In exactly what way is this conflict actually heating up lately? I've certainly noticed the increase in news coverage, but don't know of, e.g. military actions by CN/US that indicate conflict coming closer.
A war would be a great distraction for the local population. The inevitable sanctions and disruption of chip production would excuse poor GDP growth. To top it off, a "glorious victory" (Pyrrhic victory) is pretty likely. The U.S. has global reach, but it's still not as logistically feasible for the U.S. to fight from staged forces in Japan and the Philippines as it is for China to fight from their home territory.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/xi-jinping-speech-suggests-china-in...
In contrast, Hitler made Germans feel like they were heading for a better place so he garnered support, Xi though, doesn't seem as charismatic and popular. So it's going to be a much harder sell to start an all out hot war over something that means basically nothing to 99% of the population.
Also invading a country is one thing, hanging onto it is another, Syria, Afganistan, Vietnam etc for example. China isn't exactly going to make friends taking the country by force.
China is continuing to hold tibet as an invader of course, same with Xinjiang. America and western powers doesn't guarantee failure.
Eg. Afghanistan has never been held by westerners, but has been by the persians many times
People aren't that dumb, even if they are brainwashed.
Most people given the choice would rather live peacefully with others. The outlier here is there is 1 billion+ Chinese furious and ready to invade China. Not the other way around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit-Entry_Permit_for_Travelli...
They do visit without a passport, the same applies to ROC citizens in reverse. That's the whole point of the political amiguity on relations between the PRC and ROC.
Leaked censorship list of 564 terms containing references to Xi Jinping from Xiaohongshu, a popular social media app, circa 2020: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9...
Leaked censorship list of 35467 terms containing references to Xi Jinping from LeTV, a once-popular video streaming service, issued directly from the State Council Information Office, circa 2016: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%9B%BD%E6%96%B0%E5%8A...
The bottom line is an invasion of Taiwan carries a high risk of ruin for the ruling clique in the CCP. There were multiple times when the ROC was in much more vulnerable positions both militarily and diplomatically (pre-Korean War and post-US-PRC approachment) and invasions didn't happen then. The PRC is much more export-dependent than Russia despite all the nationalist hysteria, and ruining all that with sanctions is going to do far more damage to themselves compared to simply keeping the propaganda machine running with inciteful editorials without organizing an actual military campaign.
I mean, the Nazi's cap'd out at 37% [1] when they initially became the largest party and that dropped to 33% by the next vote. The average German never felt that he would lead them to a better place (otherwise it'd be 50+% not 37%) and more Germans felt Nazis were doing a poor job once they started governing.
Also, this is a First-Past-The-Poll situation so parties's popularity will be inflated in the voting results. i.e. more than 10x people voted for Nazi Party than were registered members; presumably the vast majority of Germans thought a different party would do better but between the Nazis or the Communists they picked the Nazis.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power...
Unification
You can’t reunify something that wasn’t unified before.
Before 1943 the CCP called Taiwan an independent nation and nationality. They advocated for Taiwan independence. Mao said they would help Korea and Taiwan seek independence.
It wasn’t until the allied forces asked KMT to adminster Taiwan until a later date that the CCP decided Taiwan belonged to them.
Taiwans claims to China are due to KMT writing the constitution. The reality is people in Taiwan don’t consider China part of Taiwan. Taiwan is its own country and they don’t care about China. They want to continue to live their life in peace.
131 citations and 86 sources say you were wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_under_Qing_rule
Yes most of the eastern parts were unclaimed because the concept of nation sovereignty had yet to reach East Asia, but the era of Qing rule is very much integral to the history of Taiwan because majority ethno-cultural group directly descended from those who lived under Qing rule.
>Mao said they would help Korea and Taiwan seek independence.
Mao also said his home province of Hunan should also seek independence: https://www.jstor.org/stable/652585. Sun Yat-sen wanted to drive out all Manchus in his original revolutionary manifesto yet happily accepted the new multi-ethnic ROC that completely inherited most of the land that were not historically inhabited by ethnic Han. People change their views all the time, especially politicians who have much to gain from having flexible views.
And yes "reunification" is a direct translation of PRC political jargon that carries the (false) connotation of Taiwan being a breakaway province when in reality it was the CCP who broke away from the ROC in a rebellion to create their own country. Revisionist history is bad history no matter which side it comes from.
