I wonder how good China’s anti-missle capacity is. They have to sail across 100 miles of open water, at a time when GPS guided missles can hit with precision. I know the US has fairly good ability to shoot down missles, including at sea, but how much risk are the Chinese at during their journey across?
Best I can find, a landing craft goes about 20-25 mph
Malacca strait was a weakness up until China took over Myanmar with military coup last year. China has essentially invaded Myanmar and expanded its borders.
The best way to bottleneck China on the south west is a naval blockade in the Persian Gulf.
Also note that Myanmar was critical to the Allied Forces when they needed an entry point in WWII to invade and kick out the Imperial Japanese. With Myanmar under China’s control, the Allied Forces are very limited in where they can enter China.
It has nothing to do with being tough. Those days are over. They’re not coming back. China has stated they won’t wait forever and the KMT will not be able to stall. Hu Jintao is gone, the CCP is full gone ultranationalist nazi crazy and the only way to have ‘peace’ is to submit. Even then, even 100% loyalty won’t save you if you’re not useful to the regime.
You know what submission will do. Let’s just say… Taiwan will probably have a population of 9 million by that time.
The population won’t change that much following a Beijing takeover, but I am convinced it will involve large scale population transfer, with Taiwanese forcibly relocated and scattered to remote parts of China, and compliant Han Chinese citizens moved to Taiwan to take over the administrative reins.