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It's refreshing to see a take on this conflict that runs counter to the conventional take of a cataclysmic contest over an amphibious invasion of Taiwan and a f

It's refreshing to see a take on this conflict that runs counter to the conventional take of a cataclysmic contest over an amphibious invasion of Taiwan and a frankly more realistic scenario of the PRC salami slicing it's way towards increased control of the island while trying to minimize the collateral damage an actual war would bring. The idea of imposing an inspection of all shipping into Taiwan to block military shipments while allowing civilian shipping hints of the Cuban missile crisis. Still, the US could easily run "inspections" of its own on Chinese oil tankers in the Indian ocean. That's why I'm convinced that the ultimate confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan won't happen anywhere near Taiwan at all. Rather, China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean.

ardit33 6y ago
China will absolutely get blockaded itself, as they can't project power, meanwhile get the rest of the world against them. They don't have much oil, and their economy will be crippled to a standstill. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/China_Oil_Production_vs_Consumption.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/China_Oi...
- antiviral 6y ago
  Perhaps this is why they are trying to rebuild a Silk Road across Eurasia, which would cross through the mid-east?
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    They're going to be sucking their oil through a straw. Pipelines don't have nearly the same capacity as tankers. But they are pushing their economy towards renewables, and by the 2040s the majority of China might be powered by alternatives to oil, leaving them enough to keep their military going without disrupting manufacturing. Pipelines also have the added bonus that if the US tries to sabotage them, they've just attacked a bunch of neutral countries. Not a good look.
    - seer 6y ago
      As someone from Bulgaria I still remember how the Yugoslavian war played out. NATO doesn’t seem to have any qualms in abusing weaker independent nations if their military interests require it. Granted they just used Bulgaria’s airspace but the feeling was “we don’t give a F*ck what you think, deal with it”. Bulgaria is now _in_ NATO itself, but it wasn’t back then. There was a strong pro Russian (anti Nato) sentiment and I think that war in particular showed a lot of people what a precarious geopolitical position that actually was.
  - ardit33 6y ago
    It is only one rail line and some roads... it takes a couple of B2s to destroy the link. The US doesn't have to hit china itself (to avoid any nuclear escalation). It will hit the silk road in the secondary countries where it passes (eg. Kazakhstan). Siberia is huge and the Russian - China link is very inefficient. Also, China is in bad terms with almost every other neighbor it has (territory disputes with almost every one).. and they will be glad to see it humbled a notch or two and will not help.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  I keep reading this but I don't understand. In a naval embargo scenario, why wouldn't China simply get its oil from Russia? Delivered over land.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    It's my understanding that nowhere near enough pipeline capacity exists, like, not even 10% of China's weekly/monthly oil consumption.
    - throwaway4good 6y ago
      They would just get the oil by trucks. Sure it is more expensive than getting it by oil tankers. But possible. And it would be cheaper than the US cost of doing a naval embargo.
      - msh 6y ago
        There is nowhere near enought trucks in existance for that.
        throwaway4good 6y ago
        Is that really correct?
        msh 6y ago
        China imports according to google 7,620,760 barrels of oil a day. A similar lookup gives that the largest tanker trucks can carry 176 barrels of oil. So that would, if all capacity was by truck (I know it will not be) over 43000 truck loads pr day over very bad road conditions.
        Rule35 6y ago
        Russian oil is quite a ways West, around Kazakhstan, and China's population density is to the East. The trip would be around 5000km, and take a week on good roads. Perhaps double or triple this depending on the season, and maybe with a "Russia" multiplier. So multiply that 43,000 by 14 to 42, or more, and you're within a factor of ten of all (~16M according to Google) commercial trucks in the world, of which only some fraction are tanker trucks.
- adventured 6y ago
  Nobody is blockading China. Nobody would dare. Biden just said he's fine with slavery in China, he won't so much as voice a negative opinion about their human rights atrocities. The Europeans aren't much better. Absolutely nobody is blockading them. The Saudis and Russians will sell China all the oil it cares to buy, and the Russians can deliver it via pipeline trivially. Besides that, they're not going to need most of that oil in ~20 years. Quick question: what has happened to China as a result of what they did regarding the pandemic? Millions of people just died, along tens of trillions of dollars in economic destruction. They lied about the pandemic, they hid the outbreak as long as they could, they're still hiding information about its origin and the early days. Barely anyone even cares to dispute that, they all just shrug about it. Where are the sanctions? Where's the blockade? Right. Nobody dares. Barely so much as a squeak in their direction. If I'm China I'm starting to ask: well then, what else can I get away with so easily? Let's see here. They don't care when I enslave 500,000 people to pick cotton. They don't care when I commit cultural genocide and put millions of people in camps. They don't care when I violate prominent international agreements at will and strip Hong Kong of all of its rights. They don't care when I support a military dictatorship and coup in Myanmar. They don't care when I prop up and enable a crazy nuclear dictatorship in North Korea. They don't care when I destroy Tibet and culturally strip the entire nation. They don't care when I annex territory the size of France - from numerous of my neighbors - in the South China Sea by military force. And so on. (and before anyone bothers, that I pointed out these facts about China doesn't simultaneously imply the US is The Good Guy, I'll save someone that logic failure) But oh boy, the world is suddenly going to care about Taiwan as China begins their annexation formally. The buck stops there, no doubt about it. Un huh. Before another 10-15 years goes by they're going to have the world's most powerful military overall (they'll still lag in tech in some areas). It's exceptionally obvious. The US can't afford to continue its global projection, it's rapidly weakening (courtesy of the extraordinarily stupid decisions it has made fiscally over the past 20 years), and China is just beginning its global