List of results from China-Taiwan computer war simulations.

This would be a mess. In 20 to 30 years from now, the mainland power projection ability could easily crush the large scale resistance on the island. But just like Iraq and Afghanistan, the hearts of the locals are the hardest to conquer.

Due to the education in Taiwan, there was always the anti communism atmosphere rooted within the culture. Despite being Chinese, their sense of belonging to mainland and as a part of China grew distant.

If the locals do not accept PLA, it would be very tough to maintain a stable annexation. Despite having a small and incompetent military, almost all male population on the island have served in the military, due to mandatory conscription. These men could easily tear up something, if not worse than Chechnya and Iraq.

So in this case, the media and especially the actions of the mainland as a whole, is much more important than building LPD's. More energy should be devoted into public relations, especially cross strait relations. The messages should be less politically oriented, but rather cultural and economical. ROC citizens should be treated with equal, if not more care than PRC citizens in times of overseas turmoils, such as hijacked ships, hostages, and natural disasters. The most important of all is making the people of Taiwan hearing about this. The mainland had being doing this over the past decade, but the people in Taiwan never hear about it.

But the most important of all is within mainland itself. It should improve its human rights record. I know this is a highly politicized and controversial topic used by foreigners to attack China. I also, as a Chinese, feel this been unfair and often agitated by the fact that foreign media use it in twisted manners. But putting that aside, looking at it on its own, it is still something that desperately needed to be worked on. The government and the people should treat each other and themselves with respect. The basic rights of each individuals should not be violated. His/her wealth should not be stolen by a higher power. Merchants should treat their clients as their own family. Only when this is achieved, then would the people of Taiwan know that their standard of living, and especially their freedom would be maintained when united with the mainland.

Let's be honest, who here thinks that the people of South Korea would be happy to see the Korean peninsula to be united by the North? I'm sure they probably would fight to death if occupied by the North. On the contrary, if the North is united by the South, it would probably be a different picture. The same applies to the cross strait relations. Would you rather want to be able to curse your president without getting arrested, or would you rather want to be arrested for simply posting evidences of corruptions by local government officials. Would you rather want to live in fear of local governments able to push down your house as they wish, or would you want a party fighting for you in the parliament against anything that may harm your interest as a citizen?

Perception more than anything is the true cause of estrangement. For 30 years China was branded as poor cousin who eat bananas peel in order to survive.

The effect of those propaganda of "poor mainlander, uncouth,inferior in everything still linger even after the kuomintang themselves has changed.

And in fact Taiwan has higher living standard as of today.

The same perception was registered with Hongkong resident when Hongkong return to China. If I remember correctly less than 50% consider themselves as Chinese.

But thing change now as more and more know China from travel, business, going to school, work etc.

So I wouldn't worry too much and no to change the system if ain't broke why fixed it

I've always questioned how those war games are played out anyway, but there are several obvious flaws to the logic of the original Taipei time post.

A. if the PLA can sail 100,000 men in boats of any kind, then the ROC and USA would have known they were going to come looooong before that, unless they jump in with nothing but their gun and spare ammo in the middle of the night, in which case they would be fairly useless anyway. If the PLA mobilize and conscript civilian ships to prepare them for attack, it woul be massive operation known well in advance. Operation Overlord took 6 month to prepare, and the US /UK were in a more mobilzed state already at that point.

B.Similarly, under this assumption, if they made so much preparation, the US would have made it's political decision already, if they're going for full confrontation then by then the fleets would have already been around the area, and possibly / probably already emergency lended additional weapons to Taiwan anyway.


Not that i'm a big fan of Taipei Times' it's TI leaning is very well known.

As for wether we would fight or not, very few soliders are really WILLING to fight, but when your forced into the situation the answer is often very different than what you would give before it, the Vietnam war was massively unpopular in the US and most of the draftees hated the war, that didn't mean they were running away at the first sight of Vietnamese enemies.


Just to summerize, I'm pretty sure the wargame's "surprise attack" is not the same as in the PLA suddenly attack with the ROC with no preperation at all, otherwise the later "100,000 men on boats" would be very illogical. but rather it's a "surprise" in the sense of the USA's attack on Iraq in 2003, you known it's comming, you just don't know the exact moment .

As for the mountain bunker airplane thing, one of Taiwan's major airbase is in the east side of the island behind massive mountains, so hiting it would be tougher given that there's a massive mountain range inbetween, unless your going to use ICBMs (which is rather weird against targets so close) or have cruise guided missiles with immense precision. though yeah I personally have great doubts of it's ability to survive , the runways on road thing is pretty useless, because almost allf of them are on the highly exposed west coast and the locations are well known, and bombed airways have personals trained to repair them quickly, bombed highways will take much much longer to rebuild.

