Ah, well, not that surprising. Tends to suggest that the ROC government feels they will simply rely on the US to stop any invasion. OTOH, if it ever did come down to actual engagement on land the game would already be over. PRC would have already have landed an invasion force. One part of the asymmetry in military forces seems to be an assumption that the PRC will cheerfully throw as many troops at a problem as needed, and will not be bothered by losses. Which in some ways is more like WW1 thinking. If they have managed to start the influx of troops into Taiwan, they are probably unstoppable at that point. Most thinking seems to be more about preventing things getting to that point. And that is a technological not people problem.
If this were a land war, and China shared a direct border (i.e., Korea or Vietnam,) then China could flood as many men into its opponent as it wanted. But the Strait severely limits that. China has limited sealift capacity and it poses a serious bottleneck, thus inhibiting the number of Chinese troops that can set foot on Taiwan at any given particular time.
Indeed. This probably is the most critical limiting factor. But that can be fixed, but only if they want to. That China has not engaged in building up its capacity here is probably a significant sign that they have no plans for such an direct invasion. If we see shipyards suddenly churning out large numbers of craft, we might worry more.
My point was more that if there were landed troops, everything else in the defence chain had already failed - including any international support for the ROC - and the troops might as well be arriving on cruise liners.
No, there’s no grand strategy here, it’s simply dysfunction. People who armchair analyze US/China/Taiwan relations seem to have remarkably little curiosity about Taiwan domestic politics that do not relate to China. Like any country, Taiwan has things it does well and things it does poorly and deep seated historical reasons why it struggles at many things. There’s always this shallow, panglossian assumption that things in Taiwan run fine and to ignore digging into it deeply because Taiwan domestic policy is deeply unsexy compared to detailed stats about navy landing crafts.
But the Taiwan domestic stuff matters. eg: I’ve read endless thinkpieces about TSMC and semi-conductor supremacy and everything and almost none of the pieces mention that TSMC pays like shit. There’s no good reason for it, they have the money, they just do because they’re cheap bastards. Starting wages for a Masters graduate is $19,500 USD and for a Bachelors is $13,000 USD… PER YEAR. Taiwan has a slightly lower cost of living than the US but not that much lower. (This is not isolated to TSMC, one of the biggest domestic issues in Taiwan is that young people have absurdly bad local job prospects). It’s absurd, they’re just letting hundreds of highly talented people a year walk out and join Mainland Chinese semiconductor companies.
If I were some high up State Department muckitymuck that was in charge of hobbling China, probably the most effective thing I could do would be to have a quiet work with the executives at TSMC and say either double your compensation starting tomorrow or we leak the compromising photos. It would absolutely devastate China’s semiconductor plans more efficiently than any other move you could make but of course they’re not going to do that because that’s socialism and socialism is bad.
I would agree. I have visited Taiwan once and work with people who have relatives still living there, so I do hear a bit more. One of my enduring memories of Taiwan was seeing the well prepared riot control vehicles. Buses with ABS windows with a riot shield ready on each seat, all in rows in a compound behind a razor wire fence. There was clearly a lot of effort going into worrying about controlling the populace. (The other place I saw much the same preparedness was very strangely Vienna. Then again I was there for Labour day, and there were riots.) Stupid things like the presence of water tanks on every house, because the water supply was inadequate for the populace. Lots of little things that exactly pointed to dysfunctional day to day government. But there was a general cheerfulness and on the day to day level, the place was friendly and worked well.
The thing about TMSC is simply that if the Taiwanese fabs are gone, the entire world will be without a major capability for years, until new fabs are built. What happens to the actual company is of much less importance. Loss of those fabs would lead to a major crisis. One that could be fixed - everything can. It doesn’t matter who owns the fabs, or how poorly the workers are paid. The problem is the risk of loss of capacity. The last three decades of the semiconductor industry has seen a steady decline in diversity of manufacturers. This was well understood to be an inevitable result of the escalating costs of the technology. Moore’s law said nothing about the cost of meeting the increasing technical capability. What nobody took account of was how the major provider to the fabless vendors would end up in such a vulnerable location. In general, fabs are a bit of a problem everywhere. None are really that great a thing to have. Nobody pays all that well, and the local economic benefits are low, as the actual fab equipment is all imported, and the workers are basically drones. I knew the plant manager of one fab, and he related appalling stories about worker indifference and stupidity.
