2. How it hasn’t picked a decisive moment yet
3. Destroying the gates of an underground fortress will lead to victory in war.
4. Hong-6N Strategic Nuclear Bomber Beyond the Doctrine of No Preemptive Nuclear Strike
1. The signals are piling up
Recently, a number of signals have emerged in China, indicating that Taiwan liberation war is imminent.
They are as below:
The People’s Liberation Army of China trends
1) The 35th Heavy Armed Joint Brigade and 73rd Artillery Brigade under the 71st Army Group in the Eastern Front deployed a number of new Multiple Rocket Launchers to target western part of Taiwan.
2) A Navy Marine Corps (landing forces) and an Air Force (airborne force) were assigned to the 1st Group, 3rd Group, 12th Group, and 42nd Group respectively.
3) Amphibious warfare exercises were conducted in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, and Pingtan and Dongshan, Fujian Province.
4) Continue research into tactics, military exercises and operational preparations for cigar warfare.
5) Military exercises were conducted by the reserve and militia forces in the Eastern, Southern, Northern, and Central Theater Commands.
6) Additional coastal defense fortifications were built in the coastal areas of Fujian Province.
7) Roads and railroads were expanded in Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces, respectively.
The People’s Liberation Navy of China trends
1) The carrier strike group conducted naval exercises in the waters off eastern Taiwan, the Philippine Sea, and the waters near Guam.
2) Carrier strike groups, destroyers, and amphibious assault ships practiced encircling Taiwan from all sides.
3) Aegis destroyers conducted missile launch drills.
3) Additional warships and submarines were deployed to the East Sea Fleet in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, and the South Sea Fleet in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province.
4) Increased activity by intelligence-gathering vessels in the waters around Taiwan.
5) Increased joint maritime exercises with the Russian Navy.
6) Maritime militia military exercises mobilizing civilian ships were held in ports in Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces.
7) Wartime evacuation drills were held at Zhanjiang Naval Base in Guangdong Province, mobilizing destroyers to evacuate civilians to safety zone.
8) Shipyards have seen a surge in the construction of various combat ships.
9) Port expansion work was underway in coastal areas from Jiangsu to Hainan provinces.
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force of China trends
1) Increased deployment of fighter jets to 20 air bases within 800 kilometers of Taiwan’s eastern coast.
2) Strategic nuclear bombers were deployed to the airspace around Taiwan and conducted the long-range flight exercise.
3) The aerial refueling exercise was conducted by the aerial tanker and the carrier strike group carrier.
4) Increased reconnaissance and strategic unmanned surveillance vehicles activities in the airspace around Taiwan.
5) Theater Missile Defense System in Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Shanghai, and Guangzhou were strengthened.
6) Air force bases and civilian airports located within 800 kilometers of Taiwan have been fortified.
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force of China trends
1) The 61st Missile Base in Anhui Province has been reinforced with more short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of striking the entire territory of Taiwan.
2) Missile launch facilities at the 62nd Missile Base in Yunnan Province and the 63rd Missile Base in Hunan Province have been significantly reinforced.
On May 1, 2023, the Conscription Work Regulations, which revised China’s wartime conscription regulations, went into effect. Chapter 9 of the Conscription Law stipulates that wartime veterans will be recruited in large numbers to serve in theunit in which they previously served on active duty, or to serve in the same types of military positions they held when they served on active duty.
According to a report titled “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2022” published on March 13, 2023 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a private research center in Sweden, comparing the period from 2013 to 2017 with the period from 2018 to 2022, China’s arms imports increased by 4.1% and its arms exports plummeted by 23%. China, as the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter after the United States, Russia, and France, the fact that arms imports have increased and arms exports have dropped suggests that China is stockpiling weapons in preparation for a war to liberate Taiwan. China is not only stockpiling arms and ammunition, but also wartime commodities such as oil, natural gas, coal, food, medicine, and artificial plasma (the liquid component of blood without blood cell) to treat the wounded.
2. How it hasn’t picked a decisive moment yet
In the tense situation where the PLA has virtually completed its preparations for a war to liberate Taiwan and is awaiting the order to launch an all-out attack from the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, the Taiwanese military is desperately trying to build up its defenses to ward off an attack by the PLA.
On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had approved a contract to sell Taiwan various weapons and ammunition worth $440 million. On July 28, 2023, the White House announced it had decided to provide Taiwan with $345 million in free military assistance.
The U.S. has made special arrangements for the Taiwanese military to access the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military’s Tactical Information Processing Network “Link-22”.
This allows the U.S. to provide the Taiwanese military with real-time information on many targets detected in the air, at sea, and underwater, as well as the U.S.’ battle plans.
The longer China delays the war to liberate Taiwan, the worse off China is and the better off Taiwan is.
Although the Russian army fought a war with an overwhelming offensive advantage over the Ukrainian army, it did not capture the seven Ukrainian military leaders, so a war that could have been over in seven days is still not over after more than a year, with many losses of life and damage to civilian facilities.
