The issue of political disagreements that exist between the two sides must reach a final resolution ... these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation.
―Xi Jinping
Today it is sometimes assumed that China could mount a surprise attack on Taiwan and invade the island with little or no warning. In this hypothetical scenario, Taiwan’s leaders might find themselves astonished and overwhelmed by a numerically superior enemy, who would suddenly present them with a torrent of life and death problems. They would presumably struggle to mount an effective defense in these circumstances, and organized resistance could conceivably crumble within days. Taiwan’s democratic government, having fallen prey to China’s well-orchestrated strategic deception operations, might quickly cease to exist. Communist collaborators would take over and turn Taiwan into an Orwellian police state.
The assumption that China has the capacity to catch Taiwan off-guard is foundational to most negative assessments regarding Taiwan’s defensibility.[117] Surprise is viewed by those who embrace pessimistic judgments as not only possible, but probable. From their perspective, the analytical problems of early warning repeatedly seen throughout history, from Pearl Harbor to September 11, 2001, make the anticipation of a Chinese attack on Taiwan nearly impossible, especially since the intentions animating the CCP (and by extension the PLA) are often so opaque. However, such leaps in analytical logic deserve close scrutiny in light of what is known about indications and warning, which is the art of avoiding surprise and judging when an attack is coming.
The process of indications and warning in the Taiwan Strait begins with indications, evidence that China is preparing to attack. Indications are generally comprised of some developments, or some uncertain signs or information that provide grounds for a belief that hostilities might be looming ahead. According to a seminal work on the subject, Anticipating Surprise, written by an American intelligence expert, Cynthia Grabo, an indication can be “an absence of something, a fragment of information, an observation, a photograph, a propaganda broadcast, a diplomatic note, a call-up of reservists, a deployment of forces, an agent report, or anything else. The sole provision is that it provide some insight ... into the enemy’s likely course of action.”[118] An indicator is something the adversary (in this case China) is known or expected to have to do in preparation for hostilities. Lists of things to be monitored that are anticipated might occur prior to conflict are known as watch lists or indicator lists.[119]
Strategic warning, according to Grabo, is more long-term in nature and can be issued well in advance of attack. Strategic warning would come “if a large-scale deployment of forces is under way, or the adversary has made known his political commitment to some course of action involving the use of force.” This type of warning “may be possible only when enemy action is imminent, but it also may be possible long before that.”[120] Strategic warnings are generally issued to national-level leaders such as presidents and prime ministers. Tactical warning, on the other hand, is more of an operational concern, and something available to generals with access to radar pictures and other sensor networks that provide timely indications that an enemy attack in under way.[121]
The elected officials leading the Taiwanese government probably spend very little of their time worrying about the possibility of an enemy surprise attack. That is the job of intelligence officers, who view the collection and dissemination of indications and warning information as vital to the life of their country. According to the website of the National Security Bureau (Taiwan’s counterpart to the CIA), providing advanced warning of Chinese preparations for an attack on Taiwan is the highest priority of the island’s intelligence services.[122] This mission is essential during peacetime to prevent China from achieving the advantage of surprise, and it is especially critical during periods of limited conflict to provide strategic warning of war escalation. In a crisis, Taiwan’s government will need to know if China intends to add fuel to the fire, inflaming pre-existing tensions into a mass conflagration.[123]
Timely and accurate warning is important for enabling Taiwan’s government to select the right moment to put contingency plans into action and mobilize the country for war. Taiwan maintains a professional military of around 200,000 personnel, almost all of whom are volunteers. To bolster these professional warriors, Taiwan also maintains a conscript-heavy reserve force of over 2.5 million men, giving it the ability to mobilize a giant army of citizen-soldiers.[124] Taiwan can further augment its military by mobilizing nearly one million civil defense reservists, who are registered to provide war support.[125] Early warning of a Chinese attack is needed for activating this tremendous, but latent, military and civilian power. Strategic warning is vital for helping Taiwan’s president to judge when best to order the military to increase the readiness levels of fielded troops.
The main challenges to strategic early warning are Chinese espionage and deception. Taiwan faces a well-documented spy threat, which has resulted in a considerable number of espionage cases. If unchecked, Chinese agents could undermine the discernments made by Taiwan’s elected officials. However, while the threat of enemy infiltration is very real, Taiwan’s counterintelligence community has established a solid track record of identifying and stopping leaks. In many cases, Taiwan’s spy-catchers have discovered and arrested traitors soon after China has recruited them, ensuring that security breaches were short-lived.
