Comment by elsonrodriguez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elsonrodriguez | Hacker News Reader

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The US isn't going to be caught off guard by China. What the west has been doing for Ukraine in the last few months in terms of weapons, the US and other countries have been doing for Taiwan over the last few decades:

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

The latest sale involves adding 60 Harpoon anti-ship missiles to the pile of hundreds they already have.

China will not have an easy time of invading such a well-armed country, and they also have to weigh the non-zero possibility of foreign intervention. It will be a costly endeavor by any measure.

China's best bet is a cultural/political/economic takeover, which will give other countries time to diversify chip manufacturing, as we are currently doing.

Taiwan imports 60-70% of it's food and they can't increase domestic production because they import fertilizer and they can't make their own fertilizer because they import natural gas, and they don't have any domestic gas fields.

China doesn't need to storm the beaches, they can passively blockade Taiwan until they give in.

Taiwan has hundreds of anti ship misiles with a range of over 100km.

China doesn’t have to storm beaches to be within shooting range.

If Taiwan were an easy conquest it would have been conquered. It’s not impossible that China would attempt some sort of belligerence, but Taiwan is capable responding to any threat with enough firepower to deter such actions.

You don't need ships to blockade

It’s not impossible.

China moves at a different pace than the West.

They might retake Taiwan in 2100, after a couple generations maybe care more about shared culture and language than democracy.

Many mainland Chinese think the best approach for China-Taiwan issue is to just wait. It's not of the best interest of Chinese people (of both China and Taiwan) to change the status quo.

On the other side, the US obviously wants to see a war between the two side of the strait. And the US is actually prepareing for it.

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