PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

Overbom · Jul 25, 2022

What's even funnier is that everyone focuses on US-held dollars while forgetting to mention the dollars that other countries/individuals/banks hold in their reserves lol

This is where dollar being the reserve currency is a doubled edged sword. The more you printed in peacetime, the worse it will get in wartime when everyone suddenly uses their "wealth" (dollars) to try to buy anything at the world market (or whatever is left of it by then)

So if US-held dollars alone are enough to cause hyperinflation in the US when the war happens, you can imagine what will happen when the rest of the world uses their dollars as well. I won't even mention the diplomatic/political clusterf that will happen as a result of that

That's why I said economic discussion is not suitable for this thread. Things are much more complex than simply saying "just invest on industry and infrastructure bro, wartime production, lets go!"

lzmfVw · Jul 25, 2022

tphuang said:
It really hasn't. China can get all of the necessary resources from land and sea routes it can control. Any US effort to cut off China will also cut off japan and SK and other of its "allies"

Why don't you be a little more clear. What can US cut off China aside from just a decoupling with the West? What resources can US cut off from China?

I see where you are coming from. The general argument I see here is that China is an auturky. My argument is that a China that has access to international markets and can chose to trade or not trade as she pleases is in a significant more powerful position that one that is cut off from international trade. I feel this thesis is strong enough having being validated by China's reform and opening up, so much so that I put this under the victory condition of a peer conflict. A China that is forced to be an auturky and rely on immediate land routes is arguably worse off than the status quo.

Also, not directed to anyone specifically, but assertions that the west cannot and will not do something are not very interesting because they are not sound basis for planning. Any serious planning makes rooms for contingencies, even notional ones. If the assertion is that NATO would not get into a peer conflict on the side of the U.S. because the price is too high, and then NATO does, then what? If the assertion is that the West will collapse, and then it doesn't, then what? The information gained from the original assertion is minimal, and the downside of getting it wrong can be catastrophic. I hope I don't have to belabor this point.

So what does all this all mean?
It means that - to be clear - if China is forced to fight, then it needs to fight.
It means that if China can fight at a time of its choosing, then it needs to understand what its victory conditions are, have the procurement strategy and control enough of the international security environment to realize it.
More concretely, it means deciding between building 6 aircraft carriers or 12 aircraft carriers. It means building or not building an expeditionary force. It means whether or not have overseas military bases, where, and how many, etc...

tphuang · Jul 26, 2022

lzmfVw said:
I see where you are coming from. The general argument I see here is that China is an auturky. My argument is that a China that has access to international markets and can chose to trade or not trade as she pleases is in a significant more powerful position that one that is cut off from international trade. I feel this thesis is strong enough having being validated by China's reform and opening up, so much so that I put this under the victory condition of a peer conflict. A China that is forced to be an auturky and rely on immediate land routes is arguably worse off than the status quo.

Also, not directed to anyone specifically, but assertions that the west cannot and will not do something are not very interesting because they are not sound basis for planning. Any serious planning makes rooms for contingencies, even notional ones. If the assertion is that NATO would not get into a peer conflict on the side of the U.S. because the price is too high, and then NATO does, then what? If the assertion is that the West will collapse, and then it doesn't, then what? The information gained from the original assertion is minimal, and the downside of getting it wrong can be catastrophic. I hope I don't have to belabor this point.

So what does all this all mean?
It means that - to be clear - if China is forced to fight, then it needs to fight.
It means that if China can fight at a time of its choosing, then it needs to understand what its victory conditions are, have the procurement strategy and control enough of the international security environment to realize it.
More concretely, it means deciding between building 6 aircraft carriers or 12 aircraft carriers. It means building or not building an expeditionary force. It means whether or not have overseas military bases, where, and how many, etc...

Obviously, China should avoid a peer war if it can. However, by what we've seen with Russia/Ukraine, Western countries will try to apply severe sanctions on China if it invades Taiwan. And the reality is, no Chinese gov't can stay in power if they do not prevent Taiwan from crossing the red lines.

So yes, any conflict between China and US would involve significant economic pain for the world. So, that will not be how China determines whether it won a conflict. Also, NATO is basically controlled by America. However, most NATO countries are too far for westpac to be of meaningful help.. As such, NATO's response to a China invasion is irrelevant from military point of view.

