Recently, the temperature of several conflict hotspots around the world has begun to rise. When it comes to conflict hotspots, basically not much has changed from the end of last century to now, except for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East, which has now become the Israeli-Iranian conflict; then there is Eastern Europe, which is now manifested as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; then there is the Balkan Peninsula, which is basically more sedate now. The remaining conflict hotspots, which are all related to China, are the Korean Peninsula, the Diaoyu Islands, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, China-India and India-Pakistan.
World situations never stand alone, and there are often deep underlying connections between events and incidents. But we would like to talk today about a few major conflict hotspots that are directly related to the Chinese Communist Party.
The hotspots of conflict related to the CCP that have seen the most temperature rise in the past two weeks are the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, where CCP military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone every day for ten days, starting in early April, from April 3 to April 12, with a total of 74 sorties. This is the most intrusive time in memory for Communist military aircraft since the establishment of the Chinese government.
In particular, on Monday, April 12, the official website of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), “Military Update”, released information that a total of 25 Chinese military aircraft had disturbed Taiwan on that day, including two Yun-8 anti-submarine aircraft, one Air Marshal-500 early warning aircraft, four J-10s, 14 J-16s and four Boom-6Ks. bombers can carry nuclear weapons.
According to a map provided by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, all of the Chinese military aircraft flew near the Pratas Islands and did not cross the center line of the strait.
The Pratas Islands are the Dongsha Islands.
Since April, the types of military planes deployed by the Chinese Communist Party are similar, and we can roughly guess the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party from the types of these planes. Air police-500 airborne early warning aircraft are not mentioned, which is a must for modern long-range air combat. The J-10, a military aircraft responsible for air combat, probably functions similar to the U.S. F-16. there are various legends about the relationship between the J-10 and the F-16, claiming that this is because the Chinese Communist Party obtained a lot of data from Pakistan, and in fact the J-10 does have many similarities with the F-16 in terms of design.
Then there is the J-16, which was developed from the J-11B series and claims to be a 4th.5 generation multipurpose two-seat fighter. The J-11, on the other hand, is a Chinese version of the Russian Su-30. The combat function of this aircraft is somewhat similar to that of the F-15, with the most important feature being its long-range over-the-horizon attack capability and powerful ground and sea strike capability.
The Boom-6K is the only long-range bomber currently deployed by the Chinese Communist Air Force. In addition to being equipped with advanced electronic systems, it also carries a variety of air-to-ship missiles, making it the main aircraft type for the CCP’s long-range maritime attacks.
The Yun-8 anti-submarine aircraft, as its name implies, has the main function of anti-submarine.
Since last year, Chinese military aircraft have frequently disturbed Taiwan, and the main aircraft used in the waters southwest of Taiwan are basically the above-mentioned aircraft. Including the J-16, Boom-6K, and Transport-8 anti-submarine aircraft, the main target is the sea. So, in April, the Chinese Communist Air Force deployed military aircraft with the main military objective of practicing maritime operations, envisioning an enemy not of Taiwan but of the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet.
This is probably the key to the CCP’s war against Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has been planning how to attack Taiwan by force for many years, and the strategy of war against Taiwan has been roughly set in stone. But how to determine the timing and intensity of U.S. assistance to Taiwan is the key to the war against Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has developed various “counter-intervention” strategies, mainly to prevent U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.
There is no longer any doubt that in future wars, air power will determine the outcome of the war. The Chinese Communist Party’s advantage over the United States in the air war in the Taiwan Strait is distance, and the U.S. aircraft carriers are the single biggest obstacle. So for the past decade, the CCP’s strategic focus has been on how to deal with U.S. aircraft carriers. The J-16, Bo-6K, and anti-submarine aircraft are all weapons that target U.S. carrier groups.
Warfare has never been a specialized project in human history, and in addition to weaponry and personnel training, it also requires experience, especially that of a pro-combatant commander. The vast majority of the major wars since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party were commanded by generals with extensive combat experience, and even in the 1979 war against Vietnam, a large number of the commanding generals were still military personnel who had been involved in the war and were experienced. But now, all of these generals are gone, and the quality of the new generation of military generals is not known to the outside world. One thing is for sure, not all of the generals in the current CCP army were promoted because of their high military quality.
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist regime, the CCP Air Force had a slightly better combat record than the Navy. The CCP Air Force was involved in combat in the Korean War in the 1950s, fighting directly against the U.S. Air Force, followed by a number of air battles between the two sides in the 1950s during the standoff with the Nationalist government across the Taiwan Strait, and battles between CCP and U.S. aircraft during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The air battles in northern North Korea during the Korean War were actually led by the former Soviet Union’s air force. The Soviet Union was the first to equip its forces with jet fighters, and the MiG-15s were fast and agile, giving them an advantage over the American bombers and early F-80s, before regaining air superiority when the U.S. brought in F-86 Sabre fighters.
The Chinese Communist Air Force’s combat record over the Northeast and North Korea was basically obtained with MiG-15s against B-26s and F-80s, and no cases of the Chinese Communist Air Force shooting down F-86 Sabers have been found. In other words, the Chinese Communist Air Force concentrated mainly over the border, attacking slow bombers.
By the late 1950s, Soviet-aided MiG-17s began to equip the CCP Air Force, and the CCP side built its own MiG-17s, the CCP Air Force’s numbered J-5s, and deployed them to Fujian and Zhejiang in preparation for combat against Taiwan. However, in many battles against the Taiwanese Nationalist Air Force, the J-5 lost more than it won against the F-86, so it had to hunker down inland, not daring to go out to sea to fight. Although the Chinese Communist Party produced the J-6, which was a copy of the MiG-19, and the J-7, which was a copy of the MiG-21, this situation did not change until the 1980s. In other words, the CCP air force has existed as a defensive force in the past.
