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Abstract

ing about Taiwanese people being slaughtered by the PLA, but we really must draw the line at anything which could jeopardize the sales of champagne and expensive leather shoes & handbags.It’s clear from the above that the illusion of sanctions won’t be available to Western politicians when China invades Taiwan. Does this mean that even the spineless politicians we’ve become accustomed to over the last seventy years will be forced to confront China in a meaningful way: by military action?This is even less feasible than pointless sanctions. Until recently, US carrier groups were the primary means whereby the USA could project force across the South China Sea. Unfortunately, in the last few years the Chinese have developed and tested surface-to-surface cruise missiles designed explicitly to sink US aircraft carriers. Although we may be cautiously skeptical about the operational efficacy of such missiles, the fact is that China has built an archipelago of heavily militarized artificial islands on which can be based both missiles and strike aircraft. Furthermore, China has 73 missile boats in service, each of which is equipped with multiple surface-to-surface missiles capable of inflicting major damage on US ships. When we add in the 80 submarines of the Chinese fleet, it’s clear that any US carrier group venturing within range would be taking enormous risks. It is exceedingly unlikely therefore that any US President would be willing to accept the potential loss of an aircraft carrier, destroyer, or even frigate, along with thousands of lives, to defend an island with which the USA has no formal mutual-protection agreement.Remember: the West is sitting on its hands as Russia lays waste to Ukraine even though the USA and the UK signed a treaty in 1994 that explicitly guarantees Ukraine’s territorial integrity. If we can pretend we have no obligations even when we’ve signed legally-binding documents, we can certainly say we have no obligations when there’s not even a piece of paper to hold up and wave in the air.So the USA is highly unlikely to defend Taiwan when things get tough, and no other Western nation has either the capability or the appetite to go where the USA will fear to tread. Left to fend for itself, as we’ve left Ukraine to fend for itself, can Taiwan hold out against the overwhelming might of the PLA?Although a few silly journalists are currently writing nonsense puff pieces about the importance of morale versus hard steel, Ukraine’s struggle against Russian violence is not comparable. Ukraine was invaded twice in 2014 and has been attempting to improve its defensive capability ever since. Taiwan, by contrast, is complacent and most of its people simply can’t even imagine Chinese aggression, never mind considering rising up to oppose it. Taiwan is like a soft-bellied child who believes its tougher older brother will always defend it. Unfortunately for Taiwan, that tougher older brother is going to stand aside with its hands in its pockets, leaving it to crumble ignominiously from the first punch onward.The PLA has 2.2 million active personnel, of whom around 400,000 can be mustered “on the sharp end” as part of an invasion force. At least 1,500 fighter jets and bombers could be devoted to the invasion. China’s primary weakness is its lack of amphibious assault capability, but it is building new ships as quickly as it can. The Chinese navy presently has only three Type 075 vessels, but five more will be completed within the next two years. Combined with 29 landing ships designed to offload tanks onto contested beachfro

Options

nts, and 29 landing craft designed to offload soldiers and light vehicles, it’s apparent China would only be able to assault Taiwan in at most two separate beachhead locations. This implies that huge “softening up” bombardments would be employed long before any surface operations commenced, so as to minimize the risk of Chinese forces being confined to their initial landing sites once the land invasion has begun.The logistics of an invasion are non-trivial and it’s clear China must consider not only how to land troops and equipment such as APCs and tanks, but also how to maintain adequate logistics across the sea between mainland China and Taiwan. No doubt utilization of local resources will feature heavily, so as to minimize the necessity of transporting fuel and food in order to focus on maintaining supplies of ammunition and other battle-oriented materiel. It’s also the case that as soon as PLA troops can capture airstrips, China can fly in supplies using not only Air Force planes but also commandeered civilian cargo aircraft — of which China has a great many. Thus, although logistics will pose challenges, these challenges are not insurmountable.And when it comes to the matter of logistics, we can note that the Chinese authorities are already preparing the ground. China now has a one-year stockpile of wheat, for example, thus ensuring that even if the West was capable of mounting any sort of sanctions regime, it would be even more pointless than usual.When we see that China won’t suffer economically from its aggression against Taiwan, and when we see that there’s little prospect of any serious military opposition to the PLA, it’s clear that the only question regarding the invasion is the exact timing.From the perspective of China’s Emperor Xi, there’s no need to rush. He is not dying of incurable thyroid cancer, unlike sad little Putin. Xi will want to avoid any chance of a Putinesque embarrassment, and so the next couple of years will doubtless see a great deal of intensive auditing of Chinese military capacity so as to root out and rectify any Russian-style inadequacies resulting from large-scale corruption. We can expect the Chinese to stockpile more raw materials, and prepare in advance to defeat any attempts the West may make with regard to cosmetic sanctions. We can also expect to see the relentless pace of modernization continue, with the PLA focusing more on quality and less on quantity. The artificial islands in the South China Sea will increase, and they will receive more weapons systems.Meanwhile, Chinese anti-Western rhetoric will continue to be ramped up and the Chinese people will be prepared for a glorious patriotic reclamation of Chinese territory. The Chinese government may partially unwind its Western assets while increasing its ability to hold Western assets hostage inside China itself. Its drive toward self-sufficiency in key technologies will continue unabated, as will its ever-popular industrial espionage. And cultivation of despots in Africa, the Middle East, and South America will continue so as to neuter even a few pointless votes in the United Nations.In short, the future is plain to see. But like most people everywhere, the Taiwanese are likely to continue living in a fantasy land of complacent denial right up to the moment when the first Chinese missiles, bombs, and artillery shells begin to turn the island into rubble. At which point, the only realistic option on the table for the Taiwanese government will be precisely what China is looking for: a rapid unconditional surrender.</article></body>

