Is China Contemplating A Sudden Strike Against Taiwan?
(Above) Training ground in Inner Mongolia, China; (Below) Presidential Palace in Taiwan
I am as skeptical as most with the drum-beats for war that seem to surround us recently, and have pushed back thus far against ideas that China might be considering a strike soon against Taiwan. But the map above gives me pause…
It is a training ground in China’s Inner Mongolia province. It is obviously a replica of the road network near Taiwan’s Presidential Palace.
It does look like it’s an island in a sea of sand, rather than the ocean, but if you ignore the background, the forensic capability looks impressive. You can model many scenarios using this.
Of course, the layout may be a coincidence, but it’s a pretty accurate depiction of the target.
It even has a model Presidential Palace inset in the plan.
It’s as if it were going to be used by airborne regiments practicing for a sudden rush on the palace, to paralyze the decision-making.
The US has long planned for a conflict in which a massive Chinese naval force attempts a crossing of the South China Sea with a conventional arms build-up that can be spotted on global satellite photos. Defending naval forces would be rushed into play and the rival air forces would duke it out high in the sky.
The US has been getting ready…
CIA Director William Burns said earlier this year that U.S. intelligence shows that Xi has directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027; China says 2035.
Japan, planning ahead for spill-over, is building underground shelters on remote islands in Okinawa Prefecture. Residents of these Japanese territories are preparing for the possibility of staying in shelters with reinforced concrete walls 30 centimeters high and a supply of food and water for two weeks, since the municipalities are located on remote islands, where evacuation is possible only by air or sea transport. It has also appointed a retired Japanese Self-Defense Forces officer to the role of military attaché in Taiwan - a bold move considering that China does not want Taiwan recognized in any fashion.
The Chinese are actually conservative military planners. A heavy-handed invasion scenario contains elements of risk…risk which can be avoided by a different plan.
Let’s say, instead, the Chinese swoop down from the air and behead (figuratively) the leadership of the Republic of China.
A flight of jets from the mainland would take just two hours to reach Taiwan. Two hours is not a lot of time to make high-level decisions in Washington about the protection of an ally that has always been in a sketchy defensive position.
If the leadership of Taiwan could be seized by paratroopers in the first 120 minutes of a surprise attack – with Chinese troops covering the roads to the Presidential Palace with as much aplomb as if they driving down a road in Inner Mongolia – then the ‘action’ would be over before the decision-makers in the US were fully aware of it.
And these days, with the US in a bind about Israel and Ukraine, Chinese leaders may feel that the time is right.
Certainly their media has been prepping for war.
They periodically feature articles on how Taipei’s President Tsilng-Wen is preparing to flee the country at the slightest sign of trouble.
The effort, said one analyst group, is a determined campaign to undermine Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
It has a purpose for mainland China as well, where President Xi could be looking for a distraction from current troubles.
China’s property market collapse has driven the economy to desperate lows.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs splits no hairs; China is suffering from “a reeling economy, a tanking stock market, and massive capital flight out of the country.”
It cautions: “Any serious book on China’s growth should grapple with the validity of its official GDP data. In 2023, China reported 5.2 percent in GDP growth—a performance flagrantly inconsistent with its high unemployment rate, falling exports, and failing real estate sector. At the lower end of outside analysis, an estimate from Rhodium Group puts the true growth rate at 1.5 percent.”
Former Premier Li disclosed in 2020 that around 40 percent of the population lived on a monthly income of $141 – a number indicating a level of absolute poverty, which the government denies.
In reality, China’s growth rate seems to be in the ballpark of its neighbors Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
And this growth seems to have come about after the period in which it freed up markets and invited in foreign capital and trade. In fact, those regions in China that are the most market-driven, such as Guangdong and Zhejiang, are more dynamic and efficient than state-centric playbook, such as those in China’s northeast.
Poverty is having such an impact on China that the book “Invisible China” found that over half of rural babies are undernourished, and more than half of toddlers are so developmentally delayed that their IQs may never exceed 90.
