(dramatic music)
- [Johnny] In the summer of 1995, China sent a bunch
of its troops to the province of Fujian.
They then started testing missiles and putting it on TV.
They then started running highly publicized combat
exercises, very similar to what it would look like
to cross this 130 kilometer wide straight
to invade the island of Taiwan.
A place that China doesn't think is a real country
but rather a part of China itself
a rebellious island province in an unfinished civil war.
- Another round of Chinese war games
near Taiwan has the us and other concerned.
- [Johnny] China did all this saber rattling
because Taiwan's president had asked
for a visa to visit the United States
and the US Congress voted to give it to him
defined Beijing and undermining China's claim to Taiwan.
Oh, and Taiwan was holding their first democratic election.
- [Reporter] These are the first free elections
of a Chinese leader in 5,000.
- [Reporter] China announced Friday
that it would start the new military exercises
less than a week before Taiwan's presidential election.
- [Narrator] China hated that all of this was happening
on this island that they think is theirs.
Hence all of the military flexing,
but look who shows up next.
- Diplomatic trouble may be brewing again
between China and the United States.
(dramatic music)
- It's the US military.
And they're sending their biggest show
of military force in Asia
since the Vietnam war right here in China's neighborhood.
President Bill Clinton sent in all of the US's best stuff.
Aircraft carriers, guided missile cruisers, destroyers,
powerful weapon systems
from the most powerful military on earth.
So all of this concentrated US military power
comes into the region
and enters right here through the straight of Taiwan.
It was a response to China
and all of its efforts to intimidate Taiwan.
The message was very clear.
"China, we are way more powerful than you.
So back off and let Taiwan do its thing."
And guess what?
It totally worked.
China backed down and the US reasserted itself
as the global powerhouse, a power that no one can mess with.
Okay. So now let's fast forward to last fall.
A lot has changed in this 20 or so years
and China is at it again, flexing on Taiwan.
Their favorite way of doing this lately
is flying military aircraft into this air border
Taiwan's air defense identification zone or ADIZ,
and ADIZ is airspace that if you enter
you should identify yourself
or else the nearby country will assume
that you're coming to attack them.
China has started flying military aircraft
over this airspace
without asking permission, without identifying themselves.
Not just like once or twice
but like dozens of times per day, hundreds of times a month
these are the actual recorded flight paths
of Chinese aircraft flying over Taiwan's ADIZ.
And then back to China, it's a giant F.U.
to Taiwan or rather remember whose boss here.
Luckily there's some really amazing data
on every single one of these Chinese flyovers.
They're all documented.
- [Reporter] Taiwan's air force scrambled again today.
- This is research
from the Foreign Policy Research Institute
and it's incredibly useful to see China's activity
in Taiwan's ADIZ.
You can see this massive surge late last year in flyovers.
This is a graph that shows every single time
a Chinese jet has flown over Taiwan's ADIZ in 2021.
You can see that it comes
to a peak in the first week of October.
This was the week that China was celebrating its founding
and they were sending a very clear message to Taiwan.
You will be ours.
That week, this Chinese state owned publication comes out
with this headline: Time to warn Taiwan secessionists
and their fomenters: war is real.
This is not fair play.
So guess who shows up to the region to calm things down?
- A US war shit has sailed through the Taiwan Straight.
(upbeat electronic music)
- So right after this huge bulk of flyovers
of Taiwan's aides, the US sends in guided missile destroyers
through the Taiwan Straight.
And there are accompanied by a Canadian show.
- One of 25 Chinese aircraft that entered its defense zone.
- Oh, but this time it didn't work.
Here's when the US sailed through the Straight.
And here's what China does after.
Tons more flyovers of Taiwan's ADIZ.
Looking at the raw data,
you can see that these flyovers start happening
almost every day.
(upbeat synth music)
It's not the 90s anymore.
Things have changed.
Bill Clinton can't just send a bunch of Naval ships
to the Taiwan Straight and expect China to back down.
