The Dragon’s Gallipoli and the Hong Kong Lesson

Introduction

During WWI, the British Empire launched a bold amphibious assault against the weaker Ottoman Empire: the Gallipoli Campaign. Expecting swift victory, the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) became marooned in an eight-month grinding stalemate. Trapped by rough seas, minefields, and entrenched defenders, British forces saw their supply lines stretched and casualties mount, until they were forced to retreat into the sea.

Today, the People’s Republic of China assumes a similar swift conquest over Taiwan, carrying these same operational risks.

But, if adequately prepared, Taiwan can turn Chinese ambitions into a costly and unsustainable failure – the Dragon’s Gallipoli.

The Hong Kong Lesson

If Gallipoli demonstrates how empires can be broken by determined defenders, then Hong Kong reveals the cost of failing to resist. Beijing’s hold over Hong Kong indicates that physical control will lead to assimilation. Taiwan must place this lesson at the center of unyielding resistance.

“One Country, Two Systems” was first proposed in 1979 to reunify with a breakaway province: Taiwan. China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, promised that the province could keep its economic, social, and government systems in exchange for reunification. Deng reused this model for Hong Kong under a 50-year treaty, which unraveled in just 22 years. In 2019, mass protests broke out in opposition to legislation that would allow the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to extradite Hong Kongers under PRC laws. To prevent a post-pandemic resurgence, President Xi enacted national security laws that supersede Hong Kong’s separate system: effectively making the PRC and Hong Kong one country under one system.

Across the strait, Taiwan was a witness to Hong Kong’s suppression. The lesson: Beijing’s political control begins as soon as physical control is achieved. But for Taiwan’s ability to resist, China cannot yet sustain power over the ocean.

Beijing’s Dreams of Empire

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaims Taiwan as a Chinese province that must be reintegrated into a greater Chinese nation-state. Reunification is central to rectifying the “century of humiliation” – a period marred by internal conflict and exploitation. To avoid repeating the past, President Xi Jinping has recommitted China to national unity and technological supremacy. In addition, taking Taiwan would complete nation-building, while also diminishing US influence in Asia, seizing a semiconductor hub, and projecting power into the Indo-Pacific.

To achieve this, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) must attempt the largest seaborne invasion in 80 years against one of the world’s most defensible islands. It is imperative for the CCP to succeed where the British at Gallipoli failed, establishing and sustaining a beachhead.

Why China Hasn’t Invaded the Sandy Beaches – Yet

The threat to Taiwan rests on two pillars: intention and capability. Transforming political intent into concrete military victory requires more than public rhetoric; it demands overcoming constraints of geography, climate, and logistics. For now, Beijing has not attempted an invasion because it lacks the combat logistics to land, sustain, and reinforce a beachhead within its strategic timeframe. To succeed, China must close these gaps and reorient its capabilities for the cross-strait assault.

The beach landings in Taiwan are the hinge of this operation. It is here that the PLA is weakest, and Taiwan is strongest. Whether the PLA can annex Taiwan will be decided on these shores.

By sabotaging its own ports, Taiwan could funnel the invasion onto its few pre-targeted beaches. These landings are shallow mudflats that require complex mobile piers to unload heavier, armored vehicles.

The initial PLA wave, limited to 20,000 troops and smaller amphibious vehicles, would quickly become pinned down. Too small to advance off the beaches, they must wait for reinforcements to build the momentum to push inland.

Waiting for them will be a layered Taiwanese defense: 89,000 active-duty ground forces, anti-ship, anti-armor, and anti-personnel weapon systems stretching out 40 km, and a mobilizing force of 219,000 reservists. To succeed, the PLA’s initial landings need support from the mainland, but instead, they will likely be abandoned and trapped inside an elaborate kill zone.

No Simple Strait Shot

Chinese logistical burdens aside, the very environment of waging this war will complicate operations.

