PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

ougoah said:

Underestimating the US is definitely not something Chinese military and political planners should do. Behind all of China's conventional force should be a minimum of 3000 strategic nuclear warheads (>1 megaton yield) well before any sort of conventional military arms race with the US. Step in this match to fight once and win quickly, taking advantage of every domain of this conflict like the US has done wrt hybrid warfare.

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That is such a weird and completely arbitrary requirement, when you know China isn't gonna need to use any of the nukes, especially not strategic ones.

If China wants to do nuclear solution in Taiwan, it could do so right now, today. Or a decade ago. It would cause an international upset, but it doesn't technically break international rules to pop ~20 strategic devices over KMT strongholds. It would simply be "nuclear testing", and US also normalised testing nukes over populated territory, like the Marshall islands. China also defintely doesn't need or should use thousands of nukes inside the country, that would be ruining the whole nation just to exterminate enemies in Taiwan.

To be honest, maybe China did threaten US with such a solution at some point, hence US disengaged claims on Taiwan even back when they had much better conventional forces than China.

If your idea is to execute first strike against America, activating 3000 strategic sized weapons (assuming there isn't already that many active) will not help, because it's delivery methods that's more important. Due to advanced early warning on both sides of the Pacific, it's just too fanciful to think of a scenario where first strike is viable for either China or US.

Only way I can see first strike working is by surpassing the enemy greatly in computational power and having remote hacking through space to ground distances. That would all require scifi tech that doesn't publicly exist.

It should be obvious to everyone that if US ever attempts to deploy any kind of nuclear weapon in Taiwan, that would be a red-line & China will invade. So let's drop this topic.

AndrewS said:

I would say 3000 warheads @ 1+ Megatons is overkill

Rationally, even 1000 warheads should be a sufficient deterrent, and we're likely looking at this number within 5 years. Accelerating this would cost more money, yet would only shave off 1-2 years. It doesn't seem worth it.

Then I would expect China to pass the active US warhead count of 1500 within another 5 years. This is definitely sufficient.

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On a conventional US-China arms race

1. In terms of overall GDP, once you adjust for consumer purchasing power parity, add a few of the large missing elements of SNA 2008 and correct the consumption figures, you end up with China being 56%-75% larger than the US

2. On an industrial purchasing power parity basis, the overall size of Chinese industry is more than 3x larger, as per UN numbers

3. The Pentagon is also reporting tidbits like China being 200x in terms of naval shipbuilding capacity, and instances where Chinese hypersonic missiles are 20x cheaper than their US equivalents

4. The Pentagon is also reporting to Congress that China is spending the equivalent of $700 Bn in terms of purchasing power parity. So roughly speaking, China is spending a maximum of 1.6% of GDP on its military. So theoretically, China could double its military spending to 3.2% tomorrow, yet this still wouldn't reach the US level of 3.4%

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Given these data points, China is already in a position to decisively "win" an arms race against the US

1. And we can see that in terms of Navy and Air Force procurement, China is already outbuilding the US.

2. Given that military equipment typically has a service life of 30 years, it's better to ramp up military spending now as the US still has an advantage from decades of high military spending, whilst China only really started in the past 5 years as the China-US competition kicked off. I would add that it was a strategic mistake for the US to abandon engagement with China.

3. Remember that the faster that the conventional Chinese military builds up, the less likelihood there is of a US-China war. It also means Chinese supply chains and Chinese factories become less risky, as the Chinese military can more effectively protect the homeland and extend this protection further outwards across the shipping lanes. This has domestic economic benefits. Arguably an extra $200 Bn (0.45% of GDP) in annual military spending could spur an additional $200 Bn in domestic Chinese investment.

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At the current rate of military modernisation, I would expect Japan to reluctantly acknowledge (within 10 years) that the Chinese military could enact an extended air/sea blockade of the Japanese Home Islands, despite US military involvement. At that point, Japan's military security is really dependent on China, not the USA. And at the same time, Japan's economy will have no choice but to depend on its larger Chinese neighbour, which is already the overall global leader (by far) in terms of the technologies of the next Industrial Revolution.

