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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

If what you say is true then that increases the chance of war soon, it doesn't decrease it.

AFAICT, the Chinese administration believes it must reunify Taiwan; they've backed themselves into a corner with their rhetoric. They haven't because they believe it's better to wait because the chances of it happening militarily or peacefully are greater in the future than they are now.

But if it's going to be harder in the future, they must invade now.

Luckily I don't believe your argument holds.

Taiwan's birth rate is roughly similar to China's, so it doesn't really affect their relative positions.

China's debt is 85% sovereign so it's not a forcing factor either.

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Its more a glue a state falling apart together with external opposition kitsunagi approach. Taiwan wirhout tsmc is less valuable, same as hong kong is less valuable once owned by the ccp.

Finally there is a level of people you integrate who know how flimsy dictatorships are that a dictatorship cant survive.

My point about birth rate is that China does not have enough men in the right age to fight a protracted war. Especially if the men are only sons.

And it's not China vs Taiwan straight up. It's China vs Taiwan, US, Japan, Australia, parts of nato.

China imports vast quantities of goods, so yes, debt matters.

As a peer mentioned, China has 12 million unemployed men. That's more than in all of NATO.

> China imports vast quantities of goods, so yes, debt matters.

Yes, external debt matters. However, they don't have much external debt.

And China's imports are decreasing faster than their exports are. And that trend will accelerate because the two biggest are electronics which we are sanctioning and oil which they are rapidly weaning themselves off of.

Meatgrinder hasn't exactly worked for Russia yet. Especially if the Chinese soldiers are all sitting en mass on large, slow moving boats going across a 100 mile strait.

Unless you think the China's plan is to fill the Taiwan straits with so many dead bodies/boats so quickly, that it will create a corpse bridge for tanks to roll on.

> Meatgrinder hasn't exactly worked for Russia yet.

The point is that delaying the war would have made things even worse than they presently are. 2022 wasn't a good time for a war, but it was a better time than any subsequent year.

Either way, we're likely to know in October of this year. This will likely be the last chance China has for military invasion.

> But if it's going to be harder in the future, they must invade now.

That depends on the timeframe outlook. My impression has been they keep the rhetoric up so as not to abandon their claim over Taiwan, but are willing to wait a few lifetimes to get it.

> they've backed themselves into a corner with their rhetoric.

They could easily turn around and censor any mention of taiwan until everyone forgets about it

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