I don’t think the entire defense chain would have failed, rather, it would be more like “We’re at Step 3 in a five-step process.”
Taiwan’s anti-invasion strategy, AIUI, is more or less like this:
- Have offshore islands (Jinmen, Matsu and Penghu) fire upon the invasion fleet with artillery and antiship missiles (AShMs).
- If the Chinese fleet makes it past that, then other assets like warplanes, surface combatants, land-based AshMs join in, and sea mines may inhibit it.
- If the Chinese fleet still lands, then the beach is likely mined, and rocket artillery would hit the landing forces once it became clear which beach they were at. Attack helicopters (Cobras and Apaches) would join in as well, along with combined-arms battalions (Taiwan is organizing its military into 22 such units, basically independent mini-armies each with a joint blend of stuff.)
- If the Chinese force still pushes inland, then Taiwanese tanks, AFVs, and reservists, etc. would join in. Since Taiwan is small and transportation can get a reservist from one place to another in a day’s time, there could be potentially a million reservists on scene within two days. So the incoming PLA troops would likely need to move out and try to seize Taipei immediately, or else be heavily outnumbered.
- If all that hasn’t kept the invaders out, then Taiwan is indeed in serious trouble by this point.
The defense strategy is reasonably coherent and decent itself. The main problem, as Shalmanese pointed out, is the actual execution of it - Taiwan’s military has low morale, poor discipline, lack of training, lack of basic spare parts, fuel and ammo, the structure is vulnerable to a decapitation strike, and hasn’t had any military experience in the last seventy years.
The whole process written out looks good on paper, but the enemy gets a say as well.
If the carriers aren’t there there are experts who say that the Taiwanese planes will have lifetimes measured in minutes, and that’s for those planes that manage to take off. Taiwan just just last year announced a major purchase of 66 F-16V fighters and there are those who say that it’s a waste of money, with anti aircraft systems being a better choice.
The PLA has a shitload of missiles which raises huge questions if any of these steps can be carried out. All the artillery will be subject to saturation attacks.
The biggest question is if the US sends carriers to the rescue or not and if they can get here safely.
Without the cavalry, China obtains air supremacy and accomplishing these tasks becomes quite difficult.
Despite Taiwan being a small country, you can never move millions of troops anywhere in a couple of days if you don’t have air superiority and the only way you have air superiority is if the US
had established it. At which point you don’t need millions of soldiers.
The reserves are really questionable. These are the men I’ve worked with or people I’ve thought. Universally, the ones I’ve talk to have discounted their training and potential usefulness.
That said, it would still be quite the task to convey sufficient numbers of PLA personnel and land them on beaches. @chinaguy believes that Taiwan already had the capacity to make the bomb, and invasion beaches are the perfect place for nuclear weapons.
I think there are too many unknowns to really make a good guess. If push starts looking like it’s going to come to shove, we are out of here.
I suspect that China is simply going to boil the frog slowly. They have time on their side. There’s no need to rush into any conflict with Taiwan or the US right now. They can just keep building their economic and political power as the US fights its own internal culture wars. Why go after Taiwan now when perhaps in 10 years or so, China will have an even greater advantage?
China is absolutely strong enough to hold on to Tibet indefinitely. None of its neighbors can kick China out of Tibet, and the US will not get involved, despite mouthing platitudes. Very sad fate for a simple, peaceful nation.
And we all know how well that worked out for them in 1979.