In such a scenario, Japan declaring war against China (for any reason) makes no sense. And without Japan, the US will not declare war on China either. So the risk of a real war goes down dramatically

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And there is Russia to content with, I don't know why, there is fear among the Japanese about the Russian Bear. Maybe it's a product of Zhukov victory at Khalkhin Gol.

ansy1968 said:

And there is Russia to content with, I don't know why, there is fear among the Japanese about the Russian Bear. Maybe it's a product of Zhukov victory at Khalkhin Gol.

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Japan lost Sakhalin. And they could have lost Hokkaido as well if it wasn't for the US reneging on the deal they had agreed with the Soviet Union where they were supposed to have troops stationed there.

Biscuits said:

That is such a weird and completely arbitrary requirement, when you know China isn't gonna need to use any of the nukes, especially not strategic ones.

If China wants to do nuclear solution in Taiwan, it could do so right now, today. Or a decade ago. It would cause an international upset, but it doesn't technically break international rules to pop ~20 strategic devices over KMT strongholds. It would simply be "nuclear testing", and US also normalised testing nukes over populated territory, like the Marshall islands. China also defintely doesn't need or should use thousands of nukes inside the country, that would be ruining the whole nation just to exterminate enemies in Taiwan.

To be honest, maybe China did threaten US with such a solution at some point, hence US disengaged claims on Taiwan even back when they had much better conventional forces than China.

If your idea is to execute first strike against America, activating 3000 strategic sized weapons (assuming there isn't already that many active) will not help, because it's delivery methods that's more important. Due to advanced early warning on both sides of the Pacific, it's just too fanciful to think of a scenario where first strike is viable for either China or US.

Only way I can see first strike working is by surpassing the enemy greatly in computational power and having remote hacking through space to ground distances. That would all require scifi tech that doesn't publicly exist.

Click to expand...

and @AndrewS

I'm imagining no scenario where China performs a first strike on the US. That would be unruly and quite unlike China not to mention, completely pointless when you're on the way up and the US is in decline.

3000 strategic warheads is to create an ironclad deterrence. The ballistic missile thread has featured this discussion in the past. To sum up, 300 warheads, even 1000 strategic warheads are simply nowhere near enough for ironclad deterrence against all adversarial settlements. It isn't only the continental US that China would need to respond to. In a situation where the US attempts a first strike, you should immediately remove a fair portion of your warheads. Provided you even survive a surprise first strike, you still need to wipe continental US clean and take out Israel, most of western Europe and possibly Japan. It is the responsibility of the closest military allies of the US to prevent her from performing this insanity. Therefore you must be able to at least threaten their existence if you are to be nuked into oblivion. Is this not an appropriate responsibility? A fundamental one?

1000 warheads have absolute zero chance of doing the above. Half might be effectively spoofed, the remaining can easily be intercepted. The US, Japan, and Europe have well in excess of 1000 BMD interceptors. 3000 strategic warheads allow you to cripple them.

People, even ones on this forum have very little clue how small a megaton nuke damage radius (largest circle) actually is. 3000 1MTs barely can cover the continental US. Movies have really misled people where you see Hollywood scenes of these gigantic mushroom clouds 10000x Tsar Bomb level. Real 1MT nuke cannot even cover a major city. Sure a hit basically means the city is uninhabitable for decades but really it's not hollywood. This is why both the USSR and US held more than 3000 active strategic yield nukes at their height. Around 5000 warheads each.

Again, do the maths and one would realise that 3000 strategic warheads with tip top delivery tech is a bare minimum deterrence that satisfies MAD to an even non-existential degree. Nuke destructiveness has been VASTLY overstated and misunderstood, as incredibly powerful and dangerous the weapon is. 500 warheads is a joke of a deterrence under first strike condition.

One cannot talk about matching conventionally when you are so distant in strategic weapons and strike capabilities. Even if you win a conventional war, you can lose a strategic nuclear exchange. Yes there are winners and losers of strategic nuclear exchange when one has 3000 and the other has 500. Particularly if 3000 warheads come at you at once.

This is a real nuke damage radius... of a 100MT nuke... 100 times more energy than a 1MT strategic warhead.



Hilariously inaccurate Hollywood misrepresentation of nuke destructiveness:







Considering the curvature of the earth, the nukes shown here cover areas over 100x the size of NYC. Unrealistic. Are they showing 10000MT nukes?

