4. China’s Strategies
4.3 China’s Unlimited Strategy – China’s “Blitzkrieg” and the PLA Capabilities . 86
4.3.3 China’s Plan Impediments
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commercial activities; [cyberattacks could also] serve as a force-multiplier when coupled with kinetic attacks during times of crisis or conflict”. Those capabilities could be use against the ROC military and government in a Taiwan contingency or as an asymmetric weapon for China to deter or delay an American intervention in the conflict.
4.3.3 China’s Plan Impediments
4.3.3.1 The Plan’s Structural Weaknesses
Here, we will study some of the Chinese attack plan’s weaknesses such as intelligence, political and geostrategic drawbacks. Other obstacles to the Chinese invasion, such as the nature of Taiwan’s geography and the strength of the ROC military will be treated in the next chapters because the Chinese have no control on them, and instead they play for Taiwan’s deterrence. I have taken inspiration from Ian Easton’s volume “The Chinese Invasion Threat”292 for information and the separation of this short section in three parts.
Intelligence Weaknesses
Precise intelligence is vital for designing a successful military plan. Despite the highly mediatized espionage cases that surface in Taiwan, the Chinese do not have a proper knowledge of Taiwan’s defense. This would dissuade the PLA to attack until it gets a better intelligence of Taiwan’s defensive network. For example, the PLA has little knowledge about Taiwan’s underground military facilities (comprehensive network of communication layers, bunkers and firing positions) and weapons stocks and firing positions. Therefore, it is likely that the PLA would lose time searching where to strike and waste a high quantity of munitions on incorrect targets.293
For Easton, “It is sometimes wrongly assumed that China has flawless intelligence and knows all of Taiwan’s secret. But the reality is that Chinese officers do not feel they have adequate intelligence, let alone perfect intelligence, on Taiwan. The Chinese are distressed by how much they still do not know, or by how much they think they might know but cannot confirm.”(Easton, 2017)294
292Read: Easton, “The Chinese invasion threat – Taiwan’s defense and American strategy in Asia”, The Project 2049 Institute, 2017, ISBN 9781546353256.
293Easton, “The Chinese invasion threat – Taiwan’s defense and American strategy in Asia”, The Project 2049 Institute, 2017, ISBN 9781546353256, page 185.
294 Ibid. 183.
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Easton recalls U.S.’ operation Desert Storm in 1991, during which the U.S. military enjoyed excellent intelligence but still needed 42 days and nights of bombardment to destroy around 600 assigned targets. In a Taiwan contingency, a similar amount of time would already be way too long –this constitutes a serious impediment for China’s ability to conduct a blitzkrieg. Also, targets to be stricken on Taiwan would be far more numerous (probably twice as many as in Iraq), Taiwan’s military is much stronger and professional than Saddam’s military was and the PLA is most probably not as effective as the U.S. military was.
China’s weapon stocks are finite so the PLA may run out of ammunition quickly. Wrong targeting may also be increased by Taiwan’s use of decoys, and electronic jamming of PLA targeting assets295. For Easton, “Taiwan has invested heavily in camouflage, concealment, and deception operations to protect its most important facilities and military units from being targeted. Fixed targets blend into surrounding environments, with living foliage and mountainous terrain. This makes them hard to detect from overhead imagery”296(Easton, 2017).
Put simply, the time China needs to annihilate Taiwan’s defense is antithetical to the conduct of the blitzkrieg it envisions: many warheads will not strike their objectives and China will exhaust its stocks very fast. Taiwan’s military would be allowed to recover quickly and the time wasted may invite a U.S. intervention.
Political Problems
Let alone the risk of a military debacle, a war of aggression against Taiwan would be extremely detrimental to China’s international reputation and security environment.
Globally, it would strike a huge blow to China’s efforts to present itself as a peace-loving country and trigger hostility among the world community with likely consequences in the form of diplomatic isolation. For Easton, neighboring countries which have territorial disputes with China, such as Vietnam and the Philippines would take advantage of a Taiwan Strait war to push their own claims ahead. Afterwards, wary of China’s expansionism and way of settling international disputes, these countries and others like Japan and South Korea would be likely to strengthen their ties with the West as well as to improve their military capabilities or even become willing to acquire nuclear weapons to deter China from slicing through their territories.297
Internally, a war will surely provoke instability within China. Easton picked a quotation from a PLA publications that reads “Ethnic separatists forces, religious fanatics, terrorists might join together with foreign forces (…) cause trouble and plan terrorist
295 Ibid. 186.
296 Ibid. 181-184.
297 Ibid. 193.
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activities”.298Threats of internal instability would force China to mobilize the full-array of its security forces and monitor their actions closely. Violence at home added to a Taiwan Strait war might be too much for Beijing to bear.
