Ep 237: Toshi Yoshihara on China’s Subversive Strategies

School of War · Oct 7, 2025 · 57m

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.

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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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