We're living in a different era.
The biggest difference is that
China's military has become way more powerful
in the last 20 years.
Add to that, that there's zeal
for taking over Taiwan to reunite it with mainland China
has grown immensely every year since.
The reason I'm telling you this story
and showing you the difference between how China reacted
in the 90s and how it reacted last fall
is because that difference is really important
if we want to think about
what war looks like in this region.
I've been talking to military experts.
I've been diving deep into military reports
and writings from the Chinese military itself
to try to understand what war with Taiwan would look like.
It's something that is becoming more likely year by year.
So what's to follow is my best attempt
at understanding what war in the Taiwan Straight looks like
a war that drags in the United States and its allies.
War is impossible to predict, and so we don't know for sure
but what I hope we can do here is look at a scenario
and learn how conflict works and what calculations
all the countries involved would have to make
in what might become the next world war.
- I just wanna make China understand
that we are not gonna step back.
- China's aggression against Taiwan is accelerating
and it's blaming the US.
- [Reporter] Beijing has been getting
increasingly tough on Taiwan.
- [Reporter] So you are saying
that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense?
(dramatic music)
- Yes. And yes.
- Hey, before we dive into this
I want to say thank you to the sponsor of today's video
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And now let's dive into the scenario
about potential war between Taiwan and China.
(cheeky music)
Okay, I'm gonna dive into a very specific scenario
of how conflict could escalate in the Taiwan Straight.
But first I have to say something.
I have to get this off my chest
which is I've felt a little bit conflicted
making this video.
I feel very against the sort of machismo fascination
with conflict, like it's some sort of cool, good thing.
When at the end of the day
what we're talking about are people's lives.
We are talking about valuable taxpayer money.
We are talking about the future
of entire societies being ripped apart by a power struggle.
This is not sexy and cool.
This is a nightmare.
Secondly, let us all just acknowledge right now
how easy it is to dehumanize China
and its leaders and its military.
But let me just remind you that China doesn't want war.
They don't want bloodshed.
They will probably try much less violent ways
to try to force Taiwan to the negotiating table
before resorting to all out invasion.
But the reason I want to make a video
about the nightmare scenario, because even
if a military has a goal
for a less violent intervention, that's not how war works.
Conflict is very messy and one miscalculation can lead
to an escalation in the conflict.
And now you have a wildfire that is
out of control on both sides.
It's incredibly easy for the momentum
of conflict to bring us into that kind of situation.
And that's why I wanna suss out what it could look like.
Okay. Those are my of disclaimers.
Let's dive into this.
(dramatic music)
I'm gonna start rolling here.
I'm two.
Okay. I'm gonna clap here comes.
Okay, I need to bring you over
to my desk to show you some documents I've been staring at.
Any invasion of Taiwan starts with this document.
This is a Chinese law meant to stop any parts of China
from succeeding from China itself.
And it mentions Taiwan.
It basically says that if Taiwan tries to assert
its independence from China or, and this is the most
important part, or if the possibilities
for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted
that China shall employ non peaceful means
and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
Translation, if they run out of diplomatic solutions,
China is required by law to invade Taiwan
and force it to reunite with China
and know I don't read or speak Mandarin
but Google translate, come on.
Listen, we're like 70 years into peaceful solutions
being tried and not working.
Meanwhile, on the island of Taiwan support for any sort
of reunification is at an all time low.
Like it's not looking like peaceful reunification
is gonna happen,
which is making the interpretation of this law
more and more on the side of China should do this forcibly.
Okay, so that's the legal justification
from a Chinese perspective,
pair that with the fact that unlike in the 90s
China now has a massive military.
- There's new concern at the Pentagon
about China's military buildup.
- With all sorts of new missiles-
- China could soon be able
to deploy a nuclear tipped missile
that us defenses would find much harder to detect.
- Tanks, helicopters, submarines, ships.
I mean, this isn't from me.
This is the US government.
