Could China bribe a Taiwanese military division (promise a general governorship), or buy out a harbor company and slowly infiltrate its employee ranks and slowly build up on beachhead force living on the island itself, or employ some of their legions of hackers to infiltrate the Taiwanese computer systems, etc.?
I donno. I think that very few people are pretending that Taiwan is part of China in any meaningful way. That’s a left-over relic of day past. But as a result of the actions then, everyone has agreed to that Taiwan is within China’s sphere of influence. All the other countries put up with China’s petty demands such as not using “Taiwan” in the Olympics, and larger things such as not having formal mutual defense treaties, so it’s obvious that Taiwan isn’t treated as a completely independent country, but history has also seen countries dominated by others for mellennia.
It’s pretty annoying for Taiwanese, but many of them are pretty busy making money in China these day. Anyway, this is a hijack, but it’s an interesting topic which deserves it’s own GD thread.
Back to the show. With the US participating, there is very little chance of China successfully invading and holding Taiwan. Without the US:
The question would be how much damage could China’s missiles do in their initial strike against Taiwan’s hardened defenses. When we flew into Hualien on the east coast, you could see the concrete bunkers for the F-16s. I don’t believe that China has enough highly accurate surface to surface missiles to cripple Taiwan’s defenses, and with Taiwan’s modern military, just sending a ton of boats over isn’t going to do it.
- Questionable, but certainly of concern. 2. Nope. And even so, they would still lack tanks. 3. This is a major concern. How Taiwan counters it of up most importance to the outcome of a shooting war.
[QUOTE=TokyoBayer]
The question would be how much damage could China’s missiles do in their initial strike against Taiwan’s hardened defenses. When we flew into Hualien on the east coast, you could see the concrete bunkers for the F-16s. I don’t believe that China has enough highly accurate surface to surface missiles to cripple Taiwan’s defenses, and with Taiwan’s modern military, just sending a ton of boats over isn’t going to do it.
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They would certainly do damage. But in order for some of the scenarios being given in this thread for a forced entry assault (a successful one anyway) would require pretty much hitting all home runs…not just on the targets such as aircraft revetments, but also hardened C&C facilities. Yeah, I agree with you…I don’t believe that the Chinese have sufficient numbers of highly accurate missiles to cripple Taiwan’s defenses sufficiently to allow them to either gain air superiority in the straight OR over Taiwan itself, or to gain sufficient sea dominance to allow them to move more than a few divisions across at best. Sending over a ton of boats, even assuming the Chinese have sufficient hulls for that is basically just a way to get a lot of people killed really really quickly.
The assumption in this thread and in threads like this still seems to be that the Chinese are the same people with the same goals and, more importantly the same willingness to sacrifice millions to the cause and charge those bunkers without guns to soak up the bullets so that those behind could kill the enemy, as they were during or right after the revolution. They aren’t. Neither are those in charge. In the case of the people, they just aren’t all that fervent about the government or the revolution today as they were then, nor are they willing to make the same sacrifices, especially without some good reason to do so. Certainly not on the whim of the folks in charge. As for the government, while they might not care if millions die for their plan, they DO care about keeping a lid on the population…and this wouldn’t be a good way to do that.
Yup. Absolutely. In the 1950s, the Chinese had had more than 15 years of brutal, all out warfare and were just ready to get it over with.
The leadership today doesn’t have the respect it did then, and I can’t see a bloody banzai charge either.
And even if it were to happen (which it wouldn’t) you can’t do it over 100 miles of open sea, unless you control the air the sea and can suppress all resistance on the coast on the other side to suppress what would be shooting fish in a barrel. Fishing boats and cruse ships do not stand up well to modern weapons, no matter how many you throw at the enemy.
It just ain’t going to happen.
It’s ironic because “They’d never be willing to accept the casualties” is usually an argument made against the United States. Other countries have found out that it’s a bad idea to underestimate how much a country’s population can pull together in wartime.
It’s even conceivable that the Chinese government might seek to “wag the dog” at some point and foment a crisis over Taiwan in order to suppress domestic opposition against the government.
