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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Relying on Taiwan is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. There is too much in one region of the world where a totalitarian regime with a sordid human rights record has a significant military presence and threatens Taiwan with regularity.

What happens when China rolls over Taiwan? Will the US support its ally as per treaty or will it turn a blind eye? What will the EU do? So far the world seems content to issue only proclamations against their treatment of the Uighur and the world is deafeningly silent about Hong Kong anymore.

The only way to protect the supply chain is to make more world wide that it currently is and Africa and South and Central America are ripe for bringing up their standard of living as well as the rights of their populations.

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> What happens when China rolls over Taiwan?

The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line. The concept that the US would use direct military confrontation to stop China from simply taking Taiwan is very unlikely in my opinion. Short of granting them statehood, Taiwan and its push for total freedom from China will crumble eventually. Our policy should be to buy time, clone what Taiwanese infrastructure we need, and offer a path to US citizenship to current Taiwanese residents and their children.

The approach now should just be to build infrastructure in the Americas and invite Taiwanese companies to bring over their institutional knowledge and partake. Taiwan doesn't have to be our flash point versus China. There is so much potential for advancement in the Western hemisphere, yet we sink all our resources into unwinnable bullshit because we're afraid of taking an Asia-Pacific L in pursuit of a greater American W.

The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line.

What do you mean by “in line”? Those countries are little more than nuisances in global geopolitics. If either of them seriously threatened US interests or key allies they would be rolled over as quickly as Iraq was in GW1.

My thoughts exactly. Look at what happened to Europe in the 30s. Germany just started occupying places left and right. Even when they occupied Poland they still did nothing but defend.

> What will the EU do?

They'll be gravely concerned. What did they do about the Karabah conflict? Not much. President Macron tried to talk them out of it when everybody else sat and watched helplessly, but it was already too late and Russia had to step in creating yet another Transnistria type of region. Germany has a conflict of interest in dealing with China because their economy depends on selling cars to the Chinese. And all of them already got their hands full with the pandemic. This is arguably the best time in the last 60 years for China to roll over Taiwan. The US will get involved, sure. Maybe Japan too but I'm not so sure about that now that Mr. Abe has resigned.

Isn't TSMC building a plant in Arizona? And Samsung's plant in Texas too?

US should be ready to do for Taiwan what the UK did for Hong Kong, move their best and brightest to US with Visas and path to citizenship if China were to ever take over.

If it happens, it will be quick. And there are vast numbers of very valuable Taiwanese people.

Setting aside the moral difference that the UK fundamentally had no reason to be governing part of China (except the legacy of their empire), whereas Taiwan arguably has every right to govern itself, I don’t think this would provide much relief if China decides to pounce.

I think it would be a good thing to do so since then we have much more motivation to protect Taiwan at all costs. China trying to roll over Taiwan would be akin to attacking us.

America has no choice but to defend Taiwan with the full weight of their resources, because losing Taiwan means they've lost access to the most important resource in the world. Chips are more important than anything. America has nothing without them.

The fabs would be a write off in any prolonged conflict. So they're not actually a good reason to defend Taiwan.

I think America would defend them anyway out of a sense of righteousness and pride. They wouldn't let China give them a black eye like that without hitting back. But could they actually prevail in the region? I'm not sure about that.

You are half right. The US will have to defend Taiwan otherwise we are done as a world power. Taiwan is not a push over. Any invasion would be seen way ahead of time. The Taiwan military is pretty dug in from the beaches to the mountains. They just need to make it painful enough and long enough for the US to bring its military might on target. Taiwan itself has the missile power to reach Shanghai and Beijing, and I have no doubt they would use it.

A traditional invasion may happen but is unlikely. China is already flying military planes into Taiwan airspace regularly. The goal is to wear them down, create unsustainable costs, and expand its regional hegemony to the area whereby any/all conflict over Taiwan is strategically already won by China. They’ll likely wait them out or make it painful enough that people ask for it.

Well no. They are flying into the ADIF zone and being driven off. If they crossed into the the 12 mile limit of the main island they would be shot down. China knows that. The fact is the military is really good at doing the same thing over and over again everyday. Any really escalation would result in the US actively placing support in Taiwan. China is playing a dangerous game. Their action all over the world and at home are going to drive the world into supporting more contact not less with Taiwan. Xi Jinping is not playing a very Chinese game. He is pushing too hard on every front because he is impatient. Long term this is going to break.