If PLA considered 500 or so warheads of the past is sufficient, why has China been admitting to nuclear arsenal expansion and tacitly admitting and hinting that it's aimed warhead count would be well above 1000. Again I want to stress that it has more targets to hit than just continental US which is already huge. We also need to consider BMD, post first strike retaliatory arsenal, and other factors.

China with an economy now considerably larger than the US, more wealth than the US in real terms, and with a larger workforce should match the US at the very least. Even if we're not aiming for US + allies level of nuclear arsenal which indeed would be unnecessary.

ougoah said:

I'm imagining no scenario where China performs a first strike on the US. That would be unruly and quite unlike China not to mention, completely pointless when you're on the way up and the US is in decline.

3000 strategic warheads is to create an ironclad deterrence. The ballistic missile thread has featured this discussion in the past. To sum up, 300 warheads, even 1000 strategic warheads are simply nowhere near enough for ironclad deterrence against all adversarial settlements. It isn't only the continental US that China would need to respond to. In a situation where the US attempts a first strike, you should immediately remove a fair portion of your warheads. Provided you even survive a surprise first strike, you still need to wipe continental US clean and take out Israel, most of western Europe and possibly Japan. It is the responsibility of the closest military allies of the US to prevent her from performing this insanity. Therefore you must be able to at least threaten their existence if you are to be nuked into oblivion. Is this not an appropriate responsibility? A fundamental one?

1000 warheads have absolute zero chance of doing the above. Half might have issues, the remaining can easily be intercepted. The US, Japan, and Europe have well in excess of 1000 BMD interceptors. 3000 strategic warheads allow you to cripple them.

People, even ones on this forum have very little clue how small a megaton nuke damage radius (largest circle) actually is. 3000 1MTs barely can cover the continental US. Movies have really misled people where you see Hollywood scenes of these gigantic mushroom clouds 10000x Tsar Bomb level. Real 1MT nuke cannot even cover a major city. Sure a hit basically means the city is uninhabitable for decades but really it's not hollywood. This is why both the USSR and US held more than 3000 active strategic yield nukes at their height. Around 5000 warheads each.

Again, do the maths and one would realise that 3000 strategic warheads with tip top delivery tech is a bare minimum deterrence that satisfies MAD to an even non-existential degree. Nuke destructiveness has been VASTLY overstated and misunderstood, as incredibly powerful and dangerous the weapon is. 500 warheads is a joke of a deterrence under first strike condition.

One cannot talk about matching conventionally when you are so distant in strategic weapons and strike capabilities. Even if you win a conventional war, you can lose a strategic nuclear exchange. Yes there are winners and losers of strategic nuclear exchange when one has 3000 and the other has 500. Particularly if 3000 warheads come at you at once.

This is a real nuke damage radius... of a 100MT nuke... 100 times more energy than a 1MT strategic warhead.

View attachment 123026

Hilariously inaccurate Hollywood misrepresentation of nuke destructiveness:

View attachment 123024


View attachment 123025


Considering the curvature of the earth, the nukes shown here cover areas over 100x the size of NYC. Unrealistic. Are they showing 10000MT nukes?

Click to expand...

US itself also only has about 1500 nukes in active position. And China is supposed to have a similar amount, ages ago, they claimed to have 500 nukes on alert at all times, which at this point would have expanded. Plus a straight up unknown number of nukes separated from their warheads, in accordance with Chinese protocols of how nuclear weapons should be stored in peacetime.

The real point of the nukes is to create EMP blasts, combined with their impact damage, which can disintegrate enemy society, unless they have a lot of deep, EMP proofed bunkers, sort of like what USSR and China worked on.

EMP fries everything needed to sustain population. Without refrigeration and transport, it takes around 2 weeks for the real killer (famine) to set in. In a nuclear conflict scenario, there would perhaps be 1000 or 1200 earmarked nukes for all of US, which is by itself overkill, as just 200-300 could induce the societal collapse described above, but the PLA's posture allows a large buffer margin to achieve a stronger deterrent.

