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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.

China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but other countries in its "sphere of influence" have seen hostilities for years, from land grabs [1] to overfishing [2], not to mention the border dispute with India.

And as long as we are distracted with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia, China has free rein to do whatever they want.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...

[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/chinas-overfi...

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Donbas is mostly wheat fields, Taiwan is mostly SOTA semiconductor fabs that currently are the sole pillar holding up the AI (and compute in general) zeitgeist.

The global response would not be the same, even remotely. And what would China get from it? A tiny island of rubble and an ego boost, while losing enormous global favor? The cost of that island may well be a few trillion for China, just so they can say they defeated the nationalists.

China is playing the long game. They can go spend a trillion bucks and hire/steal the tech and they could destroy Taiwan's competitive advantage, and they could just economically crush them.

The semiconductors are propping up the AI zietgeist in the US, but is that true globally? Why would Canada/Brazil/Europe care about Taiwan? China will still sell them the chips.

The only one who would really care is the US. So by taking Taiwan, China blows up the US stock market and takes control of the chips.

Every country on Earth benefits from the chips that come from Taiwan, and not just the governments, the people using pretty much anything that does computation. That includes China.

Yes I am aware. Which means that if China takes over political control of Taiwan and says, "We will still sell chips just like normal to everyone except the US".

Would the rest of the world decide to go to war with China for the political freedom of Taiwan?

Taiwan will burn (explosive demolition) the fabs before China gets them. This is baked into their defense plan and made known to China.

Or the US would :)

While I do know this is the plan in the event of an invasion, I don't know what to expect in the event of a blockade.

"Let the food and oil in or we will burn to the ground the only bargaining chip we have"… I just don't know how to model how credible a threat this is to either party.

What makes you think the Taiwanese will hand over the chip producing facitilies to the invader?

> Donbas is mostly wheat fields

... which nevertheless are very important worldwide. Early in the war, there was a lot of effort to make sure grain exports could run smoothly because otherwise Africa would have been in serious trouble.

> The global response would not be the same, even remotely.

We're already at a stage where Trump doesn't give a single fuck about NATO and some of his advisors would rather have it disbanded yesterday in favor of isolationism, or even outright march into territory to annex it. I have absolutely zero faith that Trump would intervene on Taiwan's favor - an intervention does not fit into Trump's and especially Miller's world view wherein the world is to be divided into areas of influence for the super powers to act with impunity.

> And what would China get from it? A tiny island of rubble and an ego boost, while losing enormous global favor?

Never underestimate nationalist idiocy. Putin invaded Ukraine because of his dream to restore "Great Russia", it is entirely possible that the CCP wants the same for the ego of their leadership to be the ones "bringing the lost areas home". They already did so with Hongkong, and not reacting to China violating the treaty with the UK was the biggest mistake the Western nations have ever done.

Yes, who needs food. /s

I think you need to define what global means. Does it mean the global media opinion of the "major" media news outlets? Yes. Does it mean the world's global population of 8 billion? No. Most of these 8Bn don't know what TSMC is, don't understand the Taiwan issue, don't care and could live happier without AI.

China has a far larger military advantage over Taiwan than Russia had over Ukraine. The sea is a barrier, but that cuts both ways as it means China can blockade Taiwan.

I don't think that mainland China needs any sort of precedent over Taiwan should they decide on military action. The situation is completely different from Ukraine. The South China Sea is also on long-running dispute that predates the PRC (and dates from a time where all the neighbouring countries were Western colonies...) and what has been happening is more a policy of "fait accompli" by occupying unoccupied disputed islands first rather than an "invasion".

I don't know what is the thinking on Ukraine now in Beijing, but they were massively pissed off when Russia invaded because it has caused a lot of disruption to belt and road and to East-West relations in general.

That makes sense, but if that's the case, why aren't they invading Taiwan now? Wouldn't now be the perfect time?

Yep, a time when anyone can say to an ally "Greenland must be mine" and more or less get away with it...

The consensus among Western defense and foreign policy types is that China will most likely invade Taiwan in 2027, relative to any other single year, conditional on them doing it at all.

This 2027 date is based off a misread from a speech from Xi that he himself has since distanced himself from. 2027 is just used by war mongers and natsec folks to bang the war drums to siphon more money into the US military industrial complex. Unlike Russia, China isn't stupid and they don't need a full scale invasion to take over Taiwan.

> 2027 is just used by war mongers and natsec folks to bang the war drums

They correctly predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while everyone using slurs like "war monger" did not. I will go with their opinion on this. Which, fortunately, is more balanced than what you're letting on. They're not saying that China will definitely invade Taiwan this decade, only that it is in the ~20% ballpark, and it's therefore prudent to prepare, because "assume the best" or "I can read the mind of their autocrat" is a terrible security doctrine.

Because that would be way more destabilizing globally before the precedent is set and China doesn't want instability.

Which is also, coincidentally why they seem like a better trade partner to me as European at this point.

It seems like the timing gets more perfect every day. China is just watching the US self-destruct while Western Europe gets bogged down in its own issues. If the US continues to destabilize and Europe becomes vulnerable as a result, China could get Taiwan without firing a shot. No need to fight a war for it. TSMC would come out unharmed as a bonus.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visted Europe and openly said to Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign-policy chief and other EU ministers: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, fearing that the U.S. would then shift its full attention toward Beijing.

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/10/28/china-is-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxk4ywppzo

USA already set the precedent with Venezuela. The rest also follows from Donroe Doctrine.

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