Why China’s Invasion Of Taiwan Will Be Cost-Free

The fundamentals: why there will be neither sanctions nor military opposition

Although sanctions have never had any effect on any military campaign in history, they do enable windy Western politicians to pretend to be “doing something” while actually doing nothing meaningful to oppose aggression. The West has continued to exclude a wide range of Russian exports from the supposedly “punitive” sanctions that journalists love to talk about, and Europe is still sending Russia tens of millions of Euros per week for Russian oil and gas even as Russia reduces Ukraine to rubble and Russian soldiers continue to rape and mutilate girls as young as seven years of age.

But even the pathetically pointless sanctions imposed on Russia are huge compared to what the West could realistically do when China finally invades Taiwan in the middle of this decade. This article will examine why China is effectively sanctions-proof, and why there will be no military opposition to its invasion force.

Starting with money, China currently holds about $2 trillion in bonds (primarily US, Euro, Swiss) that could in theory be frozen by the West. This is, however, not going to happen because the West has $3.6 trillion invested in Chinese assets such as factories (which can’t be pulled out of China) and another $2.2 trillion in Chinese bonds and other Chinese financial assets. So any sanctions against Chinese funds held in Western banks would trigger far more pain in the West than in China itself. And the one thing Western politicians are very clear on is the need to avoid upsetting flabby self-centered Western voters.

Next up, the volume of trade that China transacts with the West is dramatically greater and less concentrated in raw materials than is the case with Russia. China absorbs 18% of US exports and 22% of Europe’s exports. The USA and Europe also import from China products that enable US and European manufacturing (parts, components). Thus, sanctions on importing items from China would directly harm Western companies and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs across the USA and Europe — something few Western politicians would contemplate for more than a few fractions of a second before abandoning the idea entirely.

If the USA wanted to restrict exports to China of semiconductors and products that incorporate them, this would cost US firms 37% of their revenues and result in an estimated loss of at least 120,000 jobs in the technology sector alone. On the other end of the complexity scale, China buys around $14 billion worth of soybeans from the USA, the loss of which would significantly impact US influential US agrobusiness. Meanwhile, Chinese retaliation could include banning export of rare earth metals, which would cripple Western battery and electric vehicle industries. And when it comes to imposing pain on first-world darlings, we can note that the West excluded luxury goods from its list of sanctions against Russia in order to avoid hurting (largely European) exports to Russia worth a mere $2.4 billion. As China imports more than $50 billion of luxury goods from the West, it’s clear that any Chinese threat to throttle consumption of products from LVMH and other makers of aspirational status items would generate squeals of outrage in France and Italy.

It’s all very well worrying about Taiwanese people being slaughtered by the PLA, but we really must draw the line at anything which could jeopardize the sales of champagne and expensive leather shoes & handbags.

It’s clear from the above that the illusion of sanctions won’t be available to Western politicians when China invades Taiwan. Does this mean that even the spineless politicians we’ve become accustomed to over the last seventy years will be forced to confront China in a meaningful way: by military action?

This is even less feasible than pointless sanctions. Until recently, US carrier groups were the primary means whereby the USA could project force across the South China Sea. Unfortunately, in the last few years the Chinese have developed and tested surface-to-surface cruise missiles designed explicitly to sink US aircraft carriers. Although we may be cautiously skeptical about the operational efficacy of such missiles, the fact is that China has built an archipelago of heavily militarized artificial islands on which can be based both missiles and strike aircraft. Furthermore, China has 73 missile boats in service, each of which is equipped with multiple surface-to-surface missiles capable of inflicting major damage on US ships. When we add in the 80 submarines of the Chinese fleet, it’s clear that any US carrier group venturing within range would be taking enormous risks. It is exceedingly unlikely therefore that any US President would be willing to accept the potential loss of an aircraft carrier, destroyer, or even frigate, along with thousands of lives, to defend an island with which the USA has no formal mutual-protection agreement.

