China's Military Strategy For Asia Pacific

Shi Lang!

Ev so often in PACRIM, leaks get all leaked like "Doing Taiwan in 3 Days" or the most recent thing bout how Collectivist China could totally knock Taiwan out - all the way out - even if Great Satan intervenes with all her effortry might and will power  - by 2020.

While the elderly unfun brigade of sourmouthed isolationists cry out it's all fake believe, Project 2049 delivers a spirited PDFing about China's Mil Strat for Asia and the Pacific

Money Shots:

The PLA’s military build-up, while comprehensive in nature, is principally anchored on a projectile-centric strategy that seeks to exploit theater geography, financial asymmetries, and gaps in international law to China’s favor. This strategy relies upon the land-based deployment of large numbers of nuclear capable delivery vehicles (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles) for long-range precision strike missions.

While this approach risks regional instability and international approbation, China’s inability to produce aircraft and ship platforms with effective power projection capabilities leaves the PLA with no incentive to alter the nature of its strategy. Further compounding the problem, the Chinese definition of victory–which is to keep Great Satan from intervening in "its" conflicts and, failing that, to assure the U.S. cannot gain air superiority and effectively project power into the region–means that the factors encouraging the PLA to continue its force modernization program are highly durable.

There are two major external threats to the CCP’s "core interests" that the PLA must be prepared to defend against. A Taiwan contingency is the primary threat, and a Japan contingency is the secondary threat. Taiwan is a threat because its government, under its Republic of China (ROC) constitution, does not recognize the legitimacy of the CCP, and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims to Taiwan’s territory.  Compounding the problem it represents to the CCP, Taiwan's model of governance is therefore anathema to the CCP’s narrative, which holds that ethnically Chinese people can only be ruled by an authoritarian system. As a result, the PLA views Taiwan as an entity that must be subjugated or "re-unified" by coercion or even war if necessary.   

Nippon also makes the list of what all Collectivist High Command veiws as a threat - especially the Japan Great Satan Hook Up Alliance 

For this reason, the PLA continues to focus on a conflict with Taiwan as the principle driver of its defense planning.  

The American alliance with Japan is also key factor in understanding Beijing’s strategic animus toward Tokyo. China’s civilian and military leaders are keenly aware that the security treaty that binds the U.S.-Japan alliance explicitly allows American forces to use bases on Japan for responding to regional contingencies, including Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

Another goal is to maintain the capacity to intervene in a war or instability on the Korean Peninsula to assure that the outcome of any such events would be strategically favorable (or at least acceptable) to Beijing.

The hottest shot of all is PLA's Projectile Strategy: 

The PLA’s modernization program, while allowing for comprehensive improvements across the force, is concentrated on developing and deploying guided missiles and other unmanned projectiles for power projection missions. In the context of PLA strategy, a projectile is any single-use ordinance delivery weapon, such as a ballistic missile, cruise missile or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is launched into the atmosphere.  

The PLA has been investing considerable resources into its reconnaissance infrastructure to achieve the ability to find, track and target its adversaries at stand-off ranges with projectiles.

This evolving "reconnaissance-strike complex" is based on using conventionally armed projectiles as weapons capable of achieving strategic effects previously only available to China through the use of nuclear weapons.

The PLA’s ability to use these nuclear capable, but conventionally armed, delivery vehicles for strategic missions has been enabled by advancements in positioning, guidance and sensor technologies that allow for great precision against land and sea surface targets, potentially even including mobile aircraft carriers.

Nonetheless, China’s military strategy represents an aberration from how nations have typically sought to project power.

Pic - "China has a brutally simple — if risky — plan to compensate for this relative weakness: buy missiles. And then, buy more of them. All kinds of missiles: short-range and long-range; land-based, air-launched and sea-launched; ballistic and cruise; guided and dumb.”