Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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February 1985: China

The Soviet nuclear targeting plot in China, the two waves of city-busting attacks, had been examined carefully by outsiders – the Americans especially – to provide ‘meaning’ to all of it. There was a reason why some cities were targeted and others weren’t. The second wave of strikes took the greatest interest, those made in retaliation to the Chinese obliteration of Vladivostok. The half a dozen cities hit in November 1984 had clearly been selected beforehand for geo-political reasons whereas those four wiped off the face of the earth in October appeared to have been hit on impulse. There were those that the Americans regarded as which should have been on the November firing plot and were left off. Nanchang could be excused because that was where the Chinese government under Hu had moved to but Nanjing (a historic Chinese capital) and others spread southwards away from the radioactive ruin of Shanghai down the coast opposite Taiwan had all be pointedly left alone. There had been that attempt to get Taiwan onside by the Soviets and that explained much of that. A further belief that the Americans had was that Moscow wished to see a post-war China have both a population and industrial base for its own exploitation in the victory they were chasing. Such reading of the situation by the Americans was entirely correct. These were Soviet intentions. In Moscow they still had that aim to see a surviving China once the war was over, one under Soviet tutelage. The defiance had to be finished off first though.

Nanjing sat alongside the Yangtze River and past that waterway were Nanchang and the Coastal Provinces. Soviet armies moved in that direction starting mid-February. The Chinese had the last of their large organised forces in the way and the mission orders ran for those to be defeated. It was to be the biggest battle of the war, one for the history books in terms of huge forces involved and the ferocity of the fight. The Battle of the Yangtze River it would be deemed afterwards.

It would be a battle which those history book would show the Soviets as the victors. They took Nanjing, went over the Yangtze and carried onwards as the month came to a close. The PLA was incapable of stopping them. They bled the Soviets greatly but this wasn’t enough to stop that steamroller which couldn’t be stopped. A trio of large pockets of cut-off Chinese troopers were formed south of the river, each with tens of thousands of PLA men caught inside them. One of the pockets was forced back towards the East China Sea and in the direction of what once was Shanghai; the other two couldn’t move and stayed where they were in the countryside. Soviet follow-on forces moved against them and began using chemical weapons in-number to further weaken what was left of them. The intention was to take each apart next month when that weakening had taken effect.

Soviet forward spearheads pushed through the huge gaps ripped open once south of the Yangtze. Hangzhou first before Ningbo and Wenzhou were out ahead along with the sea as the Soviets moved southeast towards Zhejiang Province. Other Soviet armies sent their lead units into the southern parts of Anhui: a province which the Yangtze ran through the middle of. These drove in a southwestern direction now and Nanchang was beyond them. That city sat behind the Poyang Lake – a formidable obstacle – and was a long way off but within reach beforehand of Soviet air strikes ahead of the tanks following. With his armies driving on Nanchang, and the last of the PLA’s heavier forces defeated, Vorotnikov waited for Hu to begin the process of arranging for talks to commence. China was beaten. There was no hope left for Hu now but to allow for diplomacy. There was division within the upper levels of leadership in Moscow yet none in Vorotnikov’s mind. The China War was now finally won. It had to be.


Britain had secured support from both Brunei and Singapore to help with the Hong Kong refugee crisis. The two smaller nations agreed to provide aid to stop the British colonial possession from ending up like Macau. Their assistance would come with a price to be paid later, a price which differed between each yet generally covered trade access and military support in the post-war world. Britain looked likely to come out worse off from each agreement. If the situation hadn’t been so urgent then London would never have agreed. It was though and so the deals had been struck. No one else could help. The United States was in no position to do so and neither were more traditional allies such as Australia and New Zealand either. Abandoning Hong Kong and letting it possibly fall under Taiwanese influence – they took over Hainan before the end of the month, now overtly gobbling up bits of China – was not to be done. Thus, these two other countries were turned to. Singapore was going to provide the manpower while Brunei provided support, especially immediate financial support.

Singapore had troops in South Korea and those were some of its best units in terms of training & equipment. More stayed at home, those of a lesser calibre. A brigade-sized force went to Hong Kong. They were flown there on commercial airliners in the colours of Cathay Pacific & Singapore Airlines (the smaller Royal Brunei Airlines aided in this) and arrived with light weapons. These were soldiers and thus came equipped for a fight. Overall, civilian refugees fleeing from China and seeking safety in Hong Kong in overwhelming numbers were helpless yet among them there were armed people as well: many defectors from the PLA. To come without weapons would have been foolish, especially since British forces in Hong Kong had already many times engaged armed opponents inside and on the edges of the territory. Medical and engineering personnel arrived too. What refugees were already inside needed to be attended to alongside the effort to patrol the frontier. Brunei funding was used to secure purchases of food and medical supplies to further support the needy inside Hong Kong: those who lived there and those who had arrived. It was money from the Sultan of Brunei which also paid all of the associated costs with the military deployment too. Nothing came cheap. This was certainly apparent when other nations realised that they were in a position to make a profit from Britain’s plight when it came to Hong Kong.

Singaporean troops were soon alongside the British 26th Gurkha Brigade providing the ‘defence’ of Hong Kong. The New Territories in the north and the long land border there with the Chinese mainland needed particular attention. However, the security and future of Hong Kong was under threat from all other directions as well where boats and at times even light aircraft had been making landings depositing people. It was a huge task to not just patrol the frontiers (the coastline was extensive) but inland as well. In all honestly, to stop every single entry made, five – maybe ten – times as many men from Singapore might have been needed. What came was a start though, enough to take the pressure off. The British understood that some refugees were going to get through. What they didn’t want to see was a horde of them pour in, all in urgent need and all taking what they wanted to try to ease their plight but instead bringing everything down around them. There was sympathy for such people who wanted to flee from their war-torn nation… but the wellbeing of the colony and those who lived here came first. Now, with outside support having finally arrived, even from another country rather than Britain itself, there was some hope in Hong Kong that they wouldn’t go the way of Macau. Millions of people in China remained on the move and a lot were still outside Hong Kong though. The whole situation wasn’t resolved. It was just a case of a stopgap measure and an easing of pressure. To rectify the whole situation, something else would have to be done. What that was, no one in neither Hong Kong nor London knew.