Few geopolitical subjects are as important as the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Observers around the globe are anxiously analyzing the probability that an invasion would succeed and the closely linked question of how Beijing can be effectively deterred from attempting it. In this context, valuable lessons can be learned from an earlier failed invasion of the island by a power with overwhelming naval superiority. France’s attempts to occupy parts of Taiwan in 1884-85 were stymied by a series of clever defensive actions. Despite the immense technological and other differences between today’s battlespace and that of 140 years ago, the successful defense of Taiwan can provide insights into how to protect it today.
By way of context, Taiwan was only one front in a wider Sino-French War, whose impetus was France’s desire to expand its control from southern Vietnam to the northern part of that country. Northern Vietnam, despite its history of resistance to Chinese power, was a tributary of China. French efforts to take over northern Vietnam were being parried by a Chinese force—the “Black Flag Army”—led by Liu Yongfu, an independent warlord, but one whom China did not try to rein in as he fought the French. The Sino-French War of 1884-85 began after a series of battles and unsuccessful diplomatic initiatives. Although the key prize was Vietnam, France also used its naval superiority to attack both mainland China and Taiwan, primarily as a way of exerting pressure on China to enable a favorable settlement in Vietnam. France’s goal was not to permanently occupy Taiwan but to seize important parts of it so so that France could trade at the negotiating table.
Given the state of China in the late nineteenth century, it would have seemed that France should have been able to easily defeat Chinese forces, at least in any coastal location. The Sino-French War was only one of many instances between the 1830s and 1940s when China was ravaged and insulted by foreign forces. At the time of this particular conflict, the decrepit Qing Dynasty had already lost a couple of wars to Britain and to a British-French coalition. As a result, China had been forced to yield treaty ports where the foreigners could trade opium and other goods, while “extraterritoriality” put those foreigners beyond the reach of Chinese law. Russia had seized a Chinese territory as large as France, which it continues to control today, including the key port of Vladivostok. Moreover, just two decades before the Sino-French War, China had been weakened by the devastating Taiping rebellion, a protracted civil war with one of the highest death tolls of any conflict in history. French forces were confident of winning easy victories, though that excessive confidence would plague their efforts in Taiwan and elsewhere. Chinese ground forces were surprisingly tenacious in Vietnam, even as French naval superiority enabled their warships to effectively bombard coastal locations across mainland China.
The French invasion of Taiwan
The initial French attack on Taiwan was launched against the northern port of Keelung in August 1884. The plan was to destroy the port’s defenses and then to conduct an amphibious assault to seize it, as well as nearby coal mines. The French bombardment destroyed the Chinese guns ashore, and they staged a landing the same day. However, the next day, unexpectedly large and effective Chinese forces managed to drive the landing force back to the sea. The French, frustrated at their failed invasion, staged a second attempt in October. Their marines landed west of Keelung, and were able to seize the town and several elevated positions. However, they could not advance beyond this, and the coal mines exceeded their grasp. In any case, the coal mines were no longer as desirable a prize. The Chinese commander, Liu Ming-chuan (no relation to the previously mentioned Liu Yongfu) had flooded the mines, destroyed mining machinery, and burned 15,000 tons of recently mined coal to forestall French use of these resources.
Liu Ming-chuan correctly anticipated that Tamsui—a port at the mouth of a river by the same name, twenty miles to the west of Keelung—would be the focus of the next French attack. In addition to moving forces from Keelung to Tamsui, he bolstered them with Chinese frontiersmen who lived in the “hill country” at the edge of Taiwan’s mountains, where they regularly clashed with the Taiwanese aborigines who had been driven into the highlands. These frontiersmen were armed with relatively primitive guns, but they were skilled at using any landscape to fire from concealed positions.
Liu also had the wisdom to find ways to thwart French naval power from intruding up the Tamsui River. He used the ancient naval tactic of blockships: sinking vessels (in this case, by filling them with stones) to obstruct traffic. He also had a number of naval mines that were emplaced, like the blockships, close to the mouth of the river. The mines were remotely controlled via cables that linked to a command post ashore. The initial obstructions and minefields were later bolstered by large baskets full of stones that were sunk to prevent passage. The French were cognizant of these threats, and found their warships’ movements stymied by a ground force without a navy.
The French began their amphibious assault with a bombardment against the two forts of Tamsui; many of the shells missed their targets or failed to explode. The French warships also sent small boats to conduct a minehunting operation: they visually scouted for the small buoys that maintained the mines near the top of the water column. On finding some of these, they located and tried to sever the undersea cables linking the mines to the command post, but without success. They retreated when the Chinese forces detonated one of the mines near them.