Spy scandals have done great damage to Taiwan’s reputation, but most foreign experts assess that appearances are worse than reality when it comes to Chinese penetration of Taiwan, and there is little justification for assuming that Taiwan’s ranks are riddled with Chinese spies.[126] Even more important, experts point out that Taiwan has done an extraordinary job recruiting well-placed agents in China who can provide early warning information to the Presidential Office (and the White House).[127]
Taiwan has long had a close relationship with the American military and intelligence communities, giving Taipei access to world-class arrays of early warning sensors, including radars, satellites, and electronic eavesdropping stations. These capabilities greatly reduce the risk that Taiwan’s president might be caught off guard by a Chinese surprise attack.[128] Internal PLA publications evince concern that Japan would also send warning to Taiwan. One excerpt states that Japan shadows and tracks Chinese forces with its aircraft, ships, submarines, and satellites, and uses reconnaissance and early warning networks on its southwestern islands to monitor PLA activities. According to Chinese military assessments, Tokyo has excellent early-warning intelligence on the Taiwan Strait area.[129]
It is impossible to accurately assess matters that by their very nature are secret, but the information available strongly suggests Taiwan is well prepared to avoid the threat of strategic surprise. Studies produced by experts in both China and Taiwan have closely examined indications and warning specific to a cross-Strait invasion scenario. They conclude that, while any Chinese attack on Taiwan would place a premium on deception, the PLA is unlikely to have the element of surprise on its side. It is not foreordained that events would follow exactly as anticipated, and errors in judgment are always possible. Yet according to analyses conducted on both sides of the Strait, PLA preparations for an attack on Taiwan could not be hidden from view because at least five categories of indicators exist and are routinely monitored by Taiwan, America, and Japan, and information in these categories, once collected and studied, would provide a sound basis upon which to make judgments regarding the potential for Chinese invasion.[130]
Chinese military operations to invade and capture a large and well-defended island nation like Taiwan would be fundamentally different from other smaller and less challenging operations, such as bombing it from the air or harassing it from the sea. Preparing for an all-out invasion is far more demanding and difficult to hide, since a vast number of people must be involved for the operation to have any serious chance of success. According to Chinese writings, the invasion of Taiwan would be a fantastically complex endeavor, directly affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people who would participate. The operation would require the PRC’s military units, civilian bureaucracies, and corporate organizations to become tightly knit. They would each have to surrender their own selfish interests to a larger cause, overcoming the conflicting dynamics known to organized groups of people everywhere.
Chinese analysts make clear that it would be a fool’s errand to try to completely eradicate office politics, competing departmental sub-cultures, and divisive factions, especially in a society as bureaucratic as China’s. Instead, national efforts would focus on smoothing over major splits and divergences. To prepare for the coming war, organizational structuring, planning, and coordination arrangements would have to be hammered out. This means that important people in China, whose daily activities are routinely monitored, will have to meet with each other in person to discuss what is going on and what the plan is, then they will have to negotiate and agree on who is going to do what in support of the plan, and when they are going to do it.
It is anticipated that the leaders of the party and the military would begin covertly convening several months prior to the onset of hostilities. In addition to a flurry of CCP Politburo meetings in Beijing, at least one major war planning and coordination conference is likely to be held in the Eastern Theater Command. This hypothetical conference would be attended by executive-level representatives from the army, navy, air force, rocket forces, space forces, intelligence services, public security forces, militia, and provincial and city governments. Each member present at the war conference would represent an organization with an important role to play in the coming operation. A smaller circle of trusted super-elites would likely be selected and appointed to a Joint Taiwan Attack Leading Small Group and/or Joint Taiwan Attack Command Center, responsible for finalizing details of the war plan, refereeing inter-agency disputes, and distributing copies of committee decisions throughout their respective military and civilian chains-of-command.[131]
Any one of the elite group members could be a foreign spy, or they could have a trusted confidant who was. Chinese organizations typically make judgments about loyalty based on personal ties and family connections. Relatives of high-ranking Communist Party heroes are routinely favored over their peers, no matter how incompetent they might be, or how questionable their personal behavior. The system has few checks and balances and is opaque and ridden with corruption. As such, leaks are probably inevitable. Even assuming for perfect security, the mere fact of certain leaders meeting in a non-routine fashion should indicate to Taiwanese (and American) intelligence analysts that trouble could be brewing, especially during periods when cross-Strait relations were deteriorating and tensions were running abnormally high.
