Future War with (Red) China Hypotheticals/Theorycrafting

[The Whispering Monk]

For that you need to rebuild the industry - that takes at least 20 years, if everything goes right. And that if the other side does nothing to oppose you - good luck with that.

We're already course correcting on microchips. The US will have 7 new, large scale, microchip plants begin ops within the next 18 months. They have been under construction for almost 2 years in at least one case.

It really doesn't take as long as you think to rebuild manufacturing.
Where we really need to focus next is in medicinal production.

The easy times are over. Deal with that.

I am.

Don't forget that in the last 20+ years in the US universities in the hard sciences, the 1st group is Chinese, 2nd Indian, 3rd Europeans, and at a distant 4th, the Americans. And that on your home base.
To regain your perceived technological superiority, you need to invert that.

The first part of that answer is currently in the works: don't push college degrees and get more people in the trades. That's happening.

The second is removing funding for useless degrees and not telling people that college is the answer.

 

[LordsFire]

You know that if
'If the USA declares 'All maritime trade to and from China is hereby interdicted until they retreat from Taiwanese soil,'
That is also synonymous with the collapse of the US economy, right?
The deep interconnection of both economies is so big that fucking one is equal to fuck both.

But never stops amazing me the delusional level of people that think the US is invulnerable to any economic war against a peer.
In reality, China is less vulnerable to this kind of war than the US, but just learn a bit how much the economy works, worldwide.
BTW, don't confuse economy with finance (one is real, the other is virtual) - you have already done that mistake with Russia.

You have this almost completely backwards.

What China provided to the world economy, was cheap labor. That can be had from many, many other countries. What was provided to China, was basically all the technology and advanced infrastructure needed to support advanced manufacturing.

They have proven repeatedly, at great length, that they can't maintain such things themselves.

If China is cut off from the global market, there will be abrupt shortages in almost all economic sectors, except for food and energy, the two most important.

What will need to be replaced, is almost entirely value-added refining and manufacturing. The exception to this is certain Rare Earth Elements, but while China does have a scary amount of market share of that, it's because they were producing with government subsidies to make them cheaper, not because there aren't deposits elsewhere in the world, or other nations capable of doing the refining.

What China gets from the rest of the world, it cannot provide itself, at least not under communist leadership. What the rest of the world gets from China, can be had from elsewhere. Would the transition period suck?

Yes.

But the transition has already started in many sectors, and it's only going to accelerate as China becomes more and more obviously a bad bet for businesses and economic partners.

Unfortunately, that also means there's another motivator for the CCP to attack Taiwan sooner, rather than later...

 

[JagerIV]

The fact that any of those would be attacks on Taiwan which would get the US invovled.
Jeager, you arnt the first to think of this.
They would most likely go for a decapiting strike. Because if they arnt confident they can take any of the near islands within 6 months, they are basically screwed.
Of they can st least prevent main Taiwanese forces coming from the mainland to support the islands they stand a chance.

Eh, I don't think they gain anything by rushing the invasion. Even if they could conquer Taiwan in 6 months, which is a big gamble, that doesn't negate America, who is the real opponent, and provides a big dramatic event for the US to rally around and justify big flashy responses.

I think this is a bit of wishful thinking here, in so much that an attempted decapitation strike is most benifitical for America, and thus is the best course of action for China.

Beating a Taiwan that is ready and willing to fight to the end on its own is probably a 2-3 year operation. Extent of US support probably makes the ideal timeframe to 3-10 years. As we see in wars where the US is defeated.

Assuming (which I think is reasonable) that neither the US nor China would like this to go to a general nuclear exchange, the key is to ride such a war on as optimal an escalation and containment to draw the war out long enough to demoralize the US (and Taiwanese) through a mixture of bleed, Bordon, and discomfort.

A contained, limited war to kill off the 1% or so most dedicated liberty or death portion of Taiwan, the 30% or so who would find China intolerable to lose hope of victory and flee, and the remaining 60% to make their peace/place in the new order. If Taiwan is going to fight, China would want a 1-3 year war for that fight to take place and bleed out the rebels so the occupation can be relatively easy and straightforward.

A slow roll war streched over several years encourages all relatively neutral parties to stay neutral and not get too worked up over things.

And for the US and its allies, offering a limited war gives them the chance to hope for and play for a limited, conventional fight where the pain experienced by the war can be limited on their end and things can be won conventionally at limited risk to themselves. And a position where if the pain builds/interest wains, they have plenty of space to pull back and give up.

I'll explain some examples further.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

That's a nice wish for the CCP, but I don't think the have the Command and Training to execute any such campaign. That kind of conflict requires LOADS of discipline and coordination that the CCP and PLA/N just haven't shown the capability of.

 

[Zachowon]

Eh, I don't think they gain anything by rushing the invasion. Even if they could conquer Taiwan in 6 months, which is a big gamble, that doesn't negate America, who is the real opponent, and provides a big dramatic event for the US to rally around and justify big flashy responses.

I think this is a bit of wishful thinking here, in so much that an attempted decapitation strike is most benifitical for America, and thus is the best course of action for China.

Beating a Taiwan that is ready and willing to fight to the end on its own is probably a 2-3 year operation. Extent of US support probably makes the ideal timeframe to 3-10 years. As we see in wars where the US is defeated.

Assuming (which I think is reasonable) that neither the US nor China would like this to go to a general nuclear exchange, the key is to ride such a war on as optimal an escalation and containment to draw the war out long enough to demoralize the US (and Taiwanese) through a mixture of bleed, Bordon, and discomfort.

A contained, limited war to kill off the 1% or so most dedicated liberty or death portion of Taiwan, the 30% or so who would find China intolerable to lose hope of victory and flee, and the remaining 60% to make their peace/place in the new order. If Taiwan is going to fight, China would want a 1-3 year war for that fight to take place and bleed out the rebels so the occupation can be relatively easy and straightforward.

A slow roll war streched over several years encourages all relatively neutral parties to stay neutral and not get too worked up over things.

And for the US and its allies, offering a limited war gives them the chance to hope for and play for a limited, conventional fight where the pain experienced by the war can be limited on their end and things can be won conventionally at limited risk to themselves. And a position where if the pain builds/interest wains, they have plenty of space to pull back and give up.

I'll explain some examples further.

It goes against the nature of the capturing of Taiwan. Add in the fact that there is already internal issues economically for China, and the need to go ahead and capture Taiwan, especially for Xi.

And the fact that any and all land claimed by Taiwan will lead to the US involvement because the Taiwanese, especially after seeing how Hong Kong was treated, will not just give up.

So while yes they can slow roll going after islands here and there.
It still is Taiwan beinf attacked and given the US a reasonnto get invovled

 

[JagerIV]

From a military perspective, your analysis makes reasonable sense, however, it's excluding two major considerations:

1. Taiwan may try, and almost certainly has already prepared, a 'cause disproportionate damage while accepting loss of the islands' strategy. Prepared minefields, drone bombs, some deep bunkers, and ready evacuation plans, allowing the Taiwanese to bloody the nose of a landing force before retreating swiftly. If they're willing to do it, some cheap tube artillery set up to counter-shell before running.

