What war mobilisation might look like in China

China’s war games are highly visible. Witness recent maritime drills with Russia and air drills with Thailand, as well as an exercise to transport troops using a passenger ferry in advance of Taiwan’s own war exercises, which started on July 24th. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has pledged to achieve the “peaceful reunification” of the mainland with Taiwan, yet some commentators fear that China may instead try to take Taiwan by force. Any such effort would be hard to hide.

If China wanted to invade Taiwan, it would be a “national, all-of-regime undertaking”, says John Culver, a former CIA man now with the Atlantic Council, an American think-tank. On the eve of invasion the air force would probably commandeer all of China’s air space, causing disruption that would be obvious almost immediately to the Chinese populace at large and to observers abroad. Security and personnel at air bases and ports, key infrastructure sites and along China’s land borders would be increased. Military outposts in Djibouti and Tajikistan would be put on high alert.

Much of this activity would be visible from satellite imagery, though China would probably try to interfere with that image-collecting. In the days before an attack Chinese satellites would cluster around American ones, aiming to bombard them. In the final hour or so before mission launch, cyber-attacks would probably try to knock out other countries’ capacity to see what the Chinese armed forces were doing.

The logistical build-up would already have been visible to outsiders weeks earlier. In advance of Z-day, as Ian Easton labelled it in “The Chinese Invasion Threat”, the whole of China’s south-eastern coast closest to Taiwan would be turned into “a well-stocked war camp”, with razor wire spooled along the shore line, fleets of civilian and military ships, and sprawling military encampments housing a vastly expanded array of troops and all their equipment. A steady trail of rail and freight transport with a build-up of military and other vehicles would ferry people, weapons, munitions and supplies. Commercial and coastguard vessels would be commandeered for military use, along with many civilian road vehicles. Field hospitals would be set up, just as Russia did near the border with Ukraine about two months before its attack last year.

Civilian life would soon be disrupted. Chinese experts and officials would probably be recalled from abroad, and resident experts and elites stopped from leaving the country, as would their families. Capital controls would be strict and extensive. There might be a nationwide blood drive—and blood banks might be moved closer to potential battle zones near the coast only days before an attack. Virtual private networks, which millions of Chinese employ to leap over the internet firewall, would probably become ever harder to use.

Signals of the government’s intentions might be noticeable even earlier. The most visible would involve propaganda campaigns. An attack would represent a wholesale change in how the Chinese Communist Party legitimises its rule at home, from economic growth to union with Taiwan, says Mr Culver. Chinese citizens, who are taught from childhood that Taiwan is an inalienable part of “the motherland”, would be subjected to intense and ubiquitous public-information campaigns to that effect, as well as dark warnings about violent, pro-independence activists in Taiwan. A simultaneous campaign to influence opinion in Taiwan, particularly through social networks and pro-China parts of its media, might stress America’s unwillingness to defend Taiwan, while lauding the wealth, health and happiness of mainlanders. There would be disinformation campaigns, too.

On the military side, munitions production would sharply increase in the six months or more before any planned attack, says Mr Culver. Training exercises would halt, so that major equipment could be maintained. All leave for the armed forces would be cancelled and the demobilisation of recruits on short-term contracts would be suspended, as happened in 2007 in the run-up to elections in Taiwan, when China’s leaders feared that a pro-independence candidate would win. High-level meetings in Beijing and around command centres would sharply increase. Education and information campaigns for the armed forces would change, too. For most members of China’s armed forces it would be the first time that they were preparing actually to kill. ■