Biscuits said:

US itself also only has about 1500 nukes in active position. And China is supposed to have a similar amount, ages ago, they claimed to have 500 nukes on alert at all times, which at this point would have expanded. Plus a straight up unknown number of nukes separated from their warheads, in accordance with Chinese protocols of how nuclear weapons should be stored in peacetime.

The real point of the nukes is to create EMP blasts, combined with their impact damage, which can disintegrate enemy society, unless they have a lot of deep, EMP proofed bunkers, sort of like what USSR and China worked on.

EMP fries everything needed to sustain population. Without refrigeration and transport, it takes around 2 weeks for the real killer (famine) to set in. In a nuclear conflict scenario, there would perhaps be 1000 or 1200 earmarked nukes for all of US, which is by itself overkill, as just 200-300 could induce the societal collapse described above, but the PLA's posture allows a large buffer margin to achieve a stronger deterrent.

Click to expand...

EMPs don't last that long for society to collapse. Societies have gone through much worse and rebuilt. It'll destabilise it for a bit of time until gov and military support and organisation is established. Surviving that scenario is not only doable, it's a given.

ougoah said:

EMPs don't last that long for society to collapse. Societies have gone through much worse and rebuilt. It'll destabilise it for a bit of time until gov and military support and organisation is established. Surviving that scenario is not only doable, it's a given.

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Both US and China seem to think you only need around 2000 active warheads at most, and even then, it's likely a lot of extra precaution in those numbers.

What government and what military support? If China chooses to fire on US today, every major settlement (there's around 500 such) would be hit by 2-3 strategic nukes. There wouldn't even be township councils left in most areas, let alone centralised gov and military. And it's in those conditions where lack of electronics becomes the killer.

That's probably what all 3 of the major nuclear powers are counting on, since they all work on the assumption of MAD.

ougoah said:

and @AndrewS

I'm imagining no scenario where China performs a first strike on the US. That would be unruly and quite unlike China not to mention, completely pointless when you're on the way up and the US is in decline.

3000 strategic warheads is to create an ironclad deterrence. The ballistic missile thread has featured this discussion in the past. To sum up, 300 warheads, even 1000 strategic warheads are simply nowhere near enough for ironclad deterrence against all adversarial settlements. It isn't only the continental US that China would need to respond to. In a situation where the US attempts a first strike, you should immediately remove a fair portion of your warheads. Provided you even survive a surprise first strike, you still need to wipe continental US clean and take out Israel, most of western Europe and possibly Japan. It is the responsibility of the closest military allies of the US to prevent her from performing this insanity. Therefore you must be able to at least threaten their existence if you are to be nuked into oblivion. Is this not an appropriate responsibility? A fundamental one?

1000 warheads have absolute zero chance of doing the above. Half might be effectively spoofed, the remaining can easily be intercepted. The US, Japan, and Europe have well in excess of 1000 BMD interceptors. 3000 strategic warheads allow you to cripple them.

People, even ones on this forum have very little clue how small a megaton nuke damage radius (largest circle) actually is. 3000 1MTs barely can cover the continental US. Movies have really misled people where you see Hollywood scenes of these gigantic mushroom clouds 10000x Tsar Bomb level. Real 1MT nuke cannot even cover a major city. Sure a hit basically means the city is uninhabitable for decades but really it's not hollywood. This is why both the USSR and US held more than 3000 active strategic yield nukes at their height. Around 5000 warheads each.

Again, do the maths and one would realise that 3000 strategic warheads with tip top delivery tech is a bare minimum deterrence that satisfies MAD to an even non-existential degree. Nuke destructiveness has been VASTLY overstated and misunderstood, as incredibly powerful and dangerous the weapon is. 500 warheads is a joke of a deterrence under first strike condition.

One cannot talk about matching conventionally when you are so distant in strategic weapons and strike capabilities. Even if you win a conventional war, you can lose a strategic nuclear exchange. Yes there are winners and losers of strategic nuclear exchange when one has 3000 and the other has 500. Particularly if 3000 warheads come at you at once.

This is a real nuke damage radius... of a 100MT nuke... 100 times more energy than a 1MT strategic warhead.

