Comment by euratai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by euratai | Hacker News Reader

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China is old [1] and broke [2]. It won't be able to afford to attack Taiwan - for reference, 1930s Japan and Germany had way more young people. Japan was also rich from its empire, while Germany transitioned away from gold standard to afford its wars. 2022 Russia thought the war would end in 3 days.

Also, as we see from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, drones and missiles are effective at taking out the world's second largest navy. Taiwan has very accurate and effective homegrown missiles [3]. China would need to amass a ton of ships which would be easily detected, staff them with only sons from families, and try to move them across a 100 mile straits while under the barrage of US/Japan/Taiwan missiles and drones.

Lastly, China is quickly transitioning to state run economy much like Soviet Union [4], which means innovations and growth will be gone forever, especially in tech industries.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

[2] https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/global/frugal... https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/325...

[3] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/taiwan-smashes-chinese-warship...

[4] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-s-favored-sta...

Russia did not stop after 3 days, didn’t it? And there is no indication it will stop any time soon. Russia is also old and broke, but it had enough to keep going. And Russia needs to spend a much higher percentage of the GDP on war than China. I’m pretty sure China can take Taiwan if it wants to, I just hope the estimated price will be too high for them to actually pull the trigger.

Ukraine isn't an island...

Russia is still able to continue on because of the military help from China, as US has confirmed [1]. Russia's missile barrage on Kharkiv right now is possible because of China. However, China won't be able to attack Taiwan while massively supplying Russia. And this will further drain China. When Russia is defeated, China will be scared even further about attacking Taiwan.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/12/china-supporti...

> Russia did not stop after 3 days, didn’t it?

given trillion oil/gaz dollars pumped into war machine, and that after initial attack they now stuck fighting for some minor settlements for 2 years already against much weaker opponent, we can conclude they are effectively stopped, at least for now.

> I’m pretty sure China can take Taiwan if it wants to

Taiwan has a sea as defense line, which will be very hard to cross.

China is subject to so much arm chair analysis that the hubris here is now not even funny. It is on verge of collapse for last 20 years. People are about to revolt for longer and there won't be any original product /research. They are attacking Taiwan anytime now for 30 years.

the problem with saying that war is impossible is that it always looks impossible before it happens.

while Ukraine hasn't been taken over, their economy isn't exactly doing hot since everything is at risk of bombardment. Likewise, it's likely that even if Taiwan were not to immediately fall, that TSMC facilities would be damaged, and even if they weren't, it would be a major danger to ship anything out of Taiwanese ports; shipping out of Odesa has not been smooth sailing.

If I'm trying to anticipate the future and had to choose between trusting the very expensive, very disruptive actions of nation states and multinationals as they prepare for (minimally) a trade break with China, and a handful of articles from relatively small publications (and reddit!) that say it's nothing to worry about, I'm going to go with the former.

That doesn't mean the nations and corporations are right, but the world is reconfiguring as if they were either way.

1. Go here: https://www.thetruesize.com/

2. Type in "Taiwan"

3. Type in "Ukraine"

4. Overlap them.

5. Go here: https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php

6. Find China & Russia

7. Now find Taiwan & Ukraine.

8. Ratio China/Taiwan and Russia/Ukraine.

Wtf are you talking about? China is the world's largest maker and exporter for drones. Their swarms will easily annihilate anything US/Japan/Taiwan on their way.

The only question is what costs more: taking Taiwan by force or developing Chinas own tech and watching TSMC go broke.

Also: quotation needed. Who and when said "the war would end in 3 days."?

> China is the world's largest maker and exporter for drones. Their swarms will easily annihilate anything US/Japan/Taiwan on their way.

most of those drones likely don't have enough range

> Also: quotation needed. Who and when said "the war would end in 3 days."?

it was some western intelligence/reports. But judging from tactics(send thousands of armored vehicles on key cities) it was indeed their plan.

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