I would like to contribute a gentle disagreement with the contention that China will be on the upswing in 10-15 years. Instead, that will be just about the time that its demographic shitstorm begins to gather force (barring, of course, any extreme measures it could take in the interim to preclude it).
I think the Chinese will use tried and true methods of subtle economic pressures and incentives to gain access to the natural resources of eastern Russia.
This. If they somehow managed to take Taiwan, it’ll be in the same manner that Russia “took” Mariupol.
China doesn’t seem to have cried too many tears that everything that made Hong Kong great and “desirable” has largely gone away as they’ve exerted control.
Likewise, they might not be too sad if Taiwan simply turned into a lifeless rock - so be it under Chinese control.
Yes. China is facing many severe challenges ahead and may well be at the apex of their powers just about now. The demographics you cite is one non-trivial example, but there are more, and perhaps more severe, challenges as well.
OTOH, the entire planet is facing severe challenges between AGW, sea level rise, impending AI, democracies in crisis in the post-truth era, etc.
China may well be screwed in an absolute sense, but if they’re less screwed than their competition, they’ll still be on an upswing relatively speaking.
I think China’s very profitable financial relationship with the United States holds a much bigger priority than reclaiming Outer Manchuria, and I don’t think they would upset the economic wheelbarrow by starting a war.
They got Hong Kong for free and it is still worth a pretty penny, despite declines and troubles. They would not get Taiwan for free and a gigantic smouldering pile of rubble wouldn’t be worth a dull farthing for years or decades.
I feel Sage Rat is right. The Chinese government is not seeking to take Taiwan for financial reasons. It’s a political issue. The current government wants to demonstrate to the Chinese people that it’s effective at getting things done. Conquering Taiwan would be achieving a goal they have publicly set for themselves. It won’t matter to them if they end up spending more money in achieving that goal than they’re able to extract from Taiwan afterwards.
Sure, it’s politically driven. That said, China wants Taiwan’s semi conductor industry, expertise and fabs.
But this is scorched earth. Taiwanese don’t want to be invaded a second time by the Mainland, and they have been preparing since 1949 for this event.
This soundbite doesn’t carry much meaning because “been preparing” doesn’t carry much meaning.
The question is how much preparations have been done and how effective are they?
Historically, you can look at many countries who had made preparations in case they were invaded, only to find out that the best laid plans of mice and men were just that.
For the vast majority of those years, the PLA didn’t have the ability to project power across the straits, so the preparations were not as extensive as they would have been had an invasion been a realistic possibility.
The question of who would win in the event of an invasion is a difficult question and there is no doubt that there would be a lot of destruction. There is no question that the Taiwanese are ramping up efforts to counter the threats.
However, people should not get the impression that the Taiwanese have been slaving away for 71 years making it an absolutely impregnable fortress.
Yeah, even as late as 10 or so years ago I’d have considered an invasion of Taiwan by mainland China to be extremely implausible; they lacked for amphibious lift capacity to move meaningful amounts of troops and their navy was fundamentally outclassed by the US Navy. Even if Taiwan had been forced to go it alone without the US Navy to block any Chinese invasion, their navy of fast missile boats and former US WW2 vintage destroyers would have been enough to make a mess of any Chinese landing attempt. China’s navy has been growing in size and capability for quite some time, and I would no longer dismiss the possibility of a successful invasion out of hand.
I’m not surprised that the Taiwanese army officer you talked to in the 1990s wasn’t impressed with their “crappy tanks.” They were still using WW2 vintage M24 Chaffee light tank and the Korean War era replacement, the M41 Walker Bulldog in the late 90s.
It seems worth noting that the word Taiwan doesn’t appear in the title nor OP of this thread.
But it’s all connected. Russia and China would like to deliver a new world order together. Xi and Putin share a similar world view. Russia is showing how difficult it will be to forge that. Xi is probably nailed on for a third term but a catastrophe for Russia might make his reelection a bit more difficult.