As Z-Day drew closer, the PLA’s Rocket Force would move ballistic missiles and cruise missiles out of their peacetime garrisons. Traveling on highways and rail lines deep within the mountainous interior of China, missile brigades would rumble toward their launch sites. Once arrived, they would begin conducting pre-launch inspections, warhead mating drills, and tests. Once deployments began in full, thousands of missile launchers, communications vans, security trucks, and logistics support vehicles would be moving. They would carry with them an army of personnel, each with hometowns full of friends and family and neighbors, some whom might be garrulous or indiscrete.[132] The associated chatter would probably alert Taiwan’s undercover agents on the ground, who would report anything unusual. The movement of large numbers of strategic missiles would also be noticed by eavesdropping satellites, aircraft, and other surveillance assets who are tasked with watching them from afar. Alarm lights would start flashing and secure phones would start ringing in Taipei and Washington.
Along with the sudden and alarming uptick in missile movements, many other elements of the military, dormant in peacetime, would begin coming to life. Chinese air defense units would leave their peacetime garrisons and move in large numbers to Fujian Province, where their surface-to-air missile batteries would be established in prepared sites to bolster the defense of vulnerable airspace around command bunkers, airbases, and port facilities. Elite army groups specializing in amphibious assault would cancel all vacation leave, mobilize to full strength, and ready their equipment for deployment. Reserve and militia units would be called up for service. These radical departures from routine activity, no matter how well coordinated and concealed, would place immense strain on China’s communications and transportation infrastructure, which would be noticeable.[133] Train stations, bus depots, and airports across China would be crowded with troops, and islands and other staging areas along the Taiwan Strait would be teaming with uniformed military personnel, visible for anyone to see.[134]
It is highly probable that the PLA would conduct a series of rehearsal exercises and amphibious drills to improve the readiness levels of forces soon to be engaged in deadly combat. Army groups in southeastern China are expected to conduct full-strength landing exercises, with entire brigades and divisions simulating beach assaults. With war approaching, Chinese generals would focus on neglected and expensive aspects of training for their troops. In the Chinese military, political officers generally make all the key decisions, and they tend to be cautious, cheap, and risk-adverse. If peacetime expedients were ever to be cast aside, now would be the time. It is anticipated that political officers would unchain combat commanders and allow them to organize intensive live-fire exercises, night fighting drills, and field maneuvers. In addition, large-scale combined operations involving land, sea, air, and rocket forces would likely be conducted. Soldiers participating in these exercises would not return to their home bases after the drills. Instead, they would deploy to coastal areas at or near known points of embarkation, concentrating on the ports and bays along the coast.
Intelligence would indicate that large and menacing troop movements were underway. Electro-optical satellites, their telescopic eyes staring down from space, would capture shots of Chinese tanks, rocket launchers, artillery pieces, and armored vehicles, lined up in long rows aboard flatbed train cars, some in transit, others arrived and waiting to unload at the major rail yards. Imagery would show sprawling coastal camps being established, and troops marshaling not far from transport ships loitering offshore. Helicopter activity would spike as army aviation units from all over China flocked in and landed on Fujian’s fields. On digital map screens around the world, intelligence officers would track a giant red army moving toward Taiwan like ball bearings drawn to a magnet.
Air activity would also tip China’s hand. There are around twenty military airfields in China’s southeast that lie close enough to Taiwan to place the island within the extended combat radius of a fighter jet.[135] Large numbers of fighters and fighter-bombers would relocate from their distant inland bases to these airfields ahead of any notional Z-Day. It is believed that, once established at frontline bases, they would engage in intensive training drills. Exercises would likely focus heavily on improving capabilities for night operations, air-to-air combat, bombing, and electronic jamming. In addition to unusually rigorous combat training, air squadrons would likely practice dispersing to and operating from alternative bases in case their airstrips were destroyed. When moving to backup locations, each unit‘s maintenance and logistics support crews would go with them. In addition, drone fleets would cluster in frontline bases, and Chinese paratroopers would rehearse airborne operations, simulating the seizure of airfields.
At a certain point, PLA ships and submarines would put to sea and sail out to operating areas in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. The grey-hulled vessels of the PLA Navy would join up with vast numbers of mobilized civilian vessels to practice maneuvers in formation. Naval jets and helicopters would probably join these maritime exercises, practicing their roles providing overhead fleet air defense. After naval exercises were over, it seems probable that many of the participating ship groups would not return to their home bases. They would instead seek shelter inside the warm ports and natural harbors along the coast facing Taiwan.
Civil air traffic could slow to a crawl as the number of flights in and out of major cities was reduced to free up additional airspace for military maneuvers.[136] In cities like Shanghai, fighter jets and other aircraft operating from local airports might be seen flying low in great formations as they rehearsed their roles in the invasion. Another unmistakable and ominous sign would be the presence of massed fleets of maritime militia boats gathering and clogging up ports and anchorages in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong.
