Invasion of Taiwan?
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https://apnews.com/article/trump-taiwan-chips-invasion-china-910e7a94b19248fc75e5d1ab6b0a34d8
Former President Donald Trump demanded the self-governed island of Taiwan pay for U.S. protection, dodged the question of whether he would defend the island from Beijing’s military action and accused the island of taking the computer chip industry away from the United States.
“Taiwan should pay us for defense,” the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. ...
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I think that probably China would be able to overtake Taiwan, but not so easy to hold it. I know it is apples and oranges, but look at Afghanistan (for Russia and the US), Vietnam, etc. Even Ukraine. Putin underestimated.
Taiwan is a tough place to fight. Both geography and will of the people. I mentioned this before, but China fighters "don't really care". What are they fighting for? This gives X% boost to Taiwan fighters.
And I do think that the economic fallout would be catostrophic for mainland China if they did invade. Countries would move their supply chains outside of China (which has already started). Also, Just for energy, I think that China can only supply 20-25% of its oil from domestic sources. Yes, Russia would probably help, but I think they would still fall short. One thing the US could do was to put pressure on Middle East countries to limit/stop exports. Etc.
Yes of course the whole world economy would be into recession I think, but it would hurt China worst.
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A bit of semi-old news, but still scary.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8dy437pdno
“I am currently planning to speed up my departure,” a Taiwanese businesswoman based in China said – this was soon after the Supreme Court ushered in changes allowing life imprisonment and even the death penalty for those guilty of advocating for Taiwanese independence.
“I don’t think that is making a mountain out of a molehill. The line is now very unclear,” says Prof Yu Jie, a legal scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.
But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.
“Any statement you make now could be misinterpreted and you could be reported. Even before this new law China was already encouraging people to report on others,” the businesswoman said.
That was made official last week when Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.
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Interesting white paper from the US Naval War College. The beginning part is a review of US plans to invade Taiwan during WW2 to kick out the Japanese and the (correct) reasons why it never happened. It is quite an interesting article, but the reason I am posting here is that the last part of the white paper talks about modern times and a possible mainland China invasion of Taiwan (beginning on page 44)
This history might teach us an important lesson: deterrence worked before. It can work again. Under certain circumstances, the United States and Taiwan may be capable of preventing a PRC invasion of the island.187 But a tremendous amount of hard work will be needed to realize that goal. In the last 17 months of World War II, the Empire of Japan mobilized all available civilian resources and conscripted many local Taiwanese. By early 1945, a strong army defended Taiwan that was more substantial than U.S. intelligence reports had forecasted. The defensive infrastructure the Japanese constructed and the stockpiles they prepared surpassed expectations. After the Battle of Saipan, there was little doubt in any American military mind that it would be horrific to fight on Taiwan. Today, troop numbers, fortifications, and intangibles such as the will to fight remain vital to Taiwan’s defense.188
Many of the same strategic considerations and operational variables that sealed the fate of the American plan to invade Taiwan in World War II could now be at play in Beijing’s halls of power. Landing beaches and terrain factors still matter a great deal to the military feasibility of amphibious assaults. Force ratios, weapons technology, logistics support, basing infrastructure, and social mobilization remain crucial factors. Since war plans are not themselves a political end but rather the means to a political end, how a campaign to conquer Taiwan would affect PRC leadership calculations and long-range objectives must be accounted for and considered. Above all else, human factors remain the most important and least readily understood variable.
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/42/
(The link takes you to a website where you can download the whole paper for free)
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The document assumes the Chinese look at loss ratios the same way Americans do.
They don't.
As a modern example, look at the Ukraine War and the Russians. The Russians will accept more losses than Americans and the Chinese will accept more losses than the Russians.
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A shipment of 38 US-made M1A2T Abrams tanks — part of a military procurement package from the US — arrived at the Port of Taipei early yesterday.
The vehicles are the first batch of 108 tanks and other items that then-US president Donald Trump announced for Taiwan in 2019. The Ministry of National Defense at the time allocated NT$40.5 billion (US$1.25 billion) for the purchase.
The military is to receive a shipment of 42 Abrams tanks and another of 42 tanks over the next two years, Ministry of National Defense records showed.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2024/12/16/2003828564