Taiwan was not under control or rule for the majority of the Qing dynasty.
People were not allowed to freely travel to the island until 1875. It was called a province for ~10 years.
The Qing dynasty rule of Taiwan was shorter than Japanese rule on Taiwan.
By saying that it belonged to the Qing dynasty, we are saying that Russias occupation of regions of Ukraine is legal and legit. They are there so therefore they must own it. Despite the people not wanting to be ruled by Russia.
Clearly you did not comprehend the linked article. Surely a regime that appointed bureaucrats to be stationed locally in their administrative areas for nearly 200 years means it was Terra Nullius all along!
By your logic British rule in India didn't begin until 1858 when the British has been colonizing India for 100 years prior. Good job being a disingenuous revisionist.
>People were not allowed to freely travel to the island until 1875. It was called a province for ~10 years.
The very fact that the Qing dynasty had effective immigration controls over a land they supposedly did not "control" or "rule" is a testament to them actually exercising control over a land they managed to govern. The Qing Dynasty did not exercise immigration controls over the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, because they did control those lands. That is not the case with Taiwan. The existence of immigration control is proof of governance. The PRC had strict internal immigration controls for the first 30 years of its existence, modelled after the Soviet Union. Would you say either of these countries did not effectively "control" or "rule" the very territories that formed them?
>By saying that it belonged to the Qing dynasty, we are saying that Russias occupation of regions of Ukraine is legal and legit.
Your nonsensical comparison to Ukraine just further reaffirms that. Nobody said a word about Ukraine until you tried to shoehorn it with gross disregard of the history of Ukraine.
>They are there so therefore they must own it.
The Qing Dynasty ceased to exist 100+ years ago and they have very little to do with the ROC or the PRC of today despite the ROC technically having legally suceeded the Qing Dynasty. So whether the Qing Dynasty "owned" Taiwan has nothing to do with cross-strait politics of today. Would you deny Tsarist Russia "owned" what is modern day Ukraine? And are you aware whether Tsarist Russia "owned" what is modern day Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with Vladimir Putin's personal claims? I'm talking about the rampant historical revisionism seen run amok in every English language discussion about Taiwan that is ultimately infantilizing the real issues faced by Taiwan, not whether the PRC "must own it" (hint: the PRC has never "owned it" and never deserves to "own it").
So if an Island belongs to no one, but is inhabited by people, and someone decides to sail to the Island and take orders from their home country. What you're saying is that it now belongs to their home country? And that means the entire island was adminstered and accounted for?
> Your nonsensical comparison to Ukraine just further reaffirms that. Nobody said a word about Ukraine until you tried to shoehorn it with gross disregard of the history of Ukraine.
Doesn't matter if I mention Ukraine or not. You're trying to argue that sending some people in and then saying "this belongs to me because I'm here" is a valid enough claim. If you make that claim you're supporting the CCP and you're supporting Russia. That simple.
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(back later - no time to reply to the rest)
Yes that is how much of colonization in the early modern period worked. I don't make up the rules. That's simply what happened.
>If you make that claim you're supporting the CCP and you're supporting Russia.
Oh since when is the CCP controlled by the Qing imperial family? Do you seriously type that out without putting it through some basic logical reasoning? If that's your conclusion then we are done here because you clearly do not have the ability to read or comprehend basic historical facts but instead choose what is the geopol equivalent of sh*t flinging, because you had decided to that historical revisionism with name calling is somehow an adequate replacement of your entire personality.
I should've known better before clicking into this comment section as HN always have the most downright unhinged awful takes on non-tech geopol topics because it's clear some of you have never opened a single history book. Goodbye.
I mean, they didn't. It was illegal for Han to immigrate there, but it happened anyway.
Is there any evidence any Han immigrants to Taiwan were ever deported under the Qing?
Anyway, this is pretty irrelevant. It's just incorrect to say the population controls were effective.
The supposed population control did not last 200 years to begin with, contrary to the outlandish claims seen in this thread. Although the article mentiones "In 1759, for example, the gov't caught 25 smuggling operations in action resulting in the arrest of 990+ illegals." so it was enforced to some extent but ultimately immigration kept happening due to the natural demand.
Contradicting your claim the restrictions were effective.
Backtrack: Taiwan was not under control or rule for the majority of the Qing dynasty.