It is sometimes assumed that China plans to invade Taiwan with two separate amphibious groups, each of which would target a different section of Taiwan’s coastline. One group would presumably assault Taiwan’s northwest coast, launching its attacks from bases around Pingtan Island and Nanri Island. The other amphibious fleet would presumably assault Taiwan’s southwest coast from amphibious bases around Dongshan Island and Nan’ao Island. The ports of Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Meizhou, and Shantou would be heavily involved. Extraordinary ship concentrations in these sensitive areas along China’s coast could indicate an attack was about to begin.[137]
One of the most provocative and destabilizing steps China could take prior to Z-Day would be to engage in nuclear testing. There is a precedent for this. In the summer of 1995, during the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Beijing exploded two atomic bombs, each one ignited at a politically sensitive moment.[138] Internal PLA writings state that nuclear weapons could be tested in an invasion scenario to deter American intervention.[139] Regardless of whether or not atomic experiments were actually conducted, it can be speculated that China might seek to raise the readiness levels of its nuclear forces by ordering nuclear ballistic missile submarines to sortie from their underground bases on Hainan Island. In addition, Beijing might deploy nuclear missile launchers from their garrisons and disperse them into the mountain wilderness of central China.[140]
Early warning experts know that logistics is the oxygen of battle. So they monitor stockpiling, which is an early and obvious sign that a country is preparing itself for war. Long before the final attack orders were sent out, China would begin purchasing and storing vast lakes of oil and gas. Fuel depots across from Taiwan would be topped off, and new tank farms quickly built and filled. Mountains of coal would be piled up. Chinese factories producing weapons, ammunition, and equipment would rapidly expand production.
Trains and trucks, groaning under the weight of their heavy loads, would motor into staging areas with war supplies of all kinds. Food, water, uniforms, medicine, and batteries would all be stockpiled. Blood banks would be filled. Farm animals, especially pigs, would be gathered in huge herds to feed the troops. As one consequence of China’s stockpiling surge, the price of commodities like petroleum, copper, rice, soybeans, and wheat would likely bubble up on the world markets, driven by a seemingly insatiable Chinese demand.
Stockpiling would be accompanied by a spike in infrastructure projects, providing another indication that an invasion attempt was imminent. Every large and medium-sized port from Jiangsu in the north to Hainan in the south could see a colossal increase in their manpower and heavy equipment numbers. To support the immense number of transport ships required by the invasion, infrastructure expansion activities would likely include the construction of new warehouses, docks, workshops, and cranes. Roads and railroads serving the ports would be expanded to accommodate the greatly increased traffic volume. Air defense and armed security patrols, probably both regular army and armed police, would take up station in and around port facilities. Maritime militia units would guard the harbor approaches. Merchant marines from around the world who use these ports would take notice of the engineering projects and the tightening of security, which would restrict their activities.
Shipyards across China would begin the mass production of flat-bottomed landing ships and amphibious assault vehicles. It is envisioned that fishing fleets would be called in for refitting. The great shipyards at Shanghai, Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Dalian would be clogged with commercial transport ships, roll-on/roll-off ships, ferries, and barges―all lined up to be refitted with military-grade communications systems and other equipment to improve their utility in combat.[141] Shipyards would probably be operating at breakneck speeds for at least three months before the invasion, working on 24-hour shifts and brightly lit up at night.[142] Light and noise travel great distances over water, making them easy to pick up with submarines and surveillance ships. Overhead imagery, provided by passing satellites and aircraft, would give additional proof that preparations were underway for an invasion.
Many of the Chinese airstrips near Taiwan are already fortified in preparation for combat operations, but many others are not. To support the influx of aircraft, there is expected to be a significant uptick in construction activity at airbases. This would presumably include the building of new hangars, hardened aircraft shelters, concrete revetments, back-up control towers, ammunition storage bunkers, fuel dumps, workshops, and other structures. Construction projects would likely include runway and parking ramp extensions, and efforts to make current structures more durable. Army and militia units armed with air defense guns would dig in around their perimeters. Elsewhere, new command bunkers would be tunneled into the earth. Closer to Z-Day, land mines would be sown along the Fujian coast, obstacles erected, and razor wire spooled out across endless miles of shore to keep potential infiltrators out of restricted areas. China would turn its entire southeastern coast into a well-stocked war camp.
