China could defeat U.S. in war over Taiwan by 2020

Not much. The PRC doesn't have much of a stomach for fighting in the 21st Century battlefield, and their military modernization programs still put them decades behind the US. It seems that most pundits who write about this seem to think that US forces need to be on-station in order to prosecute retaliatory strikes against Chinese targets, when the fact of the matter is, we have substantial non-nuclear ordnance that can be projected from over the horizon. In short, if China decided to move against Taiwan, and if the US elected to interpret the loosely-worded Taiwan Relations Act as a treaty to defend Taiwan against Chinese action, then China could pay a severe and dear price as dozens of its military installations in Eastern China are serviced time and time again.

And that bit about Japan being "pressured" to prevent Japan-based US forces from prosecuting retaliation is a bit overblown. Japan has and continues to be considerably alarmed by Chinese military expansion, and views China as the number one threat to Japanese security.

And it never seems to be mentioned that for all the "capabilities" the Chinese "might" have when it comes to C4I and the like, the US has as well. Let's see how quickly Chinese sea lift can transport troops across the Strait when there are US attack subs in the area.

Is this some type of video-game scenario?

Chinese people are people, just like American people are people. Chinese soldiers are not "tougher" and "more courageous." That's nonsense. It's just as much nonsense as proclamations of French soldiers being surrender prone and/or cowardly. Or of German soldiers being evil. Specific soldiers? That's a different matter. But such generalizations rarely work, with regard to states of mind.

Regardless, the economic ties are far too binding right now. The two countries are not going to war any time soon, over anything. Unless it's all-out fight to the finish, which is likely a mutually assured destruction scenario.

All that said, China is catching up in the naval world, but US aircraft carriers are still the heavy hitters. And the study you linked to makes two conclusions that don't strike me as sound, though I'm no expert: 1) pressuring Japan to deny/limit the use of Japanese territory and facilities--just don't see it happening, though if Noah sees this, he'll probably know more, and 2) attacking aircraft carriers--per my above point, those are the top dogs, attacking a carrier group successfully is no mean feat.

ETA: Well, crap. Noah posted while I was writing. At least I seem to have been right...

Actually, successfully attacking a CVG is a mean feat, and if China did so, then they would automatically invite all manner of dinnerware to be projected against them.

There is very little parallel between the continuum of combat experienced by US forces in 1950 than there might be in combat circa 2025. And there is simply no evidence to support that US defense capabilities will come to a standstill, much less erode.

Is Taiwan worth either side's time, money, and sons?

Noah Body said:

And that bit about Japan being "pressured" to prevent Japan-based US forces from prosecuting retaliation is a bit overblown. Japan has and continues to be considerably alarmed by Chinese military expansion, and views China as the number one threat to Japanese security.

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I'm not that surprised.
As I understand it, the Chinese are still pretty pissed about the war crimes the Japanese committed towards them in WW2.

China publicly states it is, but the reality is if it were, it would have been a done deal by now. Maintaining the status quo has always been in China's best interest, and with the financial and cultural ties shared by China and Taiwan, waiting it out seems the best strategy.

And whenever China wails and gnashes its teeth about US arms sales to Taiwan, they need to be reminded that the Taiwan Relations Act was part of the deal in getting official US recognition of Beijing shifted from Taipei. The Chinese knew about it all the time, and accepted it, as they desperately needed Washington to recognize Beijing as the "real" China.

LOG said:

I'm not that surprised.
As I understand it, the Chinese are still pretty pissed about the war crimes the Japanese committed towards them in WW2.

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They are, they should be. Japan got a free pass by the West back then, due to the emergence of the USSR as a pure military power. The West needed Japan as a forward operating base against both Russia and China, and Japan wisely elected to allow things to happen, even if it meant suborning the Imperial society to the wiles of the gaijin.

I thought the original post was a joke... and the shot at the marines which intimated that they were liars or pussies... just outrageous. Do you even bother to go after the ridiculous comparisons to now versus 50 years ago? I mean, if only the Vietnamese had rolled over and died because of our victory in WW2. Hoofah.

On the other side, I always like to ask of these "studies", "Cui bono?" The military is set to be slashed and right on cue, here comes the Rand Corporation with their scare. What will fix this issue? MISSILE DEFENSE. Who commissioned the study? The Air Force. Who would head up a missle defense? Oh my, dare I say it?

It's incestuous, and it's typical.

TL;DR
Just check out Noah's posts.