Hendrik_2000 said:

Perception more than anything is the true cause of estrangement. For 30 years China was branded as poor cousin who eat bananas peel in order to survive.

The effect of those propaganda of "poor mainlander, uncouth,inferior in everything still linger even after the kuomintang themselves has changed.

And in fact Taiwan has higher living standard as of today.

The same perception was registered with Hongkong resident when Hongkong return to China. If I remember correctly less than 50% consider themselves as Chinese.

But thing change now as more and more know China from travel, business, going to school, work etc.

So I wouldn't worry too much and no to change the system if ain't broke why fixed it

Click to expand...

Absolutely agree.

Fifteen years ago, would probably have thought of himself more as a than Chinese.

This shows that ultimately, it's still money that talks.

solarz said:

Absolutely agree.

Fifteen years ago,

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would probably have thought of himself more as a

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than Chinese.

This shows that ultimately, it's still money that talks.

Click to expand...

Yep. You can tell from those Hong Kong movies and TV series portray mainlanders. 20 years ago, most of the mainlanders in Hong Kong movies are illegal immigrants who run away from the mainland and normally as comic relief. Nowadays in hong Kong movies and TV shows, mainlanders are normally wealthy business men who come to save the main characters from destined bankruptcy or financial ruin. And in many Hong Kong movies, most of the main characters would go to mainland to do business. You can tell the image of mainlanders in the eyes of Hong Kong people have changed significantly.

Hendrik_2000 said:

Perception more than anything is the true cause of estrangement. For 30 years China was branded as poor cousin who eat bananas peel in order to survive.

Click to expand...

In KMT propaganda the Chinese eat tree barks, (this was during the great leap forward) and in CCP's counter propaganda it's the Taiwanese that eats banana peels (banana is a major fruit produce in Taiwan), which prompt some smarty to ask where did all the banana flesh go?

vesicles said:

Yep. You can tell from those Hong Kong movies and TV series portray mainlanders. 20 years ago, most of the mainlanders in Hong Kong movies are illegal immigrants who run away from the mainland and normally as comic relief. Nowadays in hong Kong movies and TV shows, mainlanders are normally wealthy business men who come to save the main characters from destined bankruptcy or financial ruin. And in many Hong Kong movies, most of the main characters would go to mainland to do business. You can tell the image of mainlanders in the eyes of Hong Kong people have changed significantly.

Click to expand...

That's more of a reality change than a perception one.

Similarly, reality changes effect our decisions here in Taiwan, our preceptions are far less clouded today on China than it was say... 30 years ago (when you know, even writting a letter to family members on the other side would get you into a world of trouble.), hell some of our biggest medias have more stakes in China (or Hong Kong) than Taiwan..

Perception more than anything is the true cause of estrangement. For 30 years China was branded as poor cousin who eat bananas peel in order to survive.

The effect of those propaganda of "poor mainlander, uncouth,inferior in everything still linger even after the kuomintang themselves has changed.

Click to expand...

You write about that like it's completely untrue. During the Great Leap Forward millions of mainlanders starved to death. In such circumstances, they probably ate anything to survive, just like Ukrainians during the 1930s famines or North Koreans today. China's economy really was that bad during the Great Leap Forward. The utter disasters of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution make China's economic growth since 1980 all that more impressive.

My family members had first hand experience with this. My grandma was the accountant for the mess-hall (not sure for what organization), so she was lucky that she didn't starve at all during those years but rather gained weight. But when she went to the rural areas to visit relatives, she said there were literally whole villages completely dead from the famine.

Taiwan could have a major ace up their sleeve, American SIGINT and their own decoding skills.
Taiwan can endure longer in a mutual siege situation with naval minefields while exercising a fleet in being operation with naval and air force assets. This means both commit to limited attacks on enemy targets of greatest value for the total enemy power. This would be taking out fuel supply in the region and all commercial naval vessels and navy supply ships and shooting down PLA pilots as soon as fatigue takes her toll. The whole aerial bombing campaign can be led to create little havoc and not significantly harm the ROC military by using the same old tricks Serbia successfully employed against NATO.
Concerning Saddam's fleet in being by burying fighters in the sand, as long as the enemy is not certain at what low level his opponent's air force is, he has to use valueable bomber loads and capability for fighters and electronic warfare, thus reducing overall effectiveness of the bombing campaign. Problem was, Iraq was really really overpowered and outgunned.

Concerning PRC and ROC, PRC gets stronger and will be able to excercise more power on ROC and I don't doubt they will eventually use force (and money for treason) to take the island. But PLA can't be certain of a quick win at low cost nor of surprise. That doesn't mean this is impossible, but that the PRC ROC game is rather poker dice and only to a lesser degree a go game.