With the Wuciou island in particular, there isn't really any other reasonable defensive plan, and critically, China is extremely unlikely to be able to conceal a military build-up for invasion. Wuciou is small enough that maybe a small task force could be stealthily gathered for that, but either of the larger island sets, it's not practical, so Taiwan would certainly see the invasion coming.

This I think misunderstands the point of the Wuciou attack. Its purpose is pretty much entirely political, and thus needs to be telegraphed to high heaven. The goals generally are:

1) Undermine the ability of the US to organize unified and expensive response. Prevent a grand coalition to form.
2) Test US and Taiwanese commitment and morale.
3) Undermine US and Taiwanese will and ability to resist.

Lets say this plan was started to be implemented tomorrow. This would start with some saber rattling and pointing to some new outrage as a fake because. China declares its intention to carry out a military exercise and an exclusion zone around Wuciou in 1-3 months from now.

This gives time to carry out the political side. If coordination against this is too intense, then China backs out in the 1-3 months before the anounced military operation. Mostly a major response can be minimized by signaling that the intention is to only go after Wuciou: no other operations are intended, nor anything like a blockade. China would be perfectly happy to leave everything exactly the same except around the say, 20-50 km radius exclusion zone around wuciou.

When the operation starts, if its determined favorable to do so, you start with a few weeks to a month of fly bys and not touching you manuvers, to see if Taiwan can be baited into shooting first, or the garrison can be annoyed into leaving without a fight.

Finally, you send a helicopter or boat to land on the island and make the final dare to Taiwan: are you willing to shoot, or will you just let a Chinese helicopter land, unload troops, who will then just take the troops rifles and ship them back to Taiwan, securing the island without a real fight.

If the Taiwanese lose the I'm not touching you game via violence, then China sits back and shells the island and runs sorties against it. The Island I believe by standard has a garrison of about 500. So you do a bombing campaign of enough intensity to kill roughly 2-20 Taiwanese soldiers a day. With potential spikes of engaging relief forces: if they send in a troops ship to reinforce the garrison you might for example have a spike of Taiwanese casualties from the troop ship being struck.

The plan would be to do this for roughly 6 or so months by which time Taiwan might abandon the island, but if they're determined to hold it and willing to throw valuable and expensive materials like fighters or warships forward to the battle, stretching it out to 1-2 years may be worthwhile. Over which the Taiwanese may lose some 5-30k troops, depending on how many reinforcments where willing to pour in, and of what kind.

This shifts the cost of generating a broad costly resistance from China onto the US, and the logic of their trade balance can play out:

Namely, its going to be a hard lift to convince people to give up on $6.28 trillion dollars over the daily deaths of 2-20 Taiwanese. It doesn't even make sense for Taiwan to engage in blanket sanctions: on revenue alone they sell $200 billion to China. Taiwan imposing a blanket China blockade on itself would remove something like 10% to 50% of its GDP. That would do more to destroy Taiwan's ability to resist China than anything it could lose in such a local crisis campaign. And if its not in Taiwan's interest to blockade China, who is going to be more incentivized to cut their nose to spite their face?

So, the ability of the US to organize an effective grand coalition is undermined now, and the idea of China being in combat with Taiwan is normalized, which will make it harder to organize grand expensive operations in the future.

That's more or less an ideal Wuciou campaign.

 

[Zachowon]

You seem to be under the impression that the US will not support this 0art of that conflict.
When in reality, ot being telegraphed to high heaven would work in the US favor not the Chinese

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Frankly, if I'm the US, and the CCP starts shelling Taiwanese soul, I'd destroy CCP naval infrastructure across the Pacific.

Every 'fishing' boat sinks as well.

 

[DarthOne]

Frankly, if I'm the US, and the CCP starts shelling Taiwanese soul, I'd destroy CCP naval infrastructure across the Pacific.

Every 'fishing' boat sinks as well.

Unfortunately, you aren’t the US. Which is a shame as I feel most people on this site would do a better job running the country than 95% or more of our political establishment does.

 

[LordsFire]

That's more or less an ideal Wuciou campaign.

There's a whole host of problems with this scenario.

1. It presumes the CCP has the ability to act with political and military subtlety, and over a protracted period. I have seen precisely zero demonstration of this on the commies part.

2. It requires Taiwan to treat an invasion of their sovereign territory as an economic cost/benefit scenario, instead of as an existential threat that they will end up like Hong Kong, except worse.

3. It treats Taiwan shooting at hostile soldiers landing on their soil as them 'losing.' This is not losing, this is expected self-defense that anyone except 'End of History' cultists and the like would absolutely expect. If China tries to invade Wuciou, and the Taiwanese respond by shooting at them, this is not going to make the Taiwanese look like the bad guys to anyone who wouldn't already have fallen for Chinese propaganda in the first place.

4. China has made major enemies out of basically all of their neighbors, and they've all seen how the CCP treats subjugated peoples. If China goes hot, the Vietnamese, Philipinos, Japanese, Koreans, at a minimum are going to be looking to jump in, because they all know that if Taiwan falls, they're on the short list for next target. If China substantially commits military forces to hitting even just Taiwan's outlying islands, that might spur India to put a military build-up on their border too.

5. You're looking at economic import/output figures and expecting people to make Tanya Degurachaff-like optimized rational self-interest fiscal decisions, but then also completely forgetting that something like two thirds of modern microprocessor production is based in Taiwan, and if that goes, world information technology will be hit hard. If you're going to count the economic costs of blockading China, you should also be considering the costs to an interruption in production out of Taiwan.

6. An economic blockade of China might cost the US theoretical trillions over the course of a year, but that's a very shallow look at the issue. First off, some portion of that trade intake will be able to be directly replaced with partners elsewhere in the world. Another portion will be able to swiftly get transferred into other forms of similar good sourced from elsewhere in the world. Can't buy a board game manufactured in China? How about one manufacured in Vietnam, or Europe, or some Legos? And all of this is before you get into all the things that could be produced locally in the US again, but the initial capital cost of getting production online is making it marginally cheaper to ship from China, for now.

7. China cannot survive months of blockade and still function as a modern economy. The US economy would be moderately bruised, in the time span it would take the Chinese to start suffering mass starvation, and that's before you get into the issue of how they'll keep fighting a war once most oil imports are cut off.

8. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if the PLA start attacking Taiwan, and do not immediately and overwhelmingly crush them, that makes them look weak, both internally and externally. It makes jumping in on Taiwan's side look a lot more viable and attractive to nations like Vietnam, Philipines, etc. If it's taking the Chinese weeks and months just to take one tiny island? Why the hell should entire nations be afraid of them?


On the whole, if factors played out as you theorize they do, yes, it could be an incremental plan that would benefit the CCP. However, the longer it plays out for, the longer there is for things to go wrong, and the more time the Chinese economy has to collapse out from under them even without more external economic warfare.