To reinforce the landings, China must continuously transport troops and supplies across the 90-mile Taiwan Strait, a shallow, storm-prone body of water limited by weather patterns. Winter monsoons bring 27 mph winds and 9 ft waves, disrupting movement. Even under ideal conditions, fog and wind pose risks, and predictable embarkation windows enable Taiwan to raise alertness.

After deploying the initial landing, China’s 70 amphibious ships must return to reload troops and supplies, taking eight hours to cross and leaving them exposed to Taiwanese anti-ship missiles. If China cannot maintain operational tempo, the beachhead could collapse before the momentum to push to Taipei can take hold.

Inbound Logistics Failure

Even upon achieving successful initial landings, China is not prepared to logistically sustain its forces.

A sustained invasion requires the constant reconstitution of troops and supplies beyond what China can currently orchestrate. The PLA has six amphibious brigades, each with 5,000 soldiers and 1,340 vehicles, but can only move 19,080 troops and 666 amphibious ZTD-05s per trip. Ships must return across the strait to reload, taking about eight hours– a slow, exposed process. The PLA claims it can reload a brigade in four hours, but that estimate is unrealistic. Sustained victory would require 30 million metric tons of supplies and 5.6 million tons of oil, with each brigade consuming over 600,000 kg per day.

Even optimistic PLA wargaming demonstrates it would take five days for China to amass the 3:1 force ratio for the push inland. The PLA’s heavy attrition would increase the reinforcement demands, as incoming troops would be needed not only to break out, but also to replace the estimated 9% losses across forces.

To compensate, China might deploy old Type-271 landing craft or 63 civilian Roll-on/Roll-off (RORO) ships. However, ROROs are untested in combat, poorly integrated, and useless on Taiwan’s shallow, muddy beaches.

Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan cannot be seized through police or legal procedures. Beijing’s takeover of Hong Kong depended on preexisting legal frameworks and embedded political infrastructure. Assimilating Taiwan, by contrast, requires a full-scale amphibious military conquest. The PLA, a similar tool for political projection, simply cannot march to Taipei. This cross-strait operation demands a level of logistical coordination and sustainment that remains beyond China’s current capabilities.

Untested Embarkation

From embarkation to resupply, China’s entire logistics chain is riddled with weak links. Recent modernization efforts have reoriented the PLA for a cross-strait invasion, but the combat logistical capability remains untested.

The Taiwan invasion is part of a wider national project to project long-distance military operations such as those for Belt and Road security, UN peacekeeping missions, and its support base in Djibouti. In 2016, President Xi reorganized and integrated PLA and civilian logistical systems by establishing the Joint Logistic Support Force (JLSF). These reforms seek to reduce logistical friction by innovating inventory control systems, streamlining command organization, and incorporating civilian infrastructure.

The JLSF remains unprepared to accomplish high-intensity operations. The reformed command organization is highly centralized, with a cultural avoidance of delegating tasks. Battalions typically have only one Logistical Staff Officer, and Brigades are heavily burdened with numerous duties. Embarkation at mainland transportation facilities is limited by poor civilian integration, bad roads, outdated railway stations, and civilian ports lacking RORO terminals- all of which may be unsuited for modern military usage and vulnerable to Taiwanese strikes.

Concepts of a PLAN

Yet despite these limitations, PLA Navy planners are convinced that victory will arrive with a swift operational win where “the first engagement as the final engagement”– a fait accompli.

Wargame modelling with a best-case scenario for the PLA is founded on the premise of complete strategic surprise, seizing the port of Taipei, “a few days” of urban combat, and a decapitated Taiwanese government on day 46. Anytime longer than 46 days risks developing a protracted struggle, significant international backlash from a global anti-China coalition, and domestic instability.

The sheer size of the invasion would alarm and trigger Taiwan’s mobilization. Any enormous surge of troops, vehicles, and ships would be visible from satellite and radar, signaling conflict. The scale of invasion would be unmistakable, with thousands of ships, vehicles, and aircraft converging.

