Ep 237: Toshi Yoshihara on China’s Subversive Strategies 

School of War

Toshi Yoshihara, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and author of ⁠Mao's Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China's Navy⁠, joins the show to discuss how the PLA took Beijing in 1949 by subversion, and how they may yet seize Taiwan.   

Toshi Yoshihara, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and author of <a href="https://a.co/d/ajkugXl">Mao's Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China's Navy</a>, joins the show to discuss how the PLA took Beijing in 1949 by subversion, and how they may yet seize Taiwan.      
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Times
    •      01:53 Introduction
    •      03:24 Peaceful liberation
    •      07:19 Planning and preparation         
    •      10:36 Isolation
    •      17:30 A tradition of manipulation        
    •      23:51 True believers           
    •      28:23 Helpless    
    •      34:55 Political warfare          
    •      41:53 Surprise
    •      47:32 Holy Grail
    •      50:51 Fault lines
    •      57:44 What to read?
 
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This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history.&nbsp;Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and former China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras. The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.&nbsp;&nbsp; Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps. <a href="https://schoolofwar.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Visit our Substack for episode transcripts</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/school.of.war/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Follow along on Instagram</a>