They seem to be picking a lot of fights to me. Hong Kong, Taiwan, the SC sea problems with Vietnam, Philippines, etc. And now they have intruded into the Galway Valley in Ladakh, a region in the far north of India. There are lots of disputed ceasefire lines, disputed borders, etc, and conflicts, between neighbours in this region. But this valley has always been India.
Not the normal, on going, low level, tiff stuff either. Large troop presence and an all weather military base going in. Catching India entirely off guard.
Things could get hot. On a lot of fronts, it seems. China may be more prepared, than the West imagines, for the chaos it seems intent on.
Magiver, you are referring to work unit and household watch system with it’s heyday during the cultural revolution. Work units, where one lived in a big factory complex with company housing, are largely gone. Only vestiges remained by the turn of the century. There was a bit of a resurgence during SARs to track people traveling, but it was far from universal. This system simply no longer exists in a meaningful way to spy and control the masses.
I personally witnessed the household watch system decline from 1985 to the present. The 15 years I lived in China, I never had to register in my neighborhood. Both when I lived in China under a tourist visa and with a work visa. Interestingly enough, in the 1980’s, people would be careful talking politics or sensitive items in public or a restaurant, would talk in the homes, and were most open on long train rides. Distinctly remember having major political discussions or learning about the cultural revolution on the trains, and many times someone would want to hush the conversation, and other folks would flat out say “you don’t know me, you don’t know where I’m from, don’t know my work unit, so don’t worry and lets talk to this foreigner that speaks Chinese.”
With the internet, big data, epay, wechat and Covid, people’s movements can be tracked unless one does not use a cell phone. Which is mighty difficult as apps on your phone have to be shown to get on transportation. China is at the forefront of the digital monitoring State.
It is pretty quantifiable. 90 million card carrying members. I can’t find the number readily but there are reasonable estimates for the number of people in the government and military. 90 million is small compared to the total.
AFAIK they do not exist but they were certainly considered (basically they’d detonate a nuclear bomb in space which would power and fire a laser to shoot down ballistic missiles…all in microseconds or less before it all vaporized).
These are all on the front burner lately, but have been simmering for decades. That said, China upped the game in the south china sea by artificially building military bases on reefs. The US really blew it by leaving the Philippines (but that was the Philippines wanting the US out), and a policy of doing nothing about it for the past 10 or 20 years. BTW, the South China sea is claimed by Brunei, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Don’t forget the Sino-Vietnam war in 1979, where China got bloodied. But now the economic integration of Northern Vietnam and Southern China is very deep.
Ladakh is not new. India and China have fought border skirmishes in multiple areas of the Himalaya’s certainly since the 1980’s if not earlier.
As an observer that first lived in Taiwan as a student in 1982, and visit for business at least a few times per year, taiwan appears to be less prepared than a few decades ago to repel a physical invasion.
In the 1980’s, the military was led by combat veterans of the civil war. There was universal conscription with every male needing to spend 2-3 years depending on the branch, and then they were in active reserves for years. Air raid drills were conducted at least a couple times per year in Taipei.
Now it’s an all volunteer military, but those that don’t qualify in high school or college, have to go through a few weeks of basic training and “serve” for 4 months. Searches show up multiple reports that the military is understaffed understaffed.
It is my personal sense that the people of Taiwan would not actively resist if the PLA successfully land. The Taiwanese would not be happy about it, but I don’t see great masses of virtually unarmed civilians trying to turn back the PLA.
You do understand that it’s a ridiculous apples to orangutans comparison, yes? Not all 1.5 million shells (or whatever) were fired at a handful of targets…they were fired at myriad targets, including trench lines or for suppression of troops. There is basically zero similarity between modern precision guided munitions and dumb shells fired for effect and en masse during WWI or even WWII. The comparison would be high altitude bombing raids by WWII bombers and modern guided missiles, where we can see whole bomber raids failing to hit, say, a specific building or target that can and has been demonstrated can be hit by 1 or 2 missiles and taken out. One can look at the almost off hand way the US fired a bit over 100 missiles into Syria and basically shut down several air bases and damaged a bunch of air craft. Had the US followed up on that raid every day for a few weeks it would have shut Syria down…and Syria is MUCH more dispersed than Taiwan, which has a more limited number of high value targets.
I’m not sure why you are staying with this, but anyone who can hand wave away thousands of modern intermediate range missiles and what real effect they would have on the defenses of Taiwan, especially without the US intervening and making comparison to WWI or even WWII artillery just isn’t credible. It’s a silly comparison. If China unleashed 200 or so missiles a day along with air strikes it would absolutely devastate Taiwan’s logistics and military capability to respond. Even so, they would STILL take massive casualties, IMHO, if China tried to push their fleet in, and they would take massive air casualties as well. But Taiwan couldn’t withstand that for weeks…while China could. In the end, if the CCP is willing to pay the price they could take Taiwan if the US stays out of things.
