Seizing Taiwan Gets Harder for China’s PLA

The U.S. Department of War’s latest China Military Power Report is grim reading when it comes to Taiwan.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has all the pieces needed for an assault on Taiwan—using air, naval, and ground forces, along with missiles, electronic, and cyber weaponry.

And it has been conducting rehearsals, not exercises.

The report doesn’t mention much the Chinese “fifth column” in place in Taiwan or the ongoing subversion—“entropic warfare”—breaking apart Taiwan’s society and the citizenry’s will to resist.

However, this focus on Chinese military capabilities is about what China can do to Taiwan.

As important is what Taiwan can do to China, especially to a PLA invasion force crossing the Taiwan Strait.

One way to consider this is to put yourself in the place of a PLA invasion force commander and ask: What would I least like to face?

More than anything, you don’t want to have to deal with an enemy you can’t see (because he’s well-hidden, hard to spot, and mobile), and he’s hitting you with precision from different directions and from long distances.

And if he can do these things, he’s probably got the confidence to fight hard—and that makes a huge difference.