Advancements in modern weaponry have caused some to question whether offensive amphibious operations are still feasible for the U.S. military. In 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates even remarked: “Looking ahead, I do think it is proper to ask whether large-scale amphibious assault landings along the lines of Inchon are feasible. New antiship missiles with long range and high accuracy may make it necessary to debark from ships 25, 40, or 60 or more miles at sea.”1
Secretary Gates’ comment reflects a hard reality for the United States’ joint force. Conducting offensive amphibious operations has become markedly more difficult. Potential adversaries have developed and are fielding space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; advanced ballistic and cruise missiles; underwater mines; lethal drone swarms; attack submarines; advanced cyber-attack capabilities; electronic warfare; and fourth- and fifth-generation strike fighters, all supported by advanced training in combined arms operations.2 U.S. strategists must find new ways of accomplishing offensive amphibious operations.
China, an emerging global U.S. competitor, also is scrutinizing offensive amphibious operations. But where U.S. strategists are concerned about executing such operations in a precision-strike era, Chinese leaders seem willing to accept more risk as they develop new expeditionary concepts and capabilities. Specifically, China appears to be developing offensive amphibious capabilities to:
- Conduct long-range expeditionary missions
- Engage in shorter duration missions related to seizing and holding islets and land features in the South and East China seas
- Prepare for rapid-reaction missions to protect citizenry, Chinese businesses, and other interests related to the “Belt and Road Initiative”
- Conduct a large-scale amphibious assault of Taiwan should political circumstances make that necessary
China’s history from its Civil War to today has taught its leaders the strategic value, enduring utility, and versatility of options offensive amphibious warfare capabilities can provide a great power, as well as the strategic cost of not having them.
China’s Amphibious Challenge
Chinese strategists and military thinkers are studying their own and others’ military histories to inform decisions related to their own military capabilities.3 Specifically, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leaders remember how the dearth of offensive amphibious capabilities in the Communist Chinese Navy directly affected the outcome of the Chinese Civil War, and they are acting on it.
By the beginning of 1949, the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang or KMT) had lost a series of major campaigns, suffering more than a million men killed, wounded, or missing in action.4 By that summer, Communist forces were meeting only token resistance as they rolled over Nationalist defenses, crossed the Yangzi River, and seized both Nanjing (the then-capital of modern China) and Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalists, was forced to retreat to the Island of Taiwan. Despite the Communists’ significant strategic advantages, the retreat stalemated the Pacific chessboard as Mao Zedong did not then have the means to project power beyond the mainland.
Strategic Imperative to ‘Liberate’ Taiwan
Mao and the other Communist leaders understood the need to finish the Chinese Civil War with a large-scale invasion of Taiwan. Despite the PLA having no experience in the conduct of such complex and risky operations, there were compelling strategic and political reasons for making the attempt.