And this is a perfect example of the long game. China holds Tibet, they build railways and move a lot of Chinese in to make the population more and more part of China. They are willing to wait out the Dalai Lama - no doubt have a plan to find the replacement conveniently and logically inside Tibet. (The current Dalai Lama has mentioned that perhaps the need for a Dalai Lama will end with him… or they may find the next one in his exile community…)
The same tricks only different apply to Taiwan - keep showing the educated population that life pays better and is better back in the “homeland”. Let them come in. Try to overcome the “boogie man” reputation the Nationalists brought with them. Try to strangle Taiwan diplomatically and economically. As long as Taiwan is becoming more marginalized, China is winning.
Meanwhile, the opposite in the South China Sea - establish bases; bully others into avoiding fishing or other resource exploitation while avoiding actual shooting war confrontations. Thousands of small fishing boats are simply going to avoid the area and give China de facto control rather than risk being swamped or rammed “by accident” or having their nets cut (also “by accident”). That’s not something the US or other military can defend against - it’s the nautical equivalent of guerilla warfare, everywhere at once in small numbers.
The only thing that can change this is another Tien Amen. Nobody saw the Arab Spring coming, and the current repressive big brother tactics are designed specifically to try to avoid something similar in China. They think, like Hong Kong, they can tough it out through most disruptions.
Some commentator I saw on TV a while ago said basically after Tien Amen, the CPC established an unspoken bargain with the people - “we will make you richer, and you will not interfere in how we run the country.” The thing that most worries the government is a sustained economic downturn. It is the usual precursor to unrest anywhere - not poverty, but declining circumstances. The government currently does everything in its power to keep the economy growing, but they are riding the tiger and the biggest danger is when the ride ends.
One thing everyone I know who has done business or lived in China always says is that middle class Chinese largely expect for their lives to continue to get better and reach parity with the West’s middle class. They all think that if this process is interrupted, or just ends up not happening due to economic malaise or other headwinds, it will have bad effects throughout Chinese society. I don’t know enough about Chinese society (although it is an area I have been more interested in the last 5 years), but what I do know means if I was a gambling man, I’d gamble on China figuring it out okay. China has found its way through lots of problems in the past. I think it was always a mistake and an error in simplistic thinking for people to think there were analogues between the USSR and PRC. A lot of things that in retrospect pointed to the long term instability in the USSR have no analogues in China, and expecting there to be some moment like the Soviet collapse in PRC imo is foolish.
I actually think part of the failure in Clinton’s dealings with China is this was the sort of “arc of history” he imagined, he basically figured China ended up like the USSR, or alternatively it would slowly adopt democratic reforms. I don’t think he ever imagined they’d just find a much better and effective path to managed autocracy that out-competed the West for 25 years running. We made a lot of decisions 30 years ago that have immensely entangled our economy with China’s that we probably should have understood back when we made them “China isn’t becoming an Asian United States, it is very likely to maintain its historical authoritarianism and due to its vast population and growing wealth, it is likewise going to develop into a natural powerful rival of the United States.”
I’m not entirely sure what the right answers were thirty years ago or now, but it’s clear to me the West’s political leadership had a lot of “wrongthink” when it came to the Chinese.
I think people expecting some Tiananmen (sp) style event to fundamentally change China…that probably won’t happen. I have a good friend who is a native of Hong Kong, he spent about 20 years living in Canada (where he also has citizenship) but he moved back to Hong Kong about 20 years ago and has lived there ever since. He’s a very westernized Chinese person, speaks fluent English, plays American video games and consumes American media, he’s a huge fan of Disney. When the democracy protests started in Hong Kong we talked about it some he was viciously against them, his main reason being–his view that the protesters were just “causing problems and disorder.” The way he sees it is Hong Kong was doing fine and protests and advocating for true democracy undermine society and the order that is necessary for it to function properly. This is an educated, upper middle class guy. I don’t think he is stupid or brainwashed by the PRC, I think he just has a very Chinese viewpoint that a democratic system emulating the United States or the United Kingdom, is not worth the societal costs of disorder and disarray. I don’t want to pretend I understand the Chinese man on the street based on one atypical friend of mine, or some other people I know who have lived / done business in mainland China, but I only share the story to note that a lot of our Western thinking about Tiananmen is informed by a values system that we assume for some reason is universal. In the West we established this sort of thinking that personal liberty is the highest virtue. In China I do not think this is a widely held view, and I think that far predates the Chinese Communist Party.
