US subs would likely thwart China attack on Taiwan

The Telegraph:

 China must master a difficult form of warfare before it can take on the US Navy

Submarines could decide Taiwan’s fate. If recent war games are at all accurate, the US Navy’s fleet of 54 stealthy, heavily-armed nuclear-powered attack submarines could sink scores of troop transports and blunt any Chinese invasion across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait.

And working in conjunction with US Air Force bombers firing long-range cruise missiles, the subs could even end the invasion – and decisively resolve three-quarters of a century of escalating tension between Taiwan and China.

The prospect of an undersea defeat of Beijing’s central strategic aim – the destruction of Taiwanese democracy – should only grow more likely in coming years as Taiwan adds its own new submarines, eight diesel-electric models, to the defensive fleet.

The open question is whether the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy can develop weapons and tactics for hunting down the subs before the subs hunt down the PLAN’s invasion fleet. It might be the most important question in the most important strategic rivalry in the world today.

The best answer to that question is an unsatisfying one. Maybe. But is Beijing willing to risk everything on a maybe?

Anti-submarine warfare is hard. It might even be one of the hardest missions in all of modern warfare. The oceans are vast, singing with natural noise and dense with layers of alternating cold and warm, salty and less-salty water. All of these qualities make it easy for a 380-foot-long Virginia-class submarine to hide with its 135 sailors and three dozen torpedoes and missiles.

Unless the PLAN can deploy patrol planes, helicopters, warships, submarines, satellites and undersea sensors to find and sink the US fleet’s Virginia-, Los Angeles-, Seawolf-class subs, the vessels should be able to strike at will. The Royal Navy plans to base one of its Astute-class attack boats in the Far East, too, and under the Aukus pact the US and UK nuclear-powered subs will be joined in time by Australian ones.

The US Defense Department is confident it can win the undersea fight.
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I have seen no evidence that China has the ability to engage in sea power projected ashore.  That is a tactic that the US Marines effectively used in World War II in the Pacific theater and was also used in the European theater by troops landing on Northern France.  The US also used amphibious operations against North Korea.  It is unlikely that China could evade the US subs for such an operation.