Stepped-up activities within China’s transportation network will provide American military planners with clear signs of impending military action against Taiwan, a congressional commission was told on Thursday.

Devin Thorne, a private threat intelligence analyst, said that U.S. analysts would be able to detect any preparations for a major conflict against Taiwan through military mobilization activities inside China.

Mr. Thorne told a hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that a People’s Liberation Army logistic report outlined the transportation requirements for a Taiwan attack, including some 3,000 train trips, 1 million vehicle trips, 2,100 aircraft sorties, 15 oil pipeline battalions and more than 8,000 ship voyages, according to the PLA Logistics Academic Research Center

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“In a major conflict, such as against Taiwan, mobilization to a wartime footing would likely create observable distortions or anomalies in the PRC transportation sector despite possible PLA efforts to conceal such irregularities,” Mr. Thorne stated.

By 2025, the PLA hopes to be able to complete outbound loading of materiel within 24 hours and loading of outbound brigades and regiments within four hours, Mr. Thorne said.

Other early indicators would be an increase in forward military deployments closer to the coast along the Taiwan Strait, which likely would take place months in advance of a military strike.

“The challenge is that most of the clearest signals of imminent threat in this sector will likely occur in relatively close temporal proximity (likely months) to the onset of aggression,” he stated in prepared testimony.

PLA strategic writings state that an airborne assault on Taiwan would involve secret preparations and the use of deception. But the scale for a joint landing campaign would make concealing the activities very difficult, Mr. Thorne stated.

Attack preparations would likely include large-scale disruptions in the civilian passenger and cargo flights, and abnormal patterns by civilian ships, including roll-on, roll-off transports that the PLA is expected to use to move armor and other vehicles.

“It may be possible to monitor the relatively limited number of military and civilian airports likely to be used as points of embarkation for a campaign against Taiwan (approximately 33 airports, depending on the criteria applied) for similar atypical activity,” Mr. Thorne said. “Additionally, it is possible — maybe even likely — that Chinese social media users will document military transport activities and other indicators of mobilization in their localities, although authorities would likely take measures to prevent this.”

Chinese Communist Party officials are likely to order a general mobilization for a conflict three or four months before an invasion of Taiwan, Mr. Thorne said, while PLA demobilizations of enlisted troops also would halted up to a year before an invasion.

Timothy R. Heath, a RAND defense analyst, told the commission hearing that China’s accelerated military readiness measures are not the same as going to a national war footing.

“There is ample evidence that China’s military is enhancing its preparedness, but little evidence that the national leadership intends to fight a war anytime soon,” Mr. Heath stated, reflecting the Biden administration position that a war with China over Taiwan is neither imminent nor inevitable.

Mr. Heath testified that the main obstacle is politics inside the ruling Chinese Communist Party, specifically a lack of support from some CCP cadres and a state and party bureaucracy “unprepared” for war.

“The most important indicators of a potential conflict would consist of efforts to overcome these obstacles,” he said. “Although difficult to achieve, once a Chinese leader has set the political conditions for conflict, the risk of war could rise dramatically.”

Timing of an attack or the escalation of a crisis to a major war “would likely be very difficult to predict,” Mr. Heath stated.

National defense mobilization in China would involve preparing the entire nation for conflict through conscription for the military and large-scale transfer of civilian resources to the military, he said, adding that those war preparations would be less noticeable.

“A great deal of the evidence cited for the claim that China is preparing for war is more accurately characterized as evidence of military preparedness,” Mr. Heath said. 

China’s missile buildup, including both nuclear and conventional systems, is one worrisome sign of conflict preparation, but does not signal imminent conflict, he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also have given speeches calling for the PLA to prepare for conflict is linked to military preparedness and not war preparation, Mr. Heath stated.

“In sum, although Chinese military modernization developments may well pose a threat to the U.S. military, they do not signal that China is carrying out (or has already initiated) national war preparations,” he said. “This point was underscored when senior U.S. officials clarified that intelligence reports regarding PLA modernization goals for 2027 did not imply any intent to actually start a war.”

Other experts told the commission that other signs of war preparations by China will include stockpiling of oil and gas, protecting sources of food, and steps to prepare for economic and financial sanctions that would be imposed during a conflict.