The real question is, would the US (and Japan) stay out of it, and is the CCP crazy/stupid enough to really push this thing to conflict? I’m hoping the former is yes while the later is no, but it’s only hope. Gods know what our idiot president will do at any given time, and I have zero faith in the CCP to not be stupid, short sighted and idiotic.
Not as far as the Chinese are concerned. The Galwan Valley is adjacent to/arguably part of the Aksai Chin region which has been disputed territory between Britain and China since the 19th century. China, with some justification really, regarded the various British boundaries as illegally imposed colonial aggrandizements. The history is complex - the British gained it by virtue of defeating the Sikhs in 1842 who had conquered it a few years earlier in 1835.
If Ladakh was historically tied to any region before, it was much more to neighboring Tibet. It was pretty much always been predominantly Buddhist in religion and Tibetan in culture. But we know who is calling the shots in Tibet these days :rolleyes:.
China’s border disputes with India aren’t just in the Ladakh/Aksai Chin region. They’ve also made claims in Arunachal Pradesh.
All these claims trace back to Tibet. These areas are border regions that were controlled by Tibet at some points in the past. (Ladakh and Aksai Chin are to the west of Tibet. Arunachal Pradesh is to the east.) Tibet ceded these regions to other countries.
The Chinese position is that these agreements were invalid because they were unfair to Tibet and made by force. (You have to admire the ability of Chinese officials to say this with a straight face.) So these regions should be returned to Tibet. Which, with Tibet now being annexed by China, means they should be given to China.
Sorry, the strength of a tech country is in the people and minorly the factories. You plaster the place with bombs and kill the techs, you have to train up an all new population of techs - you kill the body, you kill the mind that can create the tech innovations. Factories can be rebuilt, but then you have to train a whole new staffing. If you kill the minds that can create the innovations you are screwed - I can teach someone to machine something from a blueprint, it takes training to become an engineer …
Please do not even get me started on Tibet vs China. I’ll have an aneurysm.
Some of this stems back to the “Great Game” era. The British, I think it is fair to say, fucked up the region. Some of these current claims stem from the Brits taking over Nepal, and also the Younghusband invasion of Tibet in 1903, and the Simla Convention.
Let’s just say I side with the Tibetans on all things China-Tibet.
It has to do, at it’s core with water. By controlling Tibet China can, potentially, control key water sources for a number of regional powers, as well as their own sources for several key river ways. China has already or is in the process of putting dams up on many of them, which will further enhance their ability to squeeze concessions from several downstream nations. Even India would be in a pickle, especially if China manages to gain control of some of those border disputed areas. Which is why India basically can’t back down on any of this…they already face some steep obstacles as it is.
What you are saying here is the excuse the CCP uses to push forward their claims. But the reason boils down to water. I wonder if the other regional powers, or global powers really thought it through when they allowed China to basically annex Tibet all those decades ago…
I don’t see this as a major issue for China in a potential war with Taiwan. Taiwan is not going to be able to project a lot of force into mainland China; they will be making their attacks against invading Chinese forces.
So while China might lose a lot of military personnel and equipment, its losses in tech people and infrastructure would be minimal.
Water is certainly an issue. But I don’t feel it’s really something Mao was thinking about back in 1951.
I feel the main motivations for China’s annexation of Tibet were political; the communists wanted to show that they could take back control of a region that the imperialists and the nationalists hadn’t been able to. There was probably also some strategic rivalry. Back around 1951, there probably looked like there was a plausible threat of India annexing Tibet if China didn’t move first.
I think what Aruqvan was saying was that China would have killed off Taiwan’s human capital and tech talent in such a war, not that Taiwan would have killed off China’s.
Why would China experience a pyrrhic victory if they killed off Taiwan’s people? Even if you say Taiwan would be Chinese territory after the war, anyone left would represent a gain for China.
I agree, I don’t think it would be much of a deterrent. But it would still be in China’s interests to capture Taiwan as intact as possible. Which is why I argue that a blockade is much likelier than an invasion, should push come to shove.
No, China wanted the traditional buffer state of Tibet. Historically, China and India never collided because of Tibet, the Himalayas and the Xinjiang area. Core China never smacked up against the other side of the Himalayas.
The annexation of Tibet was primarily strategic. ONe, as a buffer, and two for the natural resources. Remember the translation of tibet is 西藏 or the “western treasure house.”
Sure, there were some political overtones. Mao wasn’t picky. He did a giant land grag for everything the could get his hands on. Only the Russians stopped Mao from getting outer mongolia and siberia. Certainly outer mongolia was part of the “historic” China sphere. Which is kinda nonsense because anything the Mongols ever took is considered part of “historic” China. And, yes, Tibet rivaled China so much back in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), that the Chinese emperor gave his daughter in tribute to the Tibetan king.
You misunderstand the point. The Taiwanese are the back bone of the major high tech manufacturers: Compal, Pegatron, Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta, TSMC, Chicony and a host of others. The factories are all in China, but the managers are all Taiwanese.
Now, having worked for one of those major companies for 4 years, IMHO China would replace that lost management and engineering force relatively quickly and painlessly.