Taiwan reports largest ever incursion as 38 Chinese planes fly over air space | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan reports largest ever incursion as 38 Chinese planes fly over air space

theguardian.com

35 pointsaazaa30 comments

Given the disastrous way the US withdrew from Afghanistan if a now emboldened China decided to invade Taiwan I feel like the US would just stand by and watch. Unfortunate to see the resolve of the US falter to uphold.

It’s a power play. Biden isn’t going to commit forces to this situation because it would mean serious war. if I were China, I’d go for it.

They can get John Cena to apologize in Mandarin, so they can sure as hell seize Taiwan.

Japan is very unlikely to sit and watch during a would be invasion of Taiwan.

Mr. Kishida, the next likely PM of Japan has made it pretty clear that Japan needs to work together with the US in case they have to respond to a Taiwan invasion scenario. Here's the Global Times propaganda piece regarding his recent WSJ interview:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1235510.shtml

JP plays up China threat card for domestic politics/electioneering. It's theater. Here's how you know JP will seriously engage in TW defense, if they adopt any of the recommendations US think tanks believe is necessary to make US forces survivable in TW defense scenarios. Increase defense budget substantially, hosting US IRBMs, allowing US assets to spread out over other JP islands (agile combat deployment). Non of this is politically feasible, especially the latter since it expose JP population centres to PRC retaliation. For reference Japanese won't even allow US Aegis Ashore ABM to defend themselves against NK nukes.

We're weary of useless and unnecessary wars -exhausted. I'm glad we got out of a place we should have never been in.

This is coming up and a wrong time for Taiwan. We are in no mood for wars, the president is neither, and may be exhausted himself. So, only if the military does it behind his back and essentially do a coup, would we go full on in there.

We're spent, China knows it. But then, Taiwan, like Japan are of strategic importance. AF was the opposite of that. We could be 3T ahead in infrastructure instead.

Probably the only thing that keeps China back is international trade. It would plummet and their economy would sour quick and the rest of the world would suffer "supply chain" pain.

If anything happens this is mostly all GW's fault.

It's just a show if force. Taiwan could accidentally fly a drone swarm into their path.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/taiwan-wants-suicid...

Taiwan can't take down a Chinese jet without severe consequences. They understand that better than the average US neocon (referring to the writers of the National Interest).

They can do just about anything they please in their airspace, including nuclear tests.

Sure they can but the consequences will be severe. It's equivalent to a remora fish pissing off the whale it feeds off of. Taiwan's economy would experience a tremendous decline in that scenario.

Afghanistan doesn’t quite compare, for example a carrier group poses no threat whatsoever to Afghanistan because there is no infrastructure to destroy. In contrast one or two US carrier groups could not only offer a ridiculous level of defense, but also a fast moving and aggressive offense that would pose enough of a threat such that it wouldn’t need to be used. At least one can hope. Interesting and scary times tbh. Given the rapid change in situation in Hong Kong, though, I’m not expecting much.

I wouldn’t be so sure, the growing vulnerability of American aircraft carriers to Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the DF-21D is just one problem to which the Pentagon lacks a good solution.

Oh I’m not at all sure and the prospect of testing these technologies is terrifying!

Random: did you ever fuck around with PBXs in the early 90s?

The territorial status of Taiwan remains number one on my mental list of “shit that can start world war three” if it wasn’t already, it got knocked off top spot for a brief little while a few years ago during the very worst of North Korea’s Sabre rattling in the very early days of Trump’s presidency, when it was unclear who would blink, if the escalation of threats had continued and North Korea pushed their “our missiles can hit the USA our great enemy” harder, but other than that week or two period, Taiwanese territorial sovereignty has been my number one most likely cause of WW3 for at least the last decade.

I never get why it would be a world war. Try engaging the problem by the size of the territory.

Would US risk WW3 over:

Eastern Europe? Yes

Japan? Yes

South Korea? No

Taiwan? No

Crimea? No

Hong Kong? No

Wouldn't a poison pill to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry deter mainland China indefinitely?

You invade us, we'll torch every fab on our island.

Simple and borderline stupid and illustrative of my own ignorance, no doubt, yet it seems like the ultimate strategy.

You invade us, we'll torch every fab on our island.

As Dirty Harry would say, "Go ahead, make my day". Torching the fabs would level the playing fields as China would then have more fabs available than the West would. TSMC is who is supplying most of the West's semiconductors these days. They are more advanced than Intel, etc.

I don't think Taiwan sabotaging itself will slow down China. A weaker TW is a lot more vulnerable to reunification and remember, China can nonviolently destroy the Taiwanese economy with very little effort as it is right now due to how supply chains are structured.

This is not going to end well.

Hopefully China is reunited soon.

Want to explain any further past advocating for invasion and death?

Hopefully it will be peaceful.

It won't be. Still hoping for an invasion? You should well the know the 24 million Taiwanese people haven't wanted it for 73 years, longer than Xi has been alive...

They were under Japanese occupation, then military dictatorship, now a failing liberal democracy.

By what metrics is Taiwan “failing” in any way? Their GDP per capita is almost 3x of China. They don’t live under constant surveillance. With what relatively few people they have they’ve created the world’s most advanced semiconductors fab.

Stop wasting your time trying to reason with an obviously brainwashed Chinese nationalist.

How naïve of you to say given China's past (and present).

As long as it is the Republic of China not People's Republic of China that would be fine.

You know the ROC claims more territory than the PRC does, right?

The reason I don't support the PRC is not because of the amount of land they claim. I support the ROC because they are not one of the worst countries on Earth. The PRC is evil and any expansion of it would be bad.

I feel sorry for someone who has such a dogmatic view of the world.

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