Of Satellite Imagery and Invasion Plans

PRC's Strategy When It Comes to Reunification, and it's Implications

On March 27, a photo circulated Twitter/X showing a satellite image of a People’s Liberation Army (China, PLA) training facility laid out like the Taiwan Presidential Office Building in Taipei, Taiwan. Community notes quickly informed the world that the imagery is about ten years old and is known. The base, Zhurihe Training Base, is in Inner Mongolia, and the South China Morning Post and Wikipedia describe the base as China’s version of Fort Irwin, National Training Center, California. The USMC comparison is 29 Palms, California (but think bigger).

While the site is a replica of the Taiwan Presidential Office Building, many interesting questions arise from the existence of such a replica. Clearly, there is no question about the PLA Special Operations Forces’ drill techniques, tactics, and procedures. More importantly, how and why would this training be implemented? Taiwan is a fortress when it comes to air defense, and the amount of firepower required to do a rapid decapitation strike by a special operations force would be suicidal. In the era of smart munitions and hypersonic missiles, why not use a standoff weapons platform to conduct such a strike?

Well, that’s because a conventional military invasion was not always Beijing’s only option for compelling reunification.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) best course of action was to compel reunification through Gray Area Operations, like the “Little Green Men” operation in Crimea. As I’ve discussed in the past, the politics of China are very complicated, and the Kuomintang (KMT) supports reunification. Especially given the apparent nationalism of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the positions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT are not irreconcilably different.

In Taiwan, the continued defeat of the KMT Party in elections removes that likelihood in the near term but raises the possibility of a conventional military invasion. Domestic politics are very complicated in both countries.

Either through unconventional or conventional means, the PRC would have to do some decapitation strike.

In the case of a gray area operation, the PLA special operations, with the support of some in the Taiwan government, would secure and defeat opposition leadership to pave the way for a reasonably bloodless takeover of Taiwan. It might seem far-fetched, but it isn’t. The Taiwan military was a political stronghold for the KMT.

This is not to say that Taiwan's military is unreliable or that the KMT does not oppose the PRC’s militarism or authoritarianism. The KMT would likely oppose a PRC invasion of Taiwan. However, the PRC’s political subversion efforts are significantly less likely to give the PRC an easy beachhead.

With the decline in pro-reunification sentiment, especially among Taiwanese youth, the PRC’s only option is a military invasion.

However, mainland China’s political and economic constraints limit its current capability. China heavily depends on imports for foodstuffs, base metals, energy inputs, and other critical vulnerabilities, all of which depend on maritime trade. An invasion of Taiwan would be the most destructive economic event in the world since 1939, especially for the Chinese people.

China’s military options only open up with the expansion of import routes, anti-submarine warfare capability, and division among the US and its allies. Importantly, each of these conditions helps alleviate the pressures from a general embargo or blockade – a situation that Chinese military planners want to circumvent.

We must preserve alliances and expand American economic strength worldwide to deter China. If Russia were to control Ukraine, a significant amount of the world’s grain supply would be under the Sino-Russian entente. The European markets will be increasingly open to Chinese exports, with the same downstream effects in Latin America and Africa.

As we learned in the Cold War, the best form of deterrence is when your enemy cannot fight their way into political and economic domination.