They recently came out with a report that said
that the Chinese Navy now is bigger than the US's Navy.
At least by numbers.
They have 360 versus our 297 ships.
Now caveat to that data, our ships are much bigger
but still China's recent military buildup is nuts
and this is why the US military is kind of freaking out.
- My opinion is this problem is much closer to us than most.
Think we have to take this on with urgency.
- China is upping the anti on Taiwan
- [Reporter] And there are fresh fears
of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Taking over Taiwan remains
China's number one strategic priority.
(dramatic music)
- Okay, so this is the moment that a lot
of you probably came to this video for,
which is what does the war actually look like?
Let's say that China feels confident
that the only way that Taiwan is going to join China
which is again, a legal imperative,
is if they forcibly invade.
Blockade isn't working,
negotiation isn't working.
The first strike on Taiwan would likely look like
just another Chinese provocative ADIZ flyover.
China's done this hundreds of times.
So at this point, Taiwan thinks
that they're just doing another one of their routine flex
our military might exercises,
but this time the fighter jet turns
towards the island and begins firing.
At the same time, China fires guided missiles
from the mainland and deploys tons more jets
and they all start firing in a fast,
highly coordinated attack.
The target here is anything that Taiwan can use
to defend itself, like weapons that can shoot
down planes or boats that are coming onto the island.
I mean, this could be anything.
Radar communication nodes, military command centers
Navy bases, bridges, communication networks, power stations
even government buildings.
They would have a wide variety
of targets to effectively deny Taiwan.
The ability to respond effectively.
I mean, unfortunately for Taiwan, a lot
of these targets are left out in the open.
They're easy to see.
A runway is really easy to see and really hard to hide.
This first attack would happen very quickly.
One military expert, Ian Easton put it very
succinctly when he said, assuming the intent is invasion,
these attacks could be expected to be concentrated
in a short timeframe, as a prelude
to invasion with no pauses other than those required
for moving, reloading, and repairing equipment.
Whew, sounds horrible.
So Taiwan's leaders are caught off guard
and they immediately retreat underground
to a command bunker where they can plan their response.
Luckily, China will not be able to take out
all of their military targets.
Some of their aircraft hangers are deep in mountains
and some of their missile sites are really well camouflaged.
They would escape the bombardment.
So Taiwan would have the ability to respond.
They would likely be able to get some air power
into air and fire some missiles
towards mainland China to hit air bases
radar and military batteries on the mainland.
At this point, Taiwan also sends troops
to their Western beaches to start laying mines
and preparing for an oncoming barrage
of Chinese troops who are probably now
on their way across the Straight.
This has all happened within just a few hours.
And the US is just barely hearing about this.
China has likely jammed much
of the communication channels that would allow
the US to have a clear picture of what's going on.
This will slow their response time.
The thing is China has gotten really good
at sending little robots up to satellites in space,
their civilian satellites, to like help repair them.
They could use the same technology to latch
onto an American spy satellite
and block its ability to view what's happening
on the ground.
Yes, we're not talking about conflict
in space as a feasible part of this scenario.
So the US is trying to get up to speed.
The US president and military leaders
now have to decide how they're gonna respond.
Are they gonna risk American lives to
protect this far away island?
It's something that the American public broadly
would not be into, but they have to do something.
They have to make a plan.
Meanwhile, back over in the Straight,
Taiwan's military assets are severely damaged
and China is now sending hundreds of thousands of troops
and loads of supplies
across this 130 kilometer stretch of water.
They're using boats of all kind, military boats
merchant boats, that don't need to defend themselves
because Taiwan can't respond adequately.
And each of these vessels is carrying tons
of supplies and troops.
But again, on Taiwan's Western beaches
there are probably Taiwanese troops who have
been planting mines ready for this invasion.
So there's now a battle
on the beaches as Chinese amphibious attackers
try to hit the beaches and push back the Taiwanese defense.
We're gonna continue assuming Taiwan
and doesn't give up and capitulate and surrender to China,
at this point.
