Sino-Korean War — China's Plan
—China.
"Vice Chairman. Explain this failure to me."
Mao Zedong's face was twisted into something hideous. Every report that came in spoke of defeat, and more defeat.
Dandong and Baishan, the cities clinging to the border, had both fallen to Korea in rapid succession, and the Korean forces pressing onward were sweeping the Chinese army aside with one-sided brutality. The exact exchange ratio was still hard to pin down, but even if you called it ten to one, the thought that crossed your mind was the absurd one: Oh, so we actually held up pretty well?
The Vice Chairman kept insisting everything was fine, that it was all going according to plan, that there was no problem whatsoever—but there was a limit to how much of that nonsense a man could endure.
In the old days I would have had his head off already. Age has made me soft.
The Chairman, who periodically had people's heads removed as a matter of course, sincerely believed this of himself.
"…It is proceeding as planned."
The Vice Chairman could not hide the tension on his face, yet he answered with a straight back all the same. That alone was more than enough to draw Mao Zedong's fury.
"As planned? You call this unbroken string of losses a plan? How magnificent! In three weeks of war you've thrown away three hundred thousand regulars!"
The actual losses had not yet reached three hundred thousand, but given how the forces stationed in Manchuria were melting away, they would get there soon enough.
"Have the Koreans bought you off? Just like the bastard who sold them our military satellite data!"
With Mao's patience hanging by a thread, the Vice Chairman decided it was time to lay everything bare.
"We are a great power. Korea is a small one. We devised a strategy to exploit that fact, and it is currently progressing with success."
"…I'll hear you out."
At the Vice Chairman's smoothly flowing words, Mao Zedong opened his ears with a look of deep suspicion.
"One hundred thousand elite troops are already concealed inside the regions that have been occupied—and the regions still being occupied."
"Concealed? From the sound of it, you never intended to hold the front lines in the first place. Am I mistaken?"
The Chairman's expression turned glacial, his words laced with murderous intent, and cold sweat slid down the Vice Chairman's face. Still, he had no choice but to admit that he had disregarded the Chairman's order to hold the border at all costs. Because that was exactly what he had done.
"It was the army's judgment—and mine—that holding the front was impossible."
The eyes of the generals who had been dragged into this wholesale nearly popped from their sockets, but the Vice Chairman was in a hurry. And it wasn't even a lie. Before hearing the Chairman's wishes, the army had said precisely this:
Ah, that? Impossible.
Do you have a brain? Say something that makes sense.
That's the thinking of some fossil who doesn't even know what modern warfare is!
I am opposed!
There had been a few minor adjustments to the phrasing, but that was essentially what they had said.
"And why, exactly, was it impossible?"
Mao Zedong wanted nothing more than to kill the Vice Chairman who had ignored his orders on the spot, yet he restrained himself. (He had never issued the command in so many words, but he had made his desire to hold the border unmistakably clear.) Because this lunatic had just thrown away nearly half the army.
Hahaha! Chairman, behold my true talent! Three hundred thousand gone in a single stroke—our own side!!!
The Vice Chairman had never once said anything of the kind, but Mao Zedong could see the hallucination of him crowing it all the same.
In any case, scrapping an operation purchased with three hundred thousand army troops would make those lost lives too expensive to waste. He had not yet lost three hundred thousand—but in the Chairman's heart, the damage was already done.
"Speak."
"In modern warfare, defending against a great power's full-commitment first strike is, for all practical purposes, impossible."
"And that has nothing to do with your own incompetence?"
The Chairman fixed the Vice Chairman with a look of pure suspicion.
Had they committed the Red Guards, a defense might have been possible. They simply had not, because those men might have died. Having received reports of Korean superhumans leading the charge from the front, the Vice Chairman considered it a blessing that the Red Guards had never been stationed on the border. If the Red Guards who met those enemies had been cut down in droves, the losses would have been incalculable.
"…Hundreds of thousands of artillery shells. The soldiers exposed to that barrage take catastrophic casualties the moment the war begins, and an army already half-shattered cannot defeat an enemy charging in at full strength."
"Could we not simply return fire with our own artillery?"
At Mao Zedong's words, a curse rose all the way to the Vice Chairman's throat before he barely managed to swallow it.
"The instant we come under enemy bombardment, our own artillery strength is already half-destroyed. Air bases and radar installations are likewise wrecked, making air superiority nearly impossible to seize."
Even trying to mobilize the artillery batteries that had barely survived outside the enemy's range was a stretch—missiles were already inbound, and the enemy air force already owned the sky. Of course, Mao Zedong had no interest in such unfortunate realities.
"Which is why I ordered you to prepare in advance."
The Vice Chairman desperately wanted to spit out, Bombs are falling like rain—how the hell do you prepare for that? You yourself said Korea has the largest shell stockpile on the planet!—but he held his tongue.
"As ordered, we layered air-defense networks and forward-deployed the air force. All of it took massive damage."
Outwardly he recited the facts with cold detachment; inwardly he was thinking something else entirely. Namely: Because of you!
The Vice Chairman ought to have been grateful that Mao Zedong could not read minds. Had the Chairman caught even a fragment of those thoughts, the man would have been begging to be killed.
"You incompetent dog!"
To Mao Zedong, still trapped in the wars of a bygone age, the Vice Chairman's words were nothing but empty noise. The Chairman was simply too old. He could no longer keep pace with a rapidly changing era.