View attachment 123026

Hilariously inaccurate Hollywood misrepresentation of nuke destructiveness:

View attachment 123024


View attachment 123025


Considering the curvature of the earth, the nukes shown here cover areas over 100x the size of NYC. Unrealistic. Are they showing 10000MT nukes?

If PLA considered 500 or so warheads of the past is sufficient, why has China been admitting to nuclear arsenal expansion and tacitly admitting and hinting that it's aimed warhead count would be well above 1000. Again I want to stress that it has more targets to hit than just continental US which is already huge. We also need to consider BMD, post first strike retaliatory arsenal, and other factors.

China with an economy now considerably larger than the US, more wealth than the US in real terms, and with a larger workforce should match the US at the very least. Even if we're not aiming for US + allies level of nuclear arsenal which indeed would be unnecessary.

Click to expand...

You forget that MAD doesn't require you to cover the enemy territory, just the major population centers. Population centers are also highly concentrated.

The "destruction" part of MAD doesn't mean killing everyone (though everyone may still die in the end), but in destroying the enemy regime, which is amply accomplishable through even a minimal amount of nuclear strikes.

What you are ignoring in your argument is the Fallout, both literal and figurative, of a nuclear strike.

The immediate deaths might "only" number in the hundreds of thousands, but the ensuing radiation will kill millions, followed by tens of millions as society descends into anarchy, followed by hundreds of millions as modern logistics break down and famine ensues.

This may be the last economic warfare punishment step before starting stoppages of the flow of trade in both directions, investment capital, finance, and people between the PRC and Taiwan province. Many selective sanctions are already in place in those areas as well.

But I think that total sanctions in those categories will probably start only in the case of an actual armed reunification because once those economic moves are made, political Taiwan will probably start escalating provocations, and get more anti-PRC and pro-Western extreme.

After all, it would destroy them very badly, as 38% of their exports are already dependent on China. If it's gone, they would go berserk.

So, doing all of this earlier, can just escalate the situation prematurely and maybe force China to actually start AR earlier. Now, this is good, pressure them before elections, just in the right amount to remind them of some economic realities.

Just do your best and hope for the best even though I don't think this suspension of tariff reductions will change the election result.

After all, if you control media and education, you control the minds of people. And separatists control the minds of the people there for decades. Without some harder, more concrete action, they will continue living in la-la-land indefinitely.

Btw, while on the topic of economic warfare, this Houthi situation in the Middle East shows you just how little force you can actually wage economic warfare, because freight shipping markets are seemingly always afraid like rabbits.

Probably for a few weeks to months fire rockets and missiles randomly all around the seas of Taiwan, use a few drones to damage a few Taiwanese-owned merchant vessels, and insurance premiums and cost of shipping will skyrocket, and there will be fewer and fewer foreign companies willing to ship there, in both directions. That is the most basic scenario a).

Btw, imagine how easy it would be for China's gigantic naval fleet to start forcing merchant ships for inspections in a declaration of sovereignty, those who disobeyed to be cleared by PLAN, militias, coast guards, fishing fleets transformed for this purpose, etc, get captured and escorted out or arrested and deported back effectively. This is probably a step before the total blockade of trade later.

I think there is very little chance for Taiwan to escape the economic apocalypse in this scenario, and this is even without getting its ports, transport infrastructure, and other critical infrastructure on the island destroyed itself with massive saturated attacks of cheap firepower.

The difference in industrial and firepower capacity between these two entities can't be overstated. There will also be accompanying psychological, propaganda, and cyber attacks from mainland China toward the population on the island to surrender peacefully, etc.

Taiwan is a small island that can't survive without trade and the outside world for a few months. I don't know in which universe some people think they can even hypothetically defend themselves without US help, even without the PLA having to put their feet there.

And some Western "strategists" still dream of some kind of massive military amphibious landings from WW2 style, they are delusional. In reality, Taiwan is not Ukraine, it has literally 0% chance of still staying independent if China acts in those ways I described on its own.

Being an island is not an 'advantage' in this case, but a major vulnerability that effectively makes them completely 100% easily blockaded.

Their population is also not aggressive and fighting-prone like Ukrainians, and their military is not invested enough in like the Ukraine military is. Once they end up penniless and without basic human needs in a few months of economic warfare campaign, they would surrender easily.