PRC needs this strategic economic partner, they won't bring the devastating effects of war on the same industries that they work with.
It turns out that economic interdependence didn't stop the Germans from marching on France when the Russians declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and once it started it turns out the economics weren't powerful enough to stop a way in progress.
Economic realities only are in play so long as no one feels they are fighting for their survival as the world geo-political maps continues to change, Russia facing a complete collapse, the coming Chinese demographic problems combined with their food supply issues, etc, many nations will see their only future being through conquest.
Then Russia invaded anyways and is apparently now in the process of doubling down by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of fresh recruits.
Now do that in Taiwan. Are you going to mine semiconductors from under a rock? Do that while an army of Taiwan partisans keeps fighting for decades?
True, but with less revenue in the future and higher inflation. Also, they are killing off lots of the men needed in their workforce. Higher revenue is just being burned in $100MM missile strikes.
Also, the world is exponentially more economically interdependent than it was a century ago. Was the trade between the Central Powers and the Entente really comparable to that between the PRC and the rest of the world today? Or even between modern Russia's trade with the world and China's trade with the world? I suspect these are all different cases that need to be examined in full, not brushed away with rhetorical flourishes.
An immense amount of consumer electronics are manufactured in China. But also, most of China's energy is imported by sea. Don't think their Belt and Road projects have managed to substitute those naval routes yet. So in the case of war, both China and its trading partners are at the risk of slitting each others' throats in a jiffy. Is that comparable to Russia, an energy exporter?
The almost dictator of Brazil, Bolsonaro, brags that his biggest achievement when in power was to bring the colors of the flag back to people’s lives
Like, wtf, how is this important?
But that’s not the point, the point is people in power will do whatever they want and have their reasoning for it
Ask Putin. Symbolism might seem weak sauce, unless you're a totalitarian state whose choices are more symbolism (aka distraction) or collapse, because Door #3, liberalizing reform, is not a permissible option.
The Chinese government's top priority is the supremacy of the party. They will invade Taiwan no matter what kind of economic damage it would do, if they believe it will strengthen Xi and the party in the long run.
No country would be stupid enough to bring all that crashing down because some stupid nationalist dispute in the Balkans, that would be idiotic and stupid. Clearly people are to rational for that.
If you’re betting on human rationality over time in the hands of people with a lot of centralized power, you’re making the losing bet. There’s a reason people were genuinely afraid of nuclear war (and still should continue to be): if it happens, it will involve very few people and there will be nothing any one of the billion’s of others can do about it.
There is a solution: the dispersal of power tends to work well; but the risk you run up against is charismatic individuals acting as a locus for a majority’s power, so you also need anti-majoritarian institutions and a culture that values them. Hard to get all three.
Futher the Ottomans were the ones who attacked Russia first, after the war had already gone on several months.
Russian involvement with Germany had almost nothing to do with Eastern European political ambitions and everything to do with the treaty between Russia and France guarenteeing Russia's protection of France in the event of conflict with Germany. Russia only got involved, not out of a desire to beat down Austria-Hungry but to protect Serbia, which had an implicit promise of protection from Russia, against the Austro-Hungarians.
Russia's only major gain from the great war was ever going to be the squashing of German power before it could challenge Russia in the East, and turned out to be the biggest mistake in Russian history.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/35758/why-did-ru...
World leaders are generally logical within the bounds of their incentives -- and China's incentives are probably such that an invasion of Taiwan makes more sense to them than it does to outside observers.
But even if it did... did Putin think that there would be no sanctions? Did he think that Finland and Sweden would not see this as their cue to join NATO? Did he think that the rest of the world would just sit there and ignore it?
That is what makes it a bad idea. Almost everyone expected Russia to win quickly. But even if they did win, all the things you mentioned would offset whatever they would gain from their victory.
Putin was probably hoping that the EU would not be willing to go without Russian gas after the war had ended -- and maybe that would have been true, but there would still be other sanctions, other countries joining NATO, etc.
Xi cracked down on SV-type of tech. Which isn't useful tech. It's ad and addiction tech that is a net negative to society. It makes a few people filthy rich but does nothing for the productive basis of your country.
From what I read the crackdown was temporary and is now coming to an end. I guess they've achieved whatever goals were pursued and it is back to business as usual.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/economy/china-economy-guo-shu...
What we, living in democratic societies, fail to appreciate is that autocrats don't mind destroying their economies in order to pursue their personal ambition. Putin has no qualms about sacrificing tens (hundreds?) of thousands of ordinary Russian men to secure his status as a great historical figure. The Russian standard of living will decline as it descends into a totalitarian state, but Putin and those around him have no elections to face. Even if the disastrous Ukraine invasion had been successful it would not have improved the lives of ordinary Russians, but it would have secured Putin's legacy.
The same goes for Xi Jinping. The Chinese Communist Party is no longer "Communist" in any Marxist sense, except in their rejection of democracy. As economic growth stalls, Xi is turning to xenophobic nationalism to bolster his legitimacy. The Chinese people will in no way benefit from an invasion of Taiwan. But Xi and the CCP aren't looking out for the benefit of the Chinese people, they are looking out for themselves.
People also thought that Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine because the economic consequences would be devastating, especially for Russia. Seems dictators don't really care about their own countries. Now with Xi grabbing more and more power in China he may also lose grounding in reality.
For the average Russian during the 1990s life was worse after economic liberalisation.
What can a vast country like Russia, China or the USA not produce domestically, keep people employed and keep profits at home?
How much is wasted on advertising and market casinos?
On the one hand globalisation expands the labor pool and access to capital. On the other the more labor there is the lower its unit value.
So under autarky prices would rise but so would wages (labor would be more scarce).
So for a big country it is not clear that people are worse off in the long run going alone.
So called comparative advantages are more a function of structure of the economy than long term inherit capabilities.
When people are scarcer their price goes up.
Yeah, except that Russia wants raw natural resources from the Ukraine territories it wants to annex. They can kill all Ukrainians and destroy all of their cities and still be able to extract what they want. Now do that in Taiwan. Are you going to mine semiconductors from under a rock? Do that while an army of Taiwan partisans keeps fighting for decades?
Dictators do what I would call "irrational" things, though one could have a long, pointless, define-your-word fight about what "rational" means here. Over time, they become surrounded by yes-men and more and more insulated from the real world. Many of them also have very selective readings of history (e.g. Putin seems to think Ukraine should be part of Russia based on a slanted reading of history; he seems to have ignored the parts of history in which failed invasions lead to the dictator's head being separated from his body).
The "economies are so strictly intertwined" argument which finds that war isn't going to happen, particularly when applied to dictators, doesn't stand up to casual scrutiny.
One major virtue of democracies is that they never or almost never (again, fights about definitions here) go to war against each other.