The French forces then prepared to land a group of marines who would seize the forts and the command post controlling the mines. Unfortunately for them, they had done insufficient reconnaissance, and were unaware that they would be approaching an area with dense tree and bush cover, as well as Chinese trenches. This environment not only enabled their opponents to readily shoot at them from concealed positions, but also limited the ability of French forces to move as coherent units through the brush. They frequently could not see one another or the enemy, and could not see visual signals to coordinate action. The early death of the marines’ bugler prevented communication and coordination using sound, except over the short distances within which French officers were able to shout over the din of battle. The French fired aimlessly into the trees and brush, unable to locate the enemies who were continually shooting at them from multiple directions. Vanquished, they stumbled back to the shore and re-embarked their ships the same day that they had arrived.
The stymied French shifted their attention back to Keelung, where they maintained a foothold. Over the next month, they hastily constructed various forts, and repaired some Chinese ones that they had attacked and captured. French forces fought off a couple of attempts by Chinese infantry to launch surprise attacks against these forts, and attacked both a Chinese fort and a village hosting a logistical base. The situation was largely a stalemate, in which French forces destroyed a couple of villages and the Chinese killed a few French foragers, but neither side could decisively advance. This stalemate worked to the Chinese forces’ advantage: the stymied French were succumbing in great numbers to disease, with up to half their ground forces incapacitated at any given time, and many dying.
French forces might be incapable of movement on land, but they still dominated at sea. During the last months of 1884, they sought to bring this advantage to bear by blockading three of Taiwan’s key ports: Tamsui, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. They captured or sank a number of merchant ships; however, Chinese forces and merchants readily evaded the porous blockade, particularly by the clever expedient of sailing at night. China was able to move tens of thousands of mainland troops onto the island, as well as substantial quantities of materiel, including German-made cannons. Liu Ming-chuan further bolstered his strength with personnel gathered from Taiwan itself. These included both additional frontiersmen and the people those frontiersmen had fought for centuries: select groups of Taiwanese aborigines, who were renowned for their ferocity in battle. French forces also increased their numbers, drawing on units from elsewhere in Asia and beyond.
In this case, French training French forces launched a couple of offensives around Keelung during January through March of 1885, making sixty miles of forward progress and taking additional fortifications. There were occasional Chinese tactical successes that exploited the terrain, such as rolling large rocks down on an ascending French force, and inflicting heavy casualties while hiding behind tree cover. However, the situation on the ground returned to a stalemate during March. Under these circumstances, French commanders began to develop plans for withdrawing from Keelung, feeling that the cost was not worth the benefits of remaining. At the end of March, French forces had an unequivocal success in seizing the Penghu Islands (also known as the Pescadores), a small archipelago just west of Taiwan. Aside from the fact that France could trade those islands at the negotiating table, they provided a base for ships, and seizure of them at an earlier date might have strengthened French warships’ ability to effectively blockade Taiwan.
The French never had to conduct their planned evacuation from Keelung under fire, since the two sides came to a peace agreement in early April. The most important aspect of the peace settlement was that France acquired control over the whole of Vietnam. To ensure that Chinese forces pulled out of Vietnam, French troops remained in Keelung and the Penghu Islands until they had done so. Taiwan and the Penghus were, as they had been throughout the war, only a means for France to achieve its ultimate goals in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Japan looked covetously on Taiwan, and compelled the Qing dynasty to surrender the island to Japan a decade later, in the wake of China’s catastrophic defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. As a codicil, Liu Yongfu, leader of the Chinese Black Flag Army in Vietnam, tried to resist Japan’s takeover of Taiwan. He briefly became president of the self-proclaimed and swiftly terminated “Republic of Formosa” before being compelled to flee.
Lessons for today
A few key points emerge from the above narrative. First, in Taiwan as elsewhere, a hostile navy’s movements can be hindered by the use of naval mines or inert obstacles. The Qing defenders of Taiwan only had enough mines, spare vessels, and time to block the entrance to the Tamsui River. However, the rim of shallow water stretching along Taiwan’s northern, western, and southern coasts facilitate larger-scale mining and obstruction operations. Emplacing inexpensive artificial reefs in peacetime could impede any potential Chinese landing force, while also having ecological benefits. China could divert resources to bombard those reefs, but that would reveal where they planned to land, and the difficulty of doing rapid battle-damage assessment would likely result in chunks of reef strewn about in pathways that the invasion force planned to use. Taiwan could also deploy numerous mines that sit on the seabed, and are much harder to hunt than those used during the Sino-French War. Such mines can use technology that dates back to the mid-twentieth century, and be readily made in vast quantities; the main constraint is ensuring that they can be loaded and distributed during a short timespan on the eve of war. The result would be a fierce gauntlet that would menace Chinese ships and landing craft, while also channelizing, delaying, and disrupting traffic in ways that would degrade operations and render ships more vulnerable to other forms of attack.
Second, the importance of the Penghu Islands should not be underestimated in any campaign involving Taiwan. Those islands represent a useful base for blockading Taiwan and a stepping-stone that can enable attacks on it; the key French error lay in not seizing them earlier. Their physical isolation from Taiwan increases their vulnerability. In case China invades the Penghu Islands as part of an overall campaign against Taiwan, Taiwan needs to have enough forces on the islands to inflict both casualties and delays, while quickly destroying all port, air, and other facilities that might aid the invaders.