projection phase; one will contract, one will de facto conquer the world. The pandemic helped tip the US over fiscally into a more rapid downward spiral, it pulled that future forward by a lot. Have you seen China's export machine during the pandemic? They took market share. They've become far more potent economically while their competitors have been severely weakened. As a future bet, who's taking Boeing versus China at this point? Intel & Co. vs China's future in semiconductors? The US is in a very bad position. Within that 15 year span of time China will be sailing aircraft carriers past Hawaii and off the Pacific US coast, as a show of force, which the US will be entirely unable to stop. I've rarely seen anything more obvious geo-politically than what is about to happen regarding China. Asia is theirs, absolutely nothing can stop that outcome. They'll even compete toe-to-toe in Latin America for influence, right in the US backyard (as we have been doing in their backyard for so long). The best the US and its allies can hope for is to hold some political & economic ground in Asia and not be entirely neutralized in the region. The age of the American superpower is over. Act accordingly. The only thing the US is good for now is resource - wealth - extraction, while it lasts (debased by the minute). Then, afterward, get out while you can. Go somewhere nicer, somewhere sane, somewhere with a functional government, a decent culture, a future of prosperity and reason - that isn't the future of the US.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  China is not Japan. China is the 5th largest oil producer in the world, is banking the largest strategic oil reserve, has enough domestic resources and sufficient food security to operate on a self-sustaining war economy, forever. The imports are needed to maintain / grow, but in case of total war footing, there's more than enough production for the war machine even if civilians has to eat rice and ride bikes again. So the question is can PRC break USN blockade or sufficiently prosecute a war until US decide Taiwan is not worth it. If both navies are trading hulls in a shooting war how much loses before USN realizes any victory would be pyrrhic one in which they lose naval hegemony to pursue their global interests. The entirety of Chinese navy which is rapidly closing gap with USN has one goal - to deter / break a USN blockade and secure oil route to ME. All other purposes like Taiwan and SCS is automatically secured if it can do so. And even if China loses, it can still become a giant north korea that's sufficiently close to Taiwan to turn it into Yemen.
  - the_dune_13 6y ago
    "has enough domestic resources and sufficient food security to operate on a self-sustaining war economy, forever." Any sources?
    - dirtyid 6y ago
      Disparate sources +napkin math. There's a lot of analysis out there on Chinese food security, the TLDR is grain production is ~95%, but a lot of it goes towards animal feed. It's around 1000lbs per capita. In terms of crude, China only produces ~4M barrels per day, imports 10M. But the entire US military consumes 300k barrels per day for much broader portfolio. Other resources, only ~30% domestic self sufficiency in iron ore for steel production, but that's still ~300Mt which is ~60x total USN displacement. More or less everything else it stockpiles or can produce enough domestically for military needs, because relative to Chinese production the military doesn't actually use that much resources. All this is to say China is not Japan, it can't be "starved" into impotency, a blockaded China can not only sustain current military, but expand it by multiple folds on her own.
echelon 6y ago
> Rather, China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. This seems like the sane approach for China. How long will it take China to build its navy to the point it can defeat the US fleet? What are the chances that a provocation by either side will lead to confrontation before this point? Will the US and its allies attempt to make war before China takes the lead?
- Animats 6y ago
  How long will it take China to build its navy to the point it can defeat the US fleet? The PLAN is growing fast. Its size has tripled in the last 20 years, and right now it has more warships than the USN. The average size is smaller, but the goal is 400 ships by 2025. Having a big commercial shipbuilding industry helps. The US no longer has much of one; China has a large one. China's third aircraft carrier is under construction. The first carrier was a refurbished Russian one. The second one was an improved version of that. The third one is comparable in size to a US carrier but without nuclear power. The next generation may have nuclear power. That's expected later in this decade. China has a substantial truck-mounted land-based missile capability for sinking ships in areas offshore of China. This is a serious threat to USN carrier groups.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Suppose china shoots a usn carrier. The entire south china sea becomes a hot zone, and commercial shipping stops for months, maybe a year. Then what. The chinese people starve. Not a good plan, if you ask me.
    - Animats 6y ago
      China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited is the largest bulk carrier in the world. China can handle their own food imports in their own hulls. The biggest item is soybeans from Brazil. China buys food from the US but does not have to.
      - hollerith 6y ago
msh 6y ago
>Rather, China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. Remember that there are two other large navies in the area that are hostile to china (india and japan, both who have significant blue water navies)
- Koiwai 6y ago
  India and Japan, large navy, sorry, I can't stop laughing.
  - msh 6y ago
    https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy
    - Koiwai 6y ago
      We have different definitions of "large". Anyway, if WW3 really happens, hard to say which side they'll choose.
      - Ancapistani 6y ago
        I can’t imagine many circumstances where Japan would be willing to ally with China.
dnautics 6y ago
> China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. Honestly a fight with the us in the Indian ocean is not what they have to worry about. They have to worry about pirates attacking their tankers and stealing oil. They have to worry about iran going to war with saudi arabia (or in the shorter term, iran hijacking chinese flagged tankers coming from saudi arabia or vice versa -- like already happened this year except with south korea). They have to worry about belt and road policies making yellow people (I'm yellow and sadly afraid to visit africa for fear of being mistaken as chinese, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52805202 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52805202) resented across africa and all of their middle management exploiters getting murdered by locals with african governments turning a blind eye because they know that debt forgiveness is around the corner.

