Hacker News Reader

Comment by irdc | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree that the PRC has their own best interests in mind. However, I don't see how they can be oblivious to the fact that going to war with and occupying Taiwan would not only tie up a significant part of their military, but would also immediately give their current trading partners both reason and rationale to cut off trade. Not to mention the brain drain from Taiwan that would follow shortly after.

If anything, I'm far more worried about the PRC exercising the soft power it's slowly been building in eg. part of Africa.

View on HN

The idea is to get Taiwan during the tail-end of the USA's upgrade cycle.

China is building new ships today: roughly 3 aircraft carriers, and a huge number of Destroyers that will (on a tonnage basis), outnumber the entirety of the US Navy. They aren't capital ships, but a mass of lower-quality ships would probably still work if those hypersonic missiles can really kill our capital ships. (A big question in of itself: do China's hypersonic "ship killing" missiles work? If so, can the USA's defense systems shoot them down? If not, then why wouldn't China attack Taiwan?)

Meanwhile, the US Navy is just about to upgrade over the next 15 years. This means that a number of our ships will be docked, and the ships that are remaining will be older designs.

If China times it correctly, it can attack Taiwan and force the USA to defend with its obsolete ships, and before the new ships come online. In effect: the USA has already "spent" our money / resources on the upgrade process, but we haven't gotten the benefits of it yet.

----------

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attack. Once the USA's fleet is upgraded, the opportunity closes (as USA will have newer / better technology ships, while China's old Carriers/Destroyers will be at the disadvantage. And China won't reclaim the advantage until it spends a huge amount of time and money on their own upgrade cycle).

Furthermore: this "delay in upgrade cycles" was caused by Bill Clinton's budget in 1996. It takes many years for a budgetary issue to come up, and the USA has spent huge amounts of money on its military from 2001 onwards (because of Afghanistan / Iraq). As such, no such "upgrade gap" will exist for 20+ years at the minimum after this opportunity passes.

Will China be willing to wait another 50 years for another opportunity like this? Or will China actually go for it? And remember, China has already dedicated incredible amounts of money towards building a new fleet. China's fleet is a "sunk cost", their only decision now is whether or not to use it.

Sure, they may very well win the battle. What I'm trying to say is that in the course of doing so they would very likely lose the war.

The Nazis and Imperial Japanese lost the war the minute they made strategic blunders like... pissing off USA + Soviets __simultaneously__.

It turns out that the human ability to make strategic blunders is very possible. So if your best argument is "it'd be a strategic mistake to do X". Well... history is filled with horrible strategic blunders.

It'd probably be against American interests and a strategic blunder to divert forces from Afghanistan into Iraq on an notion of WMDs for example. Everyone makes strategic blunders all the time. I don't fault people for making them, I just try and study them and understand why it happens.

----------

There's something fascinating about war machines, like carriers, hypersonic cruise missiles, and destroyers. You have to see them in action to understand the intoxicating effects of these machines.

Once you understand how these machines can hypnotize a person... how they can make you feel like you can accomplish anything... then, and ONLY then, will you understand why Wars get started.

China's got Hypersonic cruise missiles. They know it. We know it. China knows the USA doesn't have them (!!!). That knowledge is intoxicating. China sees that as a military advantage. Will they be intoxicated by that knowledge to the point where they attack Taiwan?

Well, no one knows for certain. But they've looked at those missiles and have __already decided__ to build more ships than the entirety of the US Navy. So what does that tell you?

> The Nazis and Imperial Japanese lost the war the minute they made strategic blunders like... pissing off USA + Soviets __simultaneously__.

This is an important point and why I believe Wolf warrior diplomacy runs contrary to China's national interests. It has caused countries who previously viewed China as merely a competitor to view it as a direct threat and to take appropriate action. You know you've gone too far when your actions have resulted in Korea and Japan aligning with each other about the need for closer ties and to align with the U.S. on regional security.

> why wouldn't China attack Taiwan?

The US officially doesn't rule out escalating from conventional to nuclear war against other nuclear-armed countries. Even if the possibility is remote, I imagine that nobody is suicidal enough to want to test the possibility.

And what if China performs the calculus: decides that Tactical nuclear weaponry is fine and that the USA isn't dumb enough to escalate into Strategic nuclear weaponry?

There's a big difference between nuclear powers lobbing 100kilo-ton bombs at each other's navies in the Pacific, and nuclear powers using 10-Megaton bombs at each other's cities.

Given that China has decided to make a large mass of cheap Destroyers, what do you think China is thinking about this next war? Tactical nuclear weaponry would favor the one who has a more dispersed naval force, and be a bigger problem for USA's multi-billion $$ supercarriers, would it not?

-------

Lets say China nukes a military Supercarrier. Will the USA respond by nuking Beijing? Of course not. Knowing that USA is tactically in the disadvantage from using nukes (due to the composition of our fleet vs the Chinese fleet), we know that USA won't escalate to using even tactical nukes.

On the one hand, that makes sense; on the other, it would still be the first use of nuclear weapons since WW2. The last close calls, like Cuba, didn't even involve any bombing, just the threat of one power's blockade against another's ships, and that one is widely seen as having come close to mutual destruction. I don't think that actually lobbing nukes at each other would be less dangerous.

