Why you can be sure that China is bluffing with its many drills around Taiwan - and does NOT plan to attack Taiwan
This is a frequently asked question in the Doomsday Debunked group with many people asking it since the recent drills. Not based on anything new from China.
It’s true that an invasion of Taiwan would impact the global economy - but it would more immediately impact China's economy. And they wouldn't succeed in a few hours, they likely fail with huge disproportional military losses according to the best military experts I read.
The recent stories were just about China doing exercises - all over now. China can't win like this and aren't even trying. And Taiwan can fight back by itself, it's very militarily capable.
The US would break the blockade in any war but Taiwan would be able to hold back China for a long time with no supplies. The US wouldn't fight in Taiwan not likely. And China has many reasons to bluff but lots of reasons not to actually try to invade Taiwan.
Taiwan is prepared for an aerial assault. It has:
an entire underground city next to the capital Taipei with underground hangars and servicing for 200 fighter jets dug into the limestone mountains.
underground hangars for more fighter jets in the rest of the island and they can fly directly out of the hangars if needs be without using the air strip outside them, which can also be repaired very quickly, and can land on and take off from the roads too.
These are modern fighter jets built by Taiwan itself which is one of the most advanced economies in the world, similar to Japan.
ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that can reach deep into China. Taiwan doesn't do aggressive exercises near China or fire missiles towards China, so it never shows off these capabilities to the world.
I think that may be why few seem to know about how capable it is. It does do regular exercises every year simulating fighting off an invasion, but it does them in Taiwan itself nowhere near China and they don't get much attention outside Taiwan.
Taiwan has
vast sub-tropical forests covering the Eastern mountainous part of the island.
shorter-range cruise missiles similar to the Urainian Neptune or the UK Stormshadow that can cross the Taiwanese strait
longer-range cruise missiles similar to the NATO tomahawk that can travel for over 1000 km across the strait and deep into China. In a situation like this,
it would immediately disperse hundreds of trucks equipped to fire cruise missiles at the warships and artillery units and so on throughout the forests.
Taiwan also unlike Ukraine has
its own warships (four destroyers) and
military submarines (four of those too). It also has
fast catamarans that can fire cruise missiles
fast mine-laying ships - in a situation like that it would lay sea mines rapidly around all 14 of the invasion beaches and of course around the entrance to the river leading to Taipei.
It also has a large defence force of its own soldiers.
Global Firepower puts Taiwan's
active personnel as 215,000 and its military reserve as 2.58 million.
Typically it takes an invasion force at least three or four times the size of the defending force to invade, at least locally larger, to overwhelm the defences as it is far easier to defend than to attack. Taiwan has the advantage of earthquake-hardened skyscrapers which could be used as vantage points to fire from above. These overlook the invasion beaches from above, either skyscrapers or natural features such as hills and cliffs.
The military experts I looked at say China needs
an invasion army of at least 2 million. I
an invasion fleet of 10s of thousands of small ships.
These exercises are
nowhere near big enough to challenge Taiwan
And when Taiwan fights back, then China would need to
bring in huge supplies of munitions, fuel, food, water, i
repair the tanks and artillery,
medical facilities to treat the wounded soldiers, and need to evacuate them
and so on. Russia has to supply its war with
constant shipments on its railways and trucks on its roads, for instance
the Azov sea coast has a constant flow of trucks driving back and forth with supplies for the war.
China would have the far harder job of supplying its war through
a 4-hour sea journey with
Taiwan firing cruise and ballistic missiles at the ship every hour of the journey to Taiwan and back again, and
firing at the ships when they are in dock on the Chinese side loading up supplies for the journey, and in dock somewhere in Taiwan unloading.
Just damaging the cranes to unload in Taiwan would lead to major logistical problems for an invading army
and bombing the supply ships which would explode easily, as they would be full of supplies of munitions and fuel amongst other things.
Russia has had many explosions of ships loaded with missiles which the Ukrainians have hit with cruise missiles during the war in Ukraine.
To supply the war requires
a fleet of tens of thousands of supply vessels to go back and forth every day
these would be lightly armoured armoured, so -
no matter how good China's air defences are for its destroyers, which is unknown,
they would struggle to cover and defend thousands of civilian cargo ships and smaller vessels per destroyer.
The Russian landing ship Novocherkassk (112.5 meters long) destroyed by cruise missiles in Fedoria harbour, Crimea, 26th December 2023. The spectacular explosion is because it was likely carrying missiles.
China is only bluffing and is NOT preparing to invade Taiwan
would need a vaster army and navy than even China has
and very risky politically and militarily
If China tried to invade Taiwan it would need to supply munitions, fuel, water, food in tens of thousands of ships every day and many would explode like this.