ardit33 6y ago

China will absolutely get blockaded itself, as they can't project power, meanwhile get the rest of the world against them. They don't have much oil, and their economy will be crippled to a standstill. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/China_Oil_Production_vs_Consumption.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/China_Oi...

antiviral 6y ago
Perhaps this is why they are trying to rebuild a Silk Road across Eurasia, which would cross through the mid-east?
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  They're going to be sucking their oil through a straw. Pipelines don't have nearly the same capacity as tankers. But they are pushing their economy towards renewables, and by the 2040s the majority of China might be powered by alternatives to oil, leaving them enough to keep their military going without disrupting manufacturing. Pipelines also have the added bonus that if the US tries to sabotage them, they've just attacked a bunch of neutral countries. Not a good look.
  - seer 6y ago
    As someone from Bulgaria I still remember how the Yugoslavian war played out. NATO doesn’t seem to have any qualms in abusing weaker independent nations if their military interests require it. Granted they just used Bulgaria’s airspace but the feeling was “we don’t give a F*ck what you think, deal with it”. Bulgaria is now _in_ NATO itself, but it wasn’t back then. There was a strong pro Russian (anti Nato) sentiment and I think that war in particular showed a lot of people what a precarious geopolitical position that actually was.
- ardit33 6y ago
  It is only one rail line and some roads... it takes a couple of B2s to destroy the link. The US doesn't have to hit china itself (to avoid any nuclear escalation). It will hit the silk road in the secondary countries where it passes (eg. Kazakhstan). Siberia is huge and the Russian - China link is very inefficient. Also, China is in bad terms with almost every other neighbor it has (territory disputes with almost every one).. and they will be glad to see it humbled a notch or two and will not help.
throwaway4good 6y ago
I keep reading this but I don't understand. In a naval embargo scenario, why wouldn't China simply get its oil from Russia? Delivered over land.
- walrus01 6y ago
  It's my understanding that nowhere near enough pipeline capacity exists, like, not even 10% of China's weekly/monthly oil consumption.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    They would just get the oil by trucks. Sure it is more expensive than getting it by oil tankers. But possible. And it would be cheaper than the US cost of doing a naval embargo.
    - msh 6y ago
      There is nowhere near enought trucks in existance for that.
      - throwaway4good 6y ago
        Is that really correct?
        msh 6y ago
        China imports according to google 7,620,760 barrels of oil a day. A similar lookup gives that the largest tanker trucks can carry 176 barrels of oil. So that would, if all capacity was by truck (I know it will not be) over 43000 truck loads pr day over very bad road conditions.
        Rule35 6y ago
        Russian oil is quite a ways West, around Kazakhstan, and China's population density is to the East. The trip would be around 5000km, and take a week on good roads. Perhaps double or triple this depending on the season, and maybe with a "Russia" multiplier. So multiply that 43,000 by 14 to 42, or more, and you're within a factor of ten of all (~16M according to Google) commercial trucks in the world, of which only some fraction are tanker trucks.
adventured 6y ago
Nobody is blockading China. Nobody would dare. Biden just said he's fine with slavery in China, he won't so much as voice a negative opinion about their human rights atrocities. The Europeans aren't much better. Absolutely nobody is blockading them. The Saudis and Russians will sell China all the oil it cares to buy, and the Russians can deliver it via pipeline trivially. Besides that, they're not going to need most of that oil in ~20 years. Quick question: what has happened to China as a result of what they did regarding the pandemic? Millions of people just died, along tens of trillions of dollars in economic destruction. They lied about the pandemic, they hid the outbreak as long as they could, they're still hiding information about its origin and the early days. Barely anyone even cares to dispute that, they all just shrug about it. Where are the sanctions? Where's the blockade? Right. Nobody dares. Barely so much as a squeak in their direction. If I'm China I'm starting to ask: well then, what else can I get away with so easily? Let's see here. They don't care when I enslave 500,000 people to pick cotton. They don't care when I commit cultural genocide and put millions of people in camps. They don't care