Good information is important in peace, but it is a matter of life and death in war. Chinese writings describe some of the unusual information-gathering activities that might be expected off the coast of Taiwan prior to an invasion. PLA intelligence ships, disguised as fishing trawlers, would be equipped in large numbers with specialized suites of electronic intelligence gear to operate as listening posts at sea. Such ships are expected to be manned by crews of up to thirty men, some of whom had specialized technical training and some of whom would be armed with machine guns and assault rifles for security. Outfitted with nets and other fishing tackle as camouflage, these ships would sail near some of Taiwan’s most sensitive coastal waters to collect information on the beaches and sea bottom conditions. They would attempt to linger offshore to watch as coastal fortifications were erected, naval activities spiked, and troop movements began.
PLA writings state that China’s space launch centers would drastically ramp up the tempo of their operations in the weeks before conflict to launch emergency satellites into orbit.[143] The Chinese public would most likely be told these additional space assets were remote sensing payloads for helping agriculture, fishing, and traffic control. Chinese satellites that had long flown in fixed orbits would suddenly conduct orbital maneuvering to provide increased coverage of Taiwan and the Western Pacific.[144] One Chinese military text writes that at least four imagery satellites would be needed for daily passes over Taiwan to provide intelligence analysts with an updated reconnaissance picture of the entire island. Additional satellites would be needed to monitor Taiwanese military exercises and American aircraft carrier strike group movements within 3,000 kilometers (1,620 nautical miles) of the Chinese mainland.[145]
Chinese intelligence-gathering aircraft would likely prowl the skies around Taiwan, skirting the edge of Taiwan’s airspace to glean whatever bits of information they could. Some could orchestrate fake attack operations, charging jets past the Taiwan Strait centerline to test Taiwanese reaction speeds. Intelligence planes would loiter nearby, vacuuming up valuable data on Taiwan’s tactics, techniques, and procedures.[146] Far away from these airborne scenes of brinksmanship, China’s human intelligence activities would likely surge. However, the more agents were pressed to produce quick results, the more likely it would become that Chinese spies would have their covers blown.[147]
War begins and ends not just on the battlefield, but in the minds of the women and men involved. One component of the invasion, according to internal Chinese military books, would be using internet and television media outlets as weapons of psychological warfare to weaken Taiwan’s powers of resistance before the main attack. PLA writings describe a number of factors as being advantageous for such operations, including the broad appeal of China’s economic miracle, the large number of expatriate Taiwanese businessmen in China, the influence of politicians who frequently visit Beijing, cross-Strait tourism and cultural exchanges, and economic entanglements. Psychological warfare operations are often combined with something they call “legal warfare” and “public opinion warfare.” All fall under the broad umbrella of political warfare operations.[148]
One internal document offers the following guidance to Chinese officers undertaking such operations against Taiwan:
Utilize legal warfare and public opinion warfare together with psychological warfare to divide and erode the island’s solid willpower and lower the island’s combat strength. Of these, utilize legal warfare against the enemy’s political groups and their so-called “allies” as a form of psychological attack. Clearly make the case that a joint attack campaign against the main island is legally justifiable and based on a continued, and internal, war of liberation ... utilize public opinion warfare against the enemy’s military groups as a form of psychological attack. Point out the benefits of giving up their support for “independence” with effective messaging themes.... Use the Internet media heavily against non-governmental groups on the island and the masses as a form of psychological attack. Proactively spread propaganda regarding the benefits of unification for the nation and the people, and erode the social foundation of the “separatist” forces on the island.[149]
As part of the effort, propaganda campaigns would ignite war fever across China. Party mouthpieces would excoriate “Taiwan independence forces,” and saturate the airwaves with jingoistic articles using canned catchphrases like, “Better one thousand troops dead than one inch of territory lost!” “Rebuild Taiwan! (after obliterating it),” and, “Annihilate the Taiwan splitist forces!” Stories would likely be run and re-run glorifying past PLA heroes and model soldiers, and media reports would breathlessly tell Chinese troops that they inherited just and courageous traditions. Troops would be told that the sacrifices made by past heroes were worthy of emulation in the days ahead.
