Lude Media has reportedly received audio and visual recording of a military planning meeting of the People Liberation Army’s Guangdong Military Region of the Southern Command and the principal officers in Guangdong Province administration and the regional Chinese Communist Party committee. This story has picked up a lot of traction amongst defense circles on Twitter, but has not yet been verified. The meeting focused on the military mobilization of the regions civilian vessels in order to support a Peoples Liberation Army Navy assault on Taiwan.
The video reportedly shows:
- Major General Zhou He, Commander of the Guangdong Military Region;
- Major General Huang Shan-chun, Member of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Political Commissar of the Provincial Military Region;
- Li Xi, Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee;
- Wang Wei-zhong, Deputy Secretary of Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Governor of Guangdong Province;
- Zhang Hu, Member of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee,
- Secretary of the Political and Legal Committee and Executive Vice Governor of the Provincial Government;
- Wang Zhi-zhong, Deputy Governor of the Guangdong Provincial Government and Secretary of the Party Committee of the Provincial Public Security Department.
The nearly two hour meeting focused on three agenda items:
- Optimizing a military-civilian joint mobilization command and control system which seizes upon the massive civilian fishery fleet. Guangdong Province was apparently ordered to supply: “1,358 units of various types with a total of 140,000 personnel; 953 ships; 1,653 unmanned aircraft; 20 airport terminals; 6 shipyards; 14 emergency mobilization centers; grain and oil depots, hospital blood bank, etc.” Of which a majority would be supplied from civilian industries, especially the ships. Currently, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy is comprised of around 350 vessels, the meeting focused on equipping civilian vessels with weapons, communications equipment, and folding them into the general military system. The meeting also called for: “64 10,000-ton ro-ro ships, 38 aircraft, 588 trains, and 19 civil facilities such as airport docks.”
- Establishing wartime procedures, especially for mobilization. According to analysis by Lude, China plans on applying lessons learned from civilian-military cooperation with regards to COVID-19 lockdowns and regulation towards military mobilization. “Convert the experience and practice of the prevention and control of the new corona epidemic in previous years into measures for social prevention and control during wartime, to ensure that the people’s production and life are orderly, the overall social situation is stable, and to create a favorable environment and conditions for a strategic victory.”
- Preparing for wartime command and control between the various fleets and branches. “It is necessary to coordinate the two directions of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, the two areas of maritime and land protection, the two traditional and new forces, the two kinds of resources in the province and overseas, and the focus on cohesive resources to ensure the direction of the Taiwan Strait.” With regards to the Taiwan Strait, the military composition of the invading force would probably have to rely on the Eastern Theater and the Southern Theater. These two theaters comprise a majority of the naval tonnage of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy which would not only execute the invasion, but also screen both sides of the strait from American and Japanese vessels, if they attempted to interdict. Chinese air bases and missile bases in the Eastern Theater are capable of reaching Taiwan with aircraft and land based surface to surface missiles, but the Strait would have to be protected by naval assets. This would require immense coordination between the theater command and corresponding fleets. As for the South China Sea, which would hypothetically be vulnerable during an assault on Taiwan, the Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force has gone to great lengths to place access area denial weapons in the Paracel and Spratley Islands.
The audio of the meeting can be found below:
https://rumble.com/v14yqo9-leaked-audio-of-china-military-meeting.html