when I violate prominent international agreements at will and strip Hong Kong of all of its rights. They don't care when I support a military dictatorship and coup in Myanmar. They don't care when I prop up and enable a crazy nuclear dictatorship in North Korea. They don't care when I destroy Tibet and culturally strip the entire nation. They don't care when I annex territory the size of France - from numerous of my neighbors - in the South China Sea by military force. And so on. (and before anyone bothers, that I pointed out these facts about China doesn't simultaneously imply the US is The Good Guy, I'll save someone that logic failure) But oh boy, the world is suddenly going to care about Taiwan as China begins their annexation formally. The buck stops there, no doubt about it. Un huh. Before another 10-15 years goes by they're going to have the world's most powerful military overall (they'll still lag in tech in some areas). It's exceptionally obvious. The US can't afford to continue its global projection, it's rapidly weakening (courtesy of the extraordinarily stupid decisions it has made fiscally over the past 20 years), and China is just beginning its global projection phase; one will contract, one will de facto conquer the world. The pandemic helped tip the US over fiscally into a more rapid downward spiral, it pulled that future forward by a lot. Have you seen China's export machine during the pandemic? They took market share. They've become far more potent economically while their competitors have been severely weakened. As a future bet, who's taking Boeing versus China at this point? Intel & Co. vs China's future in semiconductors? The US is in a very bad position. Within that 15 year span of time China will be sailing aircraft carriers past Hawaii and off the Pacific US coast, as a show of force, which the US will be entirely unable to stop. I've rarely seen anything more obvious geo-politically than what is about to happen regarding China. Asia is theirs, absolutely nothing can stop that outcome. They'll even compete toe-to-toe in Latin America for influence, right in the US backyard (as we have been doing in their backyard for so long). The best the US and its allies can hope for is to hold some political & economic ground in Asia and not be entirely neutralized in the region. The age of the American superpower is over. Act accordingly. The only thing the US is good for now is resource - wealth - extraction, while it lasts (debased by the minute). Then, afterward, get out while you can. Go somewhere nicer, somewhere sane, somewhere with a functional government, a decent culture, a future of prosperity and reason - that isn't the future of the US.
dirtyid 6y ago
China is not Japan. China is the 5th largest oil producer in the world, is banking the largest strategic oil reserve, has enough domestic resources and sufficient food security to operate on a self-sustaining war economy, forever. The imports are needed to maintain / grow, but in case of total war footing, there's more than enough production for the war machine even if civilians has to eat rice and ride bikes again. So the question is can PRC break USN blockade or sufficiently prosecute a war until US decide Taiwan is not worth it. If both navies are trading hulls in a shooting war how much loses before USN realizes any victory would be pyrrhic one in which they lose naval hegemony to pursue their global interests. The entirety of Chinese navy which is rapidly closing gap with USN has one goal - to deter / break a USN blockade and secure oil route to ME. All other purposes like Taiwan and SCS is automatically secured if it can do so. And even if China loses, it can still become a giant north korea that's sufficiently close to Taiwan to turn it into Yemen.
- the_dune_13 6y ago
  "has enough domestic resources and sufficient food security to operate on a self-sustaining war economy, forever." Any sources?
  - dirtyid 6y ago
    Disparate sources +napkin math. There's a lot of analysis out there on Chinese food security, the TLDR is grain production is ~95%, but a lot of it goes towards animal feed. It's around 1000lbs per capita. In terms of crude, China only produces ~4M barrels per day, imports 10M. But the entire US military consumes 300k barrels per day for much broader portfolio. Other resources, only ~30% domestic self sufficiency in iron ore for steel production, but that's still ~300Mt which is ~60x total USN displacement. More or less everything else it stockpiles or can produce enough domestically for military needs, because relative to Chinese production the military doesn't actually use that much resources. All this is to say China is not Japan, it can't be "starved" into impotency, a blockaded China can not only sustain current military, but expand it by multiple folds on her own.

