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Comment by sharpshadow | Hacker News Reader

Can you elaborate on what you mean with „the threat is gone“ please?

At some point in the future, it's likely that invading Taiwan militarily will not longer be part of the Chinese agenda. There are multiple ways for this to happen:

1) China could have a regime change. This could either lead to voluntary reunification or at least to military action becoming irrelevant.

2) Xi could die, and the successor might have other priorities.

3) China could lose the ability or confidence to invade, for instance if their economy is destroyed by corruption or they stop investing in their armed forces.

4) Taiwan could develop their own nukes in secret, and be too scary to invade.

5) The threat could become reality (and thus no longer a threat). China may proceed to either win or lose such a war. In such a scenario, it's hard to say what remains of TSMC's capacity after.

The status quo can go on indefinitely. Taiwan gains almost nothing from actual independence. Chinese people don't seem to think of Taiwan unless it's brought up; they've already declared themselves the winner of the civil war and the whole world legally agrees. In dynastic times, China had many tributary states who acknowledged the power of China but otherwise went about their own business, and the current status quo is not far from that.

1-4 are unrealistic. 5 is the likely outcome and Taiwanese production is no more.

In my view it’s not a China Taiwan conflict more a US China one.

Edit: China is trying to get hold of Taiwan politically not necessarily militarily and if I’m not mistaken the US said they will not tolerate this either.

I'm sure a lot of people inside Taiwan see this as a Taiwan China conflict, with the US being an ally that has shared interests with Taiwan.

From what I've been reading, the support for reunification within the Taiwanese population has been going down for a long time. The current talk of invasion could reflect Xi giving up on that possibility.

As for what would happen if some day the majority in Taiwan actually supported a peaceful reunification, the US wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't be easy for the US to defend attempts to stop it militarily.

Now, that wouldn't completely rule out some kind of covert support for a military coup or something. But if the support for reunification is large enough, the US would probably have to accept it.

Edit: Also, 1-4 are not that unrealistic, if you give it enough time. In fact, if enough time passes with no invasion (or peaceful reunification with the CCP still in power), one of them is likely to happen I would say.

It could take 30 years though, and we could be deep into some kind of singularity event before it happens. For instance, TSMC could end up building the largest AI on the planet using their own chips, and by using that become more powerful in all ways than China itself. (Possibly at the cost of human extinction).

Reunification is desired and could happen but unlikely on the basis of a regime change in China. It’s also very difficult because of the strategic position the island has for the US military in the broader US China conflict view. Looking at the map the US is surrounding China from the east like the Nato is surrounding Russia from the west.

As soon as the west is more independent from China again the conflict will enter into the next phase. Any military activity in and around Taiwan will brain drain the country very quickly and most of the talent will go to western companies.

30 years is a hell lot of time these days.

Invasion by CCP followed by full ceasing of chip shipments.

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