In the last two weeks, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been causing a lot of trouble for Taiwan by sending eight “Boom 6K” bombers, four “J-16” warplanes, and one “Carrier 8” anti-submarine aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). On January 23, the Communist Party of China sent eight “Boom 6K” bombers, four “J-16” warplanes and one “Carrier 8” anti-submarine aircraft from the junction of China’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. This is also the highest single day since last year, the communist forces to disturb Taiwan sorties, and for the first Time with bombers, warplanes to disturb Taiwan.
The USS Roosevelt battle group then entered the South China Sea to begin its daily drills. Many sources said that Chinese Air Force warplanes began flying intensively in the vicinity and even began drills to attack the aircraft carrier. The situation in the Taiwan Strait is clearly getting tense.
In fact, although the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the United States involves many aspects, basically the most fundamental and central one is the Taiwan issue.
After Trump (Trump) came to power, U.S.-China relations took a sharp turn for the same reason, in fact.At the 19th Communist Party Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping amended the party constitution to remove the limit on consecutive terms of office. Soon after, the United States changed its policy on Taiwan and introduced the Taiwan Travel Act. It was in April and May 2018 that the CCP made a diplomatic overhaul to ease relations with Japan, South Korea, India and even with Vietnam. Most prominently, it invited Kim Jong-un to visit Beijing.
The logic inherent in this linkage of relations between the two countries is none other than Taiwan. U.S. intelligence believes that Xi Jinping’s strengthening of his personal power at the 19th National Congress was justified by the “resolution of the Taiwan issue. In an internal speech, Xi argued that if the current generation of Communist Party leaders fails to solve the Taiwan issue, they will “not be able to face their martyrs” and proposed a blueprint for solving the Taiwan issue between 2022 and 2025.
Xi’s approach was to “force surrender through war. That said, the situation was quite favorable for the Chinese Communist Party at the time. Although Tsai Ing-wen’s government won the election in 2016, the DPP lost the midterm elections, and the Kuomintang had a new candidate in South Korea Yu, who ran for president and even maintained a significant lead in the first half of 2019.
The “anti-China” movement broke out in Hong Kong in 2019, and Taiwan’s public opinion changed rapidly, as well as the ambiguity and lack of clarity in cross-strait relations and the nepotism of the KMT’s mainland interests, leading to a complete flip in the final presidential election. The feeling is that the CCP then abandoned the strategy of peaceful reunification as the main focus and stepped up its preparations for war, preparing for the use of force.
The biggest obstacle for the CCP to move against Taiwan is not the Taiwan Strait, but the United States. Almost all of the weaponry developed by the CCP is aimed at countering the involvement of the U.S. military. Over the past 20 years the CCP has continued to increase its defense budget significantly, purchase advanced weapons and technology, and develop new equipment on its own, all to counter the United States.
But even so, the difference in military power between the CCP and the United States is still too great. So if the CCP chooses to use force against Taiwan, the most critical winning factor will be time.
That is, as long as the CCP can take Taiwan within a few days, the U.S. may have to face reality if it is too late to mobilize and deploy troops. For example, in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party directly broke its promise and destroyed the free port. Although the international community was discontented, there was very little actual action by other countries, including the United Kingdom, except the United States. The Chinese Communist Party believes that Taiwan will be in a similar situation.
Therefore, some U.S. military experts believe that the CCP may not resort to a traditional large-scale amphibious assault, but may instead use a sneak attack. Bernard Cole, a professor at the National War College (NWC), said the Communist forces may still use unconventional warfare methods, hiding beforehand in large container ships flying the flags of third countries and moored inside Taiwan’s north and south ports (Kaohsiung and Keelung), while Chinese soldiers disguise themselves aboard civilian airliners and fly from China to various airports in Taiwan.
“This roundabout tactic into Taiwan would allow the Communist attack force to avoid the threat of interception by Taiwanese mines, submarines, anti-ship missiles, and beach defenses such as rocket launchers and tanks.” Once the Communist tactic is successful, Cole said, the Chinese Communists will not have to attack all the way from the beachhead into Taiwan’s cities.
Reports in Taiwan say that as early as 2008, Taiwan’s military intelligence agency had already discovered that the Communist Party was planning to sneak troops into northern Taiwan, and Ian Easton, senior director of the Institute for Project 2049, a Virginia-based think tank, speculated that the Communist Party might use exercises as a pretext for mass mobilization. They would board civilian boats that normally travel between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, sail to Taiwan on the day of the exercise, and rush out to control the docks once they were in port to meet the follow-on landing force.
In retrospect, the recent frequent harassment of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone by Chinese military aircraft echoes this strategy. This is a desensitization operation. It is to slowly increase the pressure and keep making moves, and finally let all parties get used to these moves of increasing scale. The goal is to increase the secrecy and suddenness of the action.