During the Vietnam War, the Chinese Communist Air Force also fought against the U.S. military. For the record, the five or six U.S. military planes shot down by the CCP Air Force were mostly patrol planes or enemy attack planes, and these U.S. planes were all mistakenly over mainland Chinese land because they were on missions in or near North Vietnam. However, one F-4 Ghost was also shot down, but there is still much debate as to whether this Ghost was shot down by the Chinese Communist Party or by a friendly missile. Because at that time the F-4 was a new American fighter, fast and agile, equipped with the latest air-to-air missiles. But the quality of these missiles didn’t seem to be very good at that time, and they were all heat-tracked, so they could shoot down their own aircraft during a melee. In particular, the F4 was actually not designed with machine guns, so after hitting four missiles, it had to run quickly.
In fact, the Chinese Communist Navy was, for the most part, defensive as well, but the Chinese Communist Navy won many victories in naval battles.
After 1949, most of the ROC Navy withdrew to Taiwan, and although the U.S. warships received were both old and worn out, they were still much better than the navy that the CCP had hastily built in the 1950s. The Chinese navy was small in tonnage and poor in firepower, with few warships over 1,000 tons, and most of them were gunships and torpedo ships. The many naval battles the CCP fought against Taiwan were so-called guerrilla warfare at sea, in which warships were hidden in coastal islands and then suddenly attacked in groups, relying on fast speed to approach enemy ships and then fleeing after firing torpedoes. As far as I remember, the last naval battle between the Communist Party of China (CPC) was in 1967. At that time, the Nationalist Army tried to capture Dongshan Island off the coast of Guangdong, but intelligence leaked out and a number of Communist torpedo boats were ambushed, and two of the three Nationalist Navy ships were sunk and one was wounded.
During that battle, a sailor of a Communist torpedo boat, Mai Xiande, was named a combat hero because he persisted in the battle with a head injury. He spent a long time afterwards in the Guangzhou Military Hospital to recuperate from brain damage, and I met him when I was a child.
Similar to the situation of the Air Force, the Chinese Communist Navy never went beyond 12 nautical miles, i.e., never went out into the high seas. I used to read about the Chinese Communist Party and talked about the victory in the Chinese Communist naval war, chasing to 12 nautical miles and being ordered to return, and the captain was still very upset.
In 1974, the Chinese Communist Navy and South Vietnam had fought once in the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea and won. At that time, the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam, and the Americans sold several World War II destroyers to South Vietnam and provided training. At the time of the Xisha naval battle, South Vietnam had just received the American ships for a few months. Having weapons and determination without experience does not create combat power. In that naval battle, the CCP was four torpedo boats and minesweepers against three destroyers of the South Vietnamese Navy. The South Vietnamese side had advantages in firepower and tonnage, but they did not play out in the face of battle.
There are actually many hidden stories about the Battle of Xisha. I once asked a Vietnamese general who had served in the South Vietnamese Ministry of Defense and later fled to the United States. I was curious to know why the U.S. did not do anything in the Xisha Naval Battle, although the U.S. forces had withdrawn but still had a military alliance with South Vietnam, and the U.S. had to provide assistance in case of foreign military invasion.
He told me that after the Xisha Battle began, the South Vietnamese kept asking for American assistance, but there was no response from the U.S. side from the beginning to the end. According to him, if the Americans had assisted, only two warplanes would have been needed to solve the problem, and it would have taken less than ten minutes to reach Xisha from Subi Bay in the Philippines, but the U.S. did not provide any assistance.
I had this doubt at the time because I read in the South Vietnamese information that after the U.S. handed over the warships to the South Vietnamese, it had sent a large number of naval advisors to train the South Vietnamese sailors, and the chief gunner, chief engineer, etc. on the warships were even the Americans in charge. However, by 1974, these people suddenly received orders not to leave port with the ships. So the Xisha naval battle was a bunch of South Vietnamese rookies in old warships against the Chinese Communist Navy.
So I think that the Xisha Islands was simply a naval battle between the CCP and South Vietnam with the tacit agreement of the US. Strategically, the US has decided to withdraw its troops from Vietnam and other countries, and an alliance with the CCP against the Soviet Union has been largely formed. More critically, the U.S. had already determined that South Vietnam was bound to fall into the hands of North Vietnam, which at the time was getting closer to the Soviet Union, so for the U.S., it was better for the Xisha Islands to be controlled by the CCP than to fall into the hands of North Vietnam and end up under Soviet control, since the South China Sea was a world-class strategic corridor.
Whether the U.S. and the CCP had a secret agreement on this issue I don’t know, but I do know that after the CCP took the Xisha Islands, for a long time there was no offensive weaponry on the islands, only a few military personnel equipped with light weapons. So, by 2008 onwards, when the CCP started to equip the islands in the South China Sea with missiles, expand airports, etc., the American reaction was so great that it surprised many countries. It is possible that this had something to do with the U.S. perception that the CCP had broken the initial tacit agreement.
The Xisha Naval Battle was the only time the Chinese Communist Navy left the mainland shore beyond 12 nautical miles.
As we all know, the upgrade of human weapons determines the victory or defeat of war, but the upgrade of weapons is never only a matter of weapons, but the way of combat and command need to be upgraded together to be effective. The modern navy and air force of the CCP do have some advanced equipment, but it does not mean that the CCP has advanced combat capability. The confidence of Mao Zedong back then was honed by the CCP military from more than two decades of war. But today’s CCP military is an old army and an old military system manipulating new weapons, and its true war-fighting capabilities actually remain quite questionable.
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