Remember: the West is sitting on its hands as Russia lays waste to Ukraine even though the USA and the UK signed a treaty in 1994 that explicitly guarantees Ukraine’s territorial integrity. If we can pretend we have no obligations even when we’ve signed legally-binding documents, we can certainly say we have no obligations when there’s not even a piece of paper to hold up and wave in the air.

So the USA is highly unlikely to defend Taiwan when things get tough, and no other Western nation has either the capability or the appetite to go where the USA will fear to tread. Left to fend for itself, as we’ve left Ukraine to fend for itself, can Taiwan hold out against the overwhelming might of the PLA?

Although a few silly journalists are currently writing nonsense puff pieces about the importance of morale versus hard steel, Ukraine’s struggle against Russian violence is not comparable. Ukraine was invaded twice in 2014 and has been attempting to improve its defensive capability ever since. Taiwan, by contrast, is complacent and most of its people simply can’t even imagine Chinese aggression, never mind considering rising up to oppose it. Taiwan is like a soft-bellied child who believes its tougher older brother will always defend it. Unfortunately for Taiwan, that tougher older brother is going to stand aside with its hands in its pockets, leaving it to crumble ignominiously from the first punch onward.

The PLA has 2.2 million active personnel, of whom around 400,000 can be mustered “on the sharp end” as part of an invasion force. At least 1,500 fighter jets and bombers could be devoted to the invasion. China’s primary weakness is its lack of amphibious assault capability, but it is building new ships as quickly as it can. The Chinese navy presently has only three Type 075 vessels, but five more will be completed within the next two years. Combined with 29 landing ships designed to offload tanks onto contested beachfronts, and 29 landing craft designed to offload soldiers and light vehicles, it’s apparent China would only be able to assault Taiwan in at most two separate beachhead locations. This implies that huge “softening up” bombardments would be employed long before any surface operations commenced, so as to minimize the risk of Chinese forces being confined to their initial landing sites once the land invasion has begun.

The logistics of an invasion are non-trivial and it’s clear China must consider not only how to land troops and equipment such as APCs and tanks, but also how to maintain adequate logistics across the sea between mainland China and Taiwan. No doubt utilization of local resources will feature heavily, so as to minimize the necessity of transporting fuel and food in order to focus on maintaining supplies of ammunition and other battle-oriented materiel. It’s also the case that as soon as PLA troops can capture airstrips, China can fly in supplies using not only Air Force planes but also commandeered civilian cargo aircraft — of which China has a great many. Thus, although logistics will pose challenges, these challenges are not insurmountable.

And when it comes to the matter of logistics, we can note that the Chinese authorities are already preparing the ground. China now has a one-year stockpile of wheat, for example, thus ensuring that even if the West was capable of mounting any sort of sanctions regime, it would be even more pointless than usual.

When we see that China won’t suffer economically from its aggression against Taiwan, and when we see that there’s little prospect of any serious military opposition to the PLA, it’s clear that the only question regarding the invasion is the exact timing.

From the perspective of China’s Emperor Xi, there’s no need to rush. He is not dying of incurable thyroid cancer, unlike sad little Putin. Xi will want to avoid any chance of a Putinesque embarrassment, and so the next couple of years will doubtless see a great deal of intensive auditing of Chinese military capacity so as to root out and rectify any Russian-style inadequacies resulting from large-scale corruption. We can expect the Chinese to stockpile more raw materials, and prepare in advance to defeat any attempts the West may make with regard to cosmetic sanctions. We can also expect to see the relentless pace of modernization continue, with the PLA focusing more on quality and less on quantity. The artificial islands in the South China Sea will increase, and they will receive more weapons systems.

Meanwhile, Chinese anti-Western rhetoric will continue to be ramped up and the Chinese people will be prepared for a glorious patriotic reclamation of Chinese territory. The Chinese government may partially unwind its Western assets while increasing its ability to hold Western assets hostage inside China itself. Its drive toward self-sufficiency in key technologies will continue unabated, as will its ever-popular industrial espionage. And cultivation of despots in Africa, the Middle East, and South America will continue so as to neuter even a few pointless votes in the United Nations.

In short, the future is plain to see. But like most people everywhere, the Taiwanese are likely to continue living in a fantasy land of complacent denial right up to the moment when the first Chinese missiles, bombs, and artillery shells begin to turn the island into rubble. At which point, the only realistic option on the table for the Taiwanese government will be precisely what China is looking for: a rapid unconditional surrender.