You have no idea what you are talking about.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
You are delusional if you think reunification can wait till 2049. Hell, even mid-2030’s is a stretch.
屁眼还是眼
The majority of the KMT and the army retreated with him to China thinking they will go back sooner or later. So yeah someone is gonna off him probably if he does that.
Last time I checked the people in PRC didn't agree to be Song dynasty V2. If the CPC can't lead China to reunification by 2049, there will already be political turmoil, regardless of how high China's GDP is.
Whether great rejuvenation is achieved or not is determined by future official historians. If China does not reunify under CPC, no matter how high the GDP, how high the life expectancy, it will not count. Look at the historical narrative and analysis of the Song dynasty. Similarly, if China does reunify, no matter how much deaths, how much "GDP" decline, the narrative will favour China's great rejuvenation. Look at the history books, when was the last time China was reunified and the narratives claimed it was some sort of pyrrhic victory? Has Chinese history books ever claimed something like if XXX emperor only waited a few more decades, he could have reunified the country without suffering great losses?
Whether China is ready for reunification is fundamentally determined by PLA's hardware and software as well as the associated military and political calculus. If these conditions are not met, then yes it can wait.
To be clear, I very much think the likelihood of it happening before 2049 is overwhelmingly high, and that reunification is crucial to China's future development. What I disagree with is the reasoning behind this conclusion. It will happen because China is "ready" and deems it worthy, not simply because of a date.
I can agree with the notion that there will be significant political costs if the 2049 deadline is not met.
But I see the historical thinking as problematic (not just here, but in many discussions elsewhere too). The modern world is fundamentally different from the historical context you are referring to. Suffering the described amount of casualties and economic losses in a war is not as acceptable as it was historically. Heck, even international perspectives of wartime actions carry significant weight nowadays. We can agree to disagree, but I don't think basing an argument on "China historically was this therefore that" is sufficient.
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For the next 15+ years, the political, economic, technological and military balances will continue to shift decisively in China's favour.
1. With the Trump abandoning the international system that the US created, that will create much more space for China to operate in.
2. Even with the most charitable economic comparisons, China is still less than 2x larger than the USA. Yet China has 4x the population, so it will still take at least 15 years for the gap to disappear. Note that the IMF/WorldBank expect Chinese growth to be 2x higher than the US in the next 5 years.
3. In terms of technology, the WSJ reports that the de-Americanised semiconductor fab in Beijing has gone beyond pilot production levels, presumably using DUV lithography machines which are good for mature semiconductors that account for 70% of global demand. So give it another 5 years (2030) to debug and deploy such fabs at scale.
The other 30% really needs EUV lithography machines, which looks like it is running 5 years behind.
So call it 2030 to start pilot production and then another 5 years to deploy at scale.
By 2035, domestic airliners should be fully indigenised, and China should have domestic technology companies for everything else, down to component level.
4. This all feeds into the changing military balance. But we're still looking at 2040+ for China to build a larger blue-water Navy than the US.
In 2040, China will be a very different place.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
You are making two fundamental mistakes with this line of reasoning.
The first is you are fundamentally misunderstanding the core nature of the Taiwan question and any future war for Taiwan.
Simply put, the US decision to first create the Taiwan situation, and all subsequent investments to maintain it till today’s status quo
has absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan and everything to do with America’s pathological desperation to contain and control China, which in turn is rooted in its deep national insecurity and now rapidly self-fulfilling irrational fear of being invaded and subjugated by non-whites.
During the Cold War, China was just the first domino. Today all that has changed is that America has become more convinced that loosing to China means the start of its own destruction, since the whole domino middle steps are gone. Fight China and loose over Taiwan and American primacy is over.
All that means deterrence was never an option.
The second fundamental mistake is that you are shoehorning the current complex geopolitical picture on the irrelevant historical context of WWII and drawing all the wrong conclusions from it by basically re-imagining today’s world as a re-run of WWII, just with China cast in Japan’s place.
This explains your obsession with a Chinese alpha strike and the massive impact you seem to assign it, which simply isn’t reflected in today’s reality.
America today is not the world’s factory. It cannot spin up to terrifying military industrial output levels because it has minimal industrial capacities left. It is China who has the overwhelming industrial production dominance.
Furthermore, America forward deployed military assets are hardly decisive, which means even if China wipes them all out, it doesn’t fundamentally alter anything for America in terms of either it’s desire to fight China, or it’s ability to do so.
Such a perfect position will never be realistically attainable because China is not the only one who gets a vote on starting a war.
America has already gone all in on its full commitment to contain and dominate China. So as soon as it looks like China is on course to achieve such a position, America will trigger the war to fight while they still have some chance of winning.
This is a core reason why China has not made any massive sudden leaps in defence spending in recent years despite massively increased and more overt American hostility. China is maintaining a delicate balancing act of closing the military balance of power difference as rapidly as it can without making America feel it needs to trigger the war immediately. But eventually, no matter how careful China goes about it, it will reach a point where America feels it needs to move on China while it still can, and that tipping point will be well before China attains conventional military parity with America.
This is why so much of China’s investment is actually on the production facility side rather than churning out weapons themselves.
I think you are actually massively underestimating the scale, duration and length of the war, as well as the prize for the winner.
The war won’t be about Taiwan because it was never about Taiwan, but rather it will be about who will dominate the planet for the rest of this century if not beyond.
Official deadline is 2049.
The public could hold their nose and give time until 2049 as that's the official date, but only if there has been very credible and serious progress towards that, with a visible and viable future path towards unification by the deadline. Anything else than that and indeed, by mid-2030 at latest, there would be big political legitimacy issues.
CPC said great rejuvenation by 2049. CPC has staked it's entire political legitimacy into that. Failing to achieve that, nevermind any political spin, people would question legitimacy. And as all historians know, the moment the public starts openly questioning the current ruling power's legitimacy, political collapse is not long after. I am sure Xi, and the Party know their history and Marxist lessons quite well.
Economic development, tech, military powa, yada yada. Everyone praises big strong China but little Taiwan Province can't be unified into the mainland lol. From the farmer in Tibet, to the Shanghai elite, CPC will be a joke to everyone whenever any random official or politician comes out and talks about China's strength.
Wouldn't be surprised if people even make it into a meme similar to India's Supapowa situation
Nevertheless, thats a bit too long term and (imo) underestimates the CPC too much, to discuss now. People should be afforded chances based on past execution and history. CPC has fully convinced me that it is a political actor which is competent, patriotic, non-corrupt, and can plan and execute plans and tasks successfully.
For such a large and competent organization, I think it's a bit unfair to underestimate their future actions so much. Worst scenario should always be accounted for, but that doesn't mean that it is also the most probable
I maintain the belief that the CPC's final task for Xi is to either achieve reunification with Taiwan or make significant progress towards it. I think Xi knows this, and will take necessary steps to accomplish this.
Don't forget what Xi has said about Taiwan. Past unresolved problems shouldn't be left to future generations to solve. Take that as you may