 

[JagerIV]

You seem to be under the impression that the US will not support this 0art of that conflict.
When in reality, ot being telegraphed to high heaven would work in the US favor not the Chinese

Well, obviously. The question is if the US can be maneuvered so its involvement is only roughly on the scale of the US involvement the last time China shelled Taiwanese islands. The US was wary of entering a general war with China in 1950s, as were the Chinese, and both maneuvered to keep their conflicts relatively contained.

US does not have unlimited appetite for risk, and neither will Taiwan. If Taiwan for example doesn't want a general blockade/war with China either, and would prefer a limited, contained conflict that they have a better chance to win conventionally with less pain, is the US going to sink Taiwanese ships to enforce a blockade on China Taiwan opposes?

You seem to suggest a course of action America has rarely been willing to take. If America was so willing to roll the dice and escalate far beyond what's necesary, Beijing and Moscow would already be glassed. Since Beijing and Moscow still exist, the US appetite for expansive war and immense risk is less than your suggesting.

Frankly, if I'm the US, and the CCP starts shelling Taiwanese soul, I'd destroy CCP naval infrastructure across the Pacific.

Every 'fishing' boat sinks as well.

Your bloodlust is noted, but I'm not sure what you would like to do is a particularly good measure of what the US is willing and likely to do. Would your idea of what should be done in the Ukraine war accurately predict what has happened? I find these predictions of what the US would do faced with a limited war with China, given what the US has done in a much more expansive war with Russia, somewhat unsupported by evidence.

 

[JagerIV]

There's a whole host of problems with this scenario.

1. It presumes the CCP has the ability to act with political and military subtlety, and over a protracted period. I have seen precisely zero demonstration of this on the commies part.

Hm, I'm not really sure what act of political and military subtlety is being used here. Its press reports on your intentions, saber rattlings, which Communist China has done since it came to power, and shooting in some places but not others, which is also something China has done for a really long time.

This is probably a much less subtle political and military operation than prior Strait Crises, and mostly involves basically telling the truth of things.

2. It requires Taiwan to treat an invasion of their sovereign territory as an economic cost/benefit scenario, instead of as an existential threat that they will end up like Hong Kong, except worse.

The invasion of a small outlying island is not itself an existential threat however. Its a bad trend, but not existential event, unless Taiwan itself decides to escalate the war at that point. There's a lot of reason Taiwan would not want to pre-emtively escalate the war, and would prefer to play the script of the 1958 Crisis where China heavily shelled the outlying island and probably tried to storm one of them, but they were able to push supplies through to the island (partially through American help) and China was forced to back down.

If provided the option of defending a forward island while still getting $200 billion in revenue, uninterrupted supply, and not having their cities bombed, vs defending a forward island while losing hundred of billion in revenue, having ships sunk, and your staging areas and cities bombed, Taiwan probably prefers the former.

3. It treats Taiwan shooting at hostile soldiers landing on their soil as them 'losing.' This is not losing, this is expected self-defense that anyone except 'End of History' cultists and the like would absolutely expect. If China tries to invade Wuciou, and the Taiwanese respond by shooting at them, this is not going to make the Taiwanese look like the bad guys to anyone who wouldn't already have fallen for Chinese propaganda in the first place.

Well, its China explicitly trying to put Taiwan into a "heads I win, tails you lose" position. Whether they shoot or not is both losing. Either they lose by firing back, giving a soundbite of Taiwan fired first, or they don't fight, and they win without fighting.

Given what we see in history, and the Gaza war right now, the share of people this would work on is probably something like 30-60% of the world population, because they're already pro China or Anti US and will repeat any narrative of China good, Taiwan/US bad, and it gives a fig leaf people who might not necessarily be pro China but don't want to sacrifice anything for the anti China cause.

4. China has made major enemies out of basically all of their neighbors, and they've all seen how the CCP treats subjugated peoples. If China goes hot, the Vietnamese, Philipinos, Japanese, Koreans, at a minimum are going to be looking to jump in, because they all know that if Taiwan falls, they're on the short list for next target. If China substantially commits military forces to hitting even just Taiwan's outlying islands, that might spur India to put a military build-up on their border too.

Eh, I'm not sure that's really the case. If nothing else, it requires a very strange mixture of affair's for many of them: on one hand they have to be scared enough of China to take expense actions against them, but not be so scared of them that they will jump on the chance to go to war with them.

A good one to go through the details of the logic would be Vietnam: despite the reputation of China and Vietnam being at odds, including China sinking some Vietnamese ships, in the case of a war I do not believe they would put their neck out, and would take a neutral to very mildly pro China position without extremely heavy pressure/bribing from the US. Going into that case study here though would mean I wouldn't respond to any of your other points, so I'll leave that as a future discussion if interested.

5. You're looking at economic import/output figures and expecting people to make Tanya Degurachaff-like optimized rational self-interest fiscal decisions, but then also completely forgetting that something like two thirds of modern microprocessor production is based in Taiwan, and if that goes, world information technology will be hit hard. If you're going to count the economic costs of blockading China, you should also be considering the costs to an interruption in production out of Taiwan.

Which in the given situation would only be disrupted by Taiwan or US's effort to blockade people, not China's actions.

I also find it strange to argue people looking after their own interest and being risk adverse is some unusual position. Is the idea that companies that prostrate themselves to China to make use of their slave labor camps are going to campaign to have their business destroyed over a moral concern of China asserting authority over land they've likely publicly declared at some point is legitimate Chinese land? The individuals in the US who own the approximately $150 billion in US direct investment in China are going to advocate for a position that's more likely to get their property seized?

Its very easy to advocate for setting billions, if not trillions of dollars of value on fire, if its not your billions and trillions. Russia is a good example here. US census records US trade with Russia.

In 2013 pre Crimea, pre any general sanctions, there was about $38 billion dollars of trade (exports+imports) between Russia and America. 2021 Things had not been dramatically cut down that much, to about $36 billion. 2022 You have the start of the war and heavy sanctions, by the end of the year US-Russia trade was cut about in half, to $15 billion. This year, that trade looks to be ending on roughly $5 billion for the year. That is a big reduction, down to about 14% pre war rate.

However, think of what that actually means: in all the immense moral outrage over Russia, with a big dramatic event to rally everyone around and browbeat a correct position, and with trade between the US and Russia being fairly minor between the two, and much of the trade being easily substituted oil on the American side, there is still formally about 15% of prewar trade going on between the US and Russia. And that's just formal stuff. Who knows how much US - Russia trade might still be occurring, just washed through a third party.

So, even there there's no appetite for reducing trade to zero. In the case of China, rather than some people being asked to eat a loss of a dozen or so billion dollars, and there only mostly in having to buy marginally more expensive oil than otherwise, your asking people to eat about $700 billion dollars in a year, with much of that loss not being able to buy or sell the goods. Looking at that, there's going to be a lot of lobbyists at least arguing that we don't need to be too hasty.

But, even if you could follow a trade reduction plan as aggressive as the one against Russia, that would mean over the first year of hostilities you would still have roughly $350 billion in US-China trade, and by year two you'd get that down to $105 billion. And this I think might be a bit more aggressive than is politically feasible.