Taiwan has cruise missiles that could reach far enough to sink the ships even when loading up for the journey in Chinese docks.
Background photos: video frames from: Imtiaz Mahmood (@ImtiazMadmood) on X
Photo of the ship from: БДК «Новочеркасск».JPG - Wikipedia
More background: Russian landing ship Novocherkassk - Wikipedia
When I looked at this,
the authors who had no expertise in military matters were the ones who tended to say that China could win quickly.
The more expertise they had the more they would say it would take a long time
the most expert said it was flat-out impossible.
The most expert of my sources pointed at how Russia can't even come within 300 km of the shore of Ukraine, a country without a navy, without risking their ships being sunk and talk about the next to impossible task of supplying a ground invasion on Taiwan with that long sea journey.
The less expert ones that talk about a rapid invasion success don't have any answers to these issues, they simply don't discuss them and may not be aware of how advanced Taiwan's military is.
They seem to think it is dependent on the USA to fight. In any war it is highly unlikely that the US would fight in Taiwan. Their main role would be to break any Chinese blockade and let supply ships in / out of Taiwan. But
Taiwan is reasonably self-sufficient, for the first few days or weeks of the war. It has its own stockpiles of parts, fuel, missiles and so on which would certainly last it through to the start of any invasion attempt.
the country most impacted by the war on the trade level (other than Taiwan) would of course be China itself.
Taiwan would not even be able to export to China and
would immediately block exports of chips to China even for civilian use (they are already blocked for military use).
South Korea would do the same
the US would immediately put sanctions in place.
In a situation like this
many of its Asian neighbours like the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan etc would also quickly impose sanctions on China to try to get it to stop the war as they would not want to have a successful aggressive neighbour.
They are on reasonably good terms with China for as long as it is a large powerful, but also peaceful neighbour
China prides itself on its peacefulness compared to the other great powers
hasn't been involved in any war this century and hardly anything even by way of minor military actions, just fisticuffs in the demilitarized zone in the Himalayas which led to some deaths, and
firing water cannons at Fillipino fishermen in the Spratly islands in 2014 and 2015. That's it as far as I know. Water cannon incidents here Scarborough Shoal standoff - Wikipedia
This also means that Chinese soldiers have no combat experience.
Experience is so important that Ukraine no longer accepts voluntary foreigh fighters unless they have pervious experience of active combat. These would be
soldiers that have never been involved in an active shooting incident with an enemy
dropped straight into one of the most most difficult military engagements that there could ever be in the modern world
with many of their comrades on other ships already killed before they reach the shore and can unload,
many others killed around them as they disembark from their ships.
Many of them might not be able to cope with those conditions and this would add to the problems for the Chinese to deal with their comrades who found they can’t cope with the conditions or need time to adjust to fighting when people are dying around them.
There would be very major downsides for China also if it just blockaded Taiwan or it took one of the smaller Taiwanese islands near China. It could try that, but with no chance of success in taking over Taiwan, just as a demonstration of power.
Again it would be
sanctioned,
lose the supply of chips,
any blockade would be broken by the US and Japan,
China wouldn’t want to get into any kind of shooting war with them.
These are more possible militarily, but politically they seem highly unlikely scenarios, and would do nothing to further its aim of Taiwan as part of China.
While for as long as China just bluffs and does nothing except exercises these do benefit China politically, or at least they may seem to, as displays of power and intimidation.
For background, see:
US AND CHINA RESUMED MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS WHICH HELPS WITH MUTUAL COOPERATION AND UNDERSTANDING
QUOTE
Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun said Sunday that Beijing needs more military exchanges with the United States, after the countries' defence chiefs held their first substantive face-to-face talks in 18 months.
...
Dong and Austin met for over an hour at the luxury hotel hosting the forum, which is attended by defence officials from around the world and in recent years has become a barometer of US-China relations.After the meeting, Austin said that telephone conversations between US and Chinese military commanders would resume "in the coming months", while Beijing hailed the "stabilising" security relations between the countries.
. China Defence Minister Says Beijing Needs More Military Exchanges With US
COMMENTS NOT DISABLEDUS AND CHINA RESUMED MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS WHICH HELPS WITH MUTUAL COOPERATION AND UNDERSTANDING
QUOTE
Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun said Sunday that Beijing needs more military exchanges with the United States, after the countries' defence chiefs held their first substantive face-to-face talks in 18 months.
...
Dong and Austin met for over an hour at the luxury hotel hosting the forum, which is attended by defence officials from around the world and in recent years has become a barometer of US-China relations.After the meeting, Austin said that telephone conversations between US and Chinese military commanders would resume "in the coming months", while Beijing hailed the "stabilising" security relations between the countries.
. China Defence Minister Says Beijing Needs More Military Exchanges With US
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