If that's the case, the US is now just starting to respond
likely from their bases in the region, Japan and Guam.
They deploy aircraft carriers
with jets and bombers stealth fighters, as well
as fast attack submarines that will focus on one thing
hitting all of these ships
the ones that are bringing stuff and people
across the Straight.
Japan and Australia likely come in as allies
to help out on this defense.
And now the US and its allies are in direct combat
with China, two nuclear nations fighting each other.
This is exactly what we try to avoid
because we don't know where it goes from here.
We don't know where the ceiling is.
War always escalates.
And when there's nuclear weapons involved
that's a very scary momentum.
There's even a scenario where China actually
strikes first hitting us bases in Japan and Guam.
At the same time that they hit their initial targets
in Taiwan.
This would be a much more or provocative move
and would certainly bring the US full force
into a war with China.
So now you have Chinese troops who have pushed
back the Taiwanese defense on the western beaches.
And they're now moving in towards major city centers.
The US is fighting on the water and in the air.
And from here
it becomes impossible to predict what could happen next.
There are so many different directions
depending on the US's tolerance for bloodshed.
There could be American troops on the ground trying to push
back Chinese advancements inland.
But if you look at Chinese military writings on this
you see that as a part of this scenario
when they're thinking about it, they're not just thinking
about the US and its allies in Taiwan.
They also predict that India will take advantage
of this moment of chaos
and invade the Himalayan borders to the south.
They even foresee Tibetan freedom fighters, way out here
in the west who have long been hostile toward Chinese rule
rising up and taking advantage
of the instability to gain back control of their region.
I mean, you can see how this starts to unfold.
Before you know it, the entire region is devolving
into a war that threatens to engulf many more countries,
hundreds of thousands of lives.
And this is where I wanna stop because from here
it just becomes so speculative as to be completely useless.
But I tell you this scenario
of a potential invasion of Taiwan,
not because it's the most likely, it's actually not.
The more likely situation is China will pressure Taiwan
through blockades or through other painful pressures
that will get them to come to the negotiating table.
I tell you this
because this scenario is still absolutely a possibility.
What's scary to me about all of this.
And I've said this a bunch
but I'm just gonna keep saying it: once something
like this starts, it's really hard to reverse it,
to put the cat back in the bag.
No one's in control.
That's a concept that's really hard to get your head around,
if you didn't live through a global war.
We live in an international system
that feels like it has rules.
We have the UN, we have treaties and conventions.
We have global trade.
It feels like there's some sort of order
but let me remind you that
that's because we live in the most peaceful time
in human history, this long piece where
few people alive today witnessed what it looks
like when two powerful countries clash in all out war.
It usually happens when some powerful leader feel strongly
that he deserves land
that the rest of the world says isn't his.
So he uses his big, powerful army to go take it.
And in the process, he sparks a horrible tragedy.
And while I hope more than anything that doesn't happen
in this case, we have to remember how commonplace it is
and that the peace be these big powers
is actually the outlier here.
I really hope that we are past needing to resort
to this version of conflict
to settle our disputes at this time in our history.
But I'm not totally convinced that we are yet.
And I think China and Taiwan,
this specific case is the best thing to look at
to test whether or not we can.
We can talk about it.
We can find creative ways to solve this,
instead of resorting to the thing humans have done forever,
which is just fight each other and see who wins.
(downbeat music)
Okay, so I appreciate you watching this video
and would love to hear your thoughts.
I left a bunch of sources down
in the description where you can read a lot more
about this from the really good research
and reporting that has been done on this topic.
I've got a bunch more videos coming out in the next month.
So stay tuned and subscribe if you're not already.
I also have LUTs and presets
which are in the link in my description.
They are how I color my videos and photo,
if you are interested in that.
I also have a storytelling course where I go
into my thoughts on storytelling.
That is all in the description.
You can check it out and that's it.
Thanks for watching.
I'll see you in the next one.