Backtrack: The Qing dynasty rule of Taiwan was shorter than ...
Your latter statements are probably wrong too, but I'm too lazy to disprove you. You're welcome to come clean if you wish.
It wasn't until 1885 when it became a provience that they attempted to rule over Taiwan. But they didn't. Remember for over 200 years they did nothing with Taiwan. Right at the very end, they tried, but failed, they didn't rule or control Taiwan. Japan did tho.
So if you take Qing Dynasty point of view, their rule over Taiwan was shorter than Japan's rule over Taiwan.
That doesn't mean that Taiwan was ruled by the Qing Dynasty.
I can't see an invasion happening without massive loss of life on both sides and destroying Taiwan's value. Perhaps their plan is to conduct a massive long-term blockade. This would be more in-line China's typical actions of being aggressive in diplomacy and in stretching the boundaries of international law. If they outnumber the US in the Pacific what can the US do but watch? The US almost certainly would be unwilling to fire the first shot.
Russia is in the exact same boat, they were running out of time and young people as well
(There are good reasons to believe that something similar wrt Putin is the primary motivation behind the war in Ukraine, BTW.)
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/04/21/asia-pacific/so...
Gotta play pedant for a second because it's important here: using the word "reunification" doesn't make any sense when discussing the PRC's imperialist desires to invade and capture Taiwan.
No matter what lense you use, the ruling government of the PRC, that being the CPC, has never ruled any territory controlled by Taiwan. There's nothing to "reunify," there's only further territory that the CPC wishes to capture and wrest control from a sovereign nation.
There's danger also in the CPC weaponizing the word "China," which is why I'm careful to refer to the country as "the PRC," as the propagandists in the CPC are happy to engage in cultural imperialism to justify their military imperialism. "Taiwan is China, the people there are Chinese (華人），the people there speak Chinese (中文 / 華語）, they are of Chinese cultural background, we need to "reunify" these Chinese people."
If there is an imperialist invasion, and the PRC succeeds, then they will turn their eyes on other nearby "Chinese countries " filled with "Chinese people" speaking the "national Chinese language."
These are all propagandic falsehoods so there's no reason we should help them out, and those of us that are in places where it's safe to do so (outside the borders of the PRC) should communicate using the correct terms.
Disclaimer: My first language is Chinese.
Taiwanese identity as Taiwanese. An ROC takeover of PRC territory would be imperialism. Luckily nobody in Taiwan has any such ambutions (that the roc constitution claims PRC territory is a political hostage taking: xi jinping has threatened a trigger invasion if Taiwan changes its constitution, even to remove the given claim).
If your first language is Mandarin but you used the unexpected and uncommon example of the ROC taking over the PRC, why do you say "Mainland" instead of "PRC" or "China?"
"Reunification" is factually the correct term for the aim of having the whole of China (mainland + Taiwan) under a single government and state. That the PRC/CCP want that to be under their control is actually irrelevant here. The term does not imply 'right' or 'wrong', either.
Of course you know all of this is if you are in Taipei.
In any case that's impossible, the kmt government that once ruled is gone. It's been replaced by a government that held the name but is Democratic, and the KMT party has been losing power ever since then. The people have clearly decided to detach themselves from that way of doing things.
Furthermore, given the identities of the people in the PRC and Taiwan, any term involving "unify" is just engaging in cultural propaganda. The taiwanese identify as taiwanese, and lately as distinctly anti-chinese (binary oppositional development is an important sociological concept, see the difference between femininity and masculinity in many cultures, or, the French vs the English cultural identities), the PRC people identify as chinese, these cultures and preference for forms of governance are too different to "unify."
If one government rules both of these people anytime soon it will have been imperialism, plain and simple.
"China" died at the end of the Qing dynasty imo, since then it's just been a couple han supremacist governments weaponizing the term to leverage nationalist sentiment. There's no more Chinese nationalism in Taiwan so it won't work here anymore (despite even older taiwanese government officials blundering around with han supremacist presumptions even today). I think it's still working in the PRC and that's why they're allowed to do cultural genocide there without much pushback from their citizens.
> Before that, Taiwan was part of the Qing empire before being invaded by the Japanese.
Anschluss is German reunification because Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Ditto for the Sudetenland, and, well, why not the rest of Czechia, too.