Even if beachheads are secured, PLA sustainment and momentum are still bottlenecked by a logistics-heavy operation. To increase sustainment capacity, a solution to enable ROROs via artificial piers is possible. However, these can only be used after the initial landings, as they can’t unload onto shallow beaches.

Experts propose that Taiwan should develop their defense to withstand a 30-day amphibious assault as a means to stress the PLA’s combat logistics capabilities and starve its beach landings. Taiwan does not need a quick battlefield victory; it only needs a Chinese political defeat by outside intervention and internal crisis.

From Porcupine to Gallipoli

The Ottoman defense of Gallipoli was only a success because defenders took advantage of their strengths. Taiwan must follow its Overall Defense Concept (ODC), the asymmetric strategy designed for a smaller force to break a larger invasion at its weakest point, on the beach.

To ensure China’s Gallipoli, Taiwan must expand its coastal denial systems, including more coastal, longer-range anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and launchers. Expanding Taiwan’s inventory of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) would enable it to strike Chinese logistics networks and embarkation points supporting the beach landings.

The United States and its Pacific Allies should support Taiwan’s drone buildup. To contest the Black Sea, Ukraine employed similar coastal defense systems, but its most asymmetric system was the use of unmanned surface vessels (USVs). USV doctrine in the Black Sea disrupted Russian naval operations and could do the same in the Taiwan Strait.

This capability has inspired Taiwan to follow suit, with President Lai Ching-te aiming to make Taiwan the center for Asian drone production and plans on building 200 to support littoral defense. Taiwan’s USV is the 28-foot-long Endeavor Manta. It can be trucked, launched from any beach, hunt mines, loiter in the strait, carry additional drones, fire torpedoes, and detonate on contact. Saturating its coast with USVs, Taiwan can push its defense into the Taiwan Strait, limiting China’s naval movement.

Vigilant Forewarnings

The PLA attempts to shorten Taiwan’s warning time by normalizing annual military exercises and increasing incursions into the ADIZ, blurring signals that invasion is imminent. A narrower timeline could delay Taiwan’s full mobilization and prevent it from repelling the PLA.

However, the United States has the intent and capability to accurately warn of impending invasion. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 authorizes the executive branch to provide “Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities or support” in countering any threat to “the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan”.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense states that it is actively expanding intelligence sharing with international partners. While not overtly stated, modern US intelligence has the potential to prepare Taiwan for an invasion. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US had a six-month advanced assessment with satellite and human intelligence. The immense scale of preparation for a cross-strait invasion of thousands of troops, vehicles, trains, planes, and ships would be a difficult abnormality to disguise.

Taiwan is well within range of the missile bombardment of its centers of command, logistics, and military assets. But the objective to disrupt and disable Taiwan’s ability to respond is not guaranteed to succeed. Taiwan’s ODC is designed to decentralize control, harden assets, and maintain continuity under these pre-invasion attacks.

China may also attempt to divide, distract, and overstretch Taiwan’s allies by escalating simultaneous crises via North Korea. But this may inadvertently initiate greater unity of coordination among US allies suspicious of China’s intent.

While this existential crisis confronts Taiwan, it still has allies, opportunities, and a clear choice.

Taiwan’s Choice: Gallipoli or Hong Kong

China intends to assimilate Taiwan into its nation-state, like Hong Kong. However, this threat is defined by both Chinese intentions and capabilities. For now, the PLA  lacks the logistical capability to seize it, but this is changing. It is growing its navy, expanding its missile stockpiles, and conducting annual amphibious drills. Taiwan has the advantages of distance and time to repel a Chinese advance. But only with critical investments in doctrine and weapons. As Gallipoli exposes, an empire’s grand plan can unravel when logistics, terrain, and resistance all work against it. The PLA is preparing. But with the right tools, Taiwan can break what China sees as an invasion of destiny into a grinding, strategic disaster.

Gallipoli reminds us that China can fail; Hong Kong reveals why Taiwan must not. Survival is not given freely. It is secured with weapons and the will to use them. For Taiwan to survive, its supporters must act to prevent war by preparing it to win one.

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