Will China seek to continue trading with continental Europe? Of course it will. The quicker it can settle the Taiwan situation the better. And if it can win a peer conflict in westpac, then that effectively allows China to be the region hegemon that American elites fear. There are certain economic opportunities as China would then re-orient more of its economy to Asia. The countries in East Asia will most likely be integrated into China's supply chain and use RMB as the default currency. This is a large and booming population and economic area. In the long run, continental Europe cannot ignore trading with China if China has all the advanced technology and supply chain. That's why American elites have been warning about losing the tech race to China for several years.

AndrewS · Jul 26, 2022

tphuang said:
And if it can win a peer conflict in westpac, then that effectively allows China to be the region hegemon that American elites fear. There are certain economic opportunities as China would then re-orient more of its economy to Asia. The countries in East Asia will most likely be integrated into China's supply chain and use RMB as the default currency.

The countries in East Asia are already integrated into China's supply chain today.

And today, we also see the Asian currencies have a higher correlation and follow the RMB more than the USD, as per the Economist.

These relationships will only deepen into the future.

AndrewS · Jul 26, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
No it's not. I provided actual proof and historical precedent: YMTC supply chain audit and Russian sanctions related inflation. And these are small compared to replacing the entire economy. Further proof: Saturn 5 plans being lost and unable to be recreated.

YMTC is not representative as its equipment suppliers were/are very dependent on foreign suppliers past the 2 tier. Questioning foreign suppliers on a voluntary basis is going to be slow, so I'm not surprised it took a year.

In comparison, the default position of say Intel is that all of its semiconductor requirement was developed in the West with very little to no Chinese input.

So it's a lot easier to conduct a supply chain audit in such a situation. Plus in wartime, such supply chain audits will have the force of US law behind them and are urgent because companies all along the supply chain are scared that the production will ground to a halt.

So I don't see your assertion that it would take US companies 5 years just to conduct a supply chain audit as valid.

---

As for inflation, it was a problem even before the Russia sanctions. In the event of a US-China war and economic decoupling, yes, inflation should be worse in the USA. But that is not the same as saying the US couldn't build alternative sources of supply given time.

---
The Saturn 5 situation is not relevant, because we're talking about products currently under production where blueprints/designs are still available from the manufacturers at each stage of the supply chain.

FairAndUnbiased said:
Targeting money where? They can't even fully identify all Huawei equipment, and that's a branded product with giant logos on it, in peace time, over years. Good luck identifying the parts of PCBs or mechanical assemblies with no logo or only serial numbers, without vendor cooperation.

If products have been installed say 5 years ago and are still working, then the chances are they will continue to work.
Identifying these items is not the same as trying to source components to produce brand new products

FairAndUnbiased · Jul 26, 2022

AndrewS said:
YMTC is not representative as its equipment suppliers were/are very dependent on foreign suppliers past the 2 tier. Questioning foreign suppliers on a voluntary basis is going to be slow, so I'm not surprised it took a year.

In comparison, the default position of say Intel is that all of its semiconductor requirement was developed in the West with very little to no Chinese input.

So it's a lot easier to conduct a supply chain audit in such a situation. Plus in wartime, such supply chain audits will have the force of US law behind them and are urgent because companies all along the supply chain are scared that the production will ground to a halt.

So I don't see your assertion that it would take US companies 5 years just to conduct a supply chain audit as valid.

---

As for inflation, it was a problem even before the Russia sanctions. In the event of a US-China war and economic decoupling, yes, inflation should be worse in the USA. But that is not the same as saying the US couldn't build alternative sources of supply given time.

---
The Saturn 5 situation is not relevant, because we're talking about products currently under production where blueprints/designs are still available from the manufacturers at each stage of the supply chain.

If products have been installed say 5 years ago and are still working, then the chances are they will continue to work.
Identifying these items is not the same as trying to source components to produce brand new products

No, YMTC's supply chain audit was to find the dependencies in the first place, not because it was dependent. The supply chain goes deep and dependencies come up in unexpected places.

It seems that you are convinced that just in time supply chains are highly resilient, black box subassemblies are easy to find full replacements for and it's super easy to reverse engineer and produce complex custom mechanical parts that have neither vendor documentation nor anything beyond a serial number. I've never seen that to be the case, historical precedent including the Saturn 5 rocket hasn't shown that to be the case, but maybe you know a case.

I don't know where you get this confidence from. So has anything like this ever happened historically? Please, enlighten us on that.

AndrewS · Jul 26, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
No, YMTC's supply chain audit was to find the dependencies in the first place, not because it was dependent. The supply chain goes deep and dependencies come up in unexpected places.

