That "wumao" sounds like a pretender. He is repeating the American assumption that China would embark on an island-hopping spree across Okinawa and Luzon in an AR conflict. He proclaims that Luzon is gonna be the graveyard for the PLA because there are 60 million "brave" Filipinos living on that island. The question of whether or not China needs to preemptively attack the US and its allies has been hotly debated in this thread sometime ago, so I won't go there. But I would say that that is definitely an American assumption about China's war plans.
Assuming full WestPac's US&LC intervention in Operation AR:
Attempting to capture Luzon certainly is out of the question - It makes literally no sense whatsoever. However, from the military perspective, capturing the
Ryukyu Islands (including
Okinawa) certainly makes sense for China.
In fact, the Ryukyus are
perfect for Beijing to extend China's strategic depth outwards, especially in the northeastern and eastern directions. Having a frontier that is pushed ~1000 kilometers to the east will become a major boost for the PLA's power projection and defense capabilities in the WestPac, aside from being a potent springboard into the "true blue" Pacific for China.
Besides, from the perspective of WestPac's geography:
Note:
- Red arrow = PLA (People's Liberation Army)
- Purple arrow = JSDF (Japanese Self-Defense Forces)
- Blue arrow = USM (US military)
- Green arrow = ROKAF (Republic of Korea Armed Forces)
The Ryukyu Islands (and Taiwan) actually lined up pretty largely along the Chinese coastline. This means that China will have a broad axis through which the PLA can conduct offensive actions against the JSDF and USM occupational forces on the Ryukyus, which translates to
greater volume, operational bandwidth and flexibility.
In the meantime, the JSDF and USM stationed on mainland Japan will have to come down from the northeast through a much narrower axis in order to engage the PLA, which will restrict their bandwidth of counterattacks against the PLA.
Even with ROKAF's participation that can widen the axis from the north, the PLA will also have an axis of defense that is largely similar in size against JSDF and ROKAF counterattacks along the northern reaches of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. This also applies to the USM that would be expected to counterattack against the PLA over the Ryukyus and Taiwan.
On the flipside, if Beijing (stupidly) wants to invade Luzon, the PLA will be facing the exact same dilemma as the JSDF and ROKAF in the Ryukyus and the East China & Yellow Seas - But this time, with the USM on the upper hand.
Furthermore, compared to Luzon's population of 64 million, the entirety of the Ryukyu Islands have a population of no more than 2 million, which is 12 times less than Taiwan. So there's that.