If the Russian army had advanced on the Ukrainian capital of Kiev at the very beginning of the war, laid siege to it, and captured the seven top Ukrainian military commanders, the war would have been over in seven days.
On February 24, 2022, Russian airborne units entered the city of Kiev. They advanced to the vicinity of the presidential palace in the center of the city, where they engaged in heavy fighting. It was a decapitation strike, or as the South Koreans call it, a beheading operation.
Shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine, Zelensky was trapped inside the presidential palace along with ministers and armed guards and was unable to escape.
The last-minute abandonment of the decapitation strike to capture Zelensky was a crucial mistake that prolonged the war in Ukraine.
The PLA has been conducting special combat exercises to quickly cement the war by capturing Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the entire Taiwanese military leadership in the early days of the war.
There is a large military training base in Zhurihe, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, about the size of Hong Kong, where a one-to-one replica of the five-story Taiwanese Presidential Office Building stands.
In 2014, the Air Landing Force was ordered to conduct a decapitation exercise to storm and capture the mock Presidential Office Building at the Zhurihe Military Training Base.
Because the fictional Taiwanese Army defense force resisted too stubbornly, it suffered heavy losses and failed to capture the fictional commander-in-chief.
The fictional President Tsai Ing-wen fled to the fictional Taiwanese Army war headquarters.
According to the Taiwan Military’s war scenario, in the event of an imminent attack by the PLA, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen could escape in an armored vehicle from the President’s official residence, Shilin Government House, travel through a secret tunnel from the presidential office to the building of the Ministry of National Defense and escaped in the helicopter to Hengshen Military Command Center. In January 2021, the Taiwanese military completed a secret underground passageway that leads directly from the Ministry of National Defense building to Hengshan Military Command Center.
3. Destroying the gates of an underground fortress will lead to victory in war
The Hengshan command center is a massive underground command post built by Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), who fled to Taiwan after losing the last Chinese Civil War, at the suggestion of the U.S.Military Advisory Group, into a high mountain in the Dazhi area in Northern Taiwan.
It is an underground defense facility that can withstand missile, nuclear, biological, chemical, and electromagnetic attacks. It is connected to other operations centers and military bases by a network of tunnels and is self-sufficient in air, electricity, water, and food.
If the PLA defeated the Taiwan army and liberated Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen and its military leadership could flee Taiwan by helicopter and take refuge on a U.S. Navy destroyer off the coast of Taiwan, where they could continue to command remotely.
If Tsai Ing-wen and the Taiwan military leadership hold on for dear life in Hengshan or flee Taiwan by helicopter to a U.S. destroyer, the U.S. military will seize the opportunity to intervene by force.
The bloody lesson of the Ukraine war is that China must never prolong a war for the liberation of Taiwan and must end it quickly at all costs.
It is believed that the PLA leadership, having analyzed the war in Ukraine in depth, has once again confirmed that the only way to win the war is to capture Hengshan Command Center from the outset quickly, capture Tsai Ing-wen and the Taiwanese military leaders alive, and obtain their surrender.
However, Hengshan Command Center is a very strong underground fortress. Could the PLA really capture it in wartime?
In wartime, it would be impossible for the PLA Airborne Landing Force to storm and capture Hengshan Command Center. The only realistic option for the PLA would be for the Rocket Force to launch a nuclear warhead missile to destroy the Hengshan Fortress’s gates.
According to a report in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun on January 6, 2023, U.S. and Japanese war planners believe that China is likely to use nuclear weapons in a war against Taiwan and have discussed countermeasures.
It can be understood that they expected the PLA to use nuclear weapons to destroy the gates of Hengshan Huizhou.
The location of the Hengshan Command Center had already been revealed to the world long ago. This means that the PLA had the coordinates to hit it. In contrast, the KPA’s war command center’s location is unknown. Therefore, the U.S. Army does not have the coordinates for the KPA War Center.
In June 2001, a book titled The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change, published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private U.S. research organization, described a preemptive nuclear strike to destroy the cover of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silo that the Russian army had built to a record level of robustness using new methods and new construction materials. According to the book, U.S. imperialist forces could launch a missile with a W88 warhead or a W76 warhead to destroy the Russian ICBM silo cover. The W88 warhead is a strategic nuclear warhead with an explosive yield of 475 kilotons, while the W76 warhead is a tactical nuclear warhead with an explosive yield of 100 kilotons or less.
Understanding the above, it is believed that in wartime, the PLA could launch a single 500-kiloton strategic nuclear warhead to destroy the Hengshan gate or a series of four or five 100-kiloton or lower tactical nuclear warheads to destroy the Hengshan White House gate.
In wartime, if the PLA were to destroy the Hengshan gate with a precision strike with a nuclear warhead, the PLA should not use a ground-based wheeled missile launcher. It should be a surprise launch in the dark of night on a Hong-6N strategic nuclear bomber carrying a missile with high strike accuracy, long range, and a strategic nuclear warhead. It means that the PLA would destroy the Taiwanese military command center with a surprise nighttime nuclear strike.
