China’s next target is Vietnam, not Taiwan. By David Archibald, excerpted from a more general article about defense and China here.
China has been making plenty of threats for over 20 years now but these have been ignored because it would be inconvenient to take them seriously.
Actually, China’s threats started before WW2. They have been in abeyance until they had the resources to act on them. [Here is] a map from a Nationalist primary school textbook in 1938, showing where they thought China’s borders should be:
The map isn’t completely correct. At their last meeting, Xi asked Putin to hand Vladivostok to China. …
Who’s first?
Now, having established that China is intent on war and that this undertaking is ill-advised, foolish and likely end in tears, which country will China attack first?
Not Taiwan:
China has said that it will be Taiwan but it should be borne in mind that China lies about most things, that deception is a big part of the Chinese modus operandi, and that China would prefer to practice on a country that doesn’t have defence treaties with third parties. If it is Taiwan, Taiwan will fight because China will kill the entire Taiwanese political class down to provincial council members. The rest of the population will spend their remaining lives having an hour per day spent on studying “Xi Jinping thought,” which will be a living hell.
Taiwan has two monsoon seasons and so there are two weather windows for an invasion — May to July and the month of October:
China says that it will invade Taiwan but has laid very little concrete to that end. There have been no helipads laid on Chinese islands in the Taiwan Strait despite the fact that such things would be very useful in an assault on Taiwan. China has built at least one expeditionary helipad in the Nanji Islands for an attack on the Senkaku Islands, but nothing opposite Taiwan.
Vietnam, again?
Not much concrete has been laid for an invasion of Taiwan but plenty of concrete has been laid for invading Vietnam. The prime example of this is this base built 10 kilometres north of the border:
Construction of this base started a decade ago. What marks it as being different from other buildings in the region is the fact that the roofs are red, while all commercial buildings have blue roofs. This means that they were built at the command of an authority from outside the region, which also organized the steel supply. The oldest roofs have now faded to grey.
The purpose of the complex is to shield PLA armoured units from satellite observation. Units would move in at night, with the troops barracked in the small, narrow buildings in the centre. China has also built artillery pads right along the border:
China is also building a SAM site [at Banxin] just 20 kilometres from Vietnam, within range of Vietnamese artillery:
The fact that they are building it so close to the border suggests that they think their invasion will go exactly to plan, so it won’t be in range for long. Note the running track that most PLA facilities come with.
China has been attacking Vietnam since 116 BC. The last time they attacked was in 1979. In that exercise China lost 30,000 troops in three weeks, then withdrew. They kept shelling Vietnam until 1991.
The Chinese modus operandi is to launch a surprise attack and call it a defensive pre-emptive strike. The attack routes used in the 1979 war are shown in the following figure. They will use the same ones again, constrained by the difficult topography.
There is another reason why China is likely to attack Vietnam first. China claims the whole of the South China Sea while Vietnam has 47 bases in China’s claim area. This graphic also shows the Chinese, Malaysian, Filipino and Taiwanese bases:
… While China has been attacking Filipino ships supporting their bases on the eastern side of the Spratly Islands, and this has received a lot of public attention, they have left the Vietnamese bases alone so far. This is because they know the Vietnamese will shoot back. In fact, all the Vietnamese manning these bases have been told that it will be a fight to the death when China attacks.
Vietnam’s bases in the Spratly Islands show a wide range of building styles. One particular style is quite interesting. They are small bases in shallow water. Each bases has two arms coming out so that the defenders can fire down on Chinese forces in the water. A second base is built 100 metres from the first one, with an elevated walkway in between, so that the two buildings provide each other with mutual fire support:
Photos of these bases show a lot more dogs than you might expect. It seems that the dogs are used to warn of PLA attacks by frogmen at night. When China’s war starts, each of these bases will have its own fate. They will absorb some of China’s initial missile salvo, so they are protecting us too.
Vietnam has another attraction for China. While the result of an attack on Taiwan is binary — it will be obvious whether or not China has won — an attack on Vietnam could be like the last one. China may call it off after a few weeks and announce a victory. China and Vietnam are both repressive communist dictatorships. The animus between them is racial rather than based in philosophy.
When China’s economy was only ten times larger than Vietnam’s, Vietnam was reasonably confident that they could hold China off. With the temporary liberalization of China from 2000, the economic disparity widened and Vietnam became concerned that it would be overwhelmed. So Vietnam liberalized its economy too and its economy has been growing rapidly. The extra cash has enabled Vietnam to spend more on its bases in the Spratly Islands. For example, this satellite photo from late 2023 is of the base on Namyit Island:
The green area on the lower right is the original island base. Being enlarged [by cutter-suction dredging] will enable the base to absorb a far greater amount of Chinese artillery. Given that Vietnam is expanding bases on islands that China says are rightfully theirs, Xi would consider this to be the height of insolence.
On the 8th March, 2024, Xi announced that the PLA “should coordinate the preparation for maritime military conflicts, the protection of maritime rights and interests, and the development of the maritime economy.” This opaque language has been decoded to mean war over the South China Sea.
In Vietnam’s case, China’s attack will be supported by an armoured assault into northern Vietnam. China will undertake not to withdraw until Vietnam gives up its bases in the Spratly Islands. If it does so, Vietnam’s ships will have to hug the Vietnamese coast to get anywhere. This would add 3,000 km to a voyage to Japan, for example. The Chinese boot would be stomping on the Vietnamese face forever. Vietnam would rather fight. …
Vietnam is handicapped by its constitution, which doesn’t allow defence treaties with other countries. The good news is that Japan has started talks with the Philippines about basing Japanese troops there. Japan knows that its best chance of survival is being involved in China’s first war from day one, so it wants to have tripwire troops there. The Philippines has also clarified that the trigger for invoking its defence treaty with the United States is the death of a single Filipino soldier by any foreign power, meaning China.
2027 is the rumored date the Chinese are working with, but the Chinese are big on deception.
