Taiwan Can Win a War with China | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan Can Win a War with China

foreignpolicy.com

14 pointsSubiculumCode20 comments

Maybe they can win a battle...China will live to fight another day. Let's be honest: if today is in doubt, a couple of decades ago China had no chance. The trend is on China's side. What will happen two decades from now with China having relatively unlimited money for this cause?

"Win" in the sense of the article is the same kind of "win" that Finland achieved against the USSR; they surely lost all of their objectives, but it was long, bloody, and expensive from the USSR's point of view.

Unlimited money, or at least the willingness to spend unlimited money, has not really resulted in a sustainable "win" in Afghanistan, for example.

Unlimited money, or at least the willingness to spend unlimited money, has not really resulted in a sustainable "win" in Afghanistan, for example.

China can afford a Finland vs USSR scenario, several times over. China is not going away and the Taiwanese are essentially Han Chinese according to Wikipedia so the Afghan scenario is different. China can offer same government or laws for at least for x decades...

The notion that everything is kumbaya among all Han Chinese automatically is a silly government line.

> China can offer same government or laws for at least for x decades...

Wasn't Hong Kong supposed to be independently managed til 2047? The Taiwanese are not blind.

>>Wasn't Hong Kong supposed to be independently managed til 2047? The Taiwanese are not blind.

Ask Hong Kong...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Hon... . Blind or not average people might not fight to the last man if they feel /perceive no difference in rule.

Righty-oh: as Han Chinese, the Taiwanese are highly dangerous to the mainland Communist Party's narrative that there is no alternative and that top-down Party heavy-handedness is just being reasonable "with Chinese characteristics". Any Finland-like scenario would demonstrate the effectiveness and societal value of obtaining more democracy to all Han Chinese.

Or exacerbate the conflict, the deaths from both sides in Taiwan and China could create hate that might just lead to a eight-year-long civil war like the Syrian Civil War with no end in sight.

Hmm sorry this is a bit of a non-sequitur. Responsibility for the deaths on both sides would squarely fall on Xi, and he would get all the very much deserved hate, having taken full ownership now.

It would fall on Xi but that doesn't mean the conflict will end, once blood is spilt, there will be anger. I've seen enough Middle Eastern conflicts to see where it would end. We can blame Assad for the Syrian war but its not ending it.

Probably not. There's a straight between the two sides here. They aren't right next to each other like in Syria.

There's a strait between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. It doesn't take very many people to cause destabilizing acts of terror.

Taiwan’s biggest worry right now is probably domestic. People basically lost confidence in both parties (KMT and DPP) ever in power, and Taiwan’s future is really unclear

I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but not it's not encouraging on the international side that Russia can take Crimea - resulting in a bump to Putin's approval ratings. I bet China is taking notes. Something for the China's gov't to consider if it falters (eg. crash in their economy isn't far fetched).

Yes and China is closely watching domestic events in Taiwan as well, which does have major impacts on the relation between them, and also on the sentiment of people on both sides.

This article feels odd. I'm not sure what's going on here, because it sounds a bit like the "Iraq may be able to beat USA" worries that I heard in 2003, before the Shock and Awe thing happened. Except it's the other way around. It's not whistling past their grave. I don't know what to make of this.

Issue with this is that former DPP Chair Tsai Ing-Wen has resigned her position as Chair due to low approval ratings and voting defeats on her home turf. Shes stayed on as president but not likely to be re-elected. Her opposition the KMT if they get re-elected will likely continue on either good relations with China or reunification so there would be less saber-rattling.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/24/asia/taiwan-president-resigns...

https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/05/26/taiwans-president-...

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2018/09/18/2...

Who needs a war? Taiwan and China will eventually merge without a murmur. More like Germany did than Vietnam.

Nah. While Mainland Chinese people might want to be governed by Taipei and become free and prosperous, Chairman Xi and his cronies won’t give up their death grip on the golden goose that makes every one of their family members billionaires.

And of course the other way around is even sillier. Taiwanese are as likely to join the poverty-stricken and oppressive Xi regime as South Korea joining the rule of Kim song un.

I do not agree according the latest public poll, Taiwanese people choose independent and "keep current status(not unification)" are more than unification. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2018/09/19/2...

>>The results showed that 36.2 percent of respondents supported an independent Taiwan, while 26.1 percent favored unifying with China and 23.2 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” in cross-strait relations.

So almost half already support either unification or status quo. Unite with Motherland and keep the status quo (a lie but most will buy it).

Add a few decades of "economic unification," tens of billions spent on propaganda and China will receive the island's key. Once that's done, go ahead, undo it.

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