The Hong-6N strategic nuclear bomber is a key strategic asset for China, capable of striking Taiwan, as well as the Japanese islands of Okinawa and the U.S. territory of Guam. It has a cruising range of 6,000 kilometers and an operational range of 1,800 kilometers.
When the time comes for China to reclaim Taiwan, the Hong-6N strategic nuclear bomber will be equipped with a highly accurate, long-range, air-launched missile with a strategic nuclear warhead: the Dongfeng-21D missile. This missile has a high strike accuracy, with a CEP of 10 meters, and a long range of 1,450 kilometers, and can be optionally equipped with a 200-kiloton warhead, a 300-kiloton warhead, or a 500-kiloton warhead. Therefore, if the PLA wanted to dispatch a Hong-6N strategic nuclear bomber to destroy the gates of the Hengshan Command Center with a single precision strike, it would need to launch a Dongfeng-21D missile with a 500-kiloton strategic nuclear warhead from a Hong-6N strategic nuclear bomber.
4. Hong-6N Strategic Nuclear Bomber Beyond the Doctrine of No Preemptive Nuclear Strike
China is the only one of the world’s nine nuclear powers to declare the principle of non-preemptive nuclear attack. On October 16, 1964, China conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the fifth country after the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.
The fact that China has not declared that it is abandoning the principle of no preemptive nuclear strike in the nearly 60 years since 1964 does not mean that this principle remains unchanged, but rather that China maintains a strategic ambiguity about the preemptive nuclear strike.
Strategic ambiguity means that China could launch a preemptive nuclear strike if its core interests – national sovereignty and territorial integrity – are threatened. In other words, China could launch a preemptive nuclear strike in a war to liberate Taiwan in order to realize its territorial integrity.
When launched from about 300 kilometers, the Dongfeng-21D missile can strike a target in one minute and 40 seconds.
Once such a preemptive nuclear strike breaches the gates of Hengshan Command Center, the PLA Air and Land Battle Group, which is launched by transport aircraft over Taiwan in a rapid strike operation, can track down, capture, and surrender Tsai Ing-wen and the Taiwanese military leadership, who are panicked and scrambling for their last refuge, and quickly conclude the war for the liberation of Taiwan.
The Hong-6 strategic nuclear bomber is seen as the hero of the decapitation warfare that would eventually lead to a swift and overwhelming victory in the Taiwan Liberation War. The PLA deployed 60 Hong-6 strategic nuclear bombers into the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone in 2021, and a whopping 101 in 2022. On December 12, 2022, there was a 24-hour period when 18 Hong-6 strategic nuclear bombers flew into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
The following is a chronological summary of the deployment of the Hong-6 strategic nuclear bomber, as reported by the media in 2023.
January 1 Bombing exercises in the southwestern airspace of Taiwan
April 8-10 Bombing exercises surrounding Taiwan
April 13 Night bombing exercise
April 19 Bombing exercise in the northern airspace of Taiwan
April 21-22 Bombing exercise in the southeastern airspace of Taiwan
June 6-7 Joint patrol flights with Russian strategic nuclear bombers in airspace around Japan
June 8 Flying over southern Taiwan
June 11 Flying over Taiwan Strait
June 19 Night bombing exercise surrounding Taiwan
June 30 Flying in airspace around Taiwan
July 4 Flying over the Taiwan Strait
July 12 Bombing exercises in airspace in southern and southwestern Taiwan
July 21 Surrounding flights over Taiwan
Ma Ying-jeou, who served as Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016, said in a lecture in Taipei, Taiwan, on August 10, 2020, that China’s strategy for attacking Taiwan is to end the war in a short time, eliminating any chance for Taiwan to wait for U.S. military assistance, and noted that based on the military situation, the U.S. military is unlikely to come to Taiwan to support it in the event of war.
Speaking to a Chosun Ilbo correspondent in Taipei on June 24, 2023, Ma Ying-jeou worried that “Taiwan is now only one step away from war” and said, “The situation is so urgent that if you pull a strand of hair, the whole body will move.”
He is not the only one these days to say that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is imminent. Even members of the U.S. military and former high-ranking U.S. officials are now saying that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is imminent.
As one might expect, China’s war to liberate Taiwan is not a localized war limited to Taiwan. In wartime, the U.S. empire is expected to send U.S. imperialist forces into the East and South China Seas to outflank the PLA under the false pretense of defending Taiwan. If the U.S. launches such an illegal armed intervention, the Chinese civil war will escalate into a Sino-American war. In that case, in accordance with Article 2 of “the DPRK-PRC Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance,” which assumes that China is “in a state of war due to an armed invasion,” the DPRK will provide military assistance to China “with all its might and without delay,” and the KPA will launch a “South Korea Liberation War” to realize territorial integrity in the whole land of Korea.
In light of this, we can see that China’s imminent war to liberate Taiwan is synonymous with the DPRK’s imminent war to liberate the southern half of Korea. In this regard, it is worth paying attention to the signs of a preemptive nuclear strike, such as the PLA deploying its Hong-6N strategic nuclear bombers into the airspace near Taiwan.