Mr.L.A.Kegbrat said:

China already kicked our ass in a war once and that was back when they had primitive technology.

In the Korean war after the U.S. destroyed North Korea's army, General Macarthur stupidly threatened to invade China. China sent troops across the border and drove the U.S. all the way back to the 38th parallel. China completely destroyed a U.S. army division and forced the Marines (who claim they never retreat) to retreat.

The U.S. had overwhelming firepower, far superior technology, and total control of the air. Despite the misleading belief that the "yellow hordes" outnumbered us, manpower was equal. The Chinese soldiers were better, tougher, and more courageous, and they used better strategy and tactics.

Now that China is catching up to us in technology, what would happen?

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While China did indeed succeed in pushing the UN out of North Korea, and their demonstration of tactics is impressive, the military forces were not so even as you seem to believe. The number of Chinese troops far outnumbered the allied forces in North Korea. In all engagements of the Korean war with the Chinese force, the Chinese took a roughly equal, and in some cases far greater number of casualties than the allies, yet still held superior troop numbers, even with understrength units.
Many of the Chinese troops that fought in the Korean intervention, especially the officers, were coming out of the Chinese civil war, which gave them twenty years of battle experience. Those officers and their troops under their command were still full of zeal from their revolution. While this may be a large factor for their victory in North korea, those factors don't exist today.

Several other contributors to Chinese victory that would likely not exist:
-The North Korean and US army troops at Unsan were taken by surprise and completely outnumbered by the Chinese invasion force. The technology of today and the nature of the conflict in Taiwan (that is, we would be expecting to fight them) would make such surprise difficult to create.

-The wars of the future will be fought with professional soldiers, that is, you can't just toss someone a bayonet and grenade and send them to the front lines expecting results. In the battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, the US troops lacked a lot of discipline, many troops foregoing equipment because they were so certain of victory. In the same way, the Chinese couldn't expect to field a massive army and expect ot come out on top with the help of superior numbers, which are rendered much less effective with current artillery, missiles, and other technological advancements, such as personal machine guns.

-Chinese weapons during the Korean intervention were more advanced than you may think. They captured weapons from the Nationalist army in the civil war, many of which were supplied by the US. They still used these by the time of the Korean war.

-Forests. While the US had air superiority, that doesn't mean much when you can't tell where the enemy is at. The Chinese forces also made sure to move at night. Again, advances in technology make this tactic more difficult with things like thermal vision, even imperfect. Bombs are also more precise now. Today I can mark a target and have a bomb dropped right there, as opposed to the WW2 method: Drop the bomb and hope it hits something. It was only at the battle of Chosin Reservoir that the air force even got to see real use during the fighting against the Chinese in North Korea before the regrouping behind the 38th parallel.

A few other notes:
-Chinese victories were only decisive in North Korea. After they pushed the allies back tot he 38th parallel, the Chinese attempted three times to continue the invasion but were stopped due to the logistics for their army being insufficient and the revitalized allied troops. This led to the current stalemate.

-The Chinese logistics were horrible, and a contributor to the Chinese Pyrrhic victory. Mao sent some of his elite units to the front lines at the Chosin Reservoir with no advance warning, winter gear or other vital equipment. More of the Chinese dead at the Reservoir were due to the cold and lack of supplies than actual battle. Their lack of naval power also enabled MacArthur to successfully evacuate huge numbers of troops and supplies at Hungnam.

-On the matter of Marines. While Marines may not run away, they still obey orders to retreat. I'm not sure the slogan you're referring to even existed during this time period.

All of this is not to say China couldn't win in a fight for Taiwan. But if they did, it would not be for the reasons you cite.
Although we wouldn't have the Turks with us this time...Those Turks I tell ya...their entire brigade is fragmented, a huge portion of it dead, they're using rocks to fight off the Chinese and their General asks "Withdraw? Why withdraw? We are killing lots of them."

Let's also keep in mind that China can destroy Taiwan pretty much at any time. They already have in excess of 400 short- and medium-range missiles arrayed against the island in Fujian province, and there's just no way anyone could stop the PRC from opening up if they want to.

Of course, the fallout from such action would be incredible. Not only would it finally lay low China's claim that it is a "soft" power, it would only serve to underscore the charges that China has long been a hegemon-in-waiting, and if it's going to subject its own people to such treatment, then China's regional neighbors aren't likely to fare better.