Radical pro-unification media outlets on Taiwan would parrot the messaging themes of China. In Washington, D.C. and other American cities, Chinese United Front workers would probably organize conferences and hold public events targeting foreign policy elites. PRC embassies and consular offices would do everything in their power to convince foreigners to stay out of “China’s internal business” and to abandon Taiwan in its hour of need. Some might dole out extravagant contracts and business deals to foreign agents of influence in return for them writing editorials espousing Beijing’s position.[150] Others would issue threats to American government officials using diplomatic notes and unofficial backchannels, hinting that any conflict could rapidly escalate into a nuclear exchange.[151] PLA writings indicate that while Japan and other American allies are considered secondary targets of intimidation, they would, too, be subjected to extremist threats in an effort to undermine their support for Taiwan.[152]
As the Western Pacific approached boiling point, things are expected to happen in Taiwan to make people there feel deeply insecure. It is widely assumed that significant increases in subversive activities would occur prior to the onset of war, with legions of spies infiltrating into Taiwan, Penghu, and the outer islands to conduct sabotage missions. Saboteurs are likely to poison water supplies, blow up bridges and tunnels, and attack the power grid and oil depots. Taiwanese security authorities expect a sharp rise in human smuggling, associated with discoveries of weapons caches and clandestine communications equipment.[153]
Organized crime syndicates with pro-unification agendas are expected to become highly active, seeking to rapidly recruit new teenage manpower. Violence would presumably break out at nightclubs and other nightlife establishments as pro-CCP gangs began expanding into the territory of local Taiwanese gangs. Police would confront the possibility of gangsters being armed with weapons previously unthinkable in Taiwan, such as assault rifles and explosives. Gangs and other underground elements could organize anti-government demonstrations in Taipei and engage in bloody battles with the police. In addition, Chinese intelligence agents would reportedly attempt to foster financial chaos, rioting, campus protests, and labor strikes.[154] They would also make efforts to manipulate politicians and military generals, turning them against each other.[155]
Acts of crime and espionage, designed to weaken social order and undercut feelings of national confidence, would presumably squeeze the country from every side. Based on internal PLA writings, the Taiwanese president and other high officials, and their families, could become the victims of assassination or abduction attempts.[156] Taiwan’s legal code anticipates this threat and authorizes greatly expanded security measures to ensure stability. At a certain undefined point, the mounting threat would become impossible to ignore, and Taiwan’s president and her cabinet would be forced to declare a state of emergency and mobilize the country for war.[157]
*Note that this list is notional and does not include every indicator of potential invasion.
Chinese analysts have produced a large body of work on the art of military deception. Some of this work discusses the application of deception in a Taiwan landing campaign.[158] Relevant military studies highlight the critical importance of shock in paralyzing Taiwanese decision making at every level of command. Only this could allow the PLA to rapidly overrun Taiwan’s beach defenses, seize Taipei, and decisively bring combat operations to an end before the United States could intervene.[159] The challenge facing the Chinese military is that hiding preparations for a massive over water attack is next to impossible.
According to Dennis Blasko, an American PLA expert, “Army units would be required to move significant distances using land (road and rail), air, and water (sea or river) means of transport ... in the era of satellite reconnaissance and social media, such movements are unlikely to be made in secret, reducing the chances of ground forces attaining strategic surprise to close to zero.”[160] The mobilization of civilian forces to support a military campaign would further compromise strategic surprise, and the sum total of the indicators available would provide Taiwan’s government with sufficient and solid grounds upon which to base strategic warnings and begin mobilizing the country for invasion.
China’s leaders have good reason to assume their intentions will be discovered by Taipei well in advance of the attack. If so, the military would lose its ability to execute a “bolt out of the blue” assault. Based on Chinese writings, this would represent a strategic setback, but it is not viewed as a showstopper so long as the PLA still has tactical surprise on its side. It is one thing for an enemy to know you are planning an attack against him at some point in the near future, it is quite another for him to know exactly when, where, and how you will do it. Strategic deception is viewed by the Chinese military as desirable, but probably not attainable. Tactical deception, on the other hand, is seen as vital.
Tactical deception is described by PLA writings as an essential part of a landing campaign for a number of reasons. Perhaps most important, it is critical to the success of political assassinations, or “decapitation operations,” to eliminate Taiwan’s president and other top leaders at the outset of war. To prosecute such operations, Chinese writings envision launching surprise missile raids to destroy the Presidential Office Building in Taiwan. They also imagine surprise attacks on other buildings with important political significance.[161] One PLA text offers the following guidance to operational commanders:
It is important for you to emphasize the requirement to uncover the (Taiwan) Enemy’s head organizations, and especially their head person’s location, and the defensive measures protecting them. Then you should use high-tech weapons that have a strong capability to penetrate their airspace with precision and destructiveness to execute fierce strikes against their head person(s). Assure they are successfully knocked out with one punch.[162]
Another text indicates that during invasion operations Chinese special forces will try to abduct or kill many of Taiwan’s most important political and military leaders, weapons experts, and scientists using a combination of clandestine means and direct attacks.[163] Early-warning intelligence networks are therefore critical not only for providing strategic warning that an attack is being planned, they are important for tactical warning to ensure top leaders, including the president, are not caught by surprise and killed in the first hours of war.
