The aggressive behaviour of China, the PLA and the Eastern Theatre Command, as shown in this graphic, will provide valuable insights into Chinese military thinking and capacity in the days ahead. 1/14 🧵 
2/ First, the coming days will permit us to observe how China and the PLA might think about conducting a naval blockade of Taiwan. In essence, they are telegraphing their operational approach so we can war game ways to subvert it in future.
3/ The map, with the live fire areas published by the Eastern Theatre Command, clearly plots out where the Chinese think the key operating areas are for their strategic intimidation of Taiwan and for the conduct of an illegal blockade in the future.
4/ The groupings of naval task forces, and their readiness for sea for this activity, will provide good insights into levels of short term responsiveness, command styles, and contemporary Chinese naval tactics (and how good they are with their own doctrine).
5/ The coming days and weeks will allow observations about the sustainability of large scale PLA naval deployments. Just because you have a lot of ships, it doesn’t always mean you can coordinate them, or sustain all of them at sea over long periods.
6/ Second, the coming days will allow observation of PLA air-sea integration, as well as how they integrate these operations with space-based capability and EW.
7/ Given their almost automatic response to react in this way (which makes the Chinese predictable), how the air and naval capabilities interact will provide insights into exploitable weaknesses.
8/ Third, the coming days and weeks will provide lessons on the effectiveness of PLA joint capability and the capacity of their Eastern Theatre Command. This is a relatively new ‘combatant command’ (formed in 2016), and it is the one responsible for Taiwan.
9/ How well this new command is able to command and control the variety of forces (naval, air, cyber, missile, etc) that will be deployed to intimidate Taiwan over the short to medium term will be an area of great interest to multiple military and think tank observers.
10/ Reports such as annual U.S. DoD report to Congress on China are invaluable sources of information on PLA developments. But nothing provides better insights into the actual capability of a military than seeing them deployed ‘in the field’ (or at sea).
11/ You can read the latest DoD report here: media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/03/20…
12/ The highly predictable surge in Chinese military units, and their likely aggressive posture, is full of potential for incidents with U.S. and Taiwanese forces. Recent behaviour of PLA towards Australian and US aircraft and vessels provides a baseline for their approach.
13/ Beyond the strategic messaging about ‘don’t mess with the PLA’, the PLA will almost certainly use this as an opportunity iron out issues with its joint command and control. They are decades behind the west in these kinds of operations.
14/ But, we have been given a priceless opportunity to learn about the Chinese joint military capability in real time, and to assess its strengths and weaknesses. The Taiwanese, Americans, Japanese, Australians and others will be watching closely. End
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