China has long used its 10-year anniversary Oct. 1 large scale military parades to intimidate the island democracy of Taiwan and to intimidate the United States from making good on consistent suggestions that it would help to defend Taiwan if China attacks.
Such a display takes on greater significance considering Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s increasing insistence that Taiwan accept “peaceful unification” with China, or to surrender its hard-earned democracy for an undefined status under the rubric of Beijing’s “one country, two systems.” This is the same deal that China in 1997 gave to the people of Hong Kong, who today are literally fighting and dying to defend the freedoms China is taking away.
China’s deception is that “one country, two systems” is not an “end state;” it is actually a stratagem for forcing submission to the dictatorship of the CCP that combines political, economic and military warfare. The CCP’s massive People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its nearly as large People’s Armed Police (PAP) prefer strategies of intimidation, threatening parades and military exercises instead of expensive and uncertain warfare.
Its main armament is a 105 mm auto-loading cannon that can fire 4-5 km range gun-launched anti-tank missiles that can defeat most of Taiwan’s current tanks. It employs modern modular composite armor and could in the future be armed with active defenses to defeat anti-tank missiles. It can also be more easily transported by the PLA Air Force’s Xian Aircraft Corporation Y-20 heavy transport aircraft.
Its 8-wheel missile transporter can also carry two of a version of Norinco’s Fire Dragon 280A, a 750 mm diameter and 300+km range short-range ballistic missile. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) introduced their second generation SRBMs early in this decade, but they may not yet be in service.
The adoption of Norinco’s new system for the PLA Ground Forces may mean that CASC and CASIC could soon join the PLA Rocket Force, meaning that China may build up its land-based missiles threatening Taiwan from about 1,500 to many thousands.
Eventually such LDUUVs may be armed with torpedos, sensors and computers informed with large databases and artificial intelligence programs, to enable independent anti-submarine patrols. Such ships could cooperate with unmanned combat ships and underwater sensors of the “Underwater Great Wall” that China is developing to help impose a blockade on Taiwan. LDUUVs can also be made larger to transport small groups of naval special forces troops from submarines to shore targets.
As it also carries the 1,500 km range CJ-20 subsonic land-attack cruise missile, the H-6N can contribute to PLA combined air and naval strikes against the U.S. Navy or against Taiwanese land or sea-based targets. With future longer-range missiles, perhaps a version of the new DF-20 supersonic or hypersonic speed cruise missile, the H-6N might contribute to attacks against Hawaii.
CCP’s success in intimidating Taiwan into accepting the “one country, two systems” dead end for its democracy would also endanger the direct security interests of other Asian democracies, like Japan and Australia, and those of the United States. For this reason, Washington is currently seeking to extend the bounds of the Kissinger era “Our One China” policy of the 1970s to properly recognize and support Taiwan’s democratic development.
Washington must also make good on policies set forth in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) to ensure that Taiwan has sufficient weapons for its self-defense. Recent decisions by the Trump Administration to sell Taiwan M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks that can defeat the Type-15, and new F-16V fighters that are better able to defense Taiwan’s airspace, are consistent with the goals of the TRA.
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