And in the report, the usual citations of direct action against US military holdings -- air bases and carrier groups -- are dropped, but those would absolutely serve to deliver unto China what it fears most: direct, inescapable retaliatory strikes against the Chinese mainland itself. Yes, the US could be declawed for 12-48 hours, but our military is not especially centralized, and with different active component commands, the US could -- and in the case of retaliation, such as this one -- and would decimate every Chinese naval port of operations and air field in eastern China. It just wouldn't be much of a contest, and that's without sending a single US soldier or Marine ashore anywhere.

If the US gets in a war with China, both countries are going to lose.

Yeah, we'd lose cheap electronic goods, and China loses hard currency to fund its military modernization.

Given the low quality of electronics and horribly underpowered and or massively exaggerated power of anything with a motor coming out of China, I doubt they've really advanced much technologically since the Korean War. Either that and they are dependent upon purchased tech, or they are deliberately selling us crappy goods and are trying to take us down via the second planet in the "Foundation" series.

Mr.L.A.Kegbrat said:

China already kicked our ass in a war once and that was back when they had primitive technology.

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Like Noah said...Not so much. You might want to check a few more sources for your history. In an actual war of US v China there would not be the political constraints that were in place during the Korean War. I think the proper term for this scenario is a "Paper Tiger".

Mr(s) Kegbrat, I just searched the threads and found you have a total or 40 posts with 14 of them starting threads. That doens't necessarily mean anything, yet I find it interesting.

There's no way China will threaten the US within ten years.

robeiae said:

Is this some type of video-game scenario?

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No, that was North Korea.

But on the subject of real life: Big, huge scale wars like World War 2, where two advanced technological nations slug it out en masse...ain't gonna happen again any time in the near future. We're all too economically interdependent, and if it gets to a choice between nukes and death, most losing countries would use nukes.

Unfortunately, that's not going to stop asymmetrical warfare from sputtering on for decades.

Yes, and the US could defeat China in a war over Tiddlywinks by 2012.

The world is full of all sorts of possible scenarios, each as possible as the one before. *shrug* I'm not sure what the purpose behind the OP is, unless it's to start some kind of flame war. There certainly isn't anything in the current political situation to warrant such a statement that I'm aware of, so I'm inclined to dismiss this as insignificant.

GeorgeK said:

Given the low quality of electronics and horribly underpowered and or massively exaggerated power of anything with a motor coming out of China, I doubt they've really advanced much technologically since the Korean War. Either that and they are dependent upon purchased tech, or they are deliberately selling us crappy goods and are trying to take us down via the second planet in the "Foundation" series.

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LOL!

China has changed a great deal since my first visit in the late 1990s, but the final deal is, it remains a very authoritarian state run by a small group of elitists whose personal wealth is tied directly to keeping things as under control as possible. And Taiwan is more a matter of national prestige than anything else; it's technically a part of China that's not under direct control of the CCP (which is not to say it is not influenced by Beijing, of course), and when mainlanders see (or at least perceive) of a province doing better outside the normative sphere of Chinese control, it does cause some consternation. For its part, Taiwan has always been something of a political basket case -- I was on the island in 2002 when then-President Chen declared Taiwan and China were "two countries on either side of the strait", and everyone pretty much choked on their noodles, myself included. To be sure, he was playing up to his domestic audience, but it was a needless provocation. So it does go both ways, and I believe the US had some sharp words for him.

Of course, if China had lived up the agreements it had made with Britain regarding Hong Kong, then things might be seen in a better light. The HK Basic Law allowed for democratic local elections, but Beijing put a halt to those right after the handover, then tried to establish anti-subversion laws that would consolidate Beijing's power in its SAR administrator. This in turn caused protests where 500,000 hongkies went nuts, and HK is hardly known for being a seedbed for political activism, and Beijing was forced to withdraw from that position. But Taiwan noticed both the attempt and its result, and both served to fuel its on-again/off-again desire to remain separate from China.

Noah Body said:

Japan got a free pass by the West back then, due to the emergence of the USSR as a pure military power.

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I think the deployment of two atomic bombs had something to do with it as well...

And as a side note, I've read the first 50 pages of the report and find it to be a rather remarkable set of alarmist circumstances culled from various data sets that, when contrasted against the backdrop of "reality", makes for less stirring reading than the extracts would have us believe.

I think I need to go work for RAND -- the report so far reads like background work for my own novels, only without the basic understanding of China and all the usual sex.

