According to an audio recording, reportedly leaked out of a recent high-level meeting that took place in Beijing, China, among senior officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Guangdong Military Region of the Southern Command, as well as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is actively preparing to put the country on a war footing.
Plans discussed at the early May meeting focused on a surprise military attack against Taiwan and seizure of the first island chain of archipelagos out from the East Asian mainland that includes territory belonging to Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Russia (the disputed Kuril Islands).
Much of the area within the first island chain is claimed by the PRC, for example, within its so-called “Nine-Dash Line.” The Gateway Pundit published a report about the joint CCP-PLA meeting on May 16.
The key focus of the CCP-PLA meeting was preparation to build a “military-civilian joint mobilization command and control system,” “establishing wartime procedures,” and “preparing for wartime command and control.”
The immediate Chinese military objective is conquest of Taiwan along with achieving a sweeping complete control of the South China Sea. That objective includes holding onto the artificial islands China has built up in the South China Sea and removing all U.S. and Western allied presence from the first island chain.
These apparently extensive military campaign objectives necessarily would bring the PLA into direct military conflict with Japanese, U.S. and other allied Western naval forces operating in the area of the South China Sea, explicitly including Australia and Japan, among others.
Internal operatives belonging to the Lude Media network smuggled out both the audio and a still photo of the meeting. An English language translation of the meeting transcript is being prepared.
Details discussed at the Beijing meeting in early May included employment of the full spectrum of “Unrestricted Warfare” capabilities.
For example, the PLA military command plans to flood the South China Sea with ostensibly “civilian” vessels, such as fishing craft, when, in fact, such ships will be fully armed PLA naval warships. Should they be approached or countered by U.S. or other naval vessels, Beijing will raise a disinformation clamor about “harassment” of civilian fishermen.
Internal as well as international CCP disinformation campaigns will work to portray China as the innocent party. Co-opted media outlets throughout the U.S. and the West in general already have been recruited to the CCP’s propaganda effort, as reported by the National Pulse in December 2020.
Release of another Biological Warfare (BW) agent with intent to set off another global pandemic could also be part of the war plan.
Additionally, the Guangdong Province manufacturing, shipbuilding and ship reconfiguring capabilities reportedly include some 90 firms along the coast which can refit up to 113 civilian ships simultaneously as disguised naval vessels, with an overall capability for some 280 ships per month.
Roll-on, Roll-off ferries are being converted to tank carriers and unmanned ships also can be produced at the rate of about 90 per month. Guangdong Province also has launched 16 satellites into orbit with 4 ground stations in operation to control them.
The four ground stations are located in Zhuhal (Guangdong Province), Mohe (Heilongjiang Province), Wusu (Xinjian Province) and Gaomi (Shandong Province).
While the U.S. and Western/NATO allies are focused on defeating the Russian invasion of Ukraine and perhaps expecting that any Chinese military attack against Taiwan would be delayed until after the November 2022 CCP elections — where Xi Jinping hopes to win a third term as Party Chairman — in fact, the Chinese instead may be planning a surprise October campaign that would take the U.S., Taiwan, and Western allies unprepared.
And while Russian forces may be too overextended in the Ukraine theater to provide meaningful assistance to the Chinese offensive, analysis of Moscow intentions, as well as earlier reporting from Russian defectors such as GRU Col. Stanislav Lunev, indicate that Russia remains committed to joint offensive operations against the U.S.
Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing in early February to meet with Xi Jinping in advance of his February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Afterward, Putin and Xi issued a joint statement attesting to their shared opposition to Taiwanese independence and opposition to NATO enlargement, and included a pledge to a “no limits” “friendship.”
They also laughably included an expression of concern about “compliance with the BWC [Biological Weapons Convention]” and a commitment to the Chemical Weapons Convention.
At this writing, it is unclear whether the original Mandarin language audio transcript of the Beijing meeting has been noted by U.S., Japanese, or other allied governments. As mentioned above, though, an English language translation of the meeting transcript currently is in process.
This column was originally published at Newsmax
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