First, the presence of Nationalist forces on Taiwan put Chinese national security at risk. That threat was brought home by the KMT Navy, which for the remainder of 1949 engaged in a sustained campaign of maritime interdiction along China’s east coast, causing significant merchant ship losses and devastating China’s fledgling economy.5 Similarly, the KMT Air Force took advantage of the absence of opposition to conduct periodic air raids against Shanghai, Nanjing, and Fuzhou, disrupting commerce and causing hundreds of civilian casualties.6
Second, Communist leaders feared the continued presence of the KMT on Taiwan invited U.S. military presence and interference in China’s internal political affairs. More specifically, the Communists believed Taiwan could be used as a base of operations to conduct anti-Communist military operations against China.7 There also was a long-held belief among Chinese leaders that the United States had infiltrated agents and provided military support for the KMT on Taiwan prior to the Nationalists’ losses on the mainland for the explicit purpose of shoring up an alternative regime to the CCP.8 In addition, they thought Taiwan was being integrated into a U.S. strategy to contain Communist advances along a front from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines.9
Third, and perhaps most important, the Chinese Communist leaders saw the continued survival of the Nationalists on Taiwan as questioning the legitimacy of Communist rule on the mainland. Mao clearly saw that with Chiang Kai-shek still governing a piece of Chinese territory, the anti-Communist countries led by the United States would not be inclined to recognize the new People’s Republic of China (PRC).10
Preparations for Final Battle of Taiwan
By fall 1949, the Chinese Communists had mopped up remaining pockets of resistance and held sway over all of mainland China. Only 120 nautical miles separated them from the Nationalists across the strait. That summer, Mao had notified Su Yu, acting Commander of the Third Field Army, to begin preparations for the final assault of Taiwan. In subsequent telegrams to Su Yu, Mao established four principles of preparation: (1) mobilization and training of the Army for cross-strait operations; (2) sufficient naval transportation to carry out an effective cross-strait attack; (3) air coverage of amphibious operations; and (4) cooperation of KMT defectors on the island in coordination with spies and/or other planted Communist agents.11
The development of these capabilities was no mean feat. The Chinese Communist Navy was in its infancy—comprising mostly motorized junks and older surface combatants seized from the Nationalists—and it lacked a sufficient number of ships designed for amphibious assault. The smaller vessels the Communists did possess, traveling between four and five nautical miles per hour, would need more than 20 hours to cross the strait.
Lacking a viable air force, the Chinese Communist leadership sent Liu Shaoqi, future president of the PRC, to see Joseph Stalin, who agreed to sell his Communist brethren 400 aircraft.12
But the Communists’ difficulties mounted. Training PLA Army personnel for launching a full-scale amphibious assault had no precedent in modern PLA history. Without amphibious experience, the PLA had never considered the requirements for successful interservice cooperation. Its officers had never wrestled with the tactical problems associated with modern amphibious operations—for example, how to transfer troops from large transports to smaller landing boats or landing craft; how to soften beach defenses through naval bombardment; and how to seize a beachhead, control it, and maintain logistical support across the strait. What rudimentary experience the PLA did have dealt solely with river crossings, a poor substitute for actual offensive amphibious operations.
The PLA Plan
General Su Yu submitted a number of plans to Mao starting in August 1949 and revised them into January 1950. The initial plan called for employing eight armies for the assault, but given the later discovery of the large concentration of KMT forces on Taiwan, in early 1950 Su increased the invading force to approximately 12 armies. For the initial assault, he had cobbled together a minimally sufficient amount of lift based on smaller vessels, a small core of older surface combatants that could double as transports, and a few merchant vessels that could play the role of naval transport ships.13
Throughout the fall of 1949 it became increasingly clear to Communist naval planners that lift remained a problem. When Su Yu contemplated an assault force of 12 armies, he calculated his transport requirements to be some 760,000 tons of vessel tonnage plus 2,000 small boats—already a stretch of limited resources. When the recalculation of requirements eventually reached 16 armies, PLA planners recognized they lacked the lift to accomplish the mission.14 Unable to meet requirements for even the assault echelons, the planners were at a complete loss as to where they would find sufficient lift for the logistics required for a prolonged campaign.
In the end, Su Yu and the Third Field Army lacked not only amphibious lift but also, and just as crucially, the doctrine and training to conduct and support an effective cross-strait attack and the ability to establish both air and sea control. The Nationalists simply had better air and naval forces, easily capable of disrupting a PLA assault. In May 1950, the total naval tonnage of the PLA Navy was some 43,000 tons, excluding any larger surface combatants, while the KMT naval force was more than double that, including some sizable warships. The PLA Air Force consisted of 50 fighters and bombers, while the KMT Air Force had 200 modern fighters acquired from the United States.15
Once the Korean War erupted and the United States dispatched ships from the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese Communists lost their slight chance of cobbling together an offensive amphibious force. If in 1949 Mao’s forces had possessed even a modest amphibious force, a minimal number of naval transport assets supported by airpower, and had invested intellectual capital and energy into conducting rudimentary amphibious landings, it is unlikely Taiwan could have survived as a Nationalist enclave.
