Up to 700,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit Taiwan in 2009 amid improving ties between the two sides, a report here has quoted President Ma Ying-jeou as saying.
With mid-July marking the start of peak holiday season, Ma told the Commercial Times that Taiwan is set to welcome 700,000 mainlanders -- or 2,000 a day -- by year-end, citing a tourism bureau estimate.
How many of those tourists will be PLA members scouting their war time assignment areas?
And when the invasion comes, will the PLA be able to slip a battalion a day into those 2,000 for a week or so prior to D-Day, and so have 4,000 to 7,000 troops on the ground (who'd have to be armed by agents who already established arms and vehicle caches inside Taiwan) right at H-Hour?
Even before the Chinese charm offensive began, aided by President Ma's reaching back, I feared that civilian ships would be the vanguard of the invasion.
I fear now that the Taiwanese are just allowing the pre-invasion PLA special forces to enter Taiwan as tourists rather than parachuting in or landing by small rubber boat.