Third, seemingly menacing blockades of Taiwan can be quite permeable, as the French experience shows: tens of thousands of troops and vast quantities of materiel bypassed it. Despite today’s China having the advantages of greater sensor capabilities and numbers, as well as aircraft and missiles, it may not be able to hermetically seal off Taiwan from the world. Decoys, distractions, and electronic disruption of sensors could limit the effectiveness and responsiveness of Chinese ships and aircraft. Meanwhile, numerous small, low-signature blockade-runners could sneak past Chinese patrols to deliver goods to piers or beaches along the island’s thousand-mile coastline. Like any smugglers, they will benefit from the high financial rewards available to those who brave the blockade, and such incentives will likely induce many to participate. In some cases, they might try to oversaturate the ability of blockaders in any one area to respond, like a herd of zebras rushing past a lion and creating confusion with their various signatures while doing so. The result is that while some goods may be in short supply, and improvised logistical chains will be needed to distribute goods from beaches to where they are needed, China should not anticipate that Taiwan will need to meekly and rapidly surrender in the face of a blockade.
Fourth, Taiwan’s physical environment can work to the great advantage of defenders. The hill country of Keelung, and especially the thick cover of trees and bushes, enabled Chinese forces to defeat the initial landing and to greatly impede the second. While Taiwan is less wooded than it was, the growth of urban environments creates a forest of metal and concrete from which defenders can effectively target the advancing enemy. As in any urban warfare, the defender has superior knowledge about how to remain both effective and invisible.
Fifth, the failed landing at Tamsui underscores the importance and vulnerability of command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). Inadequate knowledge of the physical environment contributed mightily to the French defeat. Excessive dependence on a single, critical communications node—the sole bugler—exacerbated the disaster. While moderns might dismiss these problems as belonging to another age, any deployed communications system being used in an expeditionary environment is likely to be somewhat fragile. Should a Chinese force land in Taiwan, its communications capabilities may be strained and can be readily fractured by targeting key nodes in combination with electronic warfare to degrade, disrupt, and delay signals. Necessary workarounds in the face of broken communications may potentially enable Taiwanese forces to better deceive the enemy with false electronic and voice communications, exploiting shared languages to induce frustration and fratricide. This threat can also contribute to deterrence to the extent that the PLA and China’s leadership may be hesitant to launch an invasion until they think they have communications that are thoroughly reliable and secure.
Finally, overconfidence was a key factor that limited the effectiveness of French forces. As was noted above, they might have begun by seizing the smaller, more isolated Penghu Islands, and then used that archipelago as a base for an effective blockade of Taiwan, followed by invasion in a favorable location. Instead, they began by launching attacks against two locations in northern Taiwan, areas with considerable cover and where the defenders could draw on the resources of a large island. Contrary to expectations, the defenders were unable to be scattered with a few volleys of modern weapons, and the French were driven back to the sea twice before achieving stalemated control over a small area. The Qing dynasty was weak, but not dead, and French underestimation of its capabilities was paid for with failed operations and loss of life. This is one area where human beings have not advanced alongside our technologies: we are still susceptible to overestimating our knowledge and hubris that only briefly masks our incompetence. Today, mainland China may be apt to underestimate a small nation whose population outnumbers more than sixty to one. However, Taiwan’s personnel, like those of Ukraine, may have more skills and motivation than are perceived by the potential aggressor. Disabusing China of its illusions of easy victory—the type of delusions that led Putin’s vanguard to pack dress uniforms for the parade in Kyiv—may aid in deterrence.
Closing remarks
Despite the tremendous advances in military technology over the last 140 years, it is worth revisiting lessons from the French invasion of Taiwan. The physical geography remains largely the same, though Taiwan’s expansive urban terrain may influence the calculus of would-be invaders from the mainland. The utility of naval mines and obstructions, the defensibility of Taiwan’s physical environment, the permeability of blockades, the importance of the Penghu Islands, the fragility of front-line C4ISR, and the risks of overconfidence remain formidable threats to any invading force.
Principal sources for this essay include The Island of Formosa: Past and Present by James W. Davidson (1903), Maritime Taiwan by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai (2009), L’Expedition Française de Formose 1884-1885 by Eugène Garnot (1894), and Modern Chinese Warfare 1795-1989, by Bruce A. Elleman (2001).
Dr. Scott Savitz is a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation. He has led numerous studies for the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and other services on diverse subjects such as naval mine warfare, the effective use of uncrewed vehicles, non-lethal weapons, and Arctic operations. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Yale University, as well as a master’s degree and PhD in the same field from the University of Pennsylvania.
The post RAND: A Historical Analysis of a True Invasion of Taiwan appeared first on Naval News.
发布者：Peter Ong，转转请注明出处：https://robotalks.cn/rand-a-historical-analysis-of-a-true-invasion-of-taiwan/
