Would ground forces even be a factor in the hypothetical China-Taiwan conflict? It seems like this would be entirely air and sea based as US and Taiwan do everything in their power to prevent China from ever making landfall. Would an invasion of the Chinese mainland be a possibility in a defensive war?
i fricked you mom last night, chang.
Trucks launching missiles would be a very big factor if that counts
No fricking shot lmao. The biblical plague of stealth fighters would kill thousands of chinks per sortie.
Well, PLA Airborne Corps have been training to attack Taiwan's Presidential Office Building for years, so maybe Xi really is as stupid as Putin.
If he’s even a hair smarter, IF, he’s seen that the west is more than happy to give infinite funds to anyone they like to ruin their enemies, so he’s probably backing down with that for now.
Jesus is this like, your fetish or something, constantly having people call you a moron?
They want reunification with the rogue province being returned under the rule of Bejing and you can't occupy an island with fighters and missiles. They could surround the island with a blockade and try to play the long game but that move essentially forces them to fight the US off while maintaining the blockade operations, significant challenge there, assuming the US intervenes which is pretty much 50/50 and I'd hate to bet my military operation of the century on a coin toss, not to mention enduring the economic fallout for longer while sustaining active combat operations. The ground invasion if successful and fast enough could deter the US from committing further since now instead of sinking your ships and fricking your planes they have to drag you off of a fairly large island WW2 style, not a glamourous option. I'm hawkish on China myself but would think twice about committing to that.
>rogue province being returned under the rule
Taiwan was never rulled by CPC
True, but tell that to the CCP, they claim it as theirs lol but it would certainly make shit less complicated if they went "oh frick you're right we never ruled taiwan my bad"
For a very funny reason, the rhetoric from China is generally carefully selected to not actually say Taiwan will be controlled by the CCP, but instead its "reunification". Its because the one China policy, which Nixon brokered with China to get them to go against the Soivets, was specifically crafted to not have any mention of who is the legitimate government.
Simiarily, the DPP of Taiwan claims they never broke the one China policy for the equally funny reason that Taiwan has always been a separate sovereign nation, and the one China policy never existed.
Doesn't Taiwan still have territorial claims on bits of Russia and India that mainland China gave up?
>Would ground forces even be a factor in the hypothetical China-Taiwan conflict?
Yes but the second phase of the invasion would be a massive fleet of amphibious landers leaving China.
Reducing that to size manageable by Taiwanese shore defense would be a serious battle.
The first phase is massive rocket artillery spam on every conceivable target in Taiwan. Probably drone spam these days too.
The Zero'th phase of the China-Taiwan conflict is being fought in Ukraine as we speak. Peeling off China's biggest ally in the conflict and setting a precedent for what happens when you pull this shit is half the point of backing Ukraine.
No, mainland will just bomb the shit ou of taiwan then send the drones.
China didn't bother to build a massive landing fleet because they don't need too.
China is not worried about fighting the USA around taiwan either, they are looking for it actually
Do you guys think China would pull some bullshit like fund a """""Rebellion""""" russia style and just send their own troops dressed like militia? communists have such awful awful poker faces, I can see them trying some obviously fake shit like that.
problem is that even the pro-china faction has become pretty anti-commie lately
that could also backfire because then taiwan might petition japan for annexation
imagine Taiwan petitioning for statehood, imagine the sheer unadulterated asshurt
Wouldn't work. There was a threat for a bit of a possible coup by communist-sympathetic officials in the military/government, but they've mostly hopped the fence or have been/are being purged.
Does Taiwan have enough missiles and stuff to put a hurt on China? Like could they hit Shanghai and some of the other nearby cities hard enough to make it way too painful for an invasion prospect?
They have this shit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yun_Feng
So that is well in range of 3 Gorges. The Chinese say that the dam is built in such a way that collapse is impossible even if there were multiple breaches and even a nuke could not bring it down due to the sheer amount of reinforced concrete.
Nah, if you really wanted to do maximum damage to Chinese stability, you'd go after power stations, transmissions lines, and other energy systems. Ideally you'd also lay naval mines in the Yellow and Yangtze rivers to further frick up transport. China's national security system is highly dependent on cyber-monitoring and communications across a vast country. If parts of the network are crippled its ability to monitor the population will be heavily reduced. On top of that, losing power will shut down Chinese industry and drive people out of the workplace into the streets, and with the much vaunted internal security systems being crippled by infrastructural damage, it will be extremely difficult for the central government to deal with a mass incident should it occur.
The key is to avoid striking Beijing and to instead hit economic centers like Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Shanghai. China doesn't have distributed power which means that their electrical infrastructure is heavily centralized and thus easy to disrupt. I'd also suggest sending unmanned mine ships into major harbor areas and just in general mining the Taiwan strait to interfere with Chinese civilian shipping. Taiwan also has a substantial submarine force which could be used to terrorize Chinese shipping further. Doing economic damage is one thing, but crippling the means of the central government to exert command and control of such a large country and populace is what would destroy China, not simply causing economic damage or inflicting military losses. The funny thing is that there are next to no redundancies in this regard because I don't think the PRC has actually put any thought into what might happen if a sophisticated military opponent chose to retaliate through countervalue in response to indiscriminate bombardment.
Bro, if 3 gorges collapses it'll wipe out something like 80% of China's industry and half the population.
3 Gorges is such an obvious target though and it was built by Western engineers, so it actually is well-designed and fortified and has redundancies built in. It's partly a prestige issue which is why this was designed as such. You get much more value from hitting indigenous Chinese targets that likely had corners cut and are less likely targets for the autocrats to anticipate. Also ideally if you have the range you want to hit upstream dams as well, dams that are likely less protected and less obvious of a target. But causing a collapse of one of the upstream dams is going to spill downstream, which means you might get the desired result anyways without dealing with what would otherwise be a well-defended target.
Wuhan lab is also designed by western engineers though?
Wuhan lab isn't a structural marvel that prevents the flooding of China
How far is 3 Gorges from Taiwan?
How good is China's missile defense tech? Could they protect all their coastal cities?