A blockade of Taiwan would be difficult for the Chinese to sustain due to operational weaknesses in the Chinese military, lack of training, lack of spare parts, and massive corruption” . “
You have got to be kidding !
China has 10,000 times the resources of the Houthis who have successfully blockaded the Suez Canal for 6 months !
It is actually alarming to read this stuff from what is a reasonably well informed person. And I think this thinking is very representative of the conventional wisdom in Repub circles in Washington.
Which means the USA will continue to stumble to more foreign policy and military disasters which are orders of magnitude larger than Ukraine or the Afghanistan collapse.
The key passage:
Chinese military corruption is so bad that China is presently incapable of invading Taiwan. President Xi made the appalling discovery last year that China’s navy and air force were so bereft of spare parts as to be mission incapable, and particularly so for several months of constant combat. Plus most of the several hundred newly constructed ICBMs and silos of its Strategic Missile Force had missile fuel tanks filled with water rather than fuel, silo lids that couldn’t open and silo concrete not much more protective than beach sandcastles.
It will take years to produce the aircraft and ship spare parts necessary to make China’s existing armed forces capable of even an attempted an invasion of Taiwan, and longer to produce the additional combat forces capable of winning (assuming the required spare parts for those are produced). The earliest China might mount an invasion is probably about 2026 – 2027. Even then there will be major uncertainties about the serviceability, reliability and effectiveness of China’s military hardware plus the operational capability of its senior officers to conduct a corps level amphibious assault with no combat experience in any of its military services. And the inherent Chinese culture of corruption. Military incompetence and military corruption go hand in hand.
The article goes on to discuss a blockade, so I urge you to read the whole thing. Keep in mind that Putin's troubles in Ukraine are a chastening example for China of the damage that corruption can do to subvert the nominal military power of an autocratic state.