China's military modernization continues to be geared for a Taiwan invasion scenario:
China’s naval modernization effort, which began in the 1990s, encompasses a broad array of weapon acquisition programs, including anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), submarines, and surface ships. China’s naval modernization effort also includes reforms and improvements in maintenance and logistics, naval doctrine, personnel quality, education, training, and exercises. Observers believe that the near-term focus of China’s military modernization effort has been to develop military options for addressing the situation with Taiwan. Consistent with this goal, observers believe that China wants its military to be capable of acting as a so-called anti-access force—a force that can deter U.S. intervention in a conflict involving Taiwan, or failing that, delay the arrival or reduce the effectiveness of intervening U.S. naval and air forces.
Yet people continue to dismiss Chinese invasion capabilities because the Chinese haven't built up large fleet of specialized amphibious warfare ships as we have. At some point, these analysts have to answer the question of why haven't the Chinese built these vessels if their force modernization is geared for a Taiwan invasion scenario?
I think it is because we are so used to having specialized amphibious assets that we forget that we are pretty unique in the history of amphibious operations. China clearly doesn't believe they need many specialized assets for an attack only 100 miles distant. I don't think they need them, either. Although even a small amount has one use I recently discovered.
But as Chinese capabilities increase, there is no reason to panic over the Chinese anti-access capabilities (from the modernization paper above):
China’s emerging maritime anti-access force can be viewed as broadly analogous to the sea-denial force that the Soviet Union developed during the Cold War to deny U.S. use of the sea or counter U.S. forces participating in a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. One potential difference between the Soviet sea-denial force and China’s emerging maritime anti-access force is that China’s force includes ASBMs capable of hitting moving ships at sea.
But the Soviets had a much broader mission than China's near-term focus on Taiwan to keep our carriers away from Soviet targets and to interfere with our sea lines of communication to the NATO central front in West Germany. So china's objectives are far more achievable than the Soviet objective. It may be that our plans to operate near Norway well within Soviet air power might have lessons for our Navy in using Taiwan as a similar shield.
One problem with addressing the Taiwan situation is that too many people think that it is a charity case to support Taiwan and if China gets too tough we can abandon Taiwan and make nice with China. The problem is, the more powerful China gets, the more important it is to have Taiwan as an asset in that potential conflict scenario:
Taiwan’s future and U.S. interests in regional security are intimately related. Indeed, Taiwan is a core interest of the United States and has a pivotal role to play as an ad hoc coalition partner in Air-Sea Battle, JOAC, and the strategic rebalancing in the Asia-Pacific.
First, Taiwan should be the central guiding focus of defense planning in the Asia-Pacific region. In assessing JOAC and Air-Sea Battle-related requirements, the greatest emphasis should be placed on contingency planning for a PLA amphibious invasion of Taiwan with minimal warning. Based on a premature and faulty assumption that cross-Strait trade and investment will inevitably lead toward Taiwan’s democratic submission to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authoritarian rule, prominent analysts have asserted that the focus of U.S. defense planning should shift toward the South China Sea and defense of the global commons.
Clearly, even if we cared not one whit for Taiwanese democracy and independence, blocking Chinese efforts to dominate the seas around them requires a friendly Taiwan as a figurative cork in the bottle penning China's fleet close to shore.
Some of the problems with judging Chinese military modernization apply to decision-making in Peking in general, as the U.S.‐China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Report states:
Information denial and/or deception:6 The PRC exercises secrecy over many aspects of its military affairs, and in some instances puts forth false or misleading information. The lack of transparency in the PRC’s military modernization has been a frequent complaint of U.S. defense officials in recent years.
Underestimation of changes in China’s defense‐industrial sector: Once viewed as a bloated and sclerotic industrial sector incapable of adaptation, in the past decade the PRC defense industry has outperformed the expectations of its critics. While it still faces many problems, the Chinese defense industry is far more capable of producing modern weapons platforms than would have been the case in the 1980s or 1990s.
Difficulty in understanding the PRC national security decision‐making process: The decisionmaking processes of the Chinese government are opaque, particularly in regards to military policy and national security issues. The public emergence and/or testing of some indigenous PRC weapons platforms has also revealed apparent problems of poor bureaucratic coordination, and the possibility of a civil‐military divide at the top levels of Chinese policymaking.
Underestimation of Beijing’s threat perceptions: Many analysts in media, academia, and the government may have failed to fully appreciate the extent to which the Chinese leadership views the United States as a fundamental threat to China’s security. These threat perceptions have been inflamed by a number of events in recent years, to include the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis and the accidental 1999 bombing of the PRC Embassy Annex in Belgrade by U.S. aircraft.
Clearly, if we don't fully understand their military capabilities, their military-industrial capabilities, their decision-making process, and what they see as a threat, we just hit more than the trifecta in failing to anticipate a war with China.
Why would we think that letting China do what they want to Taiwan would improve Chinese relations with us and reduce the chance of war when gaining Taiwan just puts China in the position to project power further out to sea? Wouldn't we just be faced with the same problem further south and east but without Taiwan as an asset on our side penning Chinese naval forces close to China?
China's modernization has implications for our ship-building, of course:
As China continues to expand economically, politically, technologically, and militarily, if the United States and other allied powers fail to forecast—or at least anticipate—these developments, the future balance of power in the Asia‐Pacific region may be significantly impacted.
And no matter how much we debate whether we should treat China as a partner, a competitor, or even an enemy, we need to remember that the answer isn't just up to us:
The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst.
The paper cited in the article is here.
If China has decided the answer, our debates are really irrelevant:
[The] United States ought to be unashamedly wary of China’s rise. Certainly the rest of East Asia and an increasing number of other nations across the world are wary. Nor should “strategic wariness” necessarily lead to hair-trigger confrontation or conflict. But it does suggest the need for a serious deterrent military posture (beginning, alas, with a nuclear deterrent), primarily in East Asia but elsewhere as well. It requires more than a token “pivot,” that’s for sure.
The fault in a trust-building strategy is that it presumes the outcome: that the Chinese (whether they know it or not) will conclude that they are better off playing by the international rules that the United States and its allies have set. That may be true; these rules, first and foremost the “security rules,” have been the framework that has allowed for China’s rise. But if the Wang Jisi “revelations” mean anything, they mean that the conclusions about China’s willingness to play by our rules – the premise of American policy for several decades – are premature if not flatly wrong.
Indeed, a little more caution by basing our decisions on Chinese capabilities rather than intent is more important than trying to manage the relationship toward cooperation.
We need an open mind on assessing China (from the U.S.‐China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Report cited above):
A decade on, it is now clear that much of the conventional wisdom about China dating from the turn of the century has proven to be dramatically wrong. These predictive errors carry with them serious geopolitical consequences. To avoid being similarly caught off‐guard in 2022, U.S. analysts should carefully reexamine many of their widely‐held assumptions about the Chinese government and its policy goals.
Personally, I'd start with the assumption that China can't invade Taiwan and that Taiwan's survival is somehow a luxury goal for us.
The fate of Taiwan is more than just the fate of Taiwan.
UPDATE: While I worry about China's growing power--from the sheer geography which means China can project power into the western Pacific faster than we can, even if over time we can project more power--don't get the idea that we can't beat China. They aren't ten feet tall despite their rapid progress in building advanced weapons:
True, the world underestimated how quickly a four-fold jump in Chinese military spending in the past decade would deliver an array of new weaponry to prevent the United States from interfering in a regional military conflict. Top American generals have worried publicly about "carrier-killer" ballistic missiles designed to destroy U.S. battle groups as far afield as the Philippines, Japan, and beyond. Last year, China tested a prototype stealth fighter and launched its maiden aircraft carrier, to augment new destroyers and nuclear submarines. What is unknown, however, is whether the Chinese military, an intensely secretive organisation only nominally accountable to civilian leaders, can develop the human software to effectively operate and integrate its new hardware.
Judging from a recent series of scathing speeches by one of the PLA's top generals, details of which were obtained by Foreign Policy, it can't: The institution is riddled with corruption and professional decay, compromised by ties of patronage, and asphyxiated by the ever-greater effort required to impose political control.
Not that I think we should dismiss China because they have weaknesses. China did fight us to a standstill in the Korean War, after all. Respect Chinese capabilities. But focus on how to beat them and not use their capabilities as an excuse to retreat before them.
And one place we shouldn't retreat is in arms sales to Taiwan:
The report questions the extent to which China is prepared to jeopardize its overall relationship with America, and concludes that while the PRC has loudly protested past arms sales, tangible retaliatory responses have not had substantial long-term effects. China is unlikely to challenge any fundamental U.S. interests in response to future releases of significant military articles or services to Taiwan, and the U.S. therefore retains considerable freedom of action in abiding by the Taiwan Relations Act.
Granted, the report is by a pro-Taiwan grouping. But we'll face far more problems with a Taiwan that can't resist China than we will with a China upset that we've armed Taiwan enough to defeat a Chinese invasion attempt.
People that want us to abandon Taiwan want us to think it is "only" about the fate of Taiwan. Leaving aside the notion that it is just fine to abandon even 25 million or so Taiwanese to lose their freedom under Chinese domination, the fate of Taiwan is not just about the fate of Taiwan. And we aren't helpless in this crisis.
