BWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!
Try 20 years, if ever. And it's rather dubious whether the Chicom leadership survives that long before collapsing in a civil war.
And, BTW, NOTHING that "Clinton may have given them" will allow China to magically create a fleet of amphibious shipping larger than that used by the Allies to invade Normandy in 1944 (which is what would be needed to invade and conquer Taiwan); their current amphibious capability is such that the number of troops they could land could probably be ARRESTED by the Taiwanese police.
The Chinese also would have great difficulty gaining air supremacy over Taiwan (again, even ABSENT any US help at all) given the very limited #s of advanced fighters they have, and the poor level of training of their pilots.
Look, I don't like military technology transfer to the PRC, or Bill Clinton himself, any more than anyone else on FR. But people are getting so obsessive on bashing Clinton over this that the PRC military, which is an inexperienced force with very limited power projection capability, is getting ridiculously overrated on FR....and their ability to quickly improve is also ridculously overrated.
People need to objectively look at the WHOLE CURRENT PRC military, WITHOUT the bias of trying to make them look like supermen to make Clinton look bad, and IGNORING worthless hype articles about PRC superweapons from the likes of World Net Daily and Newsmax, who know less about things military than a retarded hamster.
In the interest of sensitivity, don't you really mean a 'special needs' hamster?
That's a good idea.
Have you seen the recent assessment of the US military from the National Review? Here's an excerpt and the thread link [my bold]:
"Deterred from close-quarter battle in Kosovo by a lesser air defense than what now protects Saudi Arabia, the United States flew 37,000 sorties over 78 days to destroy 13 tanks, which made up less than 2 percent of Serbia's inventory. To accomplish this, the Air Force endured what its chief of staff called a strain heavier than either that of the Gulf War or that of Vietnam. And for nearly four months during this period, and beyond, while naval engagements between the Koreas resulted in the sinking of a North Korean gunboat, the United States had not a single carrier in the entire Western Pacific.
After September 11, combat air patrols over just a few American cities — requiring approximately 100 sorties per day from home bases, with neither aircraft nor bases under attack — were said by American officials, as paraphrased by the Washington Post, to "stretch the limits of the Air Force" and "severely tax military resources." What of the 1,800 fighters and bombers the RAF had to face on a single day in August 1940? Why is it that the American armed forces, with 6,000 strike aircraft, are strained by 100 sorties per day, when on the 4th of June, 1967, Israel's 290-plane air force flew more than 1,000 sorties?
[Phony War, National Review | 4/15/02 | Mark Helprin]
Possibly China is not Lou Ferrigno. But then, the US appears to be falling short of being Arnold Schwarzenegger...
Mark W.
It's not 1944 you know. There are other ways to move troops, and China has lots of commercial airliners, and a fair amount of commerical shipping too. They could just as well take an airfield through a combination of bombardment and airborne assault, possibly with helicopters. Then they'd use that field to bring in many more troops, and using their supperior numbers of aircarft to keep the ROCs from taking it back. The first objective after securing the airfield would be to take a port, where reinforcements and heavy stuff could be landed by commerical cargo ships. To pull this off however they would have to achieve at least local air superitority over a good portion of the Island, and of course they'd have to control the Taiwan Straits too, by a combination of Naval and Air power. They might have a chance to do that against the ROC, but not against the US, unless of course the US Navy, is tied down elsehwere. Of course they could miscalculate and think the entire US Navy was so tied up, but in reality it might be just the carriers, with the subs and some surface combatents free to defend the ROC. A few attack subs could pretty sink the PLA Navy, including it's subs, and any "civilian" PRC cargo ships that might get caught out of port. (Or maybe even in port, via Harpoons and Thomahawks)