Possibility of US Intervention
This is the single most important reason why the PLA would have to conduct a (very) quick blitzkrieg to take Taiwan. For Easton, “Internal Chinese military writings make it clear than an invasion campaign would have to be swift and decisively occupy Taiwan before US forces could come to the rescue. Chinese strategists know that it would not be easy to organize and prosecute the operation and worry that the US could enter the war before they had achieved their objectives.”(Easton, 2017)299
A U.S. intervention would dramatically increase the costs of the conflict for China, which places a premium of avoiding direct engagement against the U.S. military. For Easton, China simply does not have the capability to inflict a defeat on Taiwan within two weeks, or before a U.S. intervention in the war is judged most likely.300
Arguably, as long as the Chinese leadership is concerned that the odds of a U.S.
involvement in a conflict are too high and/or that, failing to dissuade an intervention, the U.S. military arrives in time to oppose China’s aggression, China will be deterred to attack Taiwan.
However, if China judges that the U.S. military will intervene anyway, it still can launch preemptive strikes against the U.S. military assets situated into the Western Pacific (Guam, Japan). But such a course of action would be extremely risky for the Chinese leaders who did not forget what happened to Japan after Pearl Harbor, where another preemptive strike was used to compel the U.S. to withdraw from the Pacific theatre.
Today, the U.S. still has comprehensive military equipment in the Asia-Pacific region and such an aggression would likely infuriate the American government and public opinion, provoke widespread indignation within the community of nations and present the U.S. with a legitimate case for unleashing a fierce military retaliation under the form of a full-fledged military support for Taiwan, if it doesn’t bear the risk to invite a nuclear escalation between both superpowers. We think that the CCP is unlikely to risk so much for the sake of taking Taiwan.
298Ibid.
299 Ibid. 192.
300 Ibid.
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4.3.3.2 PLA Weaknesses in Equipment, Organization and Human Capital
“After many years of painstaking efforts, the modernization of the Chinese armed forces has made notable achievements. But, of course, in certain areas, we are still lagging behind when compared with the most advanced militaries in the world and more efforts need to be made.”
Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesman, 2014301
Just like we did for the survey of China’s military capabilities above, a number of information and the global architecture of what follows has been inspired by a RAND Corporation survey of China’s military modernization.302 We completed the structure with information relevant to a Taiwan conflict.
Organizational and General Human Capital Weaknesses
“China has too many levels of command, “backward” combat effectiveness and too many layers of bureaucracy (…) this directly impacts upon and constrains our military in trying to raise the ability to win battles.”
People’s Liberation Army Daily, 2015/11/12303
Organizationally, the PLA has yet to update obsolete elements of its command structure.
For example, in each of the PLA’s newly-created “theatre commands”, each operational commander has to share its responsibility with a political commissar whose task is to ensure loyalty to the CCP and the political correctness of the objective pursued. This system is replicated within the PLA’s smaller units. Therefore there may be clashes between the operational commanders and the political commissars regarding the nature of the mission to lead. Confrontation between tactical and political priorities in a conflict could seriously limit the coordination within units and hamper the achievement of greater strategic objectives.
Other structural challenges include waste of resources, a generally low proficiency of the PLA bureaucratic machine, a low level of coordination, and competition for
301 Blasko, D., "Ten reasons why China will have trouble fighting a modern war”, Warontherocks, February 18, 2015, URL: http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/ten-reasons-why-china-will-have-trouble-fighting-a-modern-war/.
302 Read: Rand Corporation, “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation - Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)”, Library of Congress, Santa Monica, CA, February 2015, ISBN/EAN: 9780833088307, URL: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR893.html.
303 Taipei Times, "Chinese army says it will lose wars if it does not reform", Dec 12, 2015:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/12/12/2003634605.