Purposely and repeatedly flying military aircraft to generate a military response is my main point. Thank you for clarifying where they have been flying.

In my discussions with Taiwanese people they’ve cited these provocations as a cost, problem, threat, etc.

Would they be shot down? That remains to be seen. The U.S. is not in a great position to support Taiwan. The overwhelming majority of U.S. military tech is for projecting power, not cost effectively defending.

The is not much a difference in this case. Boots on the ground are required to hold on to anything. Any transport of troops and materials between the mainland and Taiwan exist in a very large shooting gallery. It is not clear that China could maintain long term air superiority in the area. They have a very small (but growing) Navy. The US sub fleet would sink most of it quite quickly. The US fleet is very vulnerable to ground based missiles and would take a pounding but longer term the US has the force projection to win. In order for China to win this Taiwan has to fall in 5 days, after that it becomes a war of attrition and technology and the US is better equipped today to fight that. It is not clear that will stay the same long term. In the Korean War the US planes would not chase Chinese planes over the border. That policy would not fly here as all the military fields close to Taiwan would be hit quickly no matter what because the material threat to the US Navy requires it. Chinese pride and feeling of years of rage at how the western powers treated them in the past is the only issue here. There is no reason beyond that for China to press on this as the status quo has been fine for 50 years however for the US it would mean the fall of our position in the world and the fall of the dollar which would bankrupt the US. The west has no choice but to defend Taiwan or see an end to our very way of life.

I don't think the west will defend taiwan, but it won't matter. If china invades, their economy collapses, because no one will want to send cargo ships or oil tankers into a war zone, and industrial and ag production in china proper stops for the six months-1year of the conflict, and the population starves or riots. Probably the most the us will do punitively is to embargo china with a naval blockade. That's just as bad if not worse.

It's hard to imagine chinese leadership doesn't know this.

In 25 years, the west will forget about it. And resume trade as normal.

After all, it was the west that wanted “Free Trade” with China, so that they could shove opium down their throats.

But for some strange reason, the West is upset that the Chinese got upset, and kicked them out. And they had to turn to an alternative political model, in order to survive, so they can remove all western influence on them.

> And resume trade as normal.

In 25 years what does china's demography look like? And who is making their food (the bulk of the youth lives in the city)? It's possible that china will force it's citizens to labor as agriculturists, but that guts your export productivity.

> They have a very small (but growing) Navy.

They have the world's largest navy, and it's still growing rapidly:

https://www.dw.com/en/china-navy-vs-us-navy/a-55347120

> However, defense analysts point out that the US remains far ahead in the key metric of tonnage, meaning the US Navy operates much larger warships than China.

It looks like China only has "largest" if you go by raw ship count, which is probably misleading.

Correct. River patrol boat are counted in this.

> River patrol boat are counted in this

Really? I would expect those to be operated by the People's Armed Police, which also runs the coast guard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_of_the_China_Coast_G...

Note that neither coast guard nor maritime militia are part of the navy, yet both have armed vessels and personnel. The coast guard in particular has larger ships than any other coast guard.

Anyway, it was hardly river patrol boats that led to this conclusion already back in 2019:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-army-navy-specialre...

If Taiwan launches missiles at Shanghai or Beijing, then I’m pretty sure the Taiwanese are fcked. It’s game on at this point. And China will carpet bomb the shit out of Taiwan.

At that point, the surviving Taiwanese will wish they weren’t so stupid, and had accepted the One-China policy to begin with, instead of being the sacrificial pawns of the Americans.

And nukes.. if you want to play with nukes, then the Chinese has plenty of nukes. Who’s going to blink first and launch them? China or the United States?

We know for a fact, that the United States cowardly dropped nukes on civilian populations. Twice. So, there’s a high likelihood that they’ll be the first to launch them. But this time, China has nukes of their own too.

You’re being too emotional. Take a chill pill and relax. A shooting war between China and the United States, will result in all the major American cities turned into a nuclear wasteland. At that point, is your pride still worth it?

Not the sharpest tool in the shed are you...

Please be civil. Explain why you think this or don't comment.

So.. you’re saying that you want to play with nukes?

And hope that your own American city doesn’t get atomized in the exchange?

Right, but that's exactly why the parent comment said putting manufacturing in Taiwan is a bad idea.

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