According to PLA writings, Taiwan has a highly sophisticated network of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance capabilities for monitoring Chinese activities which could indicate preparations for an attack. Taiwan’s frontline radar networks on the outer islands are viewed as considerable obstacles to surprise and dangerous because they are linked with missile units capable of suppressing Chinese air operations. Additionally, there are large air force and naval radar stations on the main island of Taiwan that are capable of seeing well across the Taiwan Strait. These land-based radars are further backed up by naval ships, patrol aircraft, and satellites that provide early warning information.[164]
Taken as a whole, Taiwan’s early warning network is judged as survivable, in-depth, and able to provide three-dimensional pictures of the cross-Strait battle space. From the Chinese military’s perspective, this network reduces the likelihood of achieving surprise. According to PLA texts, this network allows the ROC military to monitor, track, and intercept enemy targets approaching Taiwan, and it provides the president of Taiwan and other government leaders with time to escape air strikes and missile raids. One internal source states: “(Taiwan’s) quite dense air defense system not only reduces the shock of our joint ‘decapitation’ operations, it also reduces the effectiveness of using firepower raids.”[165]
PLA writings describe their anticipated pre-invasion situation as follows:
The enemy scrutinizes and monitors our coastal areas, which makes plans for the movements of army amphibious landing troops and their assembly difficult to hide. The enemy on the island has reconnaissance capabilities ... and electronic warfare capabilities that are constantly improving. Their long-distance, high fidelity, overlapping reconnaissance methods turn dark nights into bright days. Our traditional camouflage for “staying unseen from the air and hard to discover on the ground” has lost its value. Large-scale troop movements would struggle to escape “field sightings.” Large-scale troop movements are easily exposed through leaked secrets as well. These make plans to clandestinely move and assemble army amphibious landing troops ever more difficult.[166]
PLA writings tell officers that it as essential to hide their operational plans to invade Taiwan, and to minimize the damaging effects of security leaks. They exhort commanders to be flexible in choosing the time and place of attack. Once the decision had been made, commanders are expected to undertake deception operations employing decoys, feints, and camouflage to cover up their plans. The overriding objective would be to confuse Taiwanese military generals and convince them the attack would come at a false time and place. The PLA could then strike suddenly to catch defenders off-guard and keep them unbalanced throughout the ensuing battle.[167]
Deception operations for achieving tactical surprise on a notional Z-Day would rely heavily on disinformation. In the minds of Chinese military analysts, the key to success would be to employ deception operations just before an invasion attempt, and make them good enough to convince Taiwan’s defenders. They envision deception operations coming in a number of different forms, each intended to strengthen the overall effect. The operation would begin with military communications traffic simulating the buildup of forces in places where there existed little actual activity. At the same time, media outlets in Taiwan or America would be fed false information that would be disseminated by credible news shows, newspaper reports, and radio broadcasts. Chinese cyber warfare units would help the effort by smothering truthful reporting, leaving viewers with a distorted picture of the situation. The overriding goal would be to get Taiwanese leaders to make bad decisions in the tense days and weeks prior to invasion, and then catch them completely by surprise on Z-Day.[168]
To make deception operations appear more believable, PLA writings advise military commanders to use actual units for the mission. Using real units and actual physical attacks as decoys makes them more convincing. Just prior to Z-day, a missile battery could rain fire down on a target to make it appear that the Chinese military was softening it up for attack. Once Taiwanese forces had shifted strength to reinforce the affected area, the PLA could then attack its real targets elsewhere. Shifting missile strikes between real and false targets is seen as an important method of gaining surprise. If everything is getting pummeled, seemingly at random, it is more difficult to know what the attacker is getting at. Another envisioned deception operation would involve maneuvering forces at sea to draw Taiwanese attention away from the intended points of attack.