Posted by XT: " The assumption in this thread and in threads like this still seems to be that the Chinese are the same people with the same goals and, more importantly the same willingness to sacrifice millions to the cause and charge those bunkers without guns to soak up the bullets so that those behind could kill the enemy, as they were during or right after the revolution. They aren’t. Neither are those in charge. In the case of the people, they just aren’t all that fervent about the government or the revolution today as they were then, nor are they willing to make the same sacrifices, especially without some good reason to do so."
Yup. I agree with XT. I interact with the Chinese every day during work. I speak Mandarin. They are more westernized, more globalized, more aware of what the hell is going on besides what’s happening in their own village than they were during the Korean War. They wouldn’t put up with that kind of carnage. (I hope.) They have a deep patriotic love of China, but I don’t think they would put up with their children being slaughtered by the millions for the taking of Taiwan. This is my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
If China were truly changed and were truly looking for peaceful relations, it would do the obvious thing: drop its claim to Taiwan. Declare that it was accepting the reality that has existed for sixty years - that Taiwan is a separate country that Beijing has no claims to. Recognize Taiwanese sovereignty while invited Taiwan to voluntarily unify with the People’s Republic.
But China hasn’t done that. It’s asserting the same claim to Taiwan in 2012 that it was asserting in 1949. All it’s doing now is exploring different means to obtain that goal.
And while China is currently following a path of peaceful means, it’s also building up its military. I question if China will still choose exclusively peaceful means when its military reaches whatever level they’re aiming for. As Will Rogers once observed, “Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock.”
No one is claiming that China has turned into a puppy dog. XT, T. Slotroth and I are saying that the people will not longer tolerate turning scores of thousands of men into canon fodder.
Will China ever be able to build up a strong enough military to overwhelm Taiwan? Not in the next couple of decades.
I think some sort of Grand Bargain in which Taiwan is allowed complete autonomy except for the leadership of its military would come before a shooting war.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
It’s ironic because “They’d never be willing to accept the casualties” is usually an argument made against the United States. Other countries have found out that it’s a bad idea to underestimate how much a country’s population can pull together in wartime.
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I have no doubt that if China was attacked by another nation that much of the population would rally behind the current government and fight as hard as anyone to protect their homes. But we aren’t talking about that situation…you are positing the Chinese throwing away literally hundreds of thousands of lives in a wave attack using civilian ships going into the teeth of a modern military’s defenses. It would be a slaughter, and for pretty dubious gains even if they won.
Would Americans be willing to take literally 100’s of thousands of deaths in an attack such as this? Think about it while thinking about our tolerance for deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Would Europeans be willing to soak up these kinds of causalities? I’d say the answer to both is a resounding ‘no!’. So, why do you think the Chinese people WOULD accept these sorts of losses for something like this?
So, you think that the Chinese government, attempting to halt uprisings due to economic slowdowns would launch an unpopular war against Taiwan that would cost them massive amounts of causalities? :dubious: I suppose they might be that stupid, but I don’t think it would work out really well for them.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
If China were truly changed and were truly looking for peaceful relations, it would do the obvious thing: drop its claim to Taiwan. Declare that it was accepting the reality that has existed for sixty years - that Taiwan is a separate country that Beijing has no claims to. Recognize Taiwanese sovereignty while invited Taiwan to voluntarily unify with the People’s Republic.
[/QUOTE]
You are totally misunderstanding both the Chinese position on this as well as the position that’s been explained to you in this thread. The Chinese still want to bring Taiwan into the fold. Part of the pressure they are applying to meet this goal is through their military. It is and has been unacceptable for the mainland Chinese to allow Taiwan independence. But that doesn’t mean that China is seriously contemplating an invasion. It’s fairly clear they aren’t just based on what they have and haven’t built up, militarily.
Exactly. Yet they haven’t built up a massive sea lift or logistics capability. They haven’t built a large and powerful surface or submarine fleet. Why? In your estimation, what does this data suggest?