echelon 6y ago

> Rather, China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. This seems like the sane approach for China. How long will it take China to build its navy to the point it can defeat the US fleet? What are the chances that a provocation by either side will lead to confrontation before this point? Will the US and its allies attempt to make war before China takes the lead?

Animats 6y ago
How long will it take China to build its navy to the point it can defeat the US fleet? The PLAN is growing fast. Its size has tripled in the last 20 years, and right now it has more warships than the USN. The average size is smaller, but the goal is 400 ships by 2025. Having a big commercial shipbuilding industry helps. The US no longer has much of one; China has a large one. China's third aircraft carrier is under construction. The first carrier was a refurbished Russian one. The second one was an improved version of that. The third one is comparable in size to a US carrier but without nuclear power. The next generation may have nuclear power. That's expected later in this decade. China has a substantial truck-mounted land-based missile capability for sinking ships in areas offshore of China. This is a serious threat to USN carrier groups.
- dnautics 6y ago
  Suppose china shoots a usn carrier. The entire south china sea becomes a hot zone, and commercial shipping stops for months, maybe a year. Then what. The chinese people starve. Not a good plan, if you ask me.
  - Animats 6y ago
    China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited is the largest bulk carrier in the world. China can handle their own food imports in their own hulls. The biggest item is soybeans from Brazil. China buys food from the US but does not have to.
    - hollerith 6y ago

msh 6y ago

>Rather, China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. Remember that there are two other large navies in the area that are hostile to china (india and japan, both who have significant blue water navies)

Koiwai 6y ago
India and Japan, large navy, sorry, I can't stop laughing.
- msh 6y ago
  https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy
  - Koiwai 6y ago
    We have different definitions of "large". Anyway, if WW3 really happens, hard to say which side they'll choose.
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      I can’t imagine many circumstances where Japan would be willing to ally with China.

dnautics 6y ago

> China will delay until they can fight the US Navy in the Indian ocean. Honestly a fight with the us in the Indian ocean is not what they have to worry about. They have to worry about pirates attacking their tankers and stealing oil. They have to worry about iran going to war with saudi arabia (or in the shorter term, iran hijacking chinese flagged tankers coming from saudi arabia or vice versa -- like already happened this year except with south korea). They have to worry about belt and road policies making yellow people (I'm yellow and sadly afraid to visit africa for fear of being mistaken as chinese, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52805202 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52805202) resented across africa and all of their middle management exploiters getting murdered by locals with african governments turning a blind eye because they know that debt forgiveness is around the corner.