Anyway, either we live in a civilised era where things like ethnic cleansing and genocide should be condemned, or we live in an era where it is 'bog standard to invade a place occupied by your co-ethnics'.
After WW2, ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Königsberg and Poles and Ukrainians were uprooted forcefully into the boundaries of their modern nation-states.
If wars of conquest on the basis of 'this place contains our people' become 'bog standard', the ethnic cleansing of post-WW2 Europe and the post-Soviet Balkans becomes the inevitable and logical conclusion.
And it had considerably fewer Ukrainians[1]. The Ukrainian claim to Crimea is weaker than Russia's.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ethnic_P...
> The Ukrainian claim to Crimea is weaker than Russia's.
The Ukrainian claim to Crimea is stronger because they have a legal basis to its claim. If we return to a state of the world where claims to land are made on the basis of 'my group lives here, therefore it's ours', we will inevitably reap the consequences of post-war Europe.
On the same logic, Germany had a stronger claim to the Sudetenland than Czechoslovakia. But what did that get the Germans in the end? Complete expulsion from the Sudetenland.
I firmly believe in the odds of a hot war being extremely low until the children of high ranking CCP officials start a mass exodus from their comfy white collar lives in the Western world, much like Putin recalling his yachts on the eve of the war in Ukraine.
2 H-6 nuclear-capable bombers flew south of the island during this combat drill.
The last military combat drill was in late December. They have been ramping up in aggression.
China’s recent actions have been increasingly provocative, but it’s erroneous to state that there were incursions into Taiwanese airspace.
I was answering GPs question of why the news cycles.
It's solely because of the aggression and the military drills around the island by Chına.
The point of my post still stands, wouldn't you agree?
Is it really so difficult to focus on the actual aggression against a sovereign country and instead squabble over exactly where they were practicing to invade the country.
The point is they are practicing to invade the country, is it not?
https://www.newsweek.com/xi-jinping-speech-suggests-china-in...
It's no secret what they want to do with Taıwan and what these exercises are for.
Only one country is poking at the other and won't rule out an invasion, no matter how you try to spin it.
I don't expect that China will make a move yet though, they also are building capital ships, like Aircraft Carriers, and also producing ship killing Hypersonic Missiles.
So the nature is that China is preparing for a fight. Hopefully it's just bluster.
The Chinese need a full compliment of carriers to enforce a total blockade of the island and effective hypersonic anti-ship missiles to fend off US capital ships. The launch platform (H-6N) for the hypersonics is already in their arsenal. When the carriers and missiles are available it's all over for Taiwan. This is less than 4-5 years out as China is urgently working on both.
Meanwhile the US is developing LRASM, Rapid Dragon and others specifically for this scenario. The missing piece is a really long range anti-aircraft missile to threaten the H-6 fleet without exposing nuclear powered US capital ships to Chinese weapons. The F-14 would have been an ideal platform for this.
Ultimately though, unless the US is willing to go all-out kinetic with China over Taiwan there is no hope. It's a small island 100 miles off the coast of an enormous, powerful, wealthy enemy with an epic chip on its shoulder, and its key ally is on the wrong side of the Pacific.
Smart money can see this so advanced fabs are popping up all over the West.
That's what I mean by "bluster". China is publicly saying they can, but... what if they just miss the carriers in practice? What if USA can actually shoot them down and protect our carriers?
It very well could be that China is just pretending that their missiles work to extract concessions during peacetime, and never actually plans to go to war. Etc. etc. There's too many futures, and the particular knowledge (ie: How good the missiles really are) is going to be top secret on both sides. No reason for China to want to let USA know how good the missiles are... no reason for USA to want to let China know how good the AEGIS Missile shield is.
No one needs to. Just damaging a nuclear powered, nuclear armed carrier would be more than sufficient. Probably just making a splash near one. The design premise of these assets is fighting WW3 where the stakes are high enough to tolerate the risk, not a skirmish over a foreign island. Where they have been deployed since WW2 there was little to no risk or loss to enemy action. That is not operative with China.
Remember that Taiwan controls over 60% of the world's chip production, including every single iPhone, iPad, Nintendo Switch, PS5, XBox, AMD, and NVidia chip ever made (as well as a couple of Intel Xe GPUs)... and most of those car chips also come from Taiwan. It has been identified as a critical infrastructure for even US Weapons, which rely upon some of these chips.
