if airfields / maritime facilities to resupply TW are going to be zero hour targets. My thinking is that PRC needs to spell out sooner than later that since TW is legally considered Chinese territory that any unauthorized efforts to exfil is legally an attack on sovereign Chinese soil. Domestic optics would view it as such regardless. Which leaves PRC/PLA asserting control over coordinating extraction/repatriation, preferably via secured TW port, that even without PLA taking, there will likely be global pressure on TW admin to allow. Which begs the followup, where to? IMO, if smart, directly to the mainland via maritime routes where foreign nationals will be processed. Which itselfs opens up the legal status / drama of foreign nationals operating on TW (read: Chinese soil) without valid PRC authorization. Which opens up all sorts of hostage drama / strategy options. Look up stats for foreign residents on island, risk to their nationals in TW will likely deter most of the region from cooperating with US intervention until evacuation. 750k will take lots of time, and ships, that itself makes anti shipping activity in TW strait (by TW or US et al)... complicated. And every evacuation ship going to the island is an opportunity to unload PLA assets. Also mitigates TW talent being paper clipped away, while mininizing chances of "enemies of the state" from escaping to their golden parachutes in west.
Related strategic/lawfare tomfoolery that should be implemented years prior would be to "encourage" foreign nationals on TW to apply for VISA via mainland, which will erode TW sovereignty, undermine migrant labour economy, possibly discourage/make lives difficult for increasing western PRC watchers and ex mainland media relocating to TW. The implication being if one doesn't have the proper PRC stamps, when shit goes down, one can't really expect to be treated as anything but a spy/hostile/illegal migrant subject to PRC domestic laws.
Of course if implemented prematurely, could also backfire spectacularly.
In AR scenario, the logistics / escalation potential over evacuation of 750,000 foreign nationals from TW is going to be interesting, especially if airfields / maritime facilities to resupply TW are going to be zero hour targets. My thinking is that PRC needs to spell out sooner than later that since TW is legally considered Chinese territory that any unauthorized efforts to exfil is legally an attack on sovereign Chinese soil. Domestic optics would view it as such regardless. Which leaves PRC/PLA asserting control over coordinating extraction/repatriation, preferably via secured TW port, that even without PLA taking, there will likely be global pressure on TW admin to allow. Which begs the followup, where to? IMO, if smart, directly to the mainland via maritime routes where foreign nationals will be processed. Which itselfs opens up the legal status / drama of foreign nationals operating on TW (read: Chinese soil) without valid PRC authorization. Which opens up all sorts of hostage drama / strategy options. Look up stats for foreign residents on island, risk to their nationals in TW will likely deter most of the region from cooperating with US intervention until evacuation. 750k will take lots of time, and ships, that itself makes anti shipping activity in TW strait (by TW or US et al)... complicated. And every evacuation ship going to the island is an opportunity to unload PLA assets. Also mitigates TW talent being paper clipped away, while mininizing chances of "enemies of the state" from escaping to their golden parachutes in west.
Related strategic/lawfare tomfoolery that should be implemented years prior would be to "encourage" foreign nationals on TW to apply for VISA via mainland, which will erode TW sovereignty, undermine migrant labour economy, possibly discourage/make lives difficult for increasing western PRC watchers and ex mainland media relocating to TW. The implication being if one doesn't have the proper PRC stamps, when shit goes down, one can't really expect to be treated as anything but a spy/hostile/illegal migrant subject to PRC domestic laws.
Of course if implemented prematurely, could also backfire spectacularly.
Why would China evacuate foreigners to the mainland during an armed reunification? That’s just a waste of time and resources alongside an unnecessary strain on logistics to babysit them. Moving hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians for no good reason while an active AR is ongoing is just asking for chaos. The only way those foreigners are leaving is in the aftermath when everything is done and they are on a one way trip back home.
edit: Just to add on. Good luck trying to evacuate 100s of 1000s of civilians onto ships in an orderly and timely fashion. You will probably get a couple or few round trips back and forth with military resources on empty ships before the civilians are even ready to leave port.
Last edited:
Expected behaviour / barginning chip, especially in case of prolonged campaign with destroyed critical TW infra that will massive impact civilian life. Starving hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals is 100% going to lead to escalation and have long last effects on post war diplomacy. TW is an island, people can't just walk across a land border, hence evacuation of foreign nationals has to be planned for.
The benefit is it won't be orderly or timely and that can be exploited - mixing invasion (not first wave, but sustaining logistics) / evacuation traffic will create huge noise in the strait especially with respect to IFF. AKA meat shield deterrence which will be portrayed as deplorable but still infinited better optics than having foreign nationals be stuck in a warzone and getting chewed up by errant drone strike or wasting away from starvation / disease.
Large numbers of Taiwanese are Japan simps. Obvious from Facebook and other Taiwanese websites/forums, and from visiting Japan more than once.
And the political class, of course: The hoo-ha over the decapitation of the statue of Hatta Yoichi, a colonial-era engineer. Flying half mast for Abe Shinzo, and the recent statue for him in Kaohsiung. Resisting putting up memorials for comfort women. Vegetable English regularly twitting in Japanese.
As for the standoff between Taiwanese and Japanese coast guard ships, 老兵莱昂 claimed that there were PLAN destroyers/frigates nearby, although I've not seen the claim anywhere else.
Where would China need a 50kg, 1000km class loitering munition?
Taiwan can be covered with 400km ranged munitions.
And at a distance of 1000km (Japan), it would be very difficult to establish sufficient air superiority and suppress the air defences for a propellor loitering munition.
50 kg, 1000 km class munitions like the Shahed-136 were able to penetrate the Saudi air defense network with no suppression. They're also extremely cheap and expendable, so even if picked up on air defense radar, shooting it down is cost prohibitive.
You can circle these around Taiwan as well, to hit targets on the east side. You can't do that with more limited range.
$14k USD, 20 kg payload, 126 kph speed, 8 hour time = 1000 km range.
A small engine upgrade gets this to 50 kg payload.
There is no anti air platform that's cheap enough to compete with this even if sensors + small engine upgrade cause price to go up 4x to 50k USD.
- Status