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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

Not until China stops manufacturing everything, and I'm thinking by then it will be too late.

I fear it already is too late. China was brave enough to take Hong Kong in one swift motion. The international response has been so weak that China is already eyeing Taiwan. Just yesterday they flew with 18 fighter jets and a bomber across the unofficial but mutually agreed border between Taiwan and China. This is unprecedented.

If the situation doesn't deescalate quickly, we might see a war soon and if push comes to shove, the US could be in the middle of it.

> Just yesterday they flew with 18 fighter jets and a bomber across the unofficial but mutually agreed border between Taiwan and China.

There is no official border between these 2 "countries". They both officially claim they own the the other.

And China has made it plain that, as long as Taiwan is not pursuing independence, everything can be made as usual. That's backed by many popular demand from the ordinary people.

It's like US wont allow USSR to deploy nukes in Cuba. As long as you Cuba dont do that, US are OK with the communism on the island. Otherwise, sorry, you are risking the whole life for this whatever ideology you are pursuing.

The US could just extract a few key TSMC engineers, turn its facilities into a crater, and back out. I don't think anyone wants to start WWIII with China over an exiled Chinese government living on an island that's less than 200 miles from the Chinese mainland other than an occupied Taiwanese people.

I'm not even certain that the US could land a force in the area, given China's investment in defensive missile installations.

Appeasement didn't work back in the 1930s and won't work now. Let China take Taiwan and they'll probably look at Vietnam or even South Korea or Japan.

It's not appeasement. It's just not worth it. Wasting American blood in a region built up to be defensible specifically against the Americans to save a government that mostly only exists out of spite seems like a poor investment.

The kind of withdrawal I described would likely be accompanied by the expulsion of all non-immigrant Chinese nationals, a military build-up in friendly regional territories, and deployments in anticipation of blockading Chinese energy imports.

What govt do you mean exists only out of spite? You can't mean Taiwan. It's a real country. They are a democracy.

It is a real country, with a real Democracy. But if it weren't for an implicit threat of US intervention, it likely wouldn't be. My point is that its existence strikes me more as an artifact of America's of geopolitical posturing and, a policy of containment left over from the cold war than anything else.

This is delusional Cold War "domino effect" thinking but somehow even stupider because there was at least some credibility to the idea that communism would be a popular enough ideology to be adopted in such a fashion. Please tell me why China would ever have any interest in invading and occupying any of those countries.

China wants to control everything that could affect them. Eventually they will fight to take over Taiwan. They will use economic power to force Australia to do what they want also.

That's now how China works. It's a very different mentality - they _only_ care about China, specifically the boundaries of China defined by the "9-dash line."

The rest of the world will serve to feed 9-dash mainland China with raw materials (Africa) and loan repayments (Belt and Road). There is none of the "social justice" of Western imperialism, no interest in exporting Chinese values or ideology - there is only China.

The US may not need to land a force there, just ensure that China can't. Make sure Taiwan has enough missiles, subs, mines, etc to repel any PLA landing force, making it prohibitively expensive and embarrassing for China to attempt.

That's true. I honestly think an out and out invasion of Taiwan is exceedingly unlikely, when the CCP has the latitude to exert decades of concentrate soft power to render Taiwan a functional vassal long before Chinese boots hit the ground.

That would be by far the most sensible and effective strategy for China to pursue - subjugate your adversary without fighting, as Sun Tzu advised.

And they were until Xi made himself dictator for life. Under Xi it seems like the CCP has become unecessarily less rational and more insecure.

Isn't their only carrier retrofitted Russian tech?

Yes, but my understanding of their defensive strategy for tbe south China Sea is largely contingent on their ability to saturate a carrier group's defenses with missiles and torpedoes, and then fire a few more in order to score kill shots (I unfortunately can't find the source where I read this).

It's a poor strategy for power projection, but theoretically it's a comparatively economical method of negating America's capacity to power project in the region.

Here's a National Interest article on the dialogue around it: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/aircraft-carriers-vs-...

Its not only that, they have many politicians on their books. Even western publications are warry about highlighting what's happening prominently. Today a NYPD officer was caught spying for them.

https://abc7ny.com/nypd-spying-baimadajie-angwang-tibetan-of... (caution playing video)

And in an extreme twist of irony, the NYPD officer is ethnically Tibetan.

He probably had family they got to.

His dad was retired PLA and a party member. His mom was a government official and also a party member.

In a way they did get to them but not in the way you imply.

Thank you for giving more information, I should have researched more before commenting.

There will always be a segment of any oppressed population that is willing to side with their oppressors.

China has money. Let's never underestimate the greed of people when it comes to treason.

It may surprise you that Jews turned in other Jews during Nazi occupation. People are people, they don't fit into nice neat little boxes.

>Its not only that, they have many politicians on their books.

Citation needed, please. A cop is not a politician.

There's plenty of accusations being thrown around, but generally no hard proof that they're directly controlled by the Chinese Government (read into that whichever way you want).

Off the top of my head, there's:

Shaoquett Moselmane, Australian state politician. Recently had her home raided by the Australian Federal Police in relation to Chinese espionage (details are scant, due to the ongoing investigation)

Sam Dastyari, Australian federal politician. Resigned due to donations from Chinese entities

Jian Yang, NZ member of parliament. Former member of the CCP and civilian member of the PLA.

That’s how the game is played afaik... in Snowden’s book he mentions how the CIA operatives bribe assets in foreign countries (and himself witnessing a disastrous operation).

The prime minister of Singapore famously called the CIA out on it: https://mothership.sg/2017/02/cias-failed-attempt-to-bribe-l...

Are there any details of the operation Snowden witnessed? I don't think I'm familiar with that and would be interested in reading/watching it.

It's worth picking up his book and reading it firsthand. It's full of very interesting stories, the media coverage of him doesn't do justice to the real person.

I see companies shifting manufacturing out of the PRC, though sadly not fast enough and not for human rights reasons. Cellphones made in Vietnam etc. (e.g Pixel 4a I think) would be preferable to supporting the current regime in the PRC. Here's hoping we stop enabling the cruel regime in the PRC.

Genuine question: is Vietnam any better than China in regards to freedom and human rights?

Whether or not it's actually better, it gives leverage over China. Do better or else...

I think economic forces will play a part here. As China develops economically, it becomes more expensive to build there. That will tend to slowly but surely drive manufacturing to other locations. India has many strong technical universities and is a potential competitor.

Not until we stop buying everything China manufactures. We need tariffs and sanctions on any country with China's human rights record.

We're already seeing massive movement of manufacturing out of China. Samsung no longer builds smartphones in China, and even Apple has been moving some of its products to India and Taiwan. While it should have been done years ago when it was overtly obvious that China isn't going to liberalize, now is the second best time to do so.

It just takes organization, multi-lateral trade agreements. Unfortunately it may be too late for those the CCP has within their borders and perhaps those within arm's length, however it won't be too late to protect the CCP from successfully expanding and taking over the rest of the free world.

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