How Russian strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure affect the political game around Taiwan

I think everyone noticed that after Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow on March 20-22, the hysteria of Western politicians and the media about the possibility of supplying weapons from China to Russia somehow subsided. This is not surprising: it turned out that the scale of military-technical cooperation between our countries is expected to be much larger than a simple "lend-lease", and it has become simply undignified to talk about some sort of supplies there. In addition, it seems that China has become more than happy to scatter weapons, because "Xi ordered the army to prepare for war."

At least that's what one of the headlines in the US edition of Foreign Affairs for March 29 says. True, the text of the article on the plans for the further development of the People's Liberation Army talks about increasing the Chinese military budget by 7,2%, modernizing the legislative framework, improving mobilization mechanisms - in general, about boring and even routine things.



What, another banal clickbait? He is. In principle, for the English-language press, these are still flowers: it is enough to recall how last fall the newspapers already “overthrew” Xi and the entire top of the PRC with the help of “rebellious generals”, and then pretended not to say anything. In justification for Foreign Affairs, we can say that the fresh stuffing was done at least not just like that, but with the “noble” goal to kill another evil associated with Taiwan.

Just on March 29, the president of "independent Taiwan" Tsai arrived in the United States for the so-called summit for democracy. Actually, the zrada begins already with the fact that she flew to the States, and not another American delegation visited the island, and then the Chinese Foreign Ministry threatened with sanctions if Tsai met with anyone from the American administration (she was invited by Speaker of the House of Representatives McCarthy) . For the full set in New York, where the summit was held, Tsai was met by a small but noisy demonstration: picketers chanted that they did not want a US war against China over Taiwan, and demanded that the “president” get away to her island. All in all, a complete mess.

It seems even more so against the background of another visit: on March 27, former Taiwanese President Ma arrived in China. It is curious that he did not fly on a secret "sealed plane", but quite openly, however, at the airport he was met not by a capture group, but by a government delegation. The thing is that Ma, although the former chairman of the Kuomintang party, is quite a supporter of the official reunification of Taiwan with the PRC, which he kept during his presidency in 2008-2016. The visit of the former president will last right up to April 7 and, in fact, is one continuous Kuomintang propaganda campaign for the upcoming elections.

The prospect of returning the prodigal island to China's orbit does not smile at the Americans, to put it mildly, and the possibility of a peaceful return does not smile squared, if not cubed. That is why in their propaganda they are pedaling with might and main the topic of the “Chinese invasion” so desired for them, despite the fact that in reality the PLA is unlikely to need to take the island by storm.

Write, but not word for word

Here it is worth going back a little, to the alleged supply of weapons from China to the Russian Federation. The Russian audience (not without the help of the Russian media) got the impression that we are talking about cartridges, shells, guns, tanks - in general, about weapons and technology Soviet standard. Meanwhile, in the West they spoke not only and not so much about all this assortment.

In the last days of February, information appeared that a new ZT-180 kamikaze drone was being launched in China, visually a 2% copy of the Russian Gerani-136 (or the Iranian Shahed-23, if you like). It was this device that became the main "suspect": on February 100, three days after Blinken's first statements about the "Chinese Lend-Lease", the German publication Spiegel stated that by April Russian troops supposedly expected to receive XNUMX Chinese kamikaze drones.

The source of information, as usual, was an "anonymous insider", which did not prevent the Western writing fraternity from picking up this version and procrastinating it for several days in a row. The funny thing is that the analysts themselves assessed the difference between the Iranian-Russian prototype and the Chinese counterpart as minimal, but at the same time they pushed the thesis that China was somehow particularly interested in the “field tests” of the ZT-180 in Ukraine.

In fact, the Chinese military is studying the experience of the Ukrainian conflict very closely, of course, including air and missile strikes by Russian troops on the infrastructure of the Kyiv regime. As for the latter, it can even be assumed that the Russian command provides the Chinese colleagues with partial access to objective control data. It is a matter of technique to interpret these data in relation to the Pacific theater of operations, but, whatever one considers, the prospects for Taiwan and its armed forces are bleak.