And this is for the US, who is going to assumedly care more than others. Russia obviously is not going to care at all about the invasion from the beginning and won't listen to the US without huge bribes or credible threats of force. Saudi Arabia probably only has the will to pretend to care so long, and might not care enough from the beginning to actually stop any trade unless forced to. India's position vs China is not materially changed if China turns the de-jure rule into de-facto, might be made materially worse if they got into a general war with China, and could be made materially better by war profiteering as hard as possible. Which seems their most likely path.

Your quite likely to get roughly the same outcome on this as the Russo-Ukraine war, except the US is likely to be less gung ho because your trying to gore way more people's bull. And if an India or Vietnam don't get on board with the blockade, your going to be pretty close to effectively having no blockade very quickly. Unless the US is once again willing to shoot Vietnamese and Indian ships.

6. An economic blockade of China might cost the US theoretical trillions over the course of a year, but that's a very shallow look at the issue. First off, some portion of that trade intake will be able to be directly replaced with partners elsewhere in the world. Another portion will be able to swiftly get transferred into other forms of similar good sourced from elsewhere in the world. Can't buy a board game manufactured in China? How about one manufacured in Vietnam, or Europe, or some Legos? And all of this is before you get into all the things that could be produced locally in the US again, but the initial capital cost of getting production online is making it marginally cheaper to ship from China, for now.

I'm not sure this is the work of 6 months however. The US also doesn't have the workforce. There aren't 600 million unemployed skilled laborers just siting around doing nothing. We are certainly talking about the US economy shrinking in such a situation, which is going to make the war a harder sell, and we come back to an issue that 4-6 billion people are going to between pro China and not particularly caring.

7. China cannot survive months of blockade and still function as a modern economy. The US economy would be moderately bruised, in the time span it would take the Chinese to start suffering mass starvation, and that's before you get into the issue of how they'll keep fighting a war once most oil imports are cut off.

It probably can. Months is survivable probably just on emergency reserves. Mass starvation being even a realistic option (at least from actual shortages, rather than mismanagement) is dependent upon having an ironclad complete stop to all trade, which isn't going to happen. Russia being willing to trade with China alone provides all that's necesary to not starve. Pakistan is another food exporter who is likewise not going to abandon China without a lot of external pressure to do so. India of course is well positioned to wash any good and then sell them to China with a 10-30% mark up. And the US seems unlikely to ban India buying food and oil.

And obviously all the middle eastern countries have basically zero reason to stop selling oil to China except for the case of strong arming from the US. Which then is a question of how much political and other capital the US wants to expend strong arming middle eastern nations. Turkey would probably be optimally positioned to exploits things as a NATO member.

And of course, this assumes you can't have a functioning economy and starvation. Those conditions aren't mutually exclusive. The USSR continued industrialization while the Ukrainians Starved. Continuing the war while the Tibetans starve is a choice that can be made if necesary. Its just unlikely to happen in any plausible situation, at least from a cause of general shortage, rather than local supply issues.

8. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if the PLA start attacking Taiwan, and do not immediately and overwhelmingly crush them, that makes them look weak, both internally and externally. It makes jumping in on Taiwan's side look a lot more viable and attractive to nations like Vietnam, Philipines, etc. If it's taking the Chinese weeks and months just to take one tiny island? Why the hell should entire nations be afraid of them?

Eh, that doesn't follow. Vietnam is probably smart enough to see 50,000 Chinese troops involved in a minimal effort, minimal risk campaign, and not imagine the other 2.4 million Chinese troops have vanished into the either. People haven't seen the US make freedom of navigation passages with carrier aircraft without actually shooting all that many people and interpreted that as a sign of weakness.

The number of people who would mistake peacocking with an ostentatious display of superiority as is probably pretty small. And if its a long drawn out campaign because Taiwan and the US are actually throwing significant material into the fight, the number of people who will mock the Chinese for not beating the US navy in 2 weeks is pretty small. Propaganda outlets will still do it of course, but those arguments are likely to ring a bit more false than similar complaints in Russia-Ukraine.

On the whole, if factors played out as you theorize they do, yes, it could be an incremental plan that would benefit the CCP. However, the longer it plays out for, the longer there is for things to go wrong, and the more time the Chinese economy has to collapse out from under them even without more external economic warfare.

Eh, I'm not sure you would get the kind of collapse your theorizing even if you could get a total blockade of China, which isn't going to happen. Even in the case of a 100% naval blockade, last I checked only about 60% of their trade comes by sea, and basically none of their land neighbors have particularly strong incentives to stop trade, and many incentives to increase it to better war profiteer. So, China in the worst possible naval situation would still have 40% of its trade ongoing, and with a bit of prep and work could fairly easily be worked up to 50% pre-war volume, and the 50% most critical to not have a collapse.

I further find total naval blockade unlikely, so embargo is likely going to only push trade down to 60-80% of pre-war volume, which is very easily accommodated by some comparatively light wartime austerity and depleting stocks for the 1-3 years to fully replace anything critical.

Lot of text unfortunately, but hopefully nothing in here is too rambly. I might give it a once over tomorrow and see if anything can be cut down a bit.

feel free to pull out a particular point to focus on, rather than doing another huge point by point. Maybe we could focus down and game theory out Vietnam. Is the entire theory of war viable for example if Vietnam doesn't join a general war against China, and then how likely it is to do so.

 

[LordsFire]

You seem to suggest a course of action America has rarely been willing to take. If America was so willing to roll the dice and escalate far beyond what's necesary, Beijing and Moscow would already be glassed. Since Beijing and Moscow still exist, the US appetite for expansive war and immense risk is less than your suggesting.

It may seem a bit strange to you that I focus on this rather than your response to my own post, but this is very, very important.

Because the idea that being willing to escalate can only end with strategic nuclear launch tells me that you have no clue whatsoever how escalation works with the USA.

First off, the USA's idea, historically, of 'appropriate escalation' generally runs to 'we pound the shit out of you for slapping us' unless there's a Democrat in the White House.

Pearl Harbor is attacked, America forces absolute and unconditional surrender on the Japanese, to this day they are only not a vassal state of the USA because the USA doesn't do old-school vassalage.

The Iranians damage one of our ships forty years ago; we sink half their navy in response.

The Twin Towers get destroyed, and 3000 Americans died; we invade and utterly military crush two entire nations in the Middle East.

The US is very willing to escalate, and do so on a scale that no other nation is even capable of, and there's no need to go nuclear to do it.


Further, the nature of warfare in general is that once the bloodshed starts, it is immensely easier for things to scale up, than scale down. The entirety of World War I is basically this writ large, but it's far from the only case. The Korean and Vietnam wars are both examples of how it's hard to scale back once things get started, and importantly, both of those wars were fought before modern precision munitions and their widespread proliferation.


If China goes hot against Taiwan, they have to win. The loss of face of not taking whatever islands they land on would be intolerable; if the first wave does not accomplish it, they must send in additional waves, and each wave that fails, is one more humiliation, both internally and externally. The Taiwanese on the other hand don't need to win on the outlying islands; that was never in the cards for places so close to the mainland, all they have to do is bloody the Chinese enough for a morale victory.

More, once China starts shelling or missile bombardment of Taiwanese soil, why would the Taiwanese not return the favor?