If Taiwan is lost, that means for a few years (or more), USA can't get new military equipment... at least not with any of the fancy high tech computer parts. US Factories of all kinds, consumer electronics, car manufacturing (especially electronic critical safety equipment: antilock brakes, airbags, tire pressure monitors), most servers (AMD EPYC and NVidia A100s are Taiwan made) and even weapon manufacturing shuts down.
The supply chain risk is astronomical. Two carriers would be cheap compared to the loss of Taiwan.
A sincere question; what is "latest wargame?"
Does "latest wargame" compute the political equivalent of an extinction level bolide impact when a US Navy nuclear aircraft carrier gets destroyed, leaving propulsion reactors and nuclear warheads on the bottom of the Pacific, not to mention a few thousand men? I'm thinking you and I have different concepts of the stakes involved here. I believe the Western establishment will need far more at stake than a couple (more) years of supply chain troubles before it will put its capital military assets in the way of the Chinese military.
I suppose we'll find out. China will assert itself at some point and Taiwan is #1 on that bucket list.
You're severely underestimating the importance of Taiwan. 60% of every chip in the world, and 100% of the most advanced chips (ie: Apple iPhone, AMD EPYC, NVidia A100) comes from that island, and no one else in the world knows how to make those chips.
I don't know how the economy will reorganized if Taiwan is neutralized, but it won't be pretty. It'd be an extinction level event for entire industries.
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USA isn't even economically tied to Ukraine, and you can see our response to that. Taiwan on the other hand, has deep ties that underpin the largest sectors of the USA's economic wellbeing.
The chip issue over the past few years is nothing compared to what would happen if Taiwan were successfully blockaded by China.
> USA isn't even economically tied to Ukraine, and you can see our response to that.
There aren't any US nuclear assets at stake in Ukraine. No flag ships or other sovereign symbols. No body count of US servicemen. That's not a strong analogy.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/politics/taiwan-invasion-war-...
China will likely launch missiles and attempt to destroy Japanese, maybe even Philippine bases to hamper US supply lines. USA will be forced to forward deploy multiple Carriers into the risk zone, and roughly ~2 Carriers are expected to be killed. China probably can weaken the US Navy enough to attempt a landing, but no such landing seems like it'd be successful. US, Taiwan, and China take major losses, but the island likely will remain in Taiwan's control.
> There aren't any US nuclear assets at stake in Ukraine. No flag ships or other sovereign symbols. No body count of US servicemen. That's not a strong analogy.
Funny how you ignore my point and rather focus on the side-comments.
Losing Taiwan is an extinction level event for multiple, major US Industries and service sectors. Period. USA is too economically tied to that island.
Bonus points: a lot of these technology sectors (ex: Servers / AMD EPYC, and AI with NVidia A100 chips) are essential to US strategic level initiatives, like our supercomputer projects, DoD cloud initiatives, and the like. Losing Taiwan would be a direct blow to US Military and weaken us in the decades to come.
Its not "just" an economic problem, it is also a military and strength problem.
You only wrote "latest wargames" whatever that is. I'm not wading through the dreck of the interweb to figure out what you had in mind based on that. Thanks for pointing out specifically what you had in mind.
While interesting, it is as I imagined; there is no political calculation involved here. When the time comes to weigh supply chain problems (even if severe) against going kinetic with China and risk losing carriers, destroyers, etc. I believe the US will decline. We're talking about nuclear fallout here. Recovering damaged warheads from the seabed on the other end of the planet. Respectfully, I just don't see it.
> Funny how you ignore my point and rather focus on the side-comments.
I don't think I deserve this. For my part I've been respectful of your comments and I appreciate your time.
> Losing Taiwan is an extinction level event for multiple, major US Industries and service sectors. Period.
As we've seen with COVID-19 the Western establishment is capable of causing great harm to private sector interests when, right or wrong, they've deemed it necessary. The US military hasn't been so irresponsible that it can't function without a continuous supply of 3nm GPUs. I'll grant you there will be great disruption, but it's neither fatal nor permanent.
You've grossly underestimated USA's military dependence on TSMC.
Case in point: swaths of the F35 Fighter is reliant upon TSMC semiconductors. Advanced FPGAs (AMD, previously known as Xilinx) are TSMC. That's the key to our RADAR systems. Not just F35 (and other electronic warfare platforms), but also our satellite / space systems.