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resources between the different services of the military (PLAA, PLAN, PLAAF, PLARF, SSF) coupled with a perfectible logistical network for maintaining the readiness of forces.304 PLA Commanders and Staff are inexperienced when it comes to joint operations – the last major campaign the PLA conducted was against Vietnam in 1979, and it was a failure. So the PLA still has a long way ahead before it becomes a fully operational joint-force.
The combat readiness of the PLA soldiers and officers from all services is hampered by decades-old problems of low educational level, technical proficiency, mental and physical health, training, professionalism and discipline while laxity and corruption (rank trade) remain high. The RAND report notes that the “PLA’s human capital is an issue because the quality of officers and soldiers is incompatible with the requirements imposed by their duties and missions” and that “existing staffing of China’s armed forces cannot fulfill the requirements of informatized war” because “the quality of [information technology, or IT] personnel does not match the requirements for the development of combat effectiveness”305 The PLA, although it launched reforms to make careers in the military more appealing, has yet to attract more of China’s young and specialized talents to compensate its enrolment deficit.
PLAA
The PLA Army has to fix many problems before it is capable to fully achieve joint operations and be able to project forces beyond China’s borders. Its force structure is still riddled by ideological thinking and rigid decision-making with the preeminence of Party ideology over professional military thinking.306 The quality of the PLAA personnel has increased but is still lagging behind Western militaries, with a low defense spirit and a lack of professional leadership within combat units (few Non-Commissioned Officers –NCOs). This reinforces its inability to make use of modern equipment while its levels of ISR and communications as well as integration of IT systems within the force are perfectible. Training still suffer from unrealistic conditions, lack of equipment and insufficient night drills. When it comes to equipment, although changes rapidly take place the PLAA has troubles to repair equipment, suffer from lack of modern weaponry for training, while China’s main battle tank (MBT) fleet still consists of outdated cold war generation tanks, such as the 1960s built Type-59. Finally the PLAA suffers from logistical and maintenance drawbacks with static, scattered and
304 Rand Corporation, “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation - Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)”, Library of Congress, Santa Monica, CA, February 2015,
ISBN/EAN: 9780833088307, page 72, URL: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR893.html.
305 Ibid. 71.
306McCready, Douglas, "Crisis Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait", Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), U.S.
Army War College, 2014, page 25.
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insufficiently informatized logistic equipment. This cause shortcomings to maintain IT and high-tech equipment, helicopters and emergency repair capabilities.307
Such shortcomings would hamper PLAA involvement in China’s invasion of Taiwan.
These are also aggravated by the PLAN’s lack of amphibious capabilities.
According to Easton, all above mentioned drawbacks combined with PLA troops’
inexperience of combat could have diverse effects on a Taiwanese battlefield such as physical and psychological breakdowns caused by the probable high level of violence on the battlefield with the Taiwanese use of modern, precision weaponry, and psychological warfare, all augmented by a ferocious fight on unknown terrain, irregular logistical support and confusing communication (or blackouts).Demoralization caused by the carnage, fatigue, hunger, absence of directions from the hierarchy, loss of initiative added to the general disarray of the situation could lead to a lowering of the PLA soldiers’ will to fight.308
PLAAF
Despite its rapid modernization, the PLAAF still suffers from fielding multiple generations of aircrafts. Among older aircrafts, China still uses the Q-5 Fantan attack aircraft from the 1950s, the Q-5 has an obsolete design and carries obsolete weaponry – the PLAN is replacing them at fast pace, however the PLAAF’s air-to-ground strike capability remains limited (which is critical against Taiwan).
Likewise, the PLAAF’s lacks long-range strike capabilities and aerial refueling capacity, which hampers PLAAF’s bombers to effect strikes on the second island chain, since they cannot be escorted by fighters. Other special mission aircrafts are missing such as AWACS, which would limit China’s reconnaissance and ISR capability in a conflict.
When it comes to a Taiwan contingency, the biggest problem the PLAN faces is certainly the lack of airlift capabilities. At present, the PLAAF’s fleet consists only of Russian-made Il-76 and derivate. However, China now fields the new Y-20 in increasing numbers so the problem presented by a lack of airlift capabilities will soon lose significance. The PLAAF will still have to take to time for fully integrating the new aircrafts into its fleet and training new crews.
