Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

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I am glad to see Taiwan getting this type of attention from a major tech company. Taiwan's economy really needs an economic lift, after decades of brain drain and economic dominance by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and Japan.

I am concerned, though, that this is Google's way of getting around issues of not being able to operate with a free hand in China, i.e. it will serve as a platform for developing Chinese-language services and be ready to release them in the PRC when they can do so without attracting negative attention. There's some history of this -- in the 90s and 2000s it was a common strategy among global corporations to launch and iterate ideas and products in Taiwan before moving them over to China.

ETA:

Another more depressing assessment: Google is placing a bet on annexation, as the PRC has repeatedly insisted it will do by any means necessary (see "Xi Jinping Warns Taiwan That Unification Is the Goal and Force Is an Option," https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-tai...)

Another more depressing assessment: Google is placing a bet on annexation, as the PRC has repeatedly insisted it will do by any means necessary

Unlikely. Taiwan is really no closer to annexation now than it was in 1972. The situation with Taiwan has always been left intentionally vague. The CCP doesn't have to suffer the humiliation of acknowledging their own impotence and illegitimacy in bringing a 'rogue province' to heel, and the US doesn't have to maintain troops in Taiwan. No one is happy, but no one has to go to war either.

Some differences between 1972 and 2019 include the U.S. no longer has a military presence in Taiwan, and the PRC has engaged in a vast modernization of the PLA, including its air force and navy (https://thediplomat.com/2018/09/less-visible-aspects-of-chin...).

Is it enough to carry out a successful amphibious assault on and occupation of Taiwan? Maybe not (see https://www.ft.com/content/44586804-195c-11e9-9e64-d150b3105...), but Beijing is very adept at pulling other strategic levers to undermine Taiwan's economy, society, and democratic institutions.

Yes, of course. But I think I was responding more to the linked article and what seemed to be the original claim that China hasn't ruled out using force to take Taiwan. My point regarding that is,

1. Xi's sabre-rattling is nothing new. He's not the first scoundrel in Beijing to level these threats. And,

2. I doubt Google is basing their decision on any of this.

I think sometimes Westerners are shocked by how belligerent the Chinese government has become. Actually, the CCP has always been belligerent and their demands of and threats against our treaty allies have always been truculent and unreasonable. It's just that now we've made these scoundrels very powerful by trading with them. I hope its become clear to everyone that this was a civilization-level strategic blunder - that knee-capping western industrial labour unions probably wasn't worth empowering a new 21st century fascism in Asia.

Particularly in Google's case, I doubt they see it as empowering 21st century fascism in Asia. There's no love lost between Google's executive leadership and the Chinese government. China has attempted to directly hack Google and steal its source code and data on multiple occasions, and there have been previous pull-outs over diplomatic relations between the two of them.

Rather, I think Google views its China expansion as a way to get an information beachhead on China's 800 million citizens. Once they become an ingrained habit for China's populace, they become very difficult to get rid of (the same way Uber and AirBnB have become virtually impossible to get rid of, despite breaking numerous municipal laws), and can leverage that foothold to expand their influence.

Amphibious assaults are really difficult, particularly of a large populated landmass. Iwo Jima cost the U.S. 30,000 casualties, Okinawa almost 70,000, to capture a tiny island with a garrison of about 100,000 with a huge (> 6:1) numerical superiority. Japan's military was a joke at the time. The U.S. didn't even try to capture Formosa (Taiwan), and atom-bombed Japan rather than risk an invasion of the home islands. The force advantage required for an amphibious assault scales super-linearly, and beyond a certain population may not be possible at all, because of the inability to get more than a certain number of landing craft on the beach in a given time period.

Taiwan is

- small, dense, and urban, which means that everything of value is close together, and urban warfare is extremely difficult and costly.

- forested and mountainous, which would present problems with guerillas after a main invasion is over

- across a sea, so they will probably lose people just trying to get to Taiwan in the first place

If China were to militarily invade Taiwan they would probably bleed quite a lot and be the king of ashes in the end.

>king of ashes in the end

At the very most, king of at least 2 generations of extremely politically active, very pissed off people.

These are the people that took over their government buildings back in 2014 because of a suggested trade deal with China. As the young people did so, local businesses donated food, water, blankets, pillows etc in droves, demonstrated a cross-generational political activism that would be an absolute fucking nightmare to deal with as a brute-force conqueror.

Oops, the water lines to your PRC bases all clogged at the same time, weird!

Oops suddenly the internet doesn't work for PRC government offices, huh, strange!

I doubt China will actively invade Taiwan. It goes against the soft power mentality they usually prefer. More than likely, Taiwan will be compromised by Chinese companies, power and influence and its democracy corrupted from within. There's also a strong pro-China and pro-unification movement.

>Google is placing a bet on annexation

Why would that possibly be a reason to invest in Taiwan? Unless you can somehow imagine that "annexation" is a purely de jure arrangement that leaves Taiwan's regulatory structure untouched (very unlikely), any corporate structure you erect will have to be totally rebuilt upon annexation (employment law changes, people move, etc); if you're lucky you can keep the buildings (assuming they aren't bombed).

The better reason IMO would be that Taiwan is at this point cheaper than Japan or South Korea, safer than mainland SE Asia, and has (much) more room for growth than Singapore. As a base of operations in East Asia it is one of the best choices, political stability notwithstanding.

Annexation can take place with the direct threat of extreme violence but without a shot being fired, a la Hitler's "Anschluss" of 1938.

Under the terms of the 1997 Hong Kong handover, China allowed some institutions to be preserved (albeit greatly watered down) while permitting foreign companies to continue operations and have better access to the larger market (mainland China). Beijing regularly trots out this "One Country, Two Systems" model for Taiwan, something that many Taiwanese reject (recent survey results: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3663870)

I agree with your second point. Positioning Taiwan as a center of Asian operations is something Taipei actively promoted in the late 1990s as Hong Kong waned as an international center of business. It never took off then, but I hope it can get some traction now.

> safer than mainland SE Asia

Safer in what sense? crime? traffic? other?

I was primarily thinking about corruption and political stability, and civil rights (particularly women’s rights) are a concern wrt Malaysia, which otherwise leads in the EDBI for the region.

Got it, thanks.

I'm sure this is new office is for Google to move its "Chinese work" away from a campus where Western or other liberally minded employees would protest.

And that is good. If they don't want to do it, the jobs will go elsewhere

Facilitating authoritarian control of a population is a...good thing? Mind expounding?

Support a language that billions use is a bad thing?

Don't shift the goal posts. Nobody is objecting to "mandarin being supported". The issue has always been with working with a totalitarian state and working on censorship tools for said state. Saying "the jobs will go elsewhere" is not a tenable argument. Google providing those tools is not better than another actor doing the same thing.

Why is developing Chinese language services a bad thing?

Because Google is developing unethical censorship tools for the Chinese government.

OP strongly implied that working with or serving the Chinese at all was a bad thing.

They're 1/5 of the world.

This is a common practice today, even among startups. Being in Taiwan can give you access to mainland markets without the risk of the PRC coming by and demanding your tech, or someone frivolously suing you and you losing in a PRC court.

I don't see what it follows that google is placing a bet on annexation, this seems almost the opposite of that. If you wanted to support that out of china, go to Hong Kong maybe. This seems against annexation if anything.

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