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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

There are more options than nothing or war.

It is uncertain if there are more options for Taiwan. Hong Kong was a lost cause since the British withdrew

its certain, i ensure you. taiwan wont get the treat like Hong Kong before. Hong Kong proves the one country two system policy is a failure. the only result is war and taiwan will lose

> taiwan will lose

That depends on how cowardly the rest of the world acts if/when the time comes.

looks at Ukraine, its white people and NATO wont fight for it. how about another group of chinse vs chinese in far far away? and the global south supports china more?

That's a total non sequitur. Ukraine wasn't a NATO member so why would NATO fight for it? (Several NATO members have given substantial aid to Ukraine.) In terms of a potential conflict between mainland China and Taiwan, the only NATO member with the capacity to do anything is the USA. The other players will be Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Australia so the outcome will largely depend on whether they decide to get involved.

> Ukraine wasn't a NATO member so why would NATO fight for it?

so is taiwan.

> The other players will be Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Australia so the

i can ensure you Vietnam and SK wont. and we want Japan to join so much. Aus is like a bonus maybe

> That depends on how cowardly the rest of the world acts if/when the time comes.

Or how weary of not having access to TSMC the rest of the world is.

The PRC will happily sell chips to the West. I live in Taiwan, I don't want it to happen, but people need to stop acting like countries will prevent an invasion because it means the CPC will control chip manufacturing.

The choice is between possible nuclear war, or, the 5090s are more expensive and sometimes Americans can't buy them when the PRC is punishing the west for something.

Honestly, this is the most reasonable comment here, especially coming from someone in Taiwan. I hear similar views when I'm in Asia, which are very different from what I hear back in the West.

It's weirdly myopic how HN users always think of TSMC as the main factor here. In reality the greater concern has always been containing China within the first island chain. As long as mainland China doesn't control Taiwan they have no way to secure their sea lines of communication.

This thread casually talks about Taiwan being a vassal state of the US during a civil war and Hong Kong being a colony of the British. Yet the world, largely the global south, should intervene and help the global north to exploit the rest of the world more?

Every one gets that far away countries across the world can’t put military bases right next to Europe or the US. However when it comes to China, that is not only acceptable but it’s the anti-cowardly move to support outsider aggressors.

> can’t put military bases right next to Europe or the US

Indeed, Japan and Korea and the Philippines have American military bases on them.

You mentioned Taiwan, curious why? It has no American military bases. Perhaps of all the countries in the region, it's the most sovereign in that sense.

Interesting. I didn’t know there were no US military bases there. Still Taiwan exists as it does because of the US meddling across the world.

This doesn't make any sense, the USA hasn't touched anything about Taiwan in any meaningful way ever since it became the ROC, and certainly not at all since the KMT was overthrown. In fact American overtures to control chip manufacturing here were rejected explicitly as "economic imperialism."

What's with this Americentric geopolitical analysis?

taiwan only exist because USA navy intervene in the war

You mean when the American ambassador escorted Mao to the signing of the Double Tenth agreement because the Americans were worried the KMT would go back on their word and assassinate him? Or in 1950 when Truman announced Taiwan as "Chinese territory" and directed that no American navy presence was to be permitted in the Taiwan strait?

Anyway take up your grievances with the KMT, don't worry, they're about to come crying back into the CPC's arms begging for a shred of political power now that their regime has been overthrown for 30 years, and their efforts to sell Taiwan to the CPC in exchange for a teaspoon of political legitimacy are failing spectacularly.

Not really. The world got other problems. Europe is out for now, since we got Fascists at our doorstep trying to conquer Ukraine. The US has the orange clown as president, who is cozy with Putin. I don't think you can ascribe it to others being cowards, if "the world" doesn't react to protect Taiwan. It is right at China's doorstep. The logistic imbalance of trying to protect Taiwan, being this close to China is insane.

In the end, if a war happens, it will be idiotic again, from an economical point of view and from a humanitarian point of view. Economically, of course it will cost huge amount of resources to conquer Taiwan, and it will only disturb trade and what is already established on Taiwan. From a humanitarian point of view, of course many people will die.

The smartest China could do, would be to return to a soft power approach, and continue to develop mainland China, to continue to rival and even surpass Taiwan/Taipei. There are many young people, who don't have the walls in their minds, that the older population has. They don't want war, they want their freedom, and they want a high living standard. All this would be theoretically possible, if China didn't let ideology rule, but instead went for the economically best route, which is most certainly not an invasion.