China is building up it’s military, but it’s not a computer or board game where ‘build up your military’ can be looked at in course terms. What ASPECT of their military are they focusing on is the key question. Are they building up their capability for a forced entry invasion of Taiwan…or building up their military in terms of something else (oh, say like for possible suppression of their people in case things turn ugly…or as a tool to continue to project regional dominance)?
I question the figure of hundreds of thousands of casualties. Would China be willing to sacrifice 500,000 troops to take Taiwan? Probably not. Would they be willing to sacrifice 50,000 troops? Maybe.
And that’s a point I’ve been raising. China has created a force of around 150,000 troops trained for amphibious assault. That’s not some token ceremonial force.
Why do you think China developed this force? They’re not going to use them in Aksai Chin or “South Tibet”. China has disputes involving various islands in the South China Sea but they don’t need five divisions for these little atolls - all those hundreds of islands added together don’t have five square miles of land.
You say China hasn’t built a large and powerful surface or submarine fleet. But they’re in the middle of building one. They’ve quadrupled the size of their submarine fleet in the last decade. They’re developed a naval aviation force.
And here’s another thing: the DF-21D. It’s designed to sink an aircraft carrier - it’s even specifically designed to get through state-of-the-art carrier defenses. Now look around at all the countries in the world and count up how many have aircraft carriers like that. This is a weapon system that’s only purpose is to sink a type of ship that only the United States Navy has.
Past American doctrine has been to sail a carrier group into the Taiwan Strait whenever China starts rumbling about Taiwan. What’s going to happen when China has a battery of carrier-killing missiles deployed along the strait?
Now I’ll grant this, you’re right that China hasn’t expanded its sealift capacity and they would need to do that if they were seriously planning on invading Taiwan. But they’re basically assembling all of the other pieces they’d need. In comparison to the other things they’re doing, building amphibious ships are a minor matter and could be thrown together in a year or so. It may just be they haven’t expanded their sealift capacity yet.
I’m saying if you were to make a checklist of all the things China needed to do before invading Taiwan, they’ve done or are in the middle of doing nine items on a ten item list. I don’t see how they’re doing all that on just a theoretical basis.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I question the figure of hundreds of thousands of casualties. Would China be willing to sacrifice 500,000 troops to take Taiwan? Probably not. Would they be willing to sacrifice 50,000 troops? Maybe.
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They have to invade an island nation with a standing army (a standing MODERN army) of over 200,000. And you were proposing they put them on a bunch of civilian hulls earlier in the thread. I think a death toll in the hundreds of thousands is being kind with that sort of plan, to be honest.
Show me the lift capability to move and support all of those troops and you will be onto something. Remember what it took the US, on a shoe string, to invade Iraq…which had a far less capable military than Taiwan, who also is in a much better defensive situation than Iraq was. And it was the US attacking, though let’s pretend that China is as capable as the US for the sake of argument.
I think they are developing this capability for a lot of reasons, but my WAG is it has more to do with interests in Africa than it does for any realistic plan to invade Taiwan. Again, show me that China can move and support all those troops and you’ll be onto something. Telling me they have 150,000 troops trained in amphibious tactics means nothing if they can only move and support 10,000 or so at a time though.
Sure they are. Never said otherwise. And there are rational, non-invasion of Taiwan reasons for them to be doing so. The point though is that they haven’t focused on any of these things, as they would be if they were in fact actually contemplating an actual mission to do this. Instead, they have built up their submarine fleet and are in the process of building some home grown carriers while using their re-tread Soviet carrier as a sort of proof of concept and training platform. They will need a very large surface fleet, including military grade transport, logistics and amphibious platforms, and as far as I know they aren’t exactly building those in the huge quantities they would need to do something like realistically invade Taiwan.
The actual purpose of this weapon is to give the Chinese leverage and a credible threat to a US carrier group…something they never had before. It gives them leverage in any negotiations when they are rattling their sabers during the latest dust up, and also puts additional pressure on Taiwan. If you think that China would use these things in a prelude to an invasion of Taiwan then all I can say is it’s pure fantasy. Even leaving aside the rather dubious assertion that they would work as advertised and actually take out a US super-carrier, the political, military and economic fallout of attacking the US is hard to even quantify for the Chinese government.