"At the very least, if you had actively pursued urban warfare, the Korean army would not already be forming such a vast encirclement."
That remark, however, proved that the Chairman still retained some residual instinct for war. The hideous quagmire of urban combat could have dramatically improved the current, farcical exchange ratio.
"I abandoned urban warfare for the sake of the operation—and the information war."
The Vice Chairman had discarded that military advantage without hesitation. China would not collapse simply because Manchuria was temporarily lost. A victim being one-sidedly beaten tends to attract sympathy regardless of right or wrong, does it not?
For the record, by any ordinary measure Korea—the side that had launched a surprise assault—was the villain. From an omniscient, Earth-level perspective, however, China was the villain. And so, if luck ran sour, the China currently being pounded might well face a worldwide economic embargo. Such was the power of culture! With just a modest assist from the Mode System, of course.
"Then tell me what the hell this operation of yours actually is."
If the plan turned out to be worthless, the Chairman fully intended to beat the Vice Chairman half to death and throw him into a torture chamber.
"If one considers that phrase they are always shouting—the Promised Land—then the Korean army will be determined to occupy every last inch of Manchuria."
"Obviously. And?"
"We will fall back naturally and establish a second defensive line linking Jinzhou, Chaoyang, Chifeng, and the Xilingol League."
"Is that all?"
Mao Zedong rose from his seat and began walking toward the Vice Chairman. Sensing the approach of death, the Vice Chairman opened his mouth in a rush.
"And the moment the enemy begins its offensive against the second defensive line, the elite forces hidden in the occupied territories will rise and sever the Korean army's supply lines."
Mao Zedong's footsteps stopped. To his ears, the plan sounded remarkably plausible. Seizing the opening, the Vice Chairman pressed on.
"Logistics in modern warfare are far more critical than in the past. War is now impossible without supply. The moment their ammunition runs dry, every soldier becomes a scarecrow."
"…Hmm. That does sound like a decent plan."
The face that had been packed full of rage and displeasure softened into something almost mild.
"Korea may attempt maritime resupply, but we have preserved the navy's full strength against that contingency. No matter what means they employ to inflict heavy damage on our fleet, the ships held in reserve will immediately re-enter the fight."
The Vice Chairman had truly prepared for every contingency, restraining a navy that had been eager to seize sea control aggressively. The Chinese navy, which already outmatched Korea's, would cut off maritime supply and crush the enemy. Even if—by some absurd turn of events—the enemy's superhumans possessed advantageous power at sea, the navy could hold out until the army finished grinding down a Korean force starved of supplies.
"Ho. Is that the end of it?"
The Chairman, smiling from ear to ear, was prepared to offer praise even if this were the entirety of the plan. The moment it succeeded, Korea's army would be annihilated. And to the Chairman's eye, the odds of success looked extremely high.
"We are also conserving the Rocket Force's munitions for this offensive. Because we have avoided urban warfare and are conducting an information campaign, the enemy will assume we will not fire missiles or artillery at our own cities—and will therefore refrain from using theirs."
At the Vice Chairman's words, a brilliant smile bloomed across the Chairman's face.
Clap. Clap. Clap!
"Absolutely splendid!"
The Chairman even applauded as he praised the Vice Chairman. Mao Zedong tore the reserved ticket for the Vice Chairman's private torture chamber into shreds. Instead, he began considering what sort of reward to bestow.
"Manchuria is larger than Korea itself, but we are a great power. We can absorb losses of that scale. A small nation would find it difficult to anticipate."
"Good, good! Tell me more!"
The Vice Chairman gladly obliged the Chairman, who was shouting with pure delight.
"As for the information-war component of this operation—success or failure makes no difference. But by demonstrating that we abandoned urban warfare for the sake of our people, we will generate even a slight shift of favorable opinion toward our side."
The Vice Chairman, well aware that reversing the overwhelmingly pro-Korean global sentiment was impossible, carefully emphasized the words even a slight. To the Chairman's ears, however, it sounded as though world opinion would gradually turn in China's favor.
"Yes! That is how diplomacy is done! To wage war and manage diplomacy at the same time—Vice Chairman, you are better at this than the Director of the Foreign Affairs Office."
"As Comrade Chairman says!"
"Korea's end is near, then."
The Communist Party cadres present chimed in as Mao Zedong laughed heartily. In an atmosphere of rare good cheer, they threw a small celebration. The lives of the soldiers being expended as bait were justified in the name of a great victory.
"The day Korea seizes Manchuria and, flushed with triumph, attacks the second defensive line—that will be the day this war ends."
Cheers rose at the Vice Chairman's words. The potential traitors who had been digging escape routes as the front collapsed in real time ceased their activities. Certainty of victory spread through China's leadership.
The bombs being manufactured furiously in the rear. The carefully husbanded strength of the Rocket Force. The moment the Korean army reached the second defensive line and opened its offensive, every last shell of that firepower would pour down. On top of that, they would cram in the swelling ranks of freshly conscripted troops and commit the superhuman forces they had been holding in reserve.
The Korean army's ammunition would plummet in a sharp curve of consumption, and once the hidden forces cut their supply lines, the Koreans would be reduced to fighting with blunt instruments in no time at all.
Everyone who had heard the Vice Chairman's explanation was certain of it.