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Post Invasion Nightmare: Taiwan Becomes America’s Enemy (China Plan to Invade Taiwan by 2020)
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Post–Invasion Nightmare: Taiwan Becomes America’s Enemy
January 21, 2019
[link to nationalinterest.org (secure)]
Excerpts -
If Taipei fell to Beijing control tomorrow, then Xi Jinping could use the country's bases to launch new wars.
China views Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines as one long wall. Bud Cole, the celebrated specialist on Chinese naval issues, dubbed it the “The Great Wall at Sea” for good reason. Insurmountable in geographic terms; with no line of sight for its aircraft, let alone navy, Beijing has no other choice but to take Taiwan.
Taiwan’s central mountain range runs the length of the island with heights ranging from nine thousand to twelve thousand feet. This is the problem China faces in its efforts to project force into the Pacific. The Chinese air force must fly around Taiwan, the navy must sail through the Japanese-controlled Ryukyu Islands chain that stretches from Japan to Taiwan, and mainland’s ground-based radar cannot peek over Taiwan.
The occupation of Chinese military forces on Taiwan would basically turn the tables on the United States. The “wall” would now be a U.S. problem in terms of line-of-sight.
If Taiwan fell tomorrow, the Chinese navy could use the northeast naval base of Suao as a submarine base. Not just any ordinary base, but a far better one than Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island, where Chinese nuclear submarines leave their mountain cave facilities to enter the shallow waters of the South China Sea. At Suao the waters off the coast drop into the abyss, giving submarines a far better ability to drop below thermal layers and vanish.
The second base of great envy by China is Taiwan’s Hualien Air Force Base, which is the home of the 401st Wing with three squadrons of F-16 fighter aircraft. Located just south of Suao, the base has a “nuclear proof” bunker carved out from the inside of Chiashan Mountain.
Only one other airbase uses a catacomb of underground facilities and that is Taitung on the southeast coast. The base’s Shihzishan (Stone Mountain) is not as big as Chiashan Mountain but can house around three fighter squadrons during an attack.
Both airbases could be home to China’s fighter aircraft, such as the J-11/J-15/J-16, all with a range of two thousand miles and a combat range of half.
Once China establishes military bases on the island, then the Taiwan Strait could be closed to commercial traffic at Beijing’s whim for either political, economic or military agendas. Middle East oil and gas traveling up the Taiwan Strait and the eastern coast to Korea and Japan would be under China’s strategic umbrella.
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