PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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Hence China should relocate civilians to refugee zones before starting large scale fighting. Make the locals show their support with their own feet. Evacuate and follow the legitimate government, or support KMT, stay and get bombed.
Not only does it open up for the PLA to hit every aim point they can find without worry of civilian casualties, but it will deliver a severe shock to the rebel authorities, when they become unable to control the local population.
With China's construction and engineering capability, a dozen refugee camps that can hold up to 1 million each wouldn't be too great of a challenge.
Shortages and suffering would only set in in the first few weeks, before the PLA lands and can provide in person support for the safe zones. Once after that, military/drafted civilian services can maintain acceptable quality of life for civilians on Taiwan, delivering humanitarian supplies from mainland and international sources.
Initially, responsibility to set up material accomandations would fall to the civilians themselves. The conditions won't be nice, but there's millions of refugees living like that globally, sometimes indefintely. Besides, unlike refugees from middle east or SEA, these people are still in China, a country that has an overflowing amount of amenities, foodstuff and goods. They should be able to have a better living standard than what Syrian refugees have in Turkey...
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I see a couple of discussions about the role of Taiwanese civilians with regards to forcing the Taiwanese renegade government to surrender. While I agree with that, unfortunately with the way the DPP and it's US thinks, I'm not too optimistic about that.
Following the lessons of the Ukraine War, I am sure the DPP is planning to use Taiwanese civilians as human shields. They will use propaganda to fool the gullible to stay in their homes, and coercion to force the stubborn to do the same. The DPP have trained the Taiwanese military to operate heavy weaponry around residential areas. The DPP will do it's best to park and launch it's military assets and long range strike weapons around residential areas, schools, hospitals, etc. Then when the PLA retaliates, the DPP and the West will cynically cry crocodile tears and make China the bad guy. It'll be useful to gain international sympathy, and more importantly, to fool the Taiwanese populace to hate China, and rally around the DPP more.
I'm more than certain that the DPP and their cynical masters will opt to sacrifice Taiwanese civilians for their own diplomatic and propaganda benefit. It's important for the PLA's strategic planners to take this into account. There are no easy solutions to this unfortunately. Even if the PLA used micro munitions from UCAVs to take out a HIMARS launcher near an apartment complex. Even if no civilians are seriously hurt, the very act of dropping anything near a residential area will be spun by the Boba and Western media as "Chinese barbarism".
I think realistically, China cannot win the propaganda war against the West. So the Chinese leadership should anticipate some loss of international image, and the hardening of Taiwanese resistance. They should expect that the armed unification could drag out longer than expected because of a fooled populace. I have not been able to figure out a good solution for this ugly problem for China, apart from just sucking it up and soldiering on. Like how Russia did in Ukraine. It would be nice to hear some suggestions for how China could deal with this.
Following the lessons of the Ukraine War, I am sure the DPP is planning to use Taiwanese civilians as human shields. They will use propaganda to fool the gullible to stay in their homes, and coercion to force the stubborn to do the same. The DPP have trained the Taiwanese military to operate heavy weaponry around residential areas. The DPP will do it's best to park and launch it's military assets and long range strike weapons around residential areas, schools, hospitals, etc. Then when the PLA retaliates, the DPP and the West will cynically cry crocodile tears and make China the bad guy. It'll be useful to gain international sympathy, and more importantly, to fool the Taiwanese populace to hate China, and rally around the DPP more.
I'm more than certain that the DPP and their cynical masters will opt to sacrifice Taiwanese civilians for their own diplomatic and propaganda benefit. It's important for the PLA's strategic planners to take this into account. There are no easy solutions to this unfortunately. Even if the PLA used micro munitions from UCAVs to take out a HIMARS launcher near an apartment complex. Even if no civilians are seriously hurt, the very act of dropping anything near a residential area will be spun by the Boba and Western media as "Chinese barbarism".
I think realistically, China cannot win the propaganda war against the West. So the Chinese leadership should anticipate some loss of international image, and the hardening of Taiwanese resistance. They should expect that the armed unification could drag out longer than expected because of a fooled populace. I have not been able to figure out a good solution for this ugly problem for China, apart from just sucking it up and soldiering on. Like how Russia did in Ukraine. It would be nice to hear some suggestions for how China could deal with this.