I'm not talking GPUs here. I'm talking literally our military components are entirely dependent on that island.
On the one hand, TSMC isn't the only supplier. On the other hand, the other supplier is United Microelectronics Co, which is also based in Taiwan. So we have a problem here.
https://hothardware.com/news/tsmc-under-pressure-to-build-ch...
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If TSMC goes kaput, kiss the F35 project goodbye.
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/commercial-aerospace/artic...
> The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics segment in Fort Worth, Texas will provide 83,169 field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) from Xilinx Inc. in San Jose, Calif., under terms of a $104.7 million contract modification.
> The communication, navigation, and identification friend or foe (IFF) avionics of the F-35 relies on Xilinx FPGAs, as do other critical electronic subsystems aboard the advanced jet. fighter-bomber. FPGAs enable Lockheed Martin to add new waveforms to embedded software radio systems in the F-35, as well as for real-time digital signal processing.
Those Xilinx chips (now AMD) are made in TSMC.
I look to history for this question. Time and time again the navies of advanced nations have been caught off guard by anti-ship missiles. The US, UK, Israel and Russia have all had ships hit by anti-ship missiles, despite their supposed defenses. Some of those missiles were Chinese in origin. Two of those ships sank (Moskva and HMS Sheffield.)
Given the record I'll take China at its word. Their missiles will likely work.
Number of ships is very misleading (though popular among American reactionaries). I could buy 1,000 canoes and have more 'ships' than the US Navy.
Is there a particular metric you'd rather use? In both number of ships, and tons, China leads over us. US only wins in capital ships now.
But you are using number of ships and tonnage, not me, and need to establish what they mean.
Modern ship battles aren't fought with guns. The fight is with missiles, or airplanes that shoot missiles. Having more tons (aka: missiles) than the other side is a huge advantage.
Capital ships have some benefit of efficiency. But China has the benefit of only being a few hundred miles away from Taiwan, and also their Airforce (Its US Aircraft Carriers vs mostly ground-aircraft), and also Chinese Missle Force, which can use the entire Chinese Highway system to reposition themselves.
And unless the US Marines decide to make a landing in China to attack the Chinese Missile and/or Chinese Air Force, they can fire upon the US Navy with impunity.
That's not my undertanding. Again, freighters, or if you like, WWII warships could easily provide more tonnage, but not have even close to the firepower (or protection or mobility). Could you provide something to support your claim about tonnage and firepower?
Chinese Navy has more Destroyers (by weight) than the US Navy has ships (by weight).
Also, because the Chinese strategy is a mass of smaller ships, they also outnumber us on a ship by ship basis. USA strategy is around capital ships like Carriers.
There hasn't been a large scale sea battle since WW2. No one really knows how these two contrasting strategies will end, or who has the advantage.
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I think the combined US Navy + Taiwan Navy still outnumbers China though (both by weight and by ships). It's still a difficult road for China, but they are making more ships than us and will outnumber the combined fleets over the next few years.
I've given examples of warships with tonnage but not power. I don't see any support for your claim.
> USA strategy is around capital ships like Carriers.
The US explicitly left this strategy behind, several years ago.
> dude
Not me.
What claims exactly? That the Chinese Navy outnumbers us by significant margins now?
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33153
Don't forget, USA has lots of missions around the world. China on the other hand, can basically solely focus on Taiwan. Fortunately, Taiwan isn't exactly a pushover (they've got some pretty nice defenses), but Taiwan will absolutely be reliant upon USA (especially our Navy) for defense.
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As far as "capabilities", you know that the USA has no stealth destroyers, or ship-based hypersonic missiles. Remember that Chinese hypersonics can be launched on mobile platforms, meaning every single highway in China within 3000km of Taiwan is a potential hypersonic launch point. And remember that every single Chinese Air Force base will also be in play.
I don't think China will be able to take, say... Hawaii or Guam. My discussion points are hyper-focused upon Taiwan, a particular geographical region that China has _HUGE_ advantages in... while the USA has many disadvantages. Our Navy will only be supplied from Japanese / Philippines (reasonably close, but also small islands that just don't have the capability like Chinese rail or Chinese Highways / Docks will have).