Once the Taiwanese are shooting back, why wouldn't the Chinese start using their rocket corps to attack the main island?

Once bodies pile up, once blood has been spilt, it is very hard for escalation not to happen. It is possible to stop violence, but not stopping it outright, and expecting it not to escalate, especially with what both sides have at stake?

That is a very, very, very tall ask.

 

[Zachowon]

Yes because Phillipines are an ally of the US, and our navy can easily blockade China.
Add in the border conflict with India China has.

Basically, we will not be alone. And the fact that we would have suppoer from allies in Asia let alone from the hole continent should tell you enough

 

[JagerIV]

It may seem a bit strange to you that I focus on this rather than your response to my own post, but this is very, very important.

Certainly, focusing on one point is what I suggested, and this is an important node that much of the operational logic rests on.

Because the idea that being willing to escalate can only end with strategic nuclear launch tells me that you have no clue whatsoever how escalation works with the USA.

I'm not the one suggesting military escalation can only end in nuclear engagement. The entirity of the plan I put forward rests on the fact, historically supported, that it can. My criticism is with the idea your side of the argument is putting forward that the US would be willing to escalate to an existential war to the knife immediately over a fairly minor prod, when victory might be achieved at much lower cost and risk.

First off, the USA's idea, historically, of 'appropriate escalation' generally runs to 'we pound the shit out of you for slapping us' unless there's a Democrat in the White House.

Pearl Harbor is attacked, America forces absolute and unconditional surrender on the Japanese, to this day they are only not a vassal state of the USA because the USA doesn't do old-school vassalage.

The Iranians damage one of our ships forty years ago; we sink half their navy in response.

The Twin Towers get destroyed, and 3000 Americans died; we invade and utterly military crush two entire nations in the Middle East.

The US is very willing to escalate, and do so on a scale that no other nation is even capable of, and there's no need to go nuclear to do it.

In this case, the US is not being attacked, so we can eliminate Japan and the War on Terror. Those were also conflicts where we did not fear any potential escalation, while in China there are lines we do want to not cross. As has been the case in our previous conflicts with China, and as we can see in the current war with Russia, we are very concerned and cautious about escalating to a point where nukes might be used, and will generally try to win in a limited, conventional fight if possible. Escalating to a general WWIII would also likely be undesirable. For example China declaring war on Ukraine with Russia to provide direct military aid and the Korean War restarting would likely be escalations America would prefer to avoid.

The Iran example is the kind of limited war which would be a political success of the operation, even if a military failure. That is an example of what this kind of operation would aim to achieve, though obviously with more military success. If America does get directly militarily involved, which is likely but not guarenteed, the aim is to keep it a limited conventional war, like Korea, Vietnam, or the Falklands, rather than a total, unlimited war to the knife, where China stands to lose much. America would also stand to lose much however, so that's leverage to manage American escalation to manageable levels.

Further, the nature of warfare in general is that once the bloodshed starts, it is immensely easier for things to scale up, than scale down. The entirety of World War I is basically this writ large, but it's far from the only case. The Korean and Vietnam wars are both examples of how it's hard to scale back once things get started, and importantly, both of those wars were fought before modern precision munitions and their widespread proliferation.

Korea an Vietnam however show you can fight contained wars. Korea and Vietnam would probably be successes of the strategy, though minor ones. Much greater success would be getting a repeat of the 1958 Straight crisis, except with China winning, of course.

If China goes hot against Taiwan, they have to win. The loss of face of not taking whatever islands they land on would be intolerable; if the first wave does not accomplish it, they must send in additional waves, and each wave that fails, is one more humiliation, both internally and externally. The Taiwanese on the other hand don't need to win on the outlying islands; that was never in the cards for places so close to the mainland, all they have to do is bloody the Chinese enough for a morale victory.

Not really. Losing the 1958 Straight crisis didn't collapse China. Is the assumption that modern China is weaker than China under Mao? That seems implicit in the argument. Neither have any of the previous Stait crisises where China decided it was not worth escalating and carrying out their implicit threats. The 1997 strait crisis ended up being counter productive and resulted in two Chinese officers getting themselves executed. However, some generals losing their heads is not an existential threat to Communist China.

More, once China starts shelling or missile bombardment of Taiwanese soil, why would the Taiwanese not return the favor?

Once the Taiwanese are shooting back, why wouldn't the Chinese start using their rocket corps to attack the main island?

Once bodies pile up, once blood has been spilt, it is very hard for escalation not to happen. It is possible to stop violence, but not stopping it outright, and expecting it not to escalate, especially with what both sides have at stake?

That is a very, very, very tall ask.

Same reason Ukraine didn't start shelling and try to invade Russia in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Invading Russia then would have been counter productive: Ukraine basically didn't have an Army, foreign support for war with Russia wasn't there, and the little green men was obscuring enough that blame for escalating the war would be put on Ukraine. Invading Russia in 2014 would not have rallied support to Ukraine, given a general caus Belli to Russia, and since they didn't have enough military might to crush rebels with AKs at that point, and there was still a divided political situation domestically, would have resulted in at least losing more territory to the rebels, and quite likely with Russia overthrowing the newly established government.

And even now Ukraine is fairly careful not to attack into Russia itself too much and hasn't tried any full scale invasions. Because it would be counter productive, or at the very least is perceived as counter productive. Much of the same logic would apply in Taiwan, with local twists. Neither China or Taiwan benefit from having their cities shelled, and would likely prefer to resolve the conflict without that occurring, if possible. Both benefit from their trade not being blockaded. They did it in 1958, they can probably do it again.

In the end, you have to argue why current Taiwan, from a weaker position, would be more gung ho than 1950s Military Dictatorship Taiwan, and modern China is less capable than 1950s Maoist China. And why dynamics that have regularly played out in many conflicts since WWII, including several wars between the US and China, are different.

Why is a war like Vietnam, Korea, the Falklands, or Ukraine, happening now, not possible, well, now?

 

[LordsFire]

Certainly, focusing on one point is what I suggested, and this is an important node that much of the operational logic rests on.



I'm not the one suggesting military escalation can only end in nuclear engagement. The entirity of the plan I put forward rests on the fact, historically supported, that it can. My criticism is with the idea your side of the argument is putting forward that the US would be willing to escalate to an existential war to the knife immediately over a fairly minor prod, when victory might be achieved at much lower cost and risk.

One of your prior posts linked willingness to engage in drastic escalation to Moscow not being glassed.

Further, a trade blockade isn't immediately escalating to war to the knife. You aren't killing people immediately, arguably it's completely non-violent.

What it does do, is make it so that if the behavior which is being punished continues, then the cost paid continually escalates, because of the blockade. Generally such blockades are instituted with a clear message; 'this goes on until you pull out.'

A blockade is also a much lower cost or risk than entering the war directly. The US doesn't need to shed blood to enforce a blockade, especially if Indonesia, Malaysia, etc, sign on, which they almost certainly would.

