The problem with Taiwan is less the area but more the terrain. You will basically enter into a city fighting phase from day one. And you cannot do what the Russians are doing here, making people evacuate the main cities. They will have no place to evacuate to.
As for communications you guys seem to be forgetting submarine optical fiber cables. Those would have to be cut.
That's why information war is most important. Along with morale and initial casus belli. This is where Russia fucked up. They needed to do false flag attack on Russian mainland, using Ukrainian rocket or something across the border. Then they should have done propaganda war for like week or two before they went in, allowing for surrender before that, and the whole time broadcasting that there was genocide going on in donbas. They wasted their RT america and RT assets which they had built up for years, and now they got banned without even being able to affect much.
So taking that into consideration, it starts off with say a false flag attack on mainland china. Empty shopping center, or few shopping centers, whatever. Broadcast that to the world. Generate outrage. Then broadcast that Taiwan was responsible and they crossed the line, and also do anti usa propaganda, say it was US weapons they used or whatever and that US played a role in it somehow. This is to pre empt the inevitable anti china propaganda coming from US. Being the first one to do it counts for a lot. Most don't trust usa already, and china doesn't have bad history and has built up a lot of political capital over decades, so this shouldn't be too hard. Considering that the whole world has had enough of USA's lies, iraq WMD and everything else. Shouldn't be too hard to get the world on chinas side, but the main target here is to divide Europe. That's the real fence sitter. Especially Germany and France and Italy.
All the above is to setup for invasion and regime change and to take out the threat to china's security. Broadcast this as the goal. During this time before blockade, tell everyone in Taiwan who is not an enemy to leave Taiwan RIGHT NOW. because shit will go down soon, if you stay then that is your own fault. China should set up and help anyone to leave who wants to. Setup some place in mainland to host them. If china can lockdown cities of tens of millions for covid, this should not be too hard. Ask civilians in china to help host a patriotic family from Taiwan if they can. Ain't no thing. Get as much innocents out as possible beforehand.
Then do a blockade. That is the first level of escalation. Offer them to surrender within a day, otherwise missiles will take out all Taiwan military assets and bases and other useful wartime assets like energy and comms. Even water and food. Again give another day for them to reconsider and surrender, otherwise it will move onto next phase of escalation.
If no surrender, then broadcast that china is going to level the cities and whole island if needed by X date. This is the last chance for surrender before china fully commits. After that there will be no more holding back. This will be done before PLA assaults the island. It will be done during the blockade phase, and after all the initial missiles have dropped and taken out all above ground military targets.
You offer a humanitarian escape route and broadcast to the world a safe zone anyone who wants to escape needs to go to that area. You do nonstop propaganda that Taiwan is using human shields, and taking hostages and not letting anyone leave, and arming all civilians. Show those photos that Taiwan military themselves revealed that shows them camouflaging their military vehicles as civilian trucks and cranes, and stuff like that. You offer Taiwanese citizens to surrender, and offer them Chinese citizenship, and any Taiwanese troops who surrender likewise similar offers, maybe even more. You divide the troops, you divide the people. Hopefully the people and soldiers see logic and get everyone to surrender, or even fight and overthrow their own soldiers.
During this time there will be drones hovering above nonstop, with endless loudspeaker propaganda and doing leaflet drops, and also recording and streaming any atrocities of Taiwanese troops killing their own civilians trying to leave or surrender, or even fighting Taiwanese troops. Stream and broadcast that shit to the world nonstop. If need be do false flags with double agents already planted on the island long ago pretending to be taiwan military abusing the innocent civilians and using them as human shields. It shouldn't be too hard to win the propaganda war if china gets it's shit in order. Sounds harsh but just find some civilians who support Taiwan or something. It's a war, shit happens. They made their choice which side they wanted to support.
Then after all that, whoever is left, is an enemy, and china goes in with mission to liberate the island from Taiwanese military who's oppressing their own people and using them as human. Shields.
This is the easy part. Just use overwhelming force. Use drones to counter manpads etc. China can do drone swarms and just win with more cheap suicide drones than they have ammunition for the manpads. For anything else they can just use the heavy bombers or naval assets surrounding the island from all sides. Taiwan isn't that big. China could even just setup artillery from big container ships. And bombard all the shores to clear the way for landing if they want to save their more expensive guided weapons.
The key will be drones, and mass numbers of them. China's advantage is numbers and manufacturing. China doesn't need to waste it's good stuff on Taiwan, it can save them for usa. Just use lots of cheap mass produced loitering ground attack along with suicide drones. Like those ones they use for those airshows. They are probably cheaper and easier to make than manpads and manpad ammunition.
Would be easy to clear and secure one beachhead with liberal use of drones and everything else china has in it's arsenal. Once china can secure landing zone it's game over. Boots on the ground just need to mop up and clear out the cities, or what's left of them if they refused to surrender. If Taiwan chooses to fight and be like Grozny, so be it, they made their choice. For everyone else they can relocate and live on the mainland while china rebuilds taiwan.
Just curious. How long do you guys think Taiwan could hold out if china blockaded it after destroying everything on the surface including energy, water, and food production/stocks? Could Taiwan even feed/sustain itself?