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Worst: USA's "disadvantage" position will only be for a short timeframe. Our upgrade schedule for our ships is public. The world knows that USA's next generation ships / Navy is coming in the years 2030+ or so, which means China has a short... few year window... where they will be stronger / more capable than us.
The political implications are obvious. It is in the best interest of China to strike when their advantage is maximized. IE: Chinese latest-generation ships roll off their dry-docks into service... but before the USA upgrades our Navy in 2030s.
If China chooses peace (and I hope they do), they will lose the opportunity of a lifetime. US Navy obviously will outmatch the Chinese Navy in 2030s and onwards.
Taiwan buying US equipment yields $$$ for the US. TSMC building fabs in Arizona yields $$$ for TSMC and the US. China selling manufactured goods to Taiwan and the US yields $$$ for China. Media/influencers writing panic-bait to hype up engagement metrics yields $$$ for content creators and shareholders. $$$ is the only thing that matters for every entity involved in this situation.
It’s heated up dramatically with Xi stating a few months ago that “China will take back Taiwan in the next 10 years”.
You can get much more certain than literally one of the actors verbally stating it’s a goal.
Event in Russia/Ukraine make us realize war can be started anytime.
And never mind the whole "Taiwanese are not genetically pure Chinese übermenschen so we must find a final solution for them" https://twitter.com/pybaubry/status/1447466780717289476
And after Pelosi's visit a few months back things have only heated up.
For a long time China was relatively diplomatic about Taiwan. They claimed it was part of China, but they also didn't go out of their way to say "we will take it by any means necessary".
Who knows where this will end ... maybe it'll all be very anti-climatic, or maybe not ... But it's certainly a bit hotter than it was before.
For a long time, the US has been content treating Hawaii as a tourist destination and military base, but should the federal government laws apply there?
I propose someone do a survey of people who were born in, or live in Hawaii, and see if they want to be a part of the US.
As for Taiwan, we already know that they don't want to be "unified" with the mainland.
If I were Taiwan, I’d be buying as many Javelins and Stingers and whatnot the world can manufacture.
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/20...
"Navy Secretary Warns: If Defense Industry Can’t Boost Production, Arming Both Ukraine and the US May Become ‘Challenging’"
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/01/navy-secretary-wa...
IMO, the US should publicly commit to a solid order for a very large number of the weapon systems Taiwan and Ukraine would likely need in an extended double conflict. We saw in COVID (with things like tests) that "we need a billion of X, but we'll dribble out the order in much smaller quantities" tends to make industry leery of evaporating demand after making big capital investments.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fmc_WJsWAAUP8GL?format=jpg&name=...
We can ramp up Javelins faster than China can amass landing craft in numbers large enough to make invasion feasible.
China would completely swamp our manufacturing. However, they only have a small stockpile of the raw goods needed to keep up their current manufacturing levels. Even for something as basic as steel, which China's overwhelming dominance in is widely known...they are very limited by foreign imports of iron (75% of their domestic consumption of iron is provided by Australia). If China had to stop imports from Western nations, its war material production capacity would probably drop by about 75% after its 30-90 day stockpile of raw materials was used up.
How much America's production suffer without good from China? Probably fairly catastrophic as well, but more especially in the long run as industrial parts break and need replacement. The resultant domestic shortages and inflation here would quickly ruin our populations appetite for any major trade war over a small foreign island.
That’s a fair point, but US geopolitical decisions have incentivized an extremely close relationship between China and Russia, which has the third-largest iron ore reserves globally and is one of the largest producers of many other raw materials as well.
While we’re comparing Ukraine and Taiwan, Taiwan has significant defensive advantages; tougher terrain, no land border, and they’ve been fortifying for decades. Even river crossings in Ukraine are fraught with peril, let alone an ocean strait.
Sure, but China's not immune to the corruption that's helped make the Russian a much less effective force than it was supposed to be on paper. Some of the lessons remain important for a well-managed force; the effective use of drones and man-portable missiles has clear implications for every military.
> Also anti-tank weapons are an odd choice for a conflict that's likely to be mostly naval.
Javelins can be used on amphibious landing craft, and any successful amphibious assault would eventually land armored vehicles; Stingers would be useful against the almost certain paratroops. A building-to-building battle for cities in Taiwan would be absolutely brutal; I don't think China wants that.