Actually the answer to that question is 'not much'.
When World War 1990: ANZACs was still World War 1990: Operation Pacific Storm, we had planned all kinds of Chinese intrigue.
But we decided Australia, Japan, China...it was all too much. Besides, concentrating on the ANZACs made for a nice, tight [And marketable-Ed] book.
Here's some of what we wrote back in 2016, raw.
Behold:
When
General Fu arrived at his office at Shenyang Regional Military Headquarters he
found the younger officers in the conference room. As they did every morning
they read the headlines from the People’s Daily, watched news broadcasts out of
South Korea and Japan and poured over maps, all in an effort to stay informed
about the war. After the first few days of World War Three an enterpring young
officer brought graph paper, cardboard cutouts and dice. Now for weeks, every
morning before the work day began the officers wargamed the previous day’s and
week’s events. General Fu admired his staff officers for the initiative and
creativity.
On
this morning he walked into the conference room. As always the young officers
topped what they were doing and came to attention.
‘Carry
on, gentlemen,’ he said. Fu made himself a cup of tea. He looked at the map and
said ‘And how goes the war today.’
Captain
Wa, an ambitious young staff officer from Canton said ‘Today we are wargaming a
Soviet counteroffensive in Kamchatka.’
‘And?’
Fu asked as he stirred sugar into his tea.
Captain
Wa shook his head. ‘The Americans made mincemeat of them sir.’
Major
Wong, the Soviet player this morning said, ‘Excuse me, General, but I inflicted
significant losses on the Americans.’
‘Yes
sir,’ Captain Wa insisted. ‘But I still hold all key positions.’
Major
Wong was about to object, but Fu said, ‘Carry on, gentlemen.’
‘Yes,
sir.’
Cup
of tea in hand General Fu proceeded to his office. His personal assistant, a
young Lieutenant waited at the front desk. Choy was earnest and committed. Fu
hadn’t been able to get a word out of him that wasn’t work related. Fu
suspected the young man was reporting on his activities. Which was fine. Fu
lived the quite life of an older married man. He had no interest or time for
the extracurricular activities many general staff officers enjoyed. Going to
Thailand was shorthand for all kinds of nefarious things.
‘What
waits for me this morning?’ Fu asked.
‘Readiness
reports and this summary of last week’s maneuver.’
‘I
will take that first.’
Choy
handed him the appropriate folder.
He
walked into his office and sat behind his desk, a gift from the General Staff.
It was Frenchand luxurious and Fu treasured it, s imple testament to his
competency that all visitors saw when they enteed his office. It was intimating
to rivals as well. Fu had the ear of the general staff.
He sat down and read the summary of
the report. He would go through the details later at home, reading and making
notes while his wife watched the evening news. The commander of the operation,
a two brigade maneuver rehearsing the seizure of a hard target and crossing of
a river, was please overall with the operation. Fuel was an issue it had been
for weeks with the price of oil sky rocketing, first with the war then with
Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Fu had fought hard for the fuel necceary to
conduct the maneuver.
General Fu looked at the map and
dreamed. Some fools in the General Staff had maps of Taiwan, even Japan. The
latter of course could stop a Chinese attack without breaking a sweat. The PLA
and PLN just weren’t up to the job. As to the former, Fu couldn’t have cared
less about stupid Nationalist sentiments. Let Taiwan be free of Beijing and
instead exploit its capitol for business growth in the mainland.
Not since the Second World War had
Siberia been so vulnerable. In 1941, reeling from the German onslaught in the
west, Stalin had taken dozens of divisions from the region and sent the west in
a desperate bid to stop Hitler. A lone spy in Tokyo telling him the Japanese
had no intention of striking north had allowed Stalin to do so. China had spies
now throughout Siberia in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok.
They all said the same thing. The Soviets had drained Siberia of troops. Oh
there were still brigades in the big cities. But over the course of the war the
vast army that guarded the Soviet Far East had headed east to defend against
American attacks in the Pacific and then west as the Red Army lost battle after
battle and NATO attacked the Warsaw Pact.
So there it was for the taking, the
vast Soviet Far East. The People’s Liberation Army could just walk over the
border and take what it wanted. General Fu would command such an effort. Long had he played the attack. Most Chinese
planners had envisioned an attack on Vladivostok a pointless and obvious move
that would repeat the PLA’s mistakes in the Korean War. Those mistakes had cost
a million lives, Fu knew and resulted in a stalemate that lef the Americans
with a foothold in Asia. No, Fu wanted to avoid Vladivostok and the Pacific
Coast all together. Instead he saw a two pronged thrust against Khabarovsk
which would cut off the Pacific Coast. Even this was not the main purpose of
the attack.
Fu understood something many in the
PLA did not. The Soviets understood their vulnerability in the Far East better
than most in the PLA. To compensate the Soviets would go nuclear, they had no
choice. As the ultimate deterent the Soviets built half a dozen ICBM silos
across along the border. This was as clear a message as any: a move in the Far
East risks Beijing, Shanghai, Chungking…Mao had often with great blust talked
of China’s ability and willingness to lose a hundred million people. But that
was the old China. The loss of a few key cities would undo all that the party
had achived since 1949; a bourgoinging world power on the cups of the 21st
century ready to reassert its historical dominance.
Fu saw that role for China the new
China, not the old. The old China, the old Politburo of Mao and Chow en Lai
would massacre its own people to meet its ends. Fu could see the fields carpted
with bodies. For all its communist rhetoric the Politburo was still steeped in
the ancient Chinese mode of thought that saw the people as an unlimited
resource to be exploited. To Fu this had no place in the new China.
Instead of human wave attacks that
left carpets of bodies Fu saw a well planned and executed operation by an
onnovative military. He wanted to land an airborne battalion and the five
closest missiles silos and reinforce them with a flying column dashing over the
border. With six of its missile silos
taken away, and Chinese forces in control of Khabarovsk the Soviets would have
no choice but to accept Chinese control of Siberia.
There would never be a better time
than now.
All that remained was to convince
the Beijing.
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