The point is that in the semiconductor industry, the machines are generally made entirely in the West.
Yes, the US would find some unexpected dependencies, but the nature of this technology means there are comparatively few to deal with.
In terms of lithography, how many Chinese sourced components do Nikon or ASML actually use? The machines were mostly designed years ago, so my guess is barely any.

And my guess that the YMTC still has a lot of machinery suppliers who obtain components from overseas. That will change in time, but I don't think it's the situation now.

FairAndUnbiased said:
It seems that you are convinced that just in time supply chains are highly resilient, black box subassemblies are easy to find full replacements for and it's super easy to reverse engineer and produce complex custom mechanical parts that have neither vendor documentation nor anything beyond a serial number. I've never seen that to be the case, historical precedent including the Saturn 5 rocket hasn't shown that to be the case, but maybe you know a case.

Just in time supply chains are not resilient. And if you think about it, most components in products are not black box subassemblies.
Most products are actually fairly simple, with the most complex parts being the electronics.

Cars are probably the most complex mass-market product in the world, yet supply chain audits happen fairly easily.
And we've seen many of the supply chain vulnerabilities in world already appear over the past 2 years with all the COVID disruptions.

FairAndUnbiased said:
I don't know where you get this confidence from. So has anything like this ever happened historically? Please, enlighten us on that.

It goes back to how long it takes to reconfigure or produce an entirely new industrial supply chain. The best analogues are what happened during WW2 when trade links were severed and the various countries had no choice but to build alternatives.

FairAndUnbiased · Jul 26, 2022

AndrewS said:
The point is that in the semiconductor industry, the machines are generally made entirely in the West.
Yes, the US would find some unexpected dependencies, but the nature of this technology means there are comparatively few to deal with.
In terms of lithography, how many Chinese sourced components do Nikon or ASML actually use? The machines were mostly designed years ago, so my guess is barely any.

And my guess that the YMTC still has a lot of machinery suppliers who obtain components from overseas. That will change in time, but I don't think it's the situation now.

Just in time supply chains are not resilient. And if you think about it, most components in products are not black box subassemblies.
Most products are actually fairly simple, with the most complex parts being the electronics.

Cars are probably the most complex mass-market product in the world, yet supply chain audits happen fairly easily.
And we've seen many of the supply chain vulnerabilities in world already appear over the past 2 years with all the COVID disruptions.

It goes back to how long it takes to reconfigure or produce an entirely new industrial supply chain. The best analogues are what happened during WW2 when trade links were severed and the various countries had no choice but to build alternatives.

WW2 is not a reasonable comparison. WW2 was closer to an era where most people used horse carts and worked in agriculture, than it is to today. Products were far less sophisticated and even countries like Czechoslovakia had a large MIC and automotive industry, see Skoda and Brno Armory which supplied the Waffen SS.

Even with cooperative vendors it is difficult to identify all parts of an existing product to recreate it or an equivalent. See Saturn V.

No, non electronics products are not all simple, look under the hood of a car in your automotive example.

Yes, there are many black box subassemblies, try identifying the function and BoM of a random unlabeled PCB if you doubt this.

Photolithography isn't the only piece of semiconductor equipment. The supply chain for semiconductors is vast, the supply chain deep intovcompanies with roots as far back as the 19th century, and suffice to say, you should really read the semiconductor thread as a very cursory introduction to news in this sector. Even the cheapest part - packaging - is critical and technically challenging.

tphuang · Jul 26, 2022

Can we please get back to the topic of pla strategies in west pac?

watdahek · Jul 27, 2022

I just saw the conversations in this thread that happened around mid-May regarding a chinese nuclear retaliation upon receiving conventional strikes to its industrial base. I would like to add another example that I think pretty convincingly invalidates this.

Back in WW2, Nazi Germany had a lot of chemical weapons stored, but never used them even until its unconditional surrender and fall of Berlin. This is a regime that is far more fanatical, evil, and aggressive than China, and had plenty of opportunities to deliver chemical weapons to Britain or Soviet civilian centers via V1/V2 rockets and bombers/artillery, but never committed to it because it knew it will get retaliated with chemical weapons as well.

I do not think China will face situations that will be worse than Nazi Germany.

PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

Overbom

Brigadier

lzmfVw

New Member

tphuang

Lieutenant General

AndrewS

Brigadier

AndrewS

Brigadier

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier

AndrewS

Brigadier

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier

tphuang

Lieutenant General

watdahek

New Member