Also, accidents happen, and it's not clear how secure strategic weapons are against everything from a zealous airman to a submarine cut off from its command and having to make a judgment call. Daniel Ellsberg's book (The Doomsday Machine) suggests that this kind of accident during a crisis has come close to triggering a full nuclear war several times.

To summarise, I'm sure the tactics look good for China, but escalating to nukes still seems like a suicidal move, considering the risk of accident or miscalculation.

I personally agree with you.

But I can conceive a hypothetical Chinese Admiral who disagrees with the both of us. And that's all that it will take.

any sources or mode details on this?

Yes? Anything in particular you want to focus on? I think I covered a lot of topics, lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_(CSS-5_Mod-4)_Ant...

The DF-21, available maybe 10 years ago, would have the range to hit ships all the way out to Japan or so. That's really all you need to know: China is trying to develop (or already has developed) "ship-killing" hypersonic missiles.

But of course, no one knows if they work vs US ships (can US Ships deflect the missile? Do we have flares or something that the missile will mistake for a ship? Can the US shoot down the missile before it reaches a ship? No one knows).

-------

For China's military composition: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/202...

You can see in the Eastern/Southern theaters of China, they have roughly 500,000 Army troops vs Taiwan's 80,000 troops. (China has a military of over 1-million, but most are deployed elsewhere). China also has:

"The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020. China is the top ship-producing nation in the world by tonnage and is increasing its shipbuilding capacity and capability for all naval classes."

So PRC already outnumbers the USA in terms of ships. In a few more years, PRC will outnumber the USA in terms of tons. China is definitely going for "build more" and not necessarily "build better". There hasn't been a modern naval battle since like WW2 between major powers, so no one really knows if this is a good or bad strategy. But its certainly a strategy.

USA of course has our 10x Nimitz supercarriers + 1x Ford supercarrier (going through our carrier-upgrade cycle currently, +F35 project I'm sure you're aware of). USA has a number of "Amphibious assault ship", which are sorta-kinda like carriers (except for the Marines instead of Navy), but do contain VTOL aircraft like F35-B variant.

I don't think anyone really knows for sure how the battle will play out. The US ships (ie: the "Supercarriers") are incredible war machines, and even the smaller Amphibious assault ships would probably go toe-to-toe with even the Chinese carriers. But how does that play out with China's missiles and airforce?

I don't think the timing is favorable for China. Based on the papers I've read, China is about 15 years away from having a sufficient amphibious capability needed to invade Taiwan. That very likely means a sustained blockade, which will be extremely difficult politically, militarily, and economically. Surely such an invasion would be swiftly followed by harsh sanctions from many of China's trading partners. Considering the systemic risk China is presently baking into their economy by not allowing defaults to occur, what will be the appetite for adventurism of this sort with things unsettled at home? Is Xi willing to risk completely destabilizing China's economy to capture Taiwan? That sounds extremely reckless and unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

China has a policy of making everything in-house and already requires exit visas for its people. Brain drain can't happen if you are not allowed to leave.

Just how many people do you think are needed to sabotage a chip fab? I'd say about one.

How many rabid PRC-haters do you think Taiwan harbours? Well, it's more than one...

How many "von Braun" types do you think exist in Taiwan? People who are willing to work on cool projects no matter who is in charge?

von Braun worked for the Nazis to make missiles during WW2. Then was picked up by USA / NASA to make missiles / ICBMs / Space Program.

It turns out that a surprising number of engineers are rather flexible when it comes to ethics. They just want to work on cool things.

Yep, that'll likely eventually happen...

...after a couple of years of unrest and social instability. Which as simonh pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28959591) is exactly what the CCP does not want.

Knowing that the PRC tends to take the long view, I don't think they'd take the chance regarding Taiwan.

> ...after a couple of years of unrest and social instability.

If China wins Taiwan vs the USA, there wouldn't be any unrest or instability. The Chinese people would be proud of their accomplishment, and the rise of China as a military power.

Like... what "instability" occurred from Russia's annexation of Crimea? None what so ever.

>Knowing that the PRC tends to take the long view,

They do, and that's the problem. The shot clock is ticking down quickly: fertility rate in PRC just hit 1.3 births per woman. Total population is projected to halve by the end of the century. The current cohort of military-age males is shrinking, and there won't be another one to replace it. The PLA will never be stronger than it is today.

If Xi wants to take Taiwan, he has to do it now, because he's not going to get another chance. PRC manufacturing output is cratering due to power shortages and the global shipping and semiconductor convulsion, so the economy is going to get clobbered anyway. They're already doing recon flights through the ADIZ and running freedom of navigation naval patrols. If there's going to be a Taiwan annexation, it'll happen in the next 12 months.

The US Navy is hapless and the Taiwanese army is supine. Evergrande is collapsing and there's already a wide array of tariffs and sanctions against PRC leadership. They accidentally caused a global pandemic and shrugged off any political ramifications. They've already taken half a dozen hits this year and survived. Why not take another?

Organized stay-behind[0] operations such as Operation Gladio[1] were common in western Europe during the Cold War.

The Taiwanese military has had decades to prepare for a Chinese invasion; it would be surprising if they didn't have a similar setup in place.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

Reply on news.ycombinator.com