A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a bloody, logistical nightmare | Hacker News Reader

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a bloody, logistical nightmare

lite.cnn.io

38 pointsUltramanoid28 comments

I'm surprised that they almost omitted the point of mine warfare.

Sea mines were historically the most efficient marine weapon ever, and Taiwan has enough of them to use them for months.

Allegedly, they also have a stash of domestically developed "smart mines," and that will complicate things even further for the PLA.

Logistical is the least of the issues, the effect on world financial markets would be astounding. Besides the human cost the repercussions to the world would be generational.

Which would be worse, an EU and USA that do nothing in the face of it or do something because of it. The world is boxed and so it really comes down to China deciding if the cost in lives and to their economy is worth it.

Given the crucial role of the fleet in PLA's invasion plan, I am surprised Taiwan only has two submarines. I would have assumed it would spend a lot of energy torpedoing the incoming PLA's fleet.

Purely thinking out loud, Taiwan doesn't need submarines to deny use of the Taiwan Strait to PRC's surface fleet. Minefields can do the job over a much wider area and much more cheaply. Modern mines can sit passively for extended periods of time and the expensive ones effectively are torpedo launchers.

They also have a stock of land-launched (and truck-launched) anti-ship missiles, the range of which exceeds the width of the Strait. The "only" issue there comes in lighting up the incoming PRC vessels to direct the missiles at them, but that's a different problem of detection.

And of course someone flagged this good article. The pro-China narrative on HN is real.

Another article, referencing a book, that argues that it is not a foregone conclusion:

* https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...

It sounds like the best case scenario for Taiwan winning such an invasion would be an almost complete devastation of the island.

For Taiwan, "winning" may simply entail not-losing. They simply may try to exact a really high price for any invader to make them think twice.

If it is known that they are willing to burn everything to the ground rather than letting anyone else have it, then adversaries may not think it's worth the price.

It's harder to take that one seriously though, being so heavy with fiction when describing the Taiwanese countermeasures it is hard to tell what they actually are.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

History shows that dictators run on a different logic.

I wonder if you could drop a few nuclear bombs of small yields to encourage surrender? Obviously its been done in history, but while it might work, the fallout could drift back to China and the political fallout might make the whole thing backfire.

The importance of the bomb is actually not clear[1][2], which is not that surprising considering the US had already been almost wiping out Japanese cites for quite a while before they hit Hiroshima.

[1] http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-us... [2] http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alterna...

good pragmatic view, interesting read.

Yeah, but I would have liked some more commentary about the fact that China doesn't have adequate resources for an invasion (not enough paras or landing vessels).

Naively this seems like a purely political choice, expressing an unwillingness to invade Taiwan (right now). I wonder if this is part of fundamental view on the use of force offensively or just result of economic realities.

Offtopic: am I mistaken in thinking that comma shouldn't be in the title?

Depends on if you want "bloody" to act as an adverb modifying "logistical" (no comma) or adjective modifying "nightmare" (comma).

I was thinking more because 'logistical nightmare' seems like a compound noun rather than logistical being just an adjective

I don’t think China wants to invade Taiwan. They think long term. It’s inevitable that Taiwan reunifies with China eventually as the us continues to withdraw from the world and the mainland economy improves and Taiwan and mainland economic ties grow. Eventually it will get to the point that Taiwanese economic leaders insist on it.

If that's the long term plan, then China's handling of Hong Kong doesn't seem to make all that much sense.

At least the pretense for starting the latest crisis was so they could extradite two murderers _to Taiwan_. It seems to have backfired spectacularly though.

Every decade, and it's been several now, the proportion between the population that considers itself Chinese-Taiwanese versus only Taiwanese shifts closer to only Taiwanese. It is 'inevitable' as well that as more generations live and work in a de facto independent nation, 'reunification' becomes an impossible objective for the mainland, unless force is used.

No need to look farther than the Sunflower movement when the previous Taiwanese president ( from the KMT ) tried to build stronger economic ties with China. The young movement literally occupied government, and on the next election the DPP swept to power.

Edit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement

Here's some evidence backing your claim: https://theasiadialogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/fig1....

It's hard to look at that chart and argue in good faith that reunification is somehow inevitable. We don't even have to go into the obvious cultural differences that exist between a successful, progressive (in an Asian context) democracy and a repressive single-party state.

> evidence...

It seems so obvious to anyone in touch with Taiwanese society it didn't occur to me the need to provide it, my mistake.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/28/20...

Identifying as a Taiwanese only does NOT equal support for independence, by the way. Things are not that simple.

And beyond issues of identity, the vast majority of Taiwanese, however they identify themselves, overwhelmingly support the 'status quo', meaning no declaration of independence, no reunification. No one wants war, which seems assured with either of those two options.

Edit : Just seeing now that the article claims 51% for independence, but that can't be right, maybe a typo, both independence and reunification are always on the extremes, shifting anywhere from 10 to 25%, and status quo is consistently the preferred option by far.

As an outsider, what's the difference between the status quo and independence? The status quo is that Taiwan has its own government, miltary, economy and diplomatic relations: is independence just about making a political declaration and changing the name of the state?

Taiwan is formally the Republic of China. Its government used to be the government of China as a whole until forced to retreat to Taiwan by the communists, during the civil war.

In fact, formally they still claim the whole of China since that's the constitution of the Republic of China, founded in 1912.

You'll note the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, first President in 1912 in the Taiwanese Parliament. And obviously the flag.

Based on this I believe that 'independence' means writing this off and declaring that Taiwan is not China but an independent "Republic of Taiwan" only.

> Based on this I believe that 'independence' means writing this off and declaring that Taiwan is not China but an independent "Republic of Taiwan" only.

This is exactly what I mean by political declaration and name change.

Short answer, a declaration of independence means war with China.

The status quo allows for what are effectively two separate nations to keep face and avoid disaster -- for both. It is a unique and somewhat absurd state of affairs for sure.

Long answer is... Long. Probably reading on the history of China and what happened after the Communists won the war and the KMT retreated to Taiwan would be a good starting point to understand what's going on with Taiwan today.

( Edit : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263049 )

Also, no country in the world can have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan if they have them with China. ( Most do unofficially. ) Taiwan is consistently blocked by China from international organizations starting with the UN, etc. Not everything is as it should be in a 'truly' independent nation, with the status quo. A declaration of independence would therefore also affect every other country and the international order of things.

The Taiwanese are more aware of the treatment of religious, political and ethnic minorities in China than the average Westerner. Even if they had a strong feeling of being Chinese, why would they settle for conquest by people who do not care about them and want the destruction of their system of government and way of life?

The only part of Canada that’s more than vaguely foreign to the US is Quebec and Canada hasn’t petitioned for US annexation. No part of Switzerland has ever shown any enthusiasm for joining those who speak their language in the neighbouring states. Why would a people with 70 years and growing of independence agree to annexation except under threat of death?

Economics is just not that important when it comes to national feeling. Ireland lost massive subsidies from England to be independent. The U.K. will not come off better economically from leaving the EU. Most every nation in Africa suffered economically for decades after decolonisation rather than having things get better. People value pride enormously.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com