In this case, the US is not being attacked, so we can eliminate Japan and the War on Terror. Those were also conflicts where we did not fear any potential escalation, while in China there are lines we do want to not cross. As has been the case in our previous conflicts with China, and as we can see in the current war with Russia, we are very concerned and cautious about escalating to a point where nukes might be used, and will generally try to win in a limited, conventional fight if possible. Escalating to a general WWIII would also likely be undesirable. For example China declaring war on Ukraine with Russia to provide direct military aid and the Korean War restarting would likely be escalations America would prefer to avoid.

Engaging in an economic blockade is less escalatory than committing to actually join the fighting.

That's part of why I raised the possibility.

The Iran example is the kind of limited war which would be a political success of the operation, even if a military failure. That is an example of what this kind of operation would aim to achieve, though obviously with more military success. If America does get directly militarily involved, which is likely but not guarenteed, the aim is to keep it a limited conventional war, like Korea, Vietnam, or the Falklands, rather than a total, unlimited war to the knife, where China stands to lose much. America would also stand to lose much however, so that's leverage to manage American escalation to manageable levels.

America getting directly involved makes it almost impossible to have it be a meaningfully limited conventional war. Keeping it from going nuclear is a different question, but if the US gets involved, things are going to escalate hard and fast.

China loses if the US sinks their landing ships, and/or shoots down their air lift. The US's primary support options for Taiwan, especially in defending outlying islands, where we have very little incentive to land US troops, are going to be sending carrier aircraft and/or subs, along with tanker-fueled aircraft from Okinawa.

In order to help with aircraft, the US would then need to enter China's long-range AA envelope. If they're going to do that, they're going to act to destroy said long-range AA envelope, doing absolutely anything else is suicidally stupid. This would mean large-scale bombing of very expensive military installations, with very expensive stealthed missiles designed for this explicit purpose.

Hundreds to low thousands of casualties, tens to hundreds of millions of equipment destroyed.

Then the Chinese airforce launches to contest the USAF and USN in the air, and hundreds of millions to billions in equipment is destroyed. Casualty rates would likely be much lower, given modern fighter aircraft are all 1 or 2 seaters, though I have no idea how likely successful ejection rates would be in such circumstances.

Ultimately, what this results in, is either the majority of the PLAAF getting shot down, or the J-20 miraculously performs to the hype and large portions of both air force are shot down. The Chinese would still lose on attrition, because we have a *lot* more F-22's and F-35's than they have J-20's, and only one or two of their other aircraft even have a *chance* at fighting effectively against those.

End result, is that southeastern China gets completely stripped of almost all of its air defenses, and if the CCP keep doubling down, they could end up with practically their entire air force shot down. If their entire air force is shot down, China has literally pre-emptively lost any larger-scale conventional war with the USA, as after a few dozen more very expensive anti-AA missiles are used, we can start bombing their military infrastructure with increasing impunity, using less expensive munitions to wipe out their less-capable AA until they have nothing left.

There's the outlier case of the USA responding exclusively with submarines, which I won't rule out if a Democrat is in the White House, because it's a stupidly minimalist thing to do by itself, but it is a less-escalatory option.

Korea an Vietnam however show you can fight contained wars. Korea and Vietnam would probably be successes of the strategy, though minor ones. Much greater success would be getting a repeat of the 1958 Straight crisis, except with China winning, of course.

North Korea and North Vietnam were both militarily crushed. It was only the fact that two other, much larger nations, would have (or in Korea did) involve themselves if the US pushed hard enough, that kept those wars from being able to actually end in defeat for the communists.

There is no larger nation for China to go to. Russia is busy humiliating itself in Ukraine, and the kind of 'we'll throw bodies at the problem until we win' tactics that won them a blood-soaked draw in Korea aren't going to work anymore with modern cluster and precision munitions.

Not really. Losing the 1958 Straight crisis didn't collapse China. Is the assumption that modern China is weaker than China under Mao? That seems implicit in the argument. Neither have any of the previous Stait crisises where China decided it was not worth escalating and carrying out their implicit threats. The 1997 strait crisis ended up being counter productive and resulted in two Chinese officers getting themselves executed. However, some generals losing their heads is not an existential threat to Communist China.

It's not a question of whether current China is weaker, it's a question of whether the CCP's grip on power is stronger or weaker. The CCP is suffering a legitimacy crisis as their economy falters, and desperation for something to quell domestic unrest is likely what would push them to attack Taiwan in the first place.

If the CCP is desperate enough to engage in such an attack to try to make themselves look stronger by finally defeating their ancestral rivals, how likely are they to accept a defeat?

Same reason Ukraine didn't start shelling and try to invade Russia in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Invading Russia then would have been counter productive: Ukraine basically didn't have an Army, foreign support for war with Russia wasn't there, and the little green men was obscuring enough that blame for escalating the war would be put on Ukraine. Invading Russia in 2014 would not have rallied support to Ukraine, given a general caus Belli to Russia, and since they didn't have enough military might to crush rebels with AKs at that point, and there was still a divided political situation domestically, would have resulted in at least losing more territory to the rebels, and quite likely with Russia overthrowing the newly established government.

And even now Ukraine is fairly careful not to attack into Russia itself too much and hasn't tried any full scale invasions. Because it would be counter productive, or at the very least is perceived as counter productive. Much of the same logic would apply in Taiwan, with local twists. Neither China or Taiwan benefit from having their cities shelled, and would likely prefer to resolve the conflict without that occurring, if possible. Both benefit from their trade not being blockaded. They did it in 1958, they can probably do it again.

This is ignoring so many important factors.

1. Ukraine is now hitting useful targets in Russia every chance they get. They've started hitting targets on the far sides of the Urals!
2. Ukraine in 2014 is very different than Taiwan right now. Ukraine was caught off-guard, in no small part because it was the recent political upheaval that resulted in the 'seccessions' and ultimate Russian invasion.
3. Ukraine is part of Europe. Aside from Poland, the larger and more militarily capable nations in Europe have delusions about things like the 'End of History.' SE Asia/Oceania nations have no such delusions, and while until 2014 Russia was largely seen as a threat that had been in decline since 1989, China has been a visibly rising threat for about as long, and has a long and ugly history with most of those nations.
4. Ukraine has to deal with more than half of its border being with Russia, and another chunk of it being a Russian client state. Taiwan is an island nation, with open access to the high seas, and neighbors who don't want China setting a precedent of military expansion right at hand.
5. Taiwan doesn't need, or want, to indiscriminantly shell Chinese cities. Shelling the military bases invasions are being launched out of is a lot more productive.

In the end, you have to argue why current Taiwan, from a weaker position, would be more gung ho than 1950s Military Dictatorship Taiwan, and modern China is less capable than 1950s Maoist China. And why dynamics that have regularly played out in many conflicts since WWII, including several wars between the US and China, are different.

Why is a war like Vietnam, Korea, the Falklands, or Ukraine, happening now, not possible, well, now?

Vietnam, Korea, and Ukraine, are all wars where one nation with a direct land border invaded the other. They are also wars where the initial invading force got their asses kicked, and it was only massive amounts of support from other nations kept them in the fight, and in the case of Vietnam, traitorous Democrats refusing the support promised the South Vietnamese, that allowed the North Vietnamese to win.

