China

For some time now, we’ve been talking about how China continually makes noise about how they might just invade Taiwan.

My take on it has always been that China can’t win as long as the United States would oppose an invasion, and it’s going to be a long time (if ever) before China could hope to match the US forces that could be surged to the area in the event of a shooting war.

Something very interesting was mentioned by the readers in the comments. Since economic ties with both Taiwan and the United States are very strong and are growing every day, any invasion would mean devastation to the Chinese economy. It’s doubtful that the Communist government could survive such a disruption.

I’m mentioning this because Strategypage.com has a post that essentially says the same thing. (Post from April 11, 2005)

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The US military is looking towards China as the biggest threat in the foreseeable future. Every year the Chinese keep increasing their defense budget and modernizing their armed forces, all the while rattling their sabers and acting like the armed invasion of Taiwan is just around the corner.

While the Chinese might very well do something stupid like launch an invasion across the Formosa Straights, I’m not convinced that they’re as much of a problem as anyone trying to guard a defense budget says they are. As long as the US and her allies stand by Taiwan, they don’t have a realistic chance of taking the island by force.

This essay by Harold C. Hutchison at Strategypage.com examines the changes being made in the Chinese Air Force. (Post from April 9, 2005.) While the PLAAF has huge numbers of aircraft, the majority are outmoded models that wouldn’t stand a chance. Even the modernized aircraft that the Chinese can bring to bear couldn’t be used to their full potential due to a lack of force-multiplying support aircraft and low levels of pilot training.

It’s worth a read, if only because most observers have been focusing on the naval situation and missing the air force picture.

A reader named Paul Stinchfield left a very interesting question at this post.

I have seen accounts of Chinese citizens becoming violently enraged at even the most polite disagreement with Chinese policy regarding Taiwan, Tibet, etc. And yes, I mean literally, not figuratively, violent. What do you know about this, Mr. Rummel, and what clues might this give us to what the Chinese government might do?

I would be very interested in the thoughts of somebody who has actually studied China.

I’m more interested in military history than current political reality, so most of my studies have concentrated in that area. But there are a few things that jump out when someone takes even a casual glance at China.

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Here and here. The recent Chinese threats against Taiwan, and American Congressional threats to stop arms transfers to Europe, and whatever W and Condi told these b*stards when the door was closed seems to be working. Good.

“British officials have signaled increasing reluctance to advance the process, because of China’s slow progress on human rights and the new law on Taiwan. Some European governments no longer wish to jeopardize the recent thaw in transatlantic relations over the embargo.” “Diplomats said the UK was sounding out other governments in support of a postponement, possibly until 2006.”

Good to see the British taking the lead on this. Britain’s defense and intelligence partnership with the USA is far too valuable to throw away for a few renminbi from the Chicoms.

This is the cleaned-up transcript of a recent email discussion between Lex and me:

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JG: Have you seen this?

Lex: Yeah, I saw it. The guy adds nothing to the conversation. The Chinese face huge obstacles to invading — for one thing, the US Navy has submarines that could sink their invasion fleet. And now the Japanese Navy is on our side. This guy is just shooting from the hip. There are many good articles on the topic of Chinese military capacity. I don’t think they are ready to do it, and a seaborne invasion is the hardest military operation of all to pull off successfully.

JG: I hope you’re right. As I see it the problem for the Chinese leadership is similar to that for the Iranian mullahs. They cannot simultaneously keep their population under control by force and relax their economic control enough to allow their country to be internationally competitive. Something will eventually have to give. The last Soviet government didn’t have the heart to start killing people en masse, and consequently the Soviet regime fell. China, like Iran, has a significant pro-democracy movement that is not likely to go away absent drastic violent suppression and/or a return to the economic rigidity that characterized China before about 1978. Either measure would wreck the economy and thereby threaten the regime.

The temptation for dictators in these situations is to gin up nationalist sentiment and hysteria about external enemies. It may be the path of least resistance.

The same technological advances that now force US companies to be internationally competitive also put the squeeze on dictatorships. If they try to maintain control in the traditional way, using force, they risk harming their own economies to the extent that popular unrest may lead to their losing power. Even North Korea, whose leadership is ruthless, is feeling the strain. China could have gone the NK route, but having liberalized economically in the late-1970s and 1980s the leaders cannot now reverse course without making war on their own population and killing the golden goose.

China the country is doing well but its leadership is really in a desperate situation. They face an inevitable choice between further liberalization, and losing their grip, and cracking down. Ginning up war with Taiwan seems like a reasonable alternative for them, even if the a priori odds of losing seem high. I don’t think we should discount the threat merely because invasion would be difficult.

I also don’t know if the US would defend Taiwan. Maybe we would, but it’s not obvious. A gambler might be willing to run the risk.

Lex: And I agree with all of it. . .

I just don’t think that the next few weeks or months are somehow a particularly worrisome period. The Chinese are simply not yet equipped to attack across a large body of water, transport a large number of armed men, get them ashore, defeat the Taiwanese, and occupy the island. They may try to do intimidation, like the missile launches of a few years ago. If they try to invade, there will be a build-up period that we will detect. This will allow us to deploy submarines and other assets. It is similar to the situation the Warsaw Pact faced during the Cold War. They never had a sufficiently big advantage at the critical point to make an invasion of Western Europe worth the risk. The recent treaty with Japan makes a Chinese attack even more risky. If they attach and it fails or bogs down, they are facing the two biggest navies in the world, economic catastrophe as all
trade screeches to a halt, and a likely declaration of independence that they could never undo by the Taiwanese.

JG: The guy who wrote the post I cited wasn’t talking about invasion in the coming months. He was speculating about the next three or four years. He predicts China will do something around the time of the 2008 Olympics.

Lex: The military balance may have changed by then. But, Bush will still be president, our involvement in Iraq should be winding down, and Japan is on-board. The Chinese will have acquired European weapons by then, but I still think the cards we are holding are better. Attacking Taiwan would be very, very difficult under the best of circumstances — and facing the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force is as far from the best circumstances as you can ask for. I think the Chinese are aggressive, but not stupid. They want to bully people into surrender. But I don’t think they are this stupid. As long as we have a credible deterrent they won’t get into a shooting war they will probably lose. If the Democrats win in 2008, and try to “finesse” the “complexity” of the “nuanced” situation, then the Chinese might smell weakness and pounce. So, maybe after the 2008 elections and after the Olympics. But not sooner. So it appears to me. Of course, if civil unrest is looking like it might bring down the regime, all bets are off. Then a foreign war could be used as a desperation ploy to unite the country. In that case, the fish in the Taiwan straight will dine well on PLA corpses, courtesy of our Navy’s torpedoes.

UPDATE: Commenter ArtDOdger raises a very interesting question about the possibility of different outcomes from an official ROC declaration of independence vs. a popular Taiwanese independence movement a la Lebanon.

UPDATE 2: Related posts here and here.