The trouble I see is that you cannot build a middle class and an industrialized society without good education. Once people learn to think for themselves and see how things could be different in the rest of the world, it changes their expectations at home.
The key IMHO is whether there is repression. Not whether the internet is blocked so much as whether simple stray remarks and actions could get someone hauled into the police station, fired from their job, or beaten by undercover police. This would be the difference between a dictatorship and a totalitarian state. If the middle class starts to see the government as their enemy, then it’s only a matter of time before some simple innocuous event triggers a cascade of unrest. When things are going well, people are getting rich and have a decent lifestyle, they obviously don’t want to “rock the boat”.
A country doesn’t have to be a full democracy to prosper or be socially stable, The government just has to be sure the populace doesn’t build a huge backlog of unresolved grievances - which means paying attention to the people’s complaints much like democracies are forced to do.
Time will tell.
I definitely think North Korean style oppression is very restrictive of creating the sort of wealthy, modern economy needed to be a truly powerful country (it probably works fine for making a hermit prison state.) But China isn’t really like that and I think people don’t ordinarily get in trouble for stray remarks.
In China you have a lot of personal freedom to live your day to day life as you see fit, no one is micromanaging what job you work, where you live (with the residence permit caveat), what restaurants you are allowed to go to etc. You have some freedom in chat college you attend. Now there are permits required to live in specific cities, and those can be dear to come by, and there’s other restrictions of that nature that aren’t really known in the West. But by and large most Chinese get to live their day to day lives as they wish. However where they are restricted is any sort of serious organized participation in dissent would come with very harsh consequences. Just complaining about the government on social media or in a bar, is not likely to get you in much trouble. It appears usually the worst thing that happens for griping on social media is censors might delete a post, or they might not.
This isn’t Western style freedom. But at the same time, I do not know what portion of the Chinese people want Western style freedom. I think obedience to the government, and not causing societal discord, is weighted as much more important by the historical culture of China, still reflected in modern Chinese, than they are in the West. In the West people don’t much seem to give a fuck about “causing waves” anymore, and some seem to revel in it. I think that is not a common sentiment among PRC Chinese.
This may also be of interest:
Any info on China’s military drones programs? I expect them to come up with some fairly devious implementations. The US seems to be lagging here. Then again security is likely to be very tight.
Exactly. I remember a similar discussion with a scientist who interacted with Soviet scientists back in the 1980’s. He said their comments were similar - “people over here think we live in fear of the secret police hearing what we say about the government. But as long as we don’t get in the news or publicly disparage the government, we can say what we want among friends.” The public dissidents and the people actively spreading samizdat got the heat.
I gather the same applies in China. they are just setting up the technology to more easily see when someone crosses the line.
I recall in the news about 10 or 15 years ago, assorted riots usually about problems with local officials doing land grabs for development (those “ghost cities”). The central government’s response, appropriately, was to crack down on local corruption and add rules to safeguard land owners’ personal rights.
This is the opportunity and danger; if the government allows too much corruption and fails to respond to popular grievances, it risks discontent reaching a boiling point and spilling over into unrest. The problem isn’t democracy or not, the problem is whether people feel life is fair. The problem with dictatorship is that there is a limited opportunity for the people expressing popular grievances, and does the leadership care enough to redress these. .
This may be of interest: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
It’s paywalled. Any summary?
Huh - wasn’t paywalled for me. Briefly, China is aggressively selling military drones, particularly in the Middle East, and the U.S. is just starting to get into the action too. There’s some concern that these sales might spur an arms race.