After his reelection he may feel more liberated to act more dramatically, but an invasion of Taiwan would be suicide. It’d need 700,000 troops making a 100 mile journey across the Taiwan Straight, and once they land they will have to fight, street by street, through miles of urban sprawl. These cities are ringed by tall jungle covered hills where more defenders can wait in well hidden positions spotting and bombarding. The Taiwanese forces are a well armed, highly trained, modern army defending their homeland. And the attackers supply lines will rely on boats. It’s the final level boss of all invasion scenarios.
The OP specifies that Putin is out of the equation.
The thread has moved on.
In a nutshell, the OP was “Assume Putin is replaced by a western toady; does China attack an exhausted reeling Russia?”
The current topic is “What does China do vis-a-vis Taiwan given the recent lessons of Russia vs. Ukraine while Xi is rapidly proceeding down Putin’s path to personal god-leader of his country?”
Note I’m not defending this mutation, merely explaining it.
But it’s pretty clearly simply assuming a certain amount of parallel evolution of China’s / XI’s governance following in Russia’s / Putin’s footsteps. IOW, once Emperor Xi gets to where Emperor Putin was 12 months ago, what happens next? An interesting topic to be sure.
I agree that up until recently, China just didn’t have the ability to cross the straits and land enough troops to be a serious threat, and the Taiwanese defenses seemed to reflect that.
Looking at estimated spending, China outspends Taiwan on the military by 23 times, US$230 billion vs. US$10 billion and China seems to be devoting much of their money for this particular mission.
There is a lot of conflicting information by various experts, with some saying they currently do have the capacity, others say they will have that in a few years. No one is saying it would be a cakewalk. Should they actually try, they should have realized it was clear that this
was to be no picnic.
Yep, and prolly the Russian blitzkrieg turning into Stalingrad is making the PLA take a deeper look. Certainly the Chinese netizens think it will be a cakewalk since Winny the Pooh has been playing the nationalist drum for the past decade. And the netizens were simply outraged that China didn’t shoot down Pelosi’s plane.
Taiwan is defending against a primary sea borne invasion. The invader needs an overwhelming advantage, which doesn’t look like the PRC currently has.
Plus I’ll state again my pet conspiracy theory that Taiwan has the bomb and is not afraid to use it for a phyrric victory. Zaijian Shanghai.
A big issue is that China can probably not take Taiwan without destroying many of the assets it wants Taiwan for in the first olace. Specifically, those world-class chip fabs. China has a lousy semiconductor industry, and hasn’t been making much headway in improving it. Chip manufacturers are going out of business, company heads being arrested for corruption, etc.
China desperately wants Taiwan’s technology. The catch-22 is that invading to get it might just destroy it.
If anything, the war in Ukraine has highlighted how critical semiconductor capacity is for a modern military. Russia is resorting to repurposing control boards from washing machines and other consumer electronics to keep its military going. And cutting China off from global semiconductor supply chains may make them more desperate.
Yes. But its going to take them some time to get enough people trained in all the shiny new vessels and aircraft they have.
It could be worth it to deny the assets to their enemies. If China takes Taiwan, nobody gets the chips. But they will reap the benefits when the infrastructure is rebuilt.
Not really. As I said, they’ve been growing in size and capability for quite some time. They’ve already been doing the legwork of training the crews and pilots for all of their shiny new ships and aircraft for their expanding size; it’s not something that was an unexpected issue. There are 5 out of a planned 16 13,000 Type 55 Destroyers/Cruisers (Chinese/American designation for them) in service and 25 Type 52D destroyers in service with 6 more under construction. A decade ago, there none of those vessels existed; there are now 5 and 25 fully manned and in active service, with 11 and 6 more planned or under construction. They didn’t have problems manning them or require abnormally long shakedowns. Once those now planned or under construction are completed, there’s no reason to think they aren’t going to take any longer to man and undergo a shakedown cruise than their earlier sister ships or than the newest US Arleigh Burke’s are going to.