And I’m saying that you’ve yet to demonstrate this in any way. All the things you’ve brought up don’t add up to China seriously contemplating an invasion of Taiwan. Now, if you can show me they have or are demonstrably working towards being able to lift and support those 150,000 troops in a credible war time scenario, well, I’ll be slightly more convinced that China is building towards that capability. Earlier you were talking about putting troops on civilian hulls and just sending them across the straights in a mass attack, which is completely unrealistic.
I gave that as an example of a successful invasion China had conducted. They landed 115,000 troops on Hainan with less than 5000 casualties. I don’t see any reason to assume they’ve gotten worse since 1950.
China has conducted military exercises in which they’ve had 100,000 troops at sea and conducted an amphibious landing with them. Now that was a military exercise so it’s not the same as a real invasion under fire. But they weren’t faking having 100,000 troops at sea and landing them on a beachhead.
To put that in scale, the Allied landings on D-Day had about 150,000 troops.
I agree that China isn’t seeking a direct conflict with the United States. I think their intent is to deploy a anti-carrier weapons system so the United States won’t be seeking a direct conflict with China either. China isn’t looking for a Pearl Harbor - they want an Anschluss.
If China and the United States reach a point where neither side wants to fight the other, it puts Taiwan out on its lonesome. If Taiwan can’t count on American support, it will have to rely on its own resources to defend itself from China - and that’s the topic of this thread.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I gave that as an example of a successful invasion China had conducted. They landed 115,000 troops on Hainan with less than 5000 casualties. I don’t see any reason to assume they’ve gotten worse since 1950.
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Even leaving aside all the other stuff I pointed out earlier, you don’t see how weapons have gotten worse and more deadly since the 50’s?? 
I’ve never heard of such an exercise. Do you have a cite? Was there any independent observers? I seriously doubt the US could conduct such an operation on that scale, so I’m highly skeptical. No European country could do it.
While I’m sure the US Navy respects the potential threat from China’s super missiles, I seriously doubt it would deter us if China seriously threatened or attacked Taiwan.
Maybe, but maybe they are looking at another event in Germany…the fall of the Berlin wall and reunification between East and West Germany. And oddly enough, Taiwan is probably looking at the same thing.
Naw, that’s the topic of this thread, since the OP is asking the question without the US being involved at all. Personally, I don’t think that’s going to happen…but then, I don’t think that China ever will directly attack Taiwan in a full scale invasion either, so it’s just an intellectual exercise as far as I’m concerned.
And you have not added in the fact that the reserves are huge. Since there is universal conscription, every Taiwanese male has served in the military and then is in the reserves. Wikihas the armed forces at 200k and the reserves (up to age 40) of nearly 4M.
I am of the opinion that China could absolutely take Taiwan by force, but that they would pay a pretty huge price for it. And that price might mean Shanghai and a couple of other cities get nuked in the bargain.
Little Nemo - you neglect that China gains just about sweet fuck all by giving up claims to Taiwan. On the other had, by keeping claims to Taiwan, China retains all of it’s “historic” claims to Tibet, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, as well as all of the claims to the Spratleys, Natuna oil fields, the diaoyutai islands, ad nauseum.
It was the Liberation One exercise at Dongshan Island in 2001. Unfortunately, the source I had was offline.
All this military talk confuses me. If China really wanted to annex Taiwan, they could do it economically, without firing a shot:
-confiscate all Taiwan owned assets on the mainland
-engineer a run on the Taiwan dollar (the Chinese central bank could simply dump all their Taiwan dollar assets)
-undercut all of Taiwan’s exports
The result? The Taiwan dollar and stock market would crash-unemployment and bankruptcy would shut Taiwan down. The ROC would accept Chinese terms within 6 months.
Yes, I do. I think you’ve clearly established that website is not the source I used. Which is not surprising as I rarely if ever refer to an website as being “offline”.
Other than that I guess I don’t find your discovery as impressive as you seem to.