Taiwan: Would War be viable?

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Tingkai


The PLA has about 2.3 million people in uniform, down 1.5 million from aobut 20 years ago.

Why 2.3 million in uniform? A lot of reasons:
a) All countries, except Costa Rica, maintain armies even though they are not required. The existence of an army does not mean a country is planning a war.
b) The PLA is a low-tech, labour-intensive army as Smiley said. Just because there are 2.3 million in uniform doesn't mean the PLA has a fraction of the power of the US military.
c) China has a big population so 2.3 million is a drop in the bucket
d) Kicking them out of the military would increase unemployment which is already a big problem;
e) A lot of these people are not soldiers. The PLA owns a many businesses (including farms to feed the troops) and the people in these businesses are often counted in military ranks.
f) The large army acts as a deterent. The PLA lacks effective offensive abilties. It has traditionally been designed as a defensive force.

I will admit that I have not heard that they drop 1.5 million 20 years ago.
I tend to keep up what happing in various militarys around the world. Since I spent 33 + years serving in and working for the US Military.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Official numbers are $30 billion, an 11 per cent increase, but that's well below GDP growth (nominal GDP growth about 17%, real growth about 8%) and remember that inflation is running at about 9 per cent so the real increase in military spending is around 2 per cent.

China's military spending is under control relative to GDP and will not adversely effect economic growth, unlike US military spending, which is running at more than $400 billion. The amount China spends is a small fraction of US military expenditure.

Are any of your numbers ever accurate?

[:) Smiley]

A better indication of military manpower would be the number of combat troops. The US Army, for instance, has outsourced to contractors tasks such as food preparation, weapons R&D, back area logistics, etc. To get a true measure of the size of the US military, add in the employees of defense contractors. I would not be surprised if that doubled the count.

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO


I suppose that we disagree that it is inevitable. The US has more natural resources than both combined and without having to deal with overwhelming domestic populations.

The United states itself does not have enough resources to feed its demand, so the US gets what it needs the same way China and India will, from trade with other states. As for overwhelming populations, read danS posts about the terrible fact that China's pop will stop growing at some point. China needs only to have its people have a PCI of 1/3 that of an American to have a greater economy.
BY PPP numbers, they already have one half as big as that of the US, and with a PCI 1/30th that of the US.

It is my belief that the desire of China to control more of the natural resources it needs to feed its ever growing internal demand is what will lead to violence.

And did the US's same desire for resources lead to violence?China has, over the last few years, been forming more and more long term commodity deals with countless countries to secure resources. China will get what it needs throught trade, Just as Japan, post WW2, got what it neede from trade, just like every single advanced economy post 1945 has done, throught trade.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Joseph
I read a lot of your post, are you an American?

Naturalized citizen, aka, an immigrant. Living in a vibrant city of immigrants.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by DaShi


Are any of your numbers ever accurate?

Yes, all of them.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by PLATO
It is my belief that the desire of China to control more of the natural resources it needs to feed its ever growing internal demand is what will lead to violence.

GePap is right. There's no need to use military force when a country can buy the resources that it needs.

More than that, military force is an expensive option where the costs outweight the benefits. Look at the US in Iraq. The strongest military in the world is caught in a quagmire. The war has severely damaged the US economy (massive deficit, weak dollar). The U.S. military is stretched to the limits. The US has alienated allies around the world. That's a gigantic price to pay to gain control of Iraq's oil. It would have been far more prudent for the U.S. to simply pay for the oil.

Compare that to what China is doing. It's corporations are expanding, buying control of resources. This is a much more efficient strategy.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Yes, all of them.

Then let's see some sources.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Tingkai



GePap is right. There's no need to use military force when a country can buy the resources that it needs.

More than that, military force is an expensive option where the costs outweight the benefits. Look at the US in Iraq. The strongest military in the world is caught in a quagmire. The war has severely damaged the US economy (massive deficit, weak dollar). The U.S. military is stretched to the limits. The US has alienated allies around the world. That's a gigantic price to pay to gain control of Iraq's oil. It would have been far more prudent for the U.S. to simply pay for the oil.

Compare that to what China is doing. It's corporations are expanding, buying control of resources. This is a much more efficient strategy.

Japan could have gone that way also in 1937, but they chose to invade.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Joseph
Japan could have gone that way also in 1937, but they chose to invade.

That is because their long term goals made the owners of those resources reluctant to trade. Japan realized that the only way they could guarantee that they had a supply of the needed resources was to own them.

Perhaps the world will do the same with China with similar results. However, embargo does seem to be the catch all to trying to change the way a country acts...and this will inevitably lead to war.

Suppose China does attack Taiwan, and suppose resouce embargos were established as a result. What does anyone think that China's reaction to this would be?

Regardless of the short term reaction, I'll bet China would at least be laying plans to secure the resources that its economy would require...and that will inevitably lead to war.

If we look back at most wars from the last century or two, are not most of them involving countries with eithier resources or resource needs?

Now, Gepap rightly says that the US does not have the amount of resources that it needs to supply its economy, but he is incorrect in that the US has the ability (but not the willingness) to be able to be resource independent long enough to fight a major war. China does not. This probably scares the Chinese a bit...and THAT scares me.

[DaShi]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/13kahn.html?hp&oref=login

The Two Faces of Rising China

BEIJING

CHINA'S leaders announced last week at the annual National People's Congress that they will give themselves legal authority to attack Taiwan if they decide that the disputed territory has ventured too far toward independence. It was their boldest ultimatum to date, backed by China's rapidly modernizing military.

But the banner headline in the next day's China Daily, the official English-language newspaper was: "Peace Paramount in Anti-Secession Bill."

Rising China has two faces. Its leaders want - arguably need - to be viewed as managing a new kind of emerging superpower, one that will not threaten neighbors or the world. Only a gentle giant can attract $60 billion in foreign investment and rack up $160 billion annual trade surpluses with the United States, the thinking goes.

Yet the Communist Party has also concluded it would lose power if it cedes Taiwan. The bill introduced last Tuesday, and set for passage Monday, is just the latest attempt to prove that the party will pay any price, including a war that might well involve the United States, to preserve China's territorial integrity.

"Our elites know China will have difficulty rising if the world worries about a new military threat," says Jin Canrong, a foreign policy expert at People's University in Beijing. "But China also cannot rise if Taiwan breaks away. And Taiwan will break away unless the threat of force is very real."

China has no immediate ambitions to shake the world order or challenge the United States, many analysts say. Washington wants to keep it that way. But Taiwan is bringing out China's aggressive instincts, with unpredictable results.

"I don't know which side is winning - the side that wants to fight for national interests, or the side that accepts international norms," says Philip Yang, a cross-strait expert at National Taiwan University in Taipei.

China has thrived because it devotes itself to economic development while letting the United States police the region and the world. Beijing sometimes decries American hegemony, but its leaders envision Pax Americana extending well into the 21st century, at least until China becomes a middle class society and, if present trends continue, the world's largest economy.

China insists it has no fights to pick. Its evolving foreign policy maxims - principles of peaceful co-existence, peaceful orientation, peaceful rise, peaceful development - have the same emphasis.

Beijing spends far more resources on domestic projects, like bridges, steel mills and office towers, than it does on the military. Its economic strategy depends more heavily on integration with the outside world than Germany or Japan did in the years before they asserted themselves in the first half of the 20th century.

"They want to have a peaceful rise because they have to," says Robert G. Sutter, a former National Security Council official who is now an Asia specialist at Georgetown University. "They have done a cost-benefit analysis and they have found that it is much too costly to be antagonistic" to the United States, he said.

China is smoothing relations with most big countries. It recently settled border disputes with India and Russia, backed the American war on terror, soft-pedaled territorial claims in the South China Sea, lured Southeast Asian neighbors into a trade pact, even stepped up foreign aid.

Taiwan is the big exception. Cross-strait relations have deteriorated since the mid-1990's. That is largely because Taiwan's independence movement has grown in popularity. Chen Shui-bian, the independence-leaning president, won two elections. But tensions have also risen because Beijing has shown little flexibility or creativity in accommodating Taiwan's democratically expressed wariness of the mainland.

Its strategy often seems limited to reflecting the certainty of an attack if Taiwan tries creating a separate legal identity. The anti-secession bill may have been introduced precisely because it appears to tie the leadership's hands - and make war seem inevitable - if Taiwan changes its formal name or redrafts sensitive clauses in its Constitution.

In a sense this is just more saber-rattling. China has long breathed fire about Taiwanese independence, so much so that Mr. Chen and many other politicians in Taiwan have discounted Chinese threats.

eir assumption is that China will not really attack because it ultimately cares more about domestic development, playing host to the 2008 Olympics, and avoiding a conflict with the United States than it does about securing its sovereignty over Taiwan.

But Beijing's leaders have also concluded that the Communist Party needs to draw the line on Taiwan's "splittists." The party has staked its reputation on restoring the Chinese nation to its rightful place in the world.

After the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese fold in 1997, Taiwan remains the most visible reminder of the dismemberment China suffered at the hands of foreign powers at the end of the Qing dynasty (though many Taiwanese claim the island did not belong to the mainland then any more than it does today).

China treats Taiwan as sovereign territory. So it insists its belligerence should not be seen as infecting its approach to other nations. Even the draft bill introduced this week devotes three sections to peaceful overtures to Taiwan. Only the final, fourth section notes the conditions under which China would consider other means, which the bill refers to vaguely as "nonpeaceful."

Yet there are signs that China cannot easily compartmentalize Taiwan. Military spending has surged in recent years, with the official budget rising to $30 billion in 2005. Western analysts say that actual spending may be two or three times higher.

The target is Taiwan. But China's new Russian-made Su-30MKK fighters and Kilo-class attack submarines could inflict plenty of damage on the United States Pacific fleet, and the build-up has alarmed Japan.

"Taiwan is a problem for America and Japan as much as it is for China because it is the excuse China has used to build up its military," said Mr. Jin of People's University. "If there were not the Taiwan issue, China would find it harder to justify this kind of spending."

A European diplomat in Beijing said last week that the anti-secession bill, especially if it prompts a ***-for-tat response from Taiwan, could raise the risk of conflict and cause the European Union to delay the lifting of its arms embargo on China, one of Beijing's top priorities.

Relations with Japan have grown testy. Historical animosity from Japan's occupation of China has played a role. But Japan recently discovered a Chinese submarine mapping the ocean floor in Japanese territorial waters, possibly preparing for a sea battle over Taiwan or contested energy resources. And Japan joined the United States in February in a public pledge to defend Taiwan, infuriating Beijing.

In its quest for energy, China has also curried favor with Iran and Sudan, oil-rich nations that have rocky relations with the West. It has threatened to use its veto at the United Nations to prevent international sanctions to punish Iran for its nuclear program or Sudan for its alleged genocide.

"I see them as becoming less and less conciliatory on issues they consider to be vital interests," says Bonnie S. Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. She cited Japan and energy security as well as Taiwan as examples of China's more nationalist approach.

Increasingly there are two Chinas on the world stage. One has 19th century notions of sovereignty and historical destiny. The other embraces 21st century notions of global integration. The anti-secession bill looks like a victory for the atavists.

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by PLATO
Suppose China does attack Taiwan, and suppose resouce embargos were established as a result. What does anyone think that China's reaction to this would be?

Regardless of the short term reaction, I'll bet China would at least be laying plans to secure the resources that its economy would require...and that will inevitably lead to war.

Frankly I think China's government might collapse after its economy does in that scenario. Unless we're talking about a really far future scenario, China is going to take massive casualties, including losing a large portion of its airforce and navy, taking Taiwan. When you look at what options China has to get more resources, China has problems. Siberia might be its best bet, but Russia is still going to maintain a powerful army and airforce in particular, and China will have already sustained major casualties before even starting the invasion. Some significant Chinese forces are also going to be tied up in Taiwan in order to prevent a sucessful revolt from taking back the island. To top this all off, at this point the US may very well get involved militarily against China. If this happens China is simply going to get overwhelmed and overextended.

China might be able to get some resources through Central Asia, but at least for the moment resource extraction is not developed enough to sustain China on their own. The mountains in the region would complicate the military movements in this scenario. If the countries DO develope sufficient resource extraction capability in the future, they will likely use much of this money to create much more capable militaries. If you look at what would be involved in invading the Middile East by land, its simply not going to be viable for China anytime remotely soon. Another immediate amphibious invasion simpy isn't going to be viable after fighting Taiwan. China actually has alot of fairly powerful neighbors that can rather effectively box it in.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Joseph
Japan could have gone that way also in 1937, but they chose to invade.

Yes, and the Japanese were defeated, setting yet another example of how the military option leads to failure.

People in China are well-aware of what happened, and the destruction of war, much more than say the Americans who have not had a war in their country for 150 years.

The economic approach makes much more sense and there is ample evidence that China is taking this route.

[DaShi]

That and the fact, that China doesn't really have a viable military option at this time.

[Velociryx]

I agree with Plato that China's coming. Like it or not, care today about it or not, it's happening, and the best approach is not to pretend otherwise, but rather, to plan.

I disagree with GePap that it's predestined for China/India to eclipse the US, economically. Starting points considered, both have a LOT of catching up to do.

Yes, they will certainly close the gap. Undeniably, and that's a good thing.

Surpassing? That'd take a bit more doing than simple demographics. Just because a nation has more people does not mean they've got more economic potential.

China has a long history of isolationism of a sort that made US isolationism look pathetic, by comparison. Echoes of that long-standing isolationism won't be undone by a few strategic arrangements for resources, while China's heavy-handed policies and tendency to simply pirate what it needs, rather than wheel and deal with (and fully engage) other inducstrialized nations will turn a lot of people off.

In short, China is a bumbling fool when it comes to actually DEALING (in the business sense) with other nations, and this shows no signs of improvement in the immediate future.

China's economic growth remains solid right now for one reason alone...they have figured out that they can throw a LOT of people at a particular economic process or problem, and wind up being the low cost producer.

Until they figure the rest of their own economics out, they'll remain wannabes and also-rans.

Not to say that they won't figure it out. Japan did, and with spectacular results.

China will eventually follow suit, but in the meantime, and all the while, the US economy is growling ahead like the lion it is, and her population will eclipse half a billion in the next fifty years...this is hardly insignificant growth, given the demographics of most other heavily industrialized nations, and certainly significant in the China v. US economic comparisons.

-=Vel=-