China has no USSR to prop it up, and a notoriously corrupt and incompetent military. The CCP has only ever actually won two wars; one with Tibet, by absurdly overmatching a non-militarized nation, and with the Nationalist Chinese, by leaving them to fight the Imperial Japanese basically solo for years, then making their move after the Japanese pulled out, and traitors in the US state department convinced the US to stop supporting them, while the USSR continued supporting the Maoists.


The Falklands is completely different from the other three examples, and also from the China-Taiwan situation. It is hard to describe all the differences, but I'll hit a few key notes:

1. The invasion of the Falklands was a surprise. The PLA achieving surprise against the Taiwanese is extremely unlikely, and against any except Wuciou island, practically impossible except through sabotage.
2. The population of the Falklands was measured in the thousands, Taiwan is just under 24 million.
3. The Falklands were completely rolled over before the British were able to respond, and it took weeks to launch their response. There are USN Carrier groups on standing station in the area of Taiwan, and Okinawa can have a response force in the area in less than an hour.
4. It's the information age. Just as media from Ukraine has been all over the place, if the Chinese attack any of Taiwan's islands, it'll be breaking news across the world within the hour. Additionally, the like of Starlink means it's practically impossible for China to try to just shut down communications in and out.


As a conclusion to this post, I'm going to again emphasize the relative role of blockading.

TL;DR: Engaging in a blockade of Chinese trade is a non-lethal, low apparent-escalation option, but puts increasingly ruinous costs onto the CCP if they don't back down and withdraw from Taiwanese territory. It is in almost all ways preferable to actually jumping into the war if the CCP try your incremental-escalation strategy, but will break the CCP if they don't back down, and they would have to be the first to fire shots to even try to stop it.

 

[JagerIV]

Yes because Phillipines are an ally of the US, and our navy can easily blockade China.
Add in the border conflict with India China has.

Basically, we will not be alone. And the fact that we would have suppoer from allies in Asia let alone from the hole continent should tell you enough

We will have allies, true, but so does China. And there is a big range of allies from simply not willing to follow American demands, to being willing to sacrifice for the US interests/to harm Chinese interests.

Lets attempt to build that a bit, looking at the China side. What might be a good signal of who would take China's side in its Right to rule Taiwan? We actually have a pretty recent one: those who voted to support China taking over Hong Kong: this was vote was very recent, 2020, so its pretty up to date too. If a country is supportive of Chinese operations against Hong Kong, there's probably a strong correlation with supporting China taking Taiwan.

Pakistan is a known and close ally, Burma has moved closer and is very economically and politically reliant, and both Laos and Cambodia are pro China for ideological and power balancing against Vietnam. North Korea and Cuba are other nations that have very strong reasons to be pro China to counter balance American power. Iran and Belarus are also likely pro China, more for anti American reasons than pro China directly.

Other middle eastern countries and African countries on that list I don't know how much to read from it. It at least suggests a non-reflexively pro American position, and thus not strong allies of the US, but in a conflict that could mean anything from opportunistic neutrality to hard pro China. Same with the middle East.

Another major source of evidence is the response to the Uyghurs. There have been multiple UN votes pro and against it between 2019 and 2021. So, anyone who voted all 4 times that the actions against the Uyghurs are a good thing are probably not going to oppose the invasion of Taiwan.

Based on these two sources, taking everyone who supported China every single time, this suggesting something like the following of "strong" allies to China, people who will take a lot of pressure to move against China, and relatively minor convincing to be willing to sacrifice for China.

With much lower confidence on some details of the middle east and Africa.

Now, based on much thinner research/gut, attempts at filling in the rest of the map.

 

[JagerIV]

One of your prior posts linked willingness to engage in drastic escalation to Moscow not being glassed.

Further, a trade blockade isn't immediately escalating to war to the knife. You aren't killing people immediately, arguably it's completely non-violent.

Its too late right now for me to respond to more, but I'd like you to explain this here, because it sounds insane to me. A blockade is not non-violent. Enforcing a blockade involves killing thousands of Chinese civilian sailors. The U-boat campaigns were many things, but non-violent I would not describe them as.

You seem to be suggesting the equivalent of unrestricted u-boat war across the entire China sea, and really much of the entire world, can be carried out in a non-violent manner? And that this would not justify mass sinking of Allied ships as well and a general push to general WWIII?

Unless when you say blockade you just mean sanctions/embargos, so the morally offended can refuse Chinese ships, but they're otherwise free to sail around the world and trade with anyone who will take them, and countries who aren't signed up to the embargo are free to sail into Chinese ports without harassment.

In which case you have the same problem Napoleon had trying to enforce the continental system, and the standard issue with any cartel, that there's huge returns to anyone who defects from it. As India seems to have done in the Ukraine war. What if India does the same in this War? It looks at the profit potential from not participating in the Embargo, and wants to signal its independence by not letting America boss it around.

If this was a blockade, then US would be obligated to sink Indian ships to enforce it, along with thousands of Chinese ships, and accept Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are also going to have a lot of shipping sunk. Or, if it really is just an embargo, its effects will be immensely reduced if willingness to follow it is less than a 100%, which is quite likely. In which case the US looks weak by threatening something it was totally unwilling to actually apply the kind of force neccesary to enforce.

Could you clarify what exactly you mean by a trade blockade, and clear up this confusion on my end.

 

[Zachowon]

We will have allies, true, but so does China. And there is a big range of allies from simply not willing to follow American demands, to being willing to sacrifice for the US interests/to harm Chinese interests.

Lets attempt to build that a bit, looking at the China side. What might be a good signal of who would take China's side in its Right to rule Taiwan? We actually have a pretty recent one: those who voted to support China taking over Hong Kong: this was vote was very recent, 2020, so its pretty up to date too. If a country is supportive of Chinese operations against Hong Kong, there's probably a strong correlation with supporting China taking Taiwan.

Pakistan is a known and close ally, Burma has moved closer and is very economically and politically reliant, and both Laos and Cambodia are pro China for ideological and power balancing against Vietnam. North Korea and Cuba are other nations that have very strong reasons to be pro China to counter balance American power. Iran and Belarus are also likely pro China, more for anti American reasons than pro China directly.

Other middle eastern countries and African countries on that list I don't know how much to read from it. It at least suggests a non-reflexively pro American position, and thus not strong allies of the US, but in a conflict that could mean anything from opportunistic neutrality to hard pro China. Same with the middle East.

Another major source of evidence is the response to the Uyghurs. There have been multiple UN votes pro and against it between 2019 and 2021. So, anyone who voted all 4 times that the actions against the Uyghurs are a good thing are probably not going to oppose the invasion of Taiwan.

Based on these two sources, taking everyone who supported China every single time, this suggesting something like the following of "strong" allies to China, people who will take a lot of pressure to move against China, and relatively minor convincing to be willing to sacrifice for China.

With much lower confidence on some details of the middle east and Africa.

Now, based on much thinner research/gut, attempts at filling in the rest of the map.