Illiteracy has increased by 30 million people.
The current state of China goes beyond a cultural preference for autocracy, often cited as a byproduct of Confucian philosophy. Japan and Taiwan are also Confucian, and they are democratic. The only thing holding China back is the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s great famine of 1959 – which caused the death of 30 million people - was caused by the party’s autocracy. No democratic country in the world has ever suffered from a famine. By the time people are getting hungry, the politicians are pushing food out into the voters’ homes. That does not happen when the leadership does not need to care.
An illustration of the difference can be found in the booming micro-chip industry in Taiwan, v.s. the relatively sedate build-up in China. Taiwan still produces over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones. Its industries keep pushing the boundaries of the very small, with flagship TMSC pioneering ways to make chips ever-more-compact.
A study published in China in March found that 54 per cent of its jobs are at high risk of being replaced by AI in the coming decades. Workers in product manufacturing and business services are most likely to be hit.
“As jobs evolve alongside the development of AI, workers will need to adapt to activities that require more creativity and social intelligence,” the report said.
“Policymakers will need to provide more mid-career job training and income support for workers caught in the flood of AI to fulfil job transition.”
For a country that does not even allow independent unions, this will be a challenge.
As will the ongoing bad news about China’s Belt and Road initiative around the world, which is coming up against a host of debtor countries that cannot carry their debt loads.
There are many reasons why China’s leadership might want to focus people’s attention on something new.
Perhaps a lightening-fast invasion of Taiwan would give their people a Cause-To-Remember!
But there is one thing that would give the Chinese planners cause-to-pause…
US nuclear-powered submarines were able to “wreak havoc with the Chinese fleet,” in a simulation of a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, according to a 2023 report on a wargame run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Virginia-class subs used in the exercise are perhaps the most important weapon for deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Even in the event of a surprise aerial attack, there has to be a follow-through plan…Plan B. Chinese troops would need to land in great numbers quickly after. And while China is improving its anti-submarine warfare capabilities, the Virginia-class subs may be the most survivable of U.S. platforms and could destroy a Chinese surface fleet.
There are 21 Virginia-class subs in service, with another 17 on order.
A technology journal provides a glimpse of the subs’s capabilities: “The initial Virginia-class subs are 377 feet long, 34 feet wide, and have a displacement of 7,800 tons when submerged. The latest Block V models, at 461 feet long and 10,200 tons, will have a lengthened hull to accommodate the Virginia Payload Module containing additional cruise missile tubes. Powered by a single nuclear reactor, the Virginias can travel underwater at more than 25 knots (28 miles per hour) while remaining hidden in the ocean depths for months at a time.”
A WW2 U-Boat would have been half the size, running at half the speed. And it would have had to come up for air repeatedly to run its diesel engines and refresh its air supply.
A Virginia-class sub stays hidden and can destroy its target while remaining invisible.
If China can’t count on its surface fleet remaining on the surface, it may be less likely to attack.
So perhaps they are playing a longer game.
Perhaps they are drawing lines in the sand of the desert, knowing that satellites are watching, to deliberately mislead Western analysts about their intentions.
If the West can be persuaded to dump a ton of resources into tools for a ‘preventative war’ effort, it leaves China free to focus on other advances where it does not face direct confrontation.
Like Space.
China has built a crewed space station, sent a robotic rover to Mars, and become the first nation to land a robot on the far side of the moon.
President Xi Jinping has described China’s ascent as a space power as "our eternal dream".
I confess it makes the conquest of Taiwan look pretty pedestrian.
From space, all of the struggles on Earth look pretty pedestrian.
Our challenge is to get over our fear of China, persuade them to get over them fear of us, and embrace as potential partners. We can’t abandon our sense of freedom in doing so, but we can perhaps bring China gradually along into our circuit.
It would be a nice change, to give up another enemy.
Because when Russia falls – and it will - if China can get on the road to democracy, there are no other obstacles on this Earth that bar a new age of gentle progress.
It has been a long time coming.
Thank you for reading Barry’s Substack.
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