The Washington Free Beacon reports that China has a secret plan to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2020. While the existence of the plan does not mean that an invasion of the island republic is imminent, it does mean that the strategic option is very much on the minds of China's Communist Party leadership. The question is: Could China's generals pull it off?

The plan, which is the subject of a forthcoming book by the Project 2049 Institute think tank , was first made public by Taiwan's Defense Ministry in 2013. The book draws upon official Chinese People's Liberation Army documents, both public and leaked, and will paint a picture of what an invasion would look like. The invasion plans are known as the "Joint Island Attack Campaign" and would involve all arms of the People's Liberation Army (PLA): Ground Forces, the Navy, the Army Air Forces, and the Marine Corps. It would also involve the Rocket Force, responsible for the country's conventional and nuclear ballistic missile forces.

The island nation of Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China, was created in 1949 when Chinese nationalist forces evacuated the mainland and ceded it to the victorious Chinese Communist Party. The island country has evolved into a strong and vibrant democracy. Taiwan enjoys military protection from the United States, which believes that the people of Taiwan have the right of self-determination but that eventually the island and the mainland should settle their political differences peacefully.

Chinese Navy J-15 fighters on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, winter 2016. Getty Images

China, on the other hand, sees Taiwan as a rogue or breakaway province that is still technically part of China. According to the book, the government of Xi Jinping and the PLA both believe that unification by force is the only way to ensure control of Taiwan returns to Beijing.

The invasion timetable , as posted by the Free Beacon, anticipates a pre-invasion bombardment lasting anywhere from one to fifteen days. Prior to the invasion, Taiwan would be subject to a massive bombardment by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and bombers against military targets on the island. Up to 1,000 ballistic missiles belonging to the PLA Rocket Forces alone are stationed on the mainland within range of the island, and Chinese naval vessels and bombers could launch DH-10 land attack cruise missiles. It would also execute cyberattacks against Taiwan's infrastructure, paralyzing the government and demoralizing the civilian population. The People's Liberation Army Navy would defeat the Taiwanese navy at sea and implement a naval blockade.

The invasion itself would last anywhere from four to seven days and involve up to 400,000 People's Liberation Army troops. The first phase, loading the invasion transports, would take one or two nights. The actual seaborne invasion, including making the 90 mile crossing from the mainland to Taiwan, sweeping for mines, and landing the first of two waves of troops, would take a day. Consolidating the beachheads and pushing inland would take one to three days, with Taiwan's government apparently falling at the end.

Could China pull an invasion off by 2020? There are reasons to be skeptical. While the PLA and the PLA Marine Corps maintains large and ample ground forces useful in an invasion, the real problem is having enough sealift. China needs large, robust amphibious forces capable of crossing the Taiwan Strait and landing troops on a hostile beachhead. While the People's Liberation Army Navy has approximately 900 smaller landing craft, it has only four Type 071 amphibious assault ships that can carry 500 to 800 troops and their hovercraft transports at a time. That number will probably rise to five by 2020, but twelve would be a good start. Here's a short three-minute video from Chinese state television about the ships:

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Another problem is inexperience. China hasn't been in a real war since 1979, when it invaded neighboring Vietnam . China, which made the mistake of replicating the human wave attacks that had limited success in the Korean War, lost up to 2,300 troops a day to the battle-hardened People's Army of Vietnam. The Chinese military could not maintain supply lines just five miles into Vietnam, and casualty reports suggest the PLA's high number of killed in action were partly a result of being unable to evacuate wounded just a few miles to the rear. Has China finally adapted to the new realities of war? It would take a war to find out.

Finally, although Taiwan's defense forces are relatively small, it has a 500-lb. gorilla in its corner: the United States military. China's invasion is meant to be accomplished quickly, before U.S. forces can be deployed into the area. But the U.S. maintains considerable forces in the region, including two squadrons of Air Force fighters, 4,000 U.S. Marines and their amphibious transports, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in Japan, and submarines and heavy bombers on the island of Guam. Some of those forces could intervene in mere hours, before the actual seaborne invasion begins.

This leads to an extremely tricky dilemma for China's leadership: If entry of U.S. forces into the conflict is inevitable, should China strike U.S. forces first to give them a free hand against Taiwan? That would mean all-out war with the U.S.A. and likely Japan, which is not in Beijing's national interest. Suddenly, a short war to reclaim a "rogue province" has grown a lot more complicated and difficult to pull off.

China has been threatening an invasion since 1949, and existence of a an invasion plan for Taiwan isn't exactly a surprise. While China could have a strong enough military to at least mount an invasion by 2020, victory would by no means be assured.

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