The only strong allies China has, is Russia and they arnt strong.
North Korea isn't strong, Iran isn't strong, and neither sre any of those other countries.
All they add is bodies.
Add in that countries like Vietnam, have already gone to grow closer ties to the US and away from China. Indonesia and India are both not happy with China. And would most likely join the US just to reclaim or prevent China from trying anything.
The biggest thing that the US allies can use to thjer advantage, is that Russia is distracted in Ukraine, and the fact that you have most nations in SEA would either stay out or join thr US with exception of the pro China countries.
And even then, we have seen what is happening in Burma with the rebels taking a lot of land....

 

[LordsFire]

We will have allies, true, but so does China. And there is a big range of allies from simply not willing to follow American demands, to being willing to sacrifice for the US interests/to harm Chinese interests.

Lets attempt to build that a bit, looking at the China side. What might be a good signal of who would take China's side in its Right to rule Taiwan? We actually have a pretty recent one: those who voted to support China taking over Hong Kong: this was vote was very recent, 2020, so its pretty up to date too. If a country is supportive of Chinese operations against Hong Kong, there's probably a strong correlation with supporting China taking Taiwan.

Pakistan is a known and close ally, Burma has moved closer and is very economically and politically reliant, and both Laos and Cambodia are pro China for ideological and power balancing against Vietnam. North Korea and Cuba are other nations that have very strong reasons to be pro China to counter balance American power. Iran and Belarus are also likely pro China, more for anti American reasons than pro China directly.

Pakistan is the only one of those nations that has any meaningful ability to support China in any kind of conflict (NK could if it was against SK), all the rest are utterly irrelevant to a conflict with Taiwan.

Other middle eastern countries and African countries on that list I don't know how much to read from it. It at least suggests a non-reflexively pro American position, and thus not strong allies of the US, but in a conflict that could mean anything from opportunistic neutrality to hard pro China. Same with the middle East.

Another major source of evidence is the response to the Uyghurs. There have been multiple UN votes pro and against it between 2019 and 2021. So, anyone who voted all 4 times that the actions against the Uyghurs are a good thing are probably not going to oppose the invasion of Taiwan.

Based on these two sources, taking everyone who supported China every single time, this suggesting something like the following of "strong" allies to China, people who will take a lot of pressure to move against China, and relatively minor convincing to be willing to sacrifice for China.

With much lower confidence on some details of the middle east and Africa.

Now, based on much thinner research/gut, attempts at filling in the rest of the map.

Support for something in UN resolutions means absolutely nothing in regards to support in a military conflict.

The UN's favorite pastime is passing resolutions against Israel for various reasons. Basically every Arab and Muslim state backs these in lockstep, and yet exactly how many of said nations are supporting Hamas now that the Israelis have gone to war?

Exactly none of them.

Similarly, while China may be able to pressure, bribe, and bully support for UN resolutions out of various minor nations, and even nominally hostile nations, that costs those nations just about nothing, whereas supporting China in a war could cost them overnight economic collapse if they're cut off from US export markets, or the SWIFT network.

What are Cuba or Venezuela going to do, even if they do 'back' China in a conflict? Threaten to invade Florida? The US Coast Guard and a couple states National Guard could crush these nations militaries, and they have zero ability to project force outside of close range to their own territory.

The nations that actually matter in a conflict with Taiwan, are Vietnam, Philipines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. Arguably the Koreas as well, but they basically keep each other counterbalanced out of things.

All of these nations, China has bad relations with, and has actively been pissing off lately with their absurd territorial claims and 'wolf-warrior' diplomacy. China tried to invade Vietnam in living memory, and has a long history of being imperialist bastards to everyone on that list.

The US, on the other hand, has good relations with every nation on the list except Vietnam, and they have a lot less beef with us than they do the Chinese.

If Russia wasn't bleeding itself white trying and failing to subjugate Ukraine, they might have been relevant to the conflict, but at this point all that really matters, is how they've shown the whole world that American/NATO military hardware is far, far superior to what the Russians have been putting out onto the market for the last twenty years. And Taiwan is loading up on American kit, while a huge portion of Chinese military hardware, an outright majority when it comes to their airforce, isn't even Russian kit, but inferior domestic knock-offs to Soviet kit.

Its too late right now for me to respond to more, but I'd like you to explain this here, because it sounds insane to me. A blockade is not non-violent. Enforcing a blockade involves killing thousands of Chinese civilian sailors. The U-boat campaigns were many things, but non-violent I would not describe them as.
Snip.

...I am having a hard time understanding someone like you has developed such an utterly backwards understanding of things like this.

The reason the U-boat campaigns were sinking hundreds of ships, and killing lots of civilian and military sailors, is because the Germans in both WWI and WWII were the underdog in the naval conflict, trying to fight against the World Hegemon and most powerful Navy of the world, the United Kingdom, which also had tacit and then explicit support from the USA, the runner-up to the most powerful Navy in the world.

The Royal Navy enforced a blockade of civilian shipping to Germany and Italy through the Atlantic or western Mediterranean, and after America joined the war, the eastern Medieterranean as well.

Do you know how many civilian freighters they had to sink to enforce this blockade?

Zero.

(There were some military-use transports they attacked while fighting the Italians in the Med)

Why?

Because when you are the undisputed master of the high seas (which Britain was, and America is), you don't need to sink civilian shipping, you simply sail within weapons range, then inform the civilian ship that they're not allowed to go to the nation you don't want them to go to, so they'd best turn around, unless they would like to force the issue.

Historically, merchant ship captains don't force the issue.

If the USA decides to enforce a naval blockade against China alone, what that will look like is a US Carrier Battle Group parking itself in the lower reaches of the South China Sea, and telling every freighter flagged to travel to or from China to GTFO of the war zone. If any get aggressive and try to refuse, given the fact that civilian freighters and their crews are unarmed, the most likely level of force needed to push them back in line would be a contingent of marines being sent over on a helicopter to enforce the matter, no bloodshed needed.

In the far more likely event that Indonesia, Malaysia, Philipines, Vietnam, etc, sign on to the embargo, the US wouldn't even need to do anything directly. The Indonesians and Malaysians would get to flex their muscle on the international stage by telling any ship flagged to travel to China through the Straits of Malacca, or any of the more southerly Indonesian-controlled straits, has to turn their asses around, straits are closed to them.

All these allied nations get to play in the big leagues, go on visible military exercises with the most powerful navy in the world, and win a lot of points with both the USA, and everyone else in their neighborhood who doesn't like China. They'll be high up on the list of places to rebase low-labor-cost manufacturing that's not going to be happening in China anymore, it's basically all positives for them.

And there is absolutely nothing the Chinese can do about it.

The overwhelming majority of the PLAN can't project out as far as the Straits of Malacca, and what parts can, probably couldn't beat those local nations in a fight off their own coasts, much less the USN. Malaysia and Indonesia could close the straits with WWI-tier conventional tube artillery even if the PLAN did manage to defeat their navies in the area.


So, in short, *yes*, the USA can enforce a blockade without needing to start sinking a bunch of ships, and if China wanted to even try to break that blockade, they would need to start shooting at the USN, which brings you back to the 'America starts shooting down the entire PLAAF' scenario of my prior post.