China's takeover of Hong Kong proved that any notion of "one country, two systems" is a total lie and assurances from the Chinese Communist Party are completely worthless. There's no coming back from that, at least as long as Xi Jinping remains in power. Young people in Taiwan are less supportive of reintegration with the mainland than ever before. Fewer of them even have direct family ties there now.

> Young people in Taiwan are less supportive of reintegration with the mainland than ever before.

Well, go figure, if you run military "exercises" at the doorstep of your neighbor, people are not gonna like you very much, duh. But there was a time before more recent escalations, when lots of young Taiwanese people did not think too badly about being part of China. That's why I said that the smartest move would be (or would have been) to continue an approach of soft power and development, to rival life in Taiwan. Give the people comfort and high living standard, and they are less likely to dislike you.

> China's takeover of Hong Kong proved that any notion of "one country, two systems" is a total lie...

Macau seems to be doing one country, two systems just fine.

I don't think this is realistic. A few thoughts in no particular order:

- War is logistics and you're talking about trying to get involved in a war, that would necessitate supply lines thousands of miles long, between two countries that are separated by 80 miles.

- China is extremely technologically advanced with the largest military in the world, by a wide margin.

- China is the at-scale manufacturing king of the world. In a shift to a war economy, nobody would be able to come even remotely close to competing. They parallel the US in WW2 in a number of ways.

- China is a nuclear power, meaning getting involved is going to be Ukraine style indirect aid to try to avoid direct conflict and nuclear escalation.

- Any attempt to engage in things like sanctions would likely hurt the sanctioners significantly more than China.

- The "rest of the world" you're referring to is the anglosphere, EU, and a few oddballs like Japan or South Korea. This makes up less than 15% of the world, and declining.

- War fatigue is real. The US really wanted to invade Syria, but no matter how hard we beat the war drums, people just weren't down with it. I think this is because people saw major echoes of Iraq at the time, and Taiwan will have a far louder echo of Ukraine. This isn't a show many people will be enthusiastic about rerunning.

> supply lines thousands of miles long, between two countries that are separated by 80 miles

I think this one is particularly important. IIRC, it's usually phrased something like "if the USA sends aircraft carriers across the pacific, then China has an unsinkable aircraft carrier 80 miles away: the mainland". It's a huge home turf advantage.

The USA seems to have a very low appetite for helping allies against bullies at present too. And no appetite for taking US soldier casualties.

Taiwan is also unsinkable.

* The US has the largest military logistics system in the world and regularly uses it to fight wars. It's a well exercised muscle.

* Being close to the front lines is as much of a liability as an asset. China's ports and shipbuilding facilities will be bombed out, the US' will not.

* This will be a naval and air war. You can't march troops across the strait, and as we've seen in Ukraine, flying them is a no-go either.

* China hasn't fought a war within the living memory of anyone of fighting age.

* You have a weird way of trying to diminish what represents most of the economic power of the world. Let's also add the Philippines and Vietnam to those "oddballs". China will be alone. And don't forget that China's population is shrinking.

* War fatigue is not an issue here when it comes to Taiwan. Adventurism in Venezuela was emboldening. We'll see what happens with Iran. I live in the generally pacifist part of the US, and I think most folks would demand that we intervene.

The most likely start to hostilities will be if China declares a blockade. Someone in the US will call their bluff - with warships. If China starts shooting, we're in a war. Moral outrage is an (often unfortunate) American trait.

US military logistics minnow in Indopac vs PRC mainland logistics. Peak US war fighting capability was calibrated around adversaries with 50% of US GDP, even Iraq took 50% of USN CSGs + extremely favourable region basing in multi month surge operations. PRC conservatively 100x larger high-end target than Iraq, 150% US GDP by PPP, and more by actual industrial output. Before VZ uber trip, US was flexing and failing vs Houthis, i.e. shit tier adversary that actually bothered shooting US ships.

CONUS targets are on the menu, there's a reason China Military Report from last month included US west coast under PRC conventional fire, which TBH was years out of date, i.e. most of CONUS will be vulnerable, and PRC has more harden targets to attrite and more ability to deny US fires in the first place, i.e. PRC taking out exquisitely vulnerable CSG/unrep/tankers logistics tail drops US ability to deliver fires to PRC to zero, vs PRC global strikes complex chilling in hardened tunnels is extremely survivable.

You can aggregate everyone in 1IC and PRC still out manpower and out produce by magnitude. Hence most will stay neutral for the simple reason they're within PRC logistics backