The Coming Battle of Taiwan
Will it be T-Day, blockade or shades of grey if the Chinese ever come?
“Tell me,” I asked my date, “what are you going to do if China invaded tomorrow.”
“Well, if they call us up, I guess I'll go and be killed very quickly,” he said. J. is a tall and polite car salesman. A paratrooper, back in his days in the national service.
“The thing is, our training in the army wasn’t the best,” he continued, “we schlepped stuff back and forth a lot. And we did a lot of weeding. I only got to shoot a gun with live ammo once, so I don’t think I’ll be able to shoot very straight.”
J. was a conscript in the army before 2013. Back then, the national service lasted 14 month. Now, it’s been cut to just four months. In theory a volunteer force is rising to fill the gap. In reality, the Taiwanese military is struggling to attract and retain soldiers.
“Still, I wouldn’t run away or anything,” said J. with an imperceptible shrug to the shoulders, “I’ll just show up and get killed I guess.”
“Suppose we increase the military spending, would that help?” I asked?
“Suppose we drop it all the way down to zero and do something useful with the money. It just doesn’t make sense for the Chinese to invade, and if they do invade anyhow…” J. shrugged his shoulder again.
If I hadn’t asked, the issue of a possible Chinese invasion would never have come up. We might have talked about Freedom Pineapples or young Taiwanese changing their name to Salmon to get free sushi instead. The Americans might worry that the Chinese are coming, but the Taiwanese, it seems, are just numb to it.
In a previous post, we talked about the factors leading to the current heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Today, we are going to game out what might actually happen if the fateful day ever comes.
Scenario One: T-Day
It’s traditionally been assumed that if the Chinese are going to invade Taiwan, it would have to take the island in one fell swoop with a full-on amphibious assault. If the taking of Taiwan was not a fait accompli, goes this argument, international allies will come to Taiwan’s rescue.
Despite China’s massive military superiority, the lay or the land does not make an amphibious attack easy. The Taiwan Straits is choppy and too unnavigable for a Normandy-style assault for most of the year, and there are only a handful of beaches that are suitable for landing, all of them heavily defended against and booby trapped. Some reports suggest the Chinese simply do not have enough “amphibious lift” to get enough bodies across the water to make an amphibious assault work. The terrain is fabulously defensible. Machine guns can strafe across the mudflats of western Taiwan, while the military’s tanks, aged and ailing as they are, can roll out, neutralizing the PRC troops while they are still vulnerable and exposed. The sheer scale of an attack of this nature is also too massive to be concealed, taking away the element of surprise from the PRC, giving the Taiwanese air force a chance to take out the landing ships from the air before PRC boots ever touch Taiwanese sand.
Other experts are not so sure that this math really checks out. Lonny Henley argues that since it is well-within the PRC’s capability to build more amphibious lift, the fact that it had not done so suggests that it might have another avenue in mind, such as co-opting civilian vessels to deliver troops or relying more on airlift. And while it’s not known what assumptions they used, Pentagon war games frequently had the US-Taiwan “Blue Team” losing to the PRC “Red Team.
In tabletop exercises with America as the "blue team" facing off against a "red team" resembling China, Taiwan's air force is wiped out within minutes, U.S. air bases across the Pacific come under attack, and American warships and aircraft are held at bay by the long reach of China's vast missile arsenal, he said.
"Even when the blue teams in our simulations and war games intervened in a determined way, they don't always succeed in defeating the invasion," Ochmanek said.
Perhaps most seriously, there are serious questions as to the readiness of the Taiwanese military.
“What if China attacks now?” Chen asked. “In that case, we better hope they give us a few more days or weeks to at least get some of our tanks running and loaded with live rounds.”
Scenario Two: The Blockade
The very seas that provides Taiwan with protection from a direct landing becomes treacherous waters that fuel, food and other supplies have to traverse in the eventuality of a PRC blockade. The PRC need only scatter a bunch of sea mines in its territorial waters. It need not guard the entire ocean, just choke the access point near Taiwan’s ports.
Taiwan relies heavily on natural gas for electricity. If the blockade happens in the summer, we’ve got a seven day supply. Coal is a little better at three months. I’m not too sure about food. The terrible thing is, according to Lonnie Henley, nobody really knows:
Unlike Taiwan’s will to resist, its ability to resist a long-term blockade is something we should know much more about than we do. I am aware of no study in the United States or Taiwan examining Taiwan’s wartime consumption rate of critical materials, its peacetime stockpiles, or which stockpiles would likely be lost to PLA fires. There is no assessment of what must get through a blockade to keep Taiwan alive, what types of materiel in what quantities, or what Taiwan’s domestic production of food, water, supplies, and equipment might be under wartime conditions.
The best defense against a blockade is a counter-blockade against China, as it is also dependent on imported hydrocarbon for fuel. We must consider the likelihood that a blockade will be less likely to trigger a fully-fledged international military response against China than a kinetic war. I have assumed that the US is 100% going to come to Taiwan’s rescue in a hot war. But with a blockade, Taiwan will have to reach deep and find that resilience. It’s been suggested that Taiwan can use long-ranged weapon to hit high-powered PRC targets. But considering the fact that the other side can rain down an unlimited amount of punishment upon Taiwan, would it really be wise?
Scenario Three: The Grey Zone intensifies
China has been relentless in entering Taiwanese airspace with their fighter jets. The same things happen every time. Taiwanese jets scramble, accosts the CCP jets and blasts some message warning them off Taiwanese airspace. Just in 2020, Taiwan spent more than US$900 million doing this futile yet essential task.
The above shows the trajectory of 20 jets crossing over into Taiwan airspace on March 26. It escalated slowly with lone jets barely crossing the median line between Taiwan and China. Then the jets came in the twos and threes. It’s a form of war by attrition, bleeding away Taiwanese treasure and will. Grey zone warfare can be insidious because of their ambiguity. Each encroachment on their own does not rise to the level of a response by force. But one after another, they start to embolden the enemy.
It’s hard to see how much more the grey zone can intensify. In order to sending in multiple jets on the daily these days, China is also sending conducting propaganda campagnes through the infamous 50 cent army.
The Chinese jets has also been increasingly bold in harassing the Pratas Islands in the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. A possible scenario could be air incursion into the Pratas to cut the island off from air support while the Chinese Navy takes the islands. Would it trigger a wider war? It’s hard to tell. But if not, all of a sudden Taiwan’s situation just got a lot worse as China will now be able to use the Pratas as a base to control the movement of ships in the South China Sea.
One way in which a grey zone war can lead to Taiwan’s capitulation is through the addition of time. China is building up its military capabilities. If it keeps getting stronger and closing in on Taiwan, it could be eventually Taiwan simply do not have a credible plan to defend itself.
Cause for optimism
While all three scenarios seem grim in their own way, we can be cheered to remember that there is no way for China to execute on any of them right away without prohibitive damage. Does that mean Taiwan should not worry? Absolutely not. The threat of a Chinese invasion even within a short-term horizon is non-zero, and it only goes up with time as the Chinese military strengthens.
So what should we do? I asked Bonnie Glaser, Director of the China Power Project what Taiwan can do to maximize the chances of a good outcome. Here is her answer:
I would add to the list address our energy shortage, toning down Taiwanese independence rhetoric while building substantive int’l bonds, and returning to a strong national service, possibly taking cues from the Israelis.
It’s impossible to know how long we have to do all those things, but we will not have forever.
After reading Noah Smith's article about newer war technology, it feels like most descriptions of how China and Taiwan would fight seem outdated: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-future-of-war-is-bizarre-and
Sadly, my in-laws have an attitude similar to your friend's. My scenario is for an Anchulauss (1938) takeover from within. The KMT/CCP is a powerful fifth column. The majority on that beautiful island combine ambiguity, abject fear, and intentional ignorance to avoid all rational discussion.