Tiger said:

I think the deployment of two atomic bombs had something to do with it as well...

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How did the bombings have anything to do with the international tribunals set up to prosecute Japanese war criminals?

And never one to allow sleeping dogs to lie (especially when the author of the OP has apparently beat feet), I offer this editorial bon mot from The Japan Times:

NEW DELHI — By roaring at its neighbors and picking territorial fights with them, China lived up to the year of the tiger that 2010 represented in its astrology. An increasingly assertive China also strained its relations with the United States and Europe, while its resource extraction-centered outreach to Africa brought about fresh tensions over what many locals see as a neocolonial strategy.

Now in 2011, the year of the rabbit, will China emulate that burrowing animal? Will it mean more tunnels being burrowed in the Himalayas for river diversion and other strategic projects? And "carrots" (rabbit's favorite) being demanded from neighbors and the rest of the world for eschewing irascible behavior?

If the Chinese leadership were forward-looking, it would use the year of the rabbit — which begins Feb. 3 — to make up for the diplomatic imprudence of 2010 that left an isolated China counting only the problem states of North Korea, Pakistan and Burma as its allies. The onus now is clearly on a rising China to show that it wants to be a responsible power that seeks rules-based cooperation and acts with restraint and caution.

But the military's growing political clout and the sharpening power struggle in the runup to the major leadership changes scheduled to take place from next year raise concerns that the world will likely see more of what made 2010 a particularly tigerlike year when China frontally discarded Deng Xiaoping's dictum "tao guang yang hui" (conceal ambitions and hide claws).

A tiger's claws are retractable, but China has taken pride more in baring them than in drawing them in. On a host of issues — from diplomacy and territorial claims to trade and currency — China spent 2010 staking out a more muscular role that only helped heighten international concerns about its rapidly accumulating power and unbridled ambition.

Read all about it at China's Rabbit-Tiger Heart.

Clearly, you have no understanding or experience with the US warrior ethic.

The Afghanistan, even the Chechens supporting AQ were caught off guard when their tried and true tactic of destabilizing an enemy advance -- killing their leaders, in this case American officers -- failed when lower-ranking American officers or NCOs picked up and continued the fight. Even when AQ had US forces bracketed in tight with mortar fire, they lost... not because the Americans were more numerous (they most certainly were not) or because the putative Northern Alliance were fantastic fighters (there were not -- at sundown, they would go home), but because the US forces were trained to be flexible and adaptive. Unlike the Russians, who required extremely centralized leadership in all composition of units, US organizations have to be responsive to the fluid, dynamic environments of the contemporary battlespace. In short, prepare for the unexpected.

With regards to not being able to defeat Taliban hillbillies, that doesn't matter a damned bit.

China is a conventional force, still grappling with old-style Offensive Maneuver Group tactics they learned from the former Soviets, who still prize tanks and destroyers and the like before martial flexibility and innovation. As a fighting force, they are wholly untested in the current continuum of conflict, and have demonstrated little understanding of the tenets of maneuver warfare. Yes, they talk gamely about launching nukes at USN CVGs, but rarely discuss in any open fora what their plans might be for retaliatory strikes. Yes, they swagger and strut when it comes to hinting at vaunted asymmetrical prowess, but talk is cheap, let's see it on the table (and we've seen exploits launched against the Federal Reserve from Chinese assets, and they've been identified quickly and blocked).

But the real story is this: they have no practical experience when it comes to combined arms operations anywhere on this planet in the past 50 years.

And the driving force behind their modernization is this: the Chinese were shocked and horrified to see other OMG-trained units such as the Iraqis absolutely fall apart within days of contact with US force packages not just once, but twice.

The Chinese might talk big, but when it comes to measuring the heft and girth of the military penis, the US knows how to use it... and can use it all day and night long.

Torrance said:

I thought the original post was a joke... and the shot at the marines which intimated that they were liars or pussies... just outrageous. Do you even bother to go after the ridiculous comparisons to now versus 50 years ago? I mean, if only the Vietnamese had rolled over and died because of our victory in WW2. Hoofah.

On the other side, I always like to ask of these "studies", "Cui bono?" The military is set to be slashed and right on cue, here comes the Rand Corporation with their scare. What will fix this issue? MISSILE DEFENSE. Who commissioned the study? The Air Force. Who would head up a missle defense? Oh my, dare I say it?

It's incestuous, and it's typical.

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My first thought too.