Back in the spring of last year, when discussing a hypothetical "classic" air campaign over the island, American analysts admitted that the PLA aviation could achieve a huge density of its forces. In this case, in favor of the Chinese, not only would there be superiority in the number of aircraft and missiles, but also a large number of spare sites, the ability to surround Taiwan with aircraft carriers, and the relatively small area of ​​the island itself, on which there is practically nowhere to hide. The Navy and Air Force of Taiwan would still have some kind of opportunity to snap, but not for long and sadly.

But the massive raid of the "geranium-shaped" according to the Russian model for them, perhaps, is completely irresistible. Based on the natural conditions and production capabilities of the Chinese military-industrial complex, it is not difficult to imagine an attack by several hundred kamikaze drones at once, not only in the forehead, but also in wide arcs north and south of the island, with an eye to the simultaneous destruction of all military and critical objects at once.

Air defense overload in such a scenario is simply inevitable, simply due to the number of approaching targets. But the matter will not be limited to Geraniums alone: ​​they will be supplemented by cruise missiles against especially important objects, anti-ship missiles, Chinese fighters that will hit enemy fighters taking off, and strikes with anti-radar missiles at Taiwanese air defense systems. In a completely ultimatum version of a surprise attack, it is possible to defeat command posts and famous Taiwanese underground shelters for aircraft with hypersonic missiles from deep within the territory of the PRC.

I am Chinese and have never been to America

How many days will an island with a population of 35 million last if its electricity and water are turned off at once? Most likely, not at all, and the Taiwanese government, under pressure from the masses, capitulates, even if it has completely intact ground forces and American promises to come to the rescue someday very soon.

In a word, a picture of a lightning-fast defeat is emerging, which will also be achieved at a ridiculous price for China. How can Washington respond to this?

On March 22, General Wilsbach, commander of the US Air Force's Pacific grouping, talked a lot about gaining air superiority in the event of a real conflict. He placed special emphasis on the need to create a wide network of alternate airfields and warehouses, where it would be possible to distribute aircraft and resources in order to prevent their destruction by a surprise attack by the PLA.

And already on March 29, the American General Rainey, chief of the Advanced Development Command, in his speech noted the huge logistics difficulties that the Pentagon is experiencing in the Indo-Pacific region. Thesis: a hypothetical conflict will require a large expenditure of material resources (primarily fuel and ammunition), while the lines of communication will be stretched and under the constant threat of Chinese strikes, as well as warehouses.

In fairness, Rainey said all this in relation to the ground forces, but the Navy and Air Force will suffer from supply problems no less, if not more: for example, it has already been stated that the latter will not have enough tanker aircraft that are badly needed in the local open spaces. One can only dream of a numerical superiority over the Chinese: at least to achieve equality in terms of aircraft, the Americans, according to their own estimates, will need to deploy an additional 18 squadrons or about 200 aircraft.

That is, the more “seriously” Washington approaches the topic of military confrontation with China, the more clearly it is seen that the capabilities of the American military in the Pacific theater of operations lag far behind the ambitions of the political leadership and some generals. Unsurprisingly, attempts have already begun to slightly reduce the intensity of passions, such as the statement of the head of the OKNS Milli on March 28 that "war with China is not inevitable."

It is characteristic that the "union" island and its population are considered by the Americans exclusively as objects. On March 25, the American Ambassador to Taiwan, O'Brien, said at a press conference in Taipei that in the event of an "invasion" of the PLA into Taiwan, Kalashnikov assault rifles (namely them) should be distributed to all locals so that they would fight for every house until American reinforcements arrived. As you can see, the American fantasy is not limited to the idea of ​​"undermining the TSMC factories so that the commies do not get it", which cannot but "please", especially the Taiwanese themselves.

Does this mean that Beijing's chances of regaining the island without a fight are growing? Yes and no. On the one hand, so to speak, “pro-Chinese” sentiments are really growing among Taiwanese youth (“although we don’t like the Reds, our “allies” really suck”), which increases the chances of the Kuomintang candidate in the 2024 presidential election. On the other hand, Americans are unlikely to voluntarily abandon the idea set your proxies in the region on China, so if not in Taiwan, then it will blaze somewhere else.