[ls612]

The thing is that an amphibious invasion will likely not be the first move in the war. China will almost certainly strike hard to try and neuter US air and seapower close to the First Island Chain, and then impose a blockade to starve Taiwan into submission. The war would then center around the US and its allies trying to penetrate China's A2AD complex and keep food and supplies coming to Taiwan, while China builds up an invasion fleet after extensive use of airpower against Taiwanese ground installations that could threaten a beachhead.

[seanmcdirmid]

That would be really hard considering that the Ryukyus reach almost adjacent to Taiwan.

[ls612]

Yeah taking some of the Ryukyus to build airbases and host anti ship missile forces would probably be an early objective to support the blockade. Depending on how bad the US is hit in the initial stages it wouldn’t even be out of the question to see an amphibious operation against Okinawa.

[seanmcdirmid]

China would basically need to invade Japan to cut off Taiwan, ensuring that the USA and Japan are involved very early, so that makes an up front amphibious operation more likely.

[jjk166]

I don't think you are getting the idea. ANY military operation of this scale, be it a massive blockade, an invasion, a coordinated strike on multiple US bases, they all are impossible to hide. Such large scale conventional strikes are exactly what these forces and the systems that support them are designed to deal with. There isn't going to be a point where China has knocked out the ability of Taiwan and its allies to defend the island and give China the opportunity to prepare for a minimally contested invasion. On day one they are going to be fighting a well prepared force that knew the attack was coming.

You can strike US air and seapower close to the first island chain, but the airpower will be replenished in hours and the seapower in days. Blockades require a massive naval advantage, otherwise the attacking navy can concentrate its forces and defeat the blockading navy in detail. That's before we just consider the anti-ship missile threat which would make operating near an unfriendly Taiwan extremely costly even with no naval opposition. Taiwan already has supplies to last for months in the event of a blockade, and would certainly stockpile more on the eve of a major conflict. That's going to be a lot of attrition.

The major reason China is concerned about the first island chain is because it is actually quite vulnerable to the gaps in the chain being closed off and itself blockaded. The islands of the chain have much more direct access to the pacific, meaning they are much more resistant to blockade. The US and its allies can shut off the lifeblood of China's economy and industrial power without sailing anywhere near Chinese defenses. Either China will have to sail out to dislodge them on their terms, or the Chinese people will have to endure a long period of high attrition and economic hardship with little demonstrable gain. That's not to say it would be impossible for China to win, but they're going to have to go up against an extremely powerful military alliance that has a lot of positional advantage in a protracted war and win a fair fight.

Rushing Taiwan, despite being a bad idea, is probably the best strategy they could have. Its odds of success are low, for the reasons already discussed, but if they are the right combination of clever and lucky they might be able to exploit some unrecognized weakness. If they can get control of the island, a lot of things flip in their favor. The island's natural resistance to invasion would make them nigh impossible to dislodge (for comparison during WW2, the US judged an attack on Formosa to be impossible despite the Japanese only having about 170,000 troops there and the local population being hostile to Japan). Access to the pacific would make it more difficult to effectively blockade China; they still could, but it would take more resources and more would slip through. Finally, having won something, the Chinese people would be more tolerant of the war's costs. I think this is a losing gamble, and believe the Chinese invasion ships are best used as bargaining chips for negotiation (as in 'we'll sink $10 billion worth of ships to avoid tariffs which would cost us $100 billion'), but perhaps someone high up in the Chinese leadership has a different opinion.