Notional operations might entail an armada moving north as a decoy, while helicopters swept south to land troops behind Taiwanese lines. Then the armada could suddenly reverse course and land in the south to reinforce the airborne raiders.[169] In addition, amphibious ships could feint toward one beach and then land on another, or a decoy invasion armada could sit off one beach while the actual landing forces arrived on another or intelligence could be leaked through available channels, suggesting that a certain beach was going to be stormed.[170] Any known and compromised Taiwanese (or American) agents in China would be at risk of manipulation. Perhaps the most resource intensive and costly deception operation envisioned would be to conduct mine sweeping and obstacle clearing operations at numerous beaches at the same time to keep defenders guessing as to which was the intended landing point. If successful, it is thought that deception operations could get Taiwanese defenders to apply reserve stocks of men, mines, and beach obstacles on the wrong areas and leave the intended points of attack more lightly defended.[171]
There are, however, serious limits as to what tactical deception operations could offer. One technical study published by a PLA institute that specializes in amphibious warfare shows the results of computer simulations run on Taiwan’s potential susceptibility to tactical deception on a notional Z-Day. The study mathematically accounts for risks, including Taiwan’s intelligence capabilities, its disruptive counterstrike capabilities, the timing errors associated with planting false information, the distances over which forces would have to move, and the chance that large units would be exposed on land or at sea. The study results showed an exceptionally high degree of pessimism regarding each of the examined risk factors. For example, the modeling showed Taiwan’s intelligence capabilities were 70 to 80 percent likely to prove “extremely dangerous” or “very dangerous” to a camouflaged landing campaign, and there was a 50 to 60 percent chance the PLA would accidentally time leaks wrong and blow its own cover.[172]
For their own reasons, military authorities in Taiwan have a strong degree of confidence they would know Beijing’s malicious intentions in advance and have adequate, if not abundant, time to prepare for invasion. This assumption appears to stem from their deep understanding of PLA plans, their knowledge of what to look for, and their agent networks in China. Their confidence has been further boosted in recent years by the American-built Surveillance Radar Program, which is reportedly the most powerful intelligence-gathering radar in the world. Sitting high on a mountain in the north of Taiwan, the mega radar complex is designed to withstand the most intense barrage of jamming conceivable while it surveys military activity within striking range of Taiwan. When combined with information gleaned from indigenous capabilities and external intelligence sharing channels, Taiwan’s surveillance radar network is anticipated to provide a tremendous early-warning advantage.
In the worst-case scenario Taiwanese military planners assume they would have around 60 days ambiguous warning, followed by 30 days unambiguous warning. Strategic warning times could be weeks longer than that in practice, but the unexpected can happen, and it is always prudent to prepare for the worst possible outcome when one’s life is at stake. Indeed, defense officials in Taiwan make cautious judgments and have designed illustrative scenarios to help civilians imagine what the days before a Chinese invasion could look like.[173] One of the favorite storylines is seen in standardized textbooks issued to high schools and universities across the island.
The make-believe scenario begins in the early July of some future year, when the PLA suddenly moves amphibious combat units to southeastern China for training exercises which simulate joint attack operations on Dajin Island (off the coast of Guangdong Province). In August, amphibious combat units then gather in training areas near Xiangshan (in Zhejiang Province), and Shanwei (in Guangdong Province). Here they run war games and drills to certify their ability to blockade and capture offshore islands, bomb Taiwan, and finally invade in two major waves of amphibious landings.
By early September, naval and air training activity spikes all across southeastern China, and the ports of Fuzhou, Hui’an, Xiamen, Dongshan, and Shantou are overrun with large concentrations of troops. Next there is a surge in intelligence operations aimed at Taiwan’s coastal areas and beaches, and Chinese fighter aircraft begin regularly crossing the Taiwan Strait centerline, seeking to provoke a response. In the middle of September, the PLA cancels all leave and begin 24-7 operations. The Central Military Committee (CMC) establishes a Joint Theater Command to direct the overall campaign, activates emergency logistics procedures for supporting amphibious operations, and orders the mobilization of reserve units. Large-scale amphibious exercises involving land, air, and sea forces are then announced―alongside warnings for ships and aircraft to avoid waters near the Zhoushan Islands, and international shipping traffic in the area is restricted.
According to the scenario, authoritative tactical warning information comes from American intelligence authorities, who confirm that Taipei’s worst nightmare is about to come true. The coming exercises are actually a cover story, and China’s real intention is to invade Taiwan. Within hours of Washington’s message, Taiwan’s president orders the military to go to its highest state of alert. All reservists are activated, fully mobilizing millions of men in Taiwan and the outer islands. A nationwide alarm goes out, warning every citizen to prepare for an impending invasion. At this point in the scenario, Taiwan’s police and fire departments, public ministries, schools, and businesses all institute their emergency action plans. A lethal hail of Chinese ballistic missiles begins raining down on the island shortly thereafter, causing power outages, communications disruptions, traffic jams, building destruction, fires, and mass civilian causalities. The textbook scenario then ends with a brief message to Taiwanese students, reminding them that they too can help defend against the Chinese invasion threat, and all able-bodied citizens must be prepared to help save their country.
Amphibious staging areas