Strategic Opportunities Lost
The inability to settle the Taiwan issue led to a number of strategic outcomes not beneficial to the PRC:
- The Chinese Civil War remains unresolved.
- Continued survival of the Nationalists led to the United States recognizing the Nationalists as the legitimate government of the Chinese people in October 1949 and deprived the Chinese Communists of recognition until 1972.
- Survival of the Nationalist regime coupled with the outbreak of the Korean War placed the United States in opposition to China as part of its containment strategy.
- As predicted by Chinese Communist leaders, the United States formed a military presence on the island, which persisted until the Nixon-Kissinger realignment away from the Nationalists and toward the PRC.
- Chinese Communist legitimacy remains an open question as long as there is a competing government on Taiwan, particularly a democratic one.
Some of these strategic outcomes have been reversed over time through diplomacy and the changing international environment. However, the most significant strategic effects linger. The Republic of China remains an alternative government for the Chinese people—calling into question Beijing’s legitimacy—and the United States retains the potential to intervene if the PRC behaves aggressively. These issues would not continue to confront Beijing had the PLA possessed sufficient offensive amphibious capabilities in 1949–50.
China’s Lessons Learned
China knows its history and is pursuing offensive amphibious capabilities for the purpose of attaining long-term strategic objectives. It has developed long-distance expeditionary capabilities through the acquisition of landing platform dock (LPD)-like ships and is rumored to be developing an even larger amphibious platform in a landing helicopter dock (LHD)-like ship. It has acquired from Ukraine the functional equivalent of an air-cushion landing craft (LCAC). The PLA Marine Corps is reported to be growing in end strength from 30,000 to 100,000 personnel.16 In addition, the PLA is developing an amphibious armored fighting vehicle—its own version of the delayed U.S. program.
For these reasons, the United States must never forget that offensive amphibious capabilities are, and will remain, a strategic imperative for a great power. The difficulty of the task cannot distract from the importance of retaining offensive amphibious capabilities as part of the nation’s core strategic capabilities to assure allies and partners and deter and impose costs on potential adversaries.
Were the United States ever to relax its attention to retaining these vital strategic capabilities, it could be forced to accept strategic outcomes counter to its national interests that could linger for decades—as did China.
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1. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, speech at the Marine Memorial, San Francisco, CA, 12 August 2010.
2. COL Todd S. Desgrosseilliers, COL William J. Bowers, and LCOL Christian F. Wortman, USMC, “Projecting Power in Gator Operations,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 138, no. 11 (November 2012): 35−36.
3. For a detailed discussion on the PLA’s consistency in studying its own and others’ military histories, see Andrew Scobell, David Lai, and Roy Kamphausen, eds., Chinese Lessons From Other People’s Wars (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute Press, November 2011).
4. Larry Wortzel, “The Beijing-Tianjin Campaign of 1948-49,” in Mark Ryan, David Finkelstein, and Michael McDevitt, eds., Chinese Warfighting: the PLA Experience Since 1949 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003) 59−60.
5. John Huebner, “The Abortive Liberation of Taiwan,” China Quarterly 110 (June 1987): 260.
6. Huebner, “The Abortive Liberation of Taiwan,” 261; He Di, “The Last Campaign to Unify China,” in Ryan, Finkelstein, and McDevitt, Chinese Warfighting, 75.
7. Jian Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 15.
8. Huebner, “The Abortive Liberation of Taiwan,” 262.
9. He, “The Last Campaign,” 75; Huebner, “The Abortive Liberation of Taiwan,” 260.
10. He, “The Last Campaign,” 75.
11. He, “The Last Campaign,” 76.
12. He, “The Last Campaign,” 77.
13. Christopher Twomey, Doctrinal Difference and Deterrence Failure in Sino-American Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 170.
14. He, “The Last Campaign,” 83, 84.
15. He, “The Last Campaign,” 84.
16. Brian Wang, “China Creating Second Largest Marine Corps to Secure Belt and Road Interests,” The Next Big Future, 23 July 2018.