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Naval and aerial blockade, bomb all military targets, destroy all communication nodes, destroy all transformers, defeat the Hegemon’s and its vassals’ forces.
And then land troops on the island, following with PAP to control.
After that, it won't be hard to control the island (well there's much more after that, but with on the ground control, things will be fine).
It's the obvious solution to win the war. Nevertheless, I anticipate the DPP to place all those military targets among the civilian population areas. So if they do get hit, they'll spin it for their own propaganda benefit.
If the PLA goes out of its way to target the US's assets, then it could start WW3, especially if the US had initially stood out of Armed Reunification, supporting the DPP from behind. Assuming that the US had stood out of directly intervening in AR, then I think the smarter strategy for China is to keep it that way unless the US changes it's mind first. A proxy war is still less dangerous than WW3.
The US and the DPP will do their utmost to make AR as ugly as possible for China and the Taiwanese. Should China just suck it up and focus on the mission even if it gets ugly. Or is there a way to make it less ugly?
So you will then have Beijing telling civilians to evacuate and DPP telling them to stay. When they inevitably get dusted, the DPP will be to blame, and everyone on Taiwan will be fearful of listening to their continued commands.
Plays right into what China needs in order to secure lasting peace.
Who will condemn China that matters? Putin, who maintains China's raw resources and oil, will say bombing insurgents is too evil? Or maybe Iran, our reserve oil area, believes its unacceptable? Or all the 3rd world countries who voted against US in every single UN issue?
There are extremely easy solutions. Give the civilians early warning of a few hours or minutes and then flatten the whole block. It teaches quickly to locals that you should under no circumstances listen to the rebel authorities, but only to the central government, and it shows the whole world tangible proof of China's victory over American invaders.
Lesson from Ukraine war: Washington cronies can write whatever they want on their blogs et al. And it has no effect on real life! They can say we create mass graves in Taiwan province, whether this is true or not, no Chinese or others who matter will care.
You split the KMT resistence fighters from the civilians who would support them.
Taiwan is a closed system, like Gaza. Drawing from the recent ME conflict, the actual point of failure for the Israelis is that 6000 munitions over the course of 1 week is grossly insufficient to actually force out enough civilians. Additionally, the terrible reputation of Tel Aviv makes civilians unlikely to use the evacuation routes proposed by the IDF.
China will not face these problems, if they set a much higher target for bombs released, and they have better "goodwill" with the locals inside the province as well. Palestinians are used to having shelters and being bombed. They trust Hamas because Hamas historically provide safety. Taiwanese are not used to being bombed at all, and the local resistence has no experience in saving civilians from government air raids. When you give Taiwanese the ultimatum, they'll listen to the central government 9/10 times, and the remaining 1 person will quickly demonstrate why not listening was a bad idea...
No, the US and its vassals likely provide ISR to ROC forces. China is not Russia, she should not tolerate that kind of assistances. I expect ROC to surrender after the PLA defeats the US forces
There is no need to worry about images. History is written by victors
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Just ISR is not a threat though. Even if they had a complete picture of everything PLA does, that would only even the odds relative to a PLA that also knows everything they do. And they don't have enough sophisticated weapons to put up a fight, not even enough to intercept most warheads. As soon as data link capable platforms are destroyed, which isn't gonna take more than days at most, they will have lost the ISR that US was trying to provide.
In that particular scenario, it doesn't make sense for China to contest US over them providing ISR. They can just bomb away while pretending US ISR doesn't exist, since ISR is only as good as the weapons you can aim using said ISR.
US giving ISR only to ROC has about as good chance of succeeding as Russia giving ISR only to the LDPR and hoping they can come out on top vs Ukraine+NATO. I don't think US will make a play with so extremely high risk and poor odds.
Is there no scenario where the Taiwan military surrenders? For example, Kinmen, Matsu, and Penghu, simultaneously fire 30 rockets (300mm rounds) at each their beaches (next to a garrison) to demonstrate actual destructive power. The commanders of those garrisons, will they fight? Or decide not to die in vain?