Attempted Chinese Invasion of Taiwan, 1950

I interviewed a man who served on the destroyer USS Cone during the Korean War for my newspaper today and, not knowing much about naval operations during the Korean War, decided to hit google.

Here's what I found:

http://www.state.nj.us/military//korea/factsheets/navy.html

What if, in 1950, the Chinese decided to take advantage of the Korean War to invade Taiwan?

This could bring the (Red) Chinese into the Korean War much earlier, if the US contests the attack, and if the Reds get their behinds handed to them, could tempt the US to transport the Nationalists back across the Strait into southern China like Chiang wanted (but didn't get).
 
I interviewed a man who served on the destroyer USS Cone during the Korean War for my newspaper today and, not knowing much about naval operations during the Korean War, decided to hit google.

Here's what I found:

http://www.state.nj.us/military//korea/factsheets/navy.html

What if, in 1950, the Chinese decided to take advantage of the Korean War to invade Taiwan?

This could bring the (Red) Chinese into the Korean War much earlier, if the US contests the attack, and if the Reds get their behinds handed to them, could tempt the US to transport the Nationalists back across the Strait into southern China like Chiang wanted (but didn't get).

Well, the invasion would fall into much the same category as the Unmentionable Sea Mammal. The PRC could certainly land troops, equally certainly the USN would ensure that they starved to death while fighting Taiwanese troops.

Now, the consequences are quite interesting, and I wouldn't rule out the PRC thinking they had a shot (delusion in national leaders being a well-established historical phenomenon) and giving it a try.

I think the US would have to provide troops to back any Taiwanese invasion, even with the PLA heavily involved in Korea. This begs the question: where does the US get the troops? They can't pull too much out of Germany, and while I'm no expert on the period IIRC the mainland US Army of the time was a hollow shell drained by overseas deployments.
 
The reason the US neither landed the Nationalists in China nor accepted Chiang's offer of 33,000 troops in Korea was because the Nationalist Army was useless militarily, as was already proven 1945-1949.

It would have been an immediate and substantial burden on the US to supply, equip and support with air, naval and even ground units to avoid a defeat which would have finished the pretense of a Nationalist China much earlier.

MacArthur and Chiang may not have realized this but everyone else did.
 
What's Russia's reaction to all of this? This is still a little early for the Sino-Soviet Split, but I doubt Moscow is going to be happy with the PRC for making such a move.
 
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