Although training has considerably improved in recent years, it remains for the PLAAF.
PLA publications talk about a “peace disease” and consider that training is too easy.
Close air combat is underemphasized and unrealistic. Training for sustained operations
307Rand Corporation, “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation - Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)”, Library of Congress, Santa Monica, CA, February 2015,
ISBN/EAN: 9780833088307, page 76-79, URL:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR893.html.
308Easton, “The Chinese invasion threat – Taiwan’s defense and American strategy in Asia”, The Project 2049 Institute, 2017, ISBN 9781546353256, page 188-192.
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(24h/day operations) has been inconsistent until recently. Lack of attendance of pilots to key trainings and the instructors’ poor abilities have also been noted.309
As a result of perfectible training, there probably exists a gap between the skills of Chinese and Taiwanese pilots.
PLAN
While the PLAN has fielded many new and advanced units and that its air-defense capabilities are excellent, it still suffers from lack of logistics support (constrains PLA’s ability to operate far from its shores), integration of advanced weaponry within the force (lack of skilled seamen), ASW and amphibious capabilities (a deficiency compensated by Taiwan’s awkwardly weak submarine force).310
Among all, lack of amphibious capabilities is a huge problem for the PLA’s capability to take Taiwan. Despite the modernization of its amphibious fleet, the Chinese lack a sufficient number of adequate and advanced landing ships. The PLA still calls for the use of diverse types of civilian boats for carrying soldiers and weaponry. The problem is that such boats are totally inadequate for military amphibious operations which requires specialized equipment (like double-hull and watertight compartments) and personnel. Loading and unloading the boats will take longer, and the civilian crews will have no idea about military procedures (such as radio silence) and wartime conditions (with mines, obstacles, threat of Taiwanese attacks and accidents). Afterwards, PLAN boats could easily be sunk or end-up on the wrong beach. For Easton, PLA’s mission to get Taiwan is hopeless unless the Chinese redouble their efforts to field more amphibious capabilities.311 And they do.
PLARF
The Rocket Force suffers from the perfectible quality of missile force personnel, with management, leadership, discipline problems, lax and peacetime habits, low morale, excess of formalism, lack of professionalism as well as skills and knowledge issues among the personnel. The conduct of joint operations could be hampered by the PLARF lack of integration with other PLA arms, a problem also acute in trainings. About
309Rand Corporation, “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation - Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)”, Library of Congress, Santa Monica, CA, February 2015,
ISBN/EAN: 9780833088307, page 102-107, URL:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR893.html.
310 Ibid. 86-89.
311Easton, “The Chinese invasion threat – Taiwan’s defense and American strategy in Asia”, The Project 2049 Institute, 2017, ISBN 9781546353256, page 188.
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trainings, the RAND specialists cite: unrealistic conditions, neglect of deficiencies, wishful thinking, lack of sense of urgency and formalism.
Despite the PLARF is improving its conventional weaponry, it doesn’t have enough warheads, modern weaponry is poorly manned and finally, logistics are hampered by the PLARF lack of workable logistical network: informatization is limited, logistic facilities are not really suited, and the quality of logistic personnel is perfectible.
Integration with civilian industry and technology is still law.312
Against Taiwan, the PLARF lack of integration with other arms and lack of warheads could severely hamper PLA’s operations.
SSF
Despite China’s making major strides in the cyber, EW and space warfare areas, none of them really meet the PLA needs yet.
China is becoming more dependent on space capabilities and the PLA recognizes that this will bring challenges, such as vulnerability to the U.S. counter-space (anti-satellites) capabilities.
In the electromagnetic spectrum, China is concerned by cybersecurity weaknesses, vulnerable to its enemy’s cyber-actions (interestingly, Taiwan has recently fielded an elite unit specialized in cyberwarfare).
China also faces weaknesses in its C4ISR capabilities, which could hamper the PLA’s over-the-horizon targeting capabilities. These are caused by technical challenges posed by the integration of such high-technology within the PLA’s services and procedural obstacles (insufficient coordination between the PLA’s intelligence organizations and decision-makers).
312Rand Corporation, “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation - Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)”, Library of Congress, Santa Monica, CA, February 2015,
ISBN/EAN: 9780833088307, page 80-83, URL:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR893.html.