In the 1990s, there were reports in the United States that once the Chinese Communist Party attacked Taiwan, the United States would immediately face the problem of how to assist. If the U.S. military assisted Taiwan, it would inevitably come into direct conflict with the CCP forces, so the U.S. would have to decide the scale and intensity of the conflict with the CCP at that time. At that time, the United States believed that if the Chinese Communist Party declared war, the United States could be extremely passive, such as a huge military force stationed in the Pacific Ocean for a long time, which is time-consuming and costly, and the initiative to choose the location and time of the battlefield all lies with the Chinese Communist Party, so the United States would be very troublesome.
So at that time, a military think tank believed that once the Chinese Communist Party attacked Taiwan, the U.S. should launch a full-scale war, with the goal not to occupy the mainland, but to rely on the U.S. ultra-modern warfare capabilities to fully destroy the Chinese Communist Party’s military war effort and the entire defense industry.
The specific approach is that the U.S. military should choose the time when the Chinese Communist Party is halfway across the sea, for example, when the Chinese Communist Party starts to cross the sea for three days, launch a surprise attack to destroy the Chinese Communist Party’s ships and destroy its 200,000 most elite troops and its most advanced ships and planes at sea and on Taiwan’s beaches, and then launch large-scale precision air strikes to destroy transportation, communication and important industrial facilities, bomb key economic facilities , destroy energy transportation systems, etc.
This is what the Americans thought 20 years ago. Now the situation has changed a lot, and we don’t know how the U.S. will measure the contrast in power between the two sides and make the appropriate arrangements. But the actions of the U.S. military, which have been more aggressive in the last three to five years than before, are there for all to see. Also, the U.S. is doing its best to help Taiwan enhance its defense capabilities, weaponry, and personnel training, and this relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan is completely different than it was four or five years ago.
If you look at the map, the Chinese Communist Party’s activities in recent months have centered around the southwest area of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, which is over the Dongsha Islands.
This area of the Dongsha Islands is now becoming more and more important. The territorial waters of mainland China are typical of the continental shelf landscape, the alluvial shore where the mainland extends into the sea, characterized by a very shallow depth, mostly 30 to 50 meters. It is not until after the first island chain that the waters suddenly become deeper. This causes a lot of disadvantages to CCP submarine activities, because once the submarine is out at sea, it is picked up by sonar and seen by satellite. Therefore, the base of the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic nuclear submarines, deployed in Sanya, Hainan, because that is the closest place to the deep sea area, that is, the depth of two hundred meters or more.
However, when you come out of Sanya, you just go into the South China Sea, and to the south are the Southeast Asian countries, and you can’t get out. The only way to get into the Western Pacific is to cross the Bus Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan. Let’s say for a moment that strategic nuclear submarines, it’s easy to drive out into the Pacific, no one is in your way, but trying to drive out unnoticed and no one knows where you are is the most important thing.
Because the role of the nuclear submarine is to be able to launch a nuclear weapons counterattack in the event of a nuclear strike. But if a foreign country really wants a nuclear strike, its first strike is your nuclear weapons, including the nuclear submarine, so you hide in the deep sea to keep people from knowing the location, is the most important task of the nuclear submarine, otherwise the first round will be taken off.
So, the Bus Strait is important. When you come out of Sanya base, you can soon go to the Pacific Ocean via the Bus Strait. And Dongsha Island, is right in the middle of the Bus Strait. The Americans and Taiwan have deployed a lot of sensors under the sea in the area of the Bus Strait, and Dongsha is right at the core, receiving a lot of signals from the sensors. Therefore, in the past two years, it was often said that the Chinese Communist Party was going to take Dongsha Island, and it was justified.
Now this situation, to be honest, is somewhat similar to Germany before World War II. The British navy controlled the sea, the Germans could only get through one exit in the North Sea, so the British deployed their navy in the North Sea, and the German fleet couldn’t get out, so they had to use submarines to do wolf pack attacks.
China is also now, sealed in the first island chain, and the only way for submarines to get out is the Bus Strait.
This area, I think, is also the battlefield chosen by the Chinese Communist side. Because with the military power of the Chinese Communist Party, it can not fully carry out military confrontation with the United States, including within the Taiwan Strait, because the U.S. military base in Okinawa, or and the use of land facilities in Taiwan, can play a great power, but instead is close to the South China Sea side, far from the U.S. military bases, and very close to the mainland Chinese mainland. But this location and can not be in the Spratly Islands, too far away, the Chinese Communist Party military projection capacity is limited, so the best location, probably the bus strait near the South China Sea.
If the CCP controls this area, it can cut off the shortest route for U.S. forces to get to the Taiwan Strait from the Indian Ocean.
Let’s go back to why some U.S. military experts believe that the CCP will adopt unconventional tactics, but of course it is also because the CCP side knows that it cannot start a full-scale military conflict with the U.S. and wants to use a surprise attack to create a fait accompli in Taiwan to force the Americans to sit down and negotiate.
This, again, is very much like Japan before Pearl Harbor in World War II. I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party will take a sudden military action. The reason is the CCP’s military tradition that the CCP will not initiate a war that it basically has no chance of winning, and it has never done so in the past 70 years. Until the CCP is certain of victory over the United States, they will be very, very cautious in their actions against Taiwan and are unlikely to make a rash move. They are not operational risk takers.
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