Is Taiwan a part of China? (idea)

By symmetric conflict I mean that both sides resort to full conventional military means. The PLA/PLAAF/PLAN (I love the PLAN. People's Liberation Army Navy. Sounds like a store) do not resort to nuclear strikes, nor to prolonged conventional missile bombardment with the aim of causing Taiwan's government to change policy. The latter isn't war, it's extortion, and the former I'll ignore because I'll assume the PRC wants Taiwan back, not obliterated.

Strait Razor

The entire question of whether or not China can conquer Taiwan hinges on whether or not the PRC can get an adequately-sized invasion force across the straits separating the two landmasses. Let's look at what it would take to invade Taiwan. Some factors to consider:

• Taiwan has a military of ~250,000 personnel. Let's assume that of this number, 50,000 are available for ground combat. This is pessimistic; with reserves, the actual number is probably closer to 150,000; however, conservatism in analysis is a good thing.
• In order to invade a state via amphibious assault, you need to capture a port to resupply and reinforce your troops; the number of men and machines that can be stuffed into landing craft is fairly small.
• In order to have a successful amphib assault, you need beaches that are accessible to landing craft and have good access to the interior.
• All of Taiwan's good coastline for this sort of thing that is near an active port is on the east side of the island. The PLAN would have to sortie around the island, not just across the straits.
• Taiwan's western coast (facing the Mainland) is mostly rocky, and in any case, the terrain immediately behind the beaches is swampland. All the good north-south railway links and road networks are near the eastern coast.
• An accepted rule of thumb for offense vs. defense force size ratio required for an attacker to prevail is approximately three to one. Prepared defenders with terrain advantages drive this ratio higher.

Let's recap. This means that the PRC needs to successfully get approximately 150,000 ground troops and their associated equipment to the eastern shore of Taiwan and get them ashore in good fighting order. Although this is an approximation, it should serve our purposes. What factors might affect their chances of success?

Lift Capability
The PRC does *not* have a strong amphibious assault and transport force. During the military exercises mentioned earlier in the node, the PRC 'invaded' a series of small islands a few (less than ten) miles off their coast. Perhaps 15,000 soldiers (roughly one division) were emplaced on these islands, using most of the available amphibious lift. Despite a lack of any opposition and an infinite rehearsal time, several of these soldiers (it is reported) starved to death due to the inability of the PRC to resupply them or lift them off in time. This bodes ill for getting ten times this number across a distance of perhaps one hundred to one hundred and fifty nautical miles safely, under opposition!

Air Superiority
This opposition would, in the initial stages of such a conflict, take the form of strike and fighter aircraft from Taiwan attempting to prevent the PRC vessels from crossing the Straits. In order for the PRC forces to successfully cross, they will need to deny the Taiwanese Air Force air superiority. The TAF has numerous strike aircraft and small bombers. Coupled with the flotilla of small missile boats in the Taiwan Navy, as well as a large force of more capable destroyers and frigates (including ex-U.S. Kidd-class ships), these forces mean that the mainland expeditionary force would have a short but exciting lifespan if they did not hold control of the air.

Can the Mainland gain and hold air superiority? Although the Chinese Air Force (PLAAF) is widely vaunted as having an enormous number of aircraft, the majority of these are obsolete types such as the J-6 and J-7, which are based on forty and twenty-five year old Soviet designs, the MiG-17 and MiG-21. China's 'modern' (fifth generation or better) air force consists of a handful (perhaps 50-60) of Sukhoi-27s bought from Russia. Despite her best efforts, China has been unable to get a licensed production line into operation to build these aircraft, due mostly to a lack of good infrastructure and parts supply. Taiwan, on the other hand, has a small horde of more modern aircraft such as the agile F-5 and the F-16 as well as indigenously-produced fighters. Although the F-5 is older, it is still used by many nations (including the U.S. as an OPFOR fighter!) and avionics upgrade kits are available to give it most of the 'punch' of a modern light fighter. The F-16 is a premier interceptor and ground-attack aircraft; most of the later revisions of the aircraft (which Taiwan has not gotten) addressed its long-range, night-fighting and ground-attack capabilities; it remains near the top of the heap as a dogfighter and interceptor. The Taiwanese IDF is a locally-built fighter based on a never-produced U.S. design called the F-20 Tigershark. It was a competitor to the F-16 design, and resembles an up-sized F-5. In addition, Taiwan has purchased Mirage fighters from France, and has had a great deal of avionics and systems upgrades done by various Western nations.

The mainland forces do not train often, and almost never over water. All in all, it looks fairly grim for the PLAAF. I would stake a small bet that Taiwan would run out of advanced AAMs before the PLAAF ran out of planes, but they can build those themselves and would most likely have resupply available from outside nations.

An additional imbalance present is the Taiwanese possession of several E-2C Hawkeye AWACS planes. While these are not the equivalent of the famed U.S. EC-135 AWACS, they are quite capable of managing battlespaces of around 200-300 miles in diameter; they do this for the U.S. carrier fleet. The mainland, as can be seen in recent news reports, is still trying to acquire their first reasonably capable AWACS-type aircraft, using Israeli systems in an ex-Soviet airframe - indicating their inability to produce such assets locally.

All in all, then, it appears unlikely the mainland would be able to achieve a safe and protected lane across the straits; and even if it could, would be unable to transport enough force far enough to have a prayer of engaging and defeating Taiwanese ground troops. This is especially true if we assume a motivated Taiwanese defense (it's their homes, after all!) and a prepared one as well (they've had quite some time to see this coming).

Yes, this miniature take on the question punts a whole number of issues. However, I'd be pleased to debate this in more detail one-to-one; /msg me or place your comments in this node!