PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

AndrewS said:

Well, isn't that really an issue of the current government ensuring that the next generation of political leaders do have the political power and will?

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00CuriousObserver said:

I think this is much, much easier said than done. We're talking about a lot of people with different interests.

Truth is that a lot of high ranking officials benefit from not having a full conflict with the US.

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AndrewS said:

Doesn't everyone benefit from avoiding an outright war between the US and China?

That would include everyone in the current politburo.

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plawolf said:

China isn’t looking to take Taiwan the moment it gets a good chance of succeed. It’s looking to take Taiwan when the odds are so stacked in its favour the US has no chance of preventing it.

China’s leaders knows full well that to fight America for Taiwan is almost certainly going to lead to WWIII. And if it doesn’t want to endure WWIV a short while later, it needs to be able to win totally rather than settle for a WWI style armistice.

It is doing the build up before the fight instead of during it. That should both shorten the length of the war, as well as reduce Chinese casualties and losses.

You don’t need to worry about magical total reversal of fortunes. Great powers like China and America carry massive momentum with them and don’t go from ascendancy to decline quickly. Just look at America, it took decades of resting on their laurels since the fall of the Soviet Union and many many calamities, most of which were totally avoidable and self inflicted, for it to fall to its current state. If China suffers a reversal, it will have decades to course correct before it starts to get into serious trouble.

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coolgod said:

I dunno man, going down in Chinese history books as the people who defeated the mighty US empire is a pretty big deal, while getting compared with Song dynasty would be a terrible look.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

IDK about that. Complacency is not good either.

USSR was ascendant in the 1960's and 1970's: won the 1st space race, catching up in strategic arsenals, in Vietnam, had the Mig-21 which smoked its contemporary the F-4, and had unparalleled influence in Africa, Middle East and Latin America. Then in the 1980's alone it crashed down.

Soviets had the weight of 250+ million domestically and another 100 million in Eastbloc, 2nd largest economy, largest military. You would have never expected anyone like Gorbachev to get anywhere near power and in the rare event someone did, they'd be severely constrained by momentum. Even if it declined, it would do so slowly, and be tightly managed.

71% of Ukrainians in 1991 voted for keeping the Soviet Union. 81% of Belorussians. 73% of Russians. 94% of Azerbaijanis.

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That is a landslide election result in favor of keeping the union yet what happened? As Xi Jinping himself said, nobody in the Soviet system truly defended it when it was under threat. Not just the weight of the system itself but all the protests of the people and the votes in favor of keeping the Union couldn't stop it from breaking up.

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solarz said:

History is full of disastrous decisions that came from this mindset.

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solarz said:

The Soviet Union did not have a competitive economic model. Its society was not nearly as dynamic as the US. It overstretched itself militarily.

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AndrewS said:

Look at the procurement of major naval and air platforms such as stealth fighters, aircraft carriers, frigates, destroyers and submarines.

At a minimum, China is matching the US procurement rate. In some cases like frigates and destroyers, China is at twice the US rate.

And looking to the future:

1. In the case of stealth fighters, with the introduction of a 2nd stealth fighter design, my guess is that the Chinese procurement rate somewhere between 1.3-2x higher.

2. On submarines, with the ridiculous amount of shipyard capacity they've built out for nuclear submarines, I would expect a further ramp to somewhere between 1.3-2x higher

3. On aircraft carriers, once they've got a nuclear-powered design they're happy with, then in the 2030s, they'll be at the equivalent of 2x the US rate - at least till 2040.

It may end up as a mix of full-size nuclear carriers, complemented with smaller LHD drone carriers with electromagnetic catapults

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So we're looking at a situation where China is building a military that with enough time, ends up as significantly larger than the US military. If US-China relations remain bad, I could see China building a military 2x larger than the US military.

So there is no rush to attack Taiwan, as the military balance in 5 years and then 10 years will be far more favourable.

In terms of economic resilience, China will also be in a far more favourable position. For example, I expect China to have a completely self-sufficient mature semiconductor industry in terms in 5 years time. For the latest semiconductors requiring EUV lithography machines - I expect this to follow with a 5-10 year lag.

The latest IMF estimates are that China will still grow 2x faster than the US for the next 5 years. So the economic balances will continue to shift in China's favour.

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I would also add that as the years pass by, Chinese society will continue to become "softer" and presumably a "softer" generation of political leaders will be in charge.

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coolgod said:

This is nice to say in retrospect, but back in the 60s, early 70s your statement would have been objectively not true.

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supersnoop said:

Soviet agriculture was always underperforming, back in the 60's and 70's it was buying grain from Canada and the USA.

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coolgod said:

I dunno man, going down in Chinese history books as the people who defeated the mighty US empire is a pretty big deal, while getting compared with Song dynasty would be a terrible look.

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