Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove for the Rule Five links!
I found this interesting. Ever wonder what would happen if mainland China took over Taiwan? Excerpt:
What would a post –invasion Taiwan look like?
The occupation of Chinese military forces on Taiwan would basically turn the tables on the United States. The “wall” would now be a U.S. problem in terms of line-of-sight.
China has radically shifted the power balance in the South China Sea with the same island occupying philosophy. Islands are taken, then armed, and territorial lines are expanded via dubious “legal” declarations, such as exclusive economic zones, fishing grounds, historical claims that go back hundreds of years.
The declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is only a matter of time for both the South China Sea and eventually Taiwan airspace. Taiwan’s fighter capabilities are not being renewed at a rate to stop Chinese advances in fighters and electronic warfare. Even if Taiwan procures new F-16Vs it will still face a significant problem in air power projection as China increases fighter patrols that are performing circumnavigation patrols of the island.
If Taiwan fell tomorrow, the Chinese navy could use the northeast naval base of Suao as a submarine base. Not just any ordinary base, but a far better one than Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island, where Chinese nuclear submarines leave their mountain cave facilities to enter the shallow waters of the South China Sea. At Suao the waters off the coast drop into the abyss, giving submarines a far better ability to drop below thermal layers and vanish.
To be sure, China’s Communist government doesn’t harbor a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings towards the United States. But I can’t really see them invading Taiwan, and not just because of America’s long-standing policy of protecting Taiwan.
No matter how modern a military force is, they can’t take and hold land without putting lots of men in boots with rifles on that land. And China, the size of their army notwithstanding, would have a lot of damn trouble putting enough men on that big rock called Taiwan to effectively hold it against the resistance that the Taiwanese would put up; they would have to cross the strait against a swarm of missiles, establish beachheads, and bring in enough troops to effectively control the rocky, mountainous island. And that’s presuming no naval support from the United States (and maybe Japan.)
China may try to take Taiwan culturally, and while that might just work, it would be a task of generations.
But China has bigger problems. They are facing a demographic crisis, the fruits of their former “one child” policy; their economy is moribund, and their balance of trade is changing to be less overwhelmingly in their favor.
A successful invasion of Taiwan by China, yes, would be bad news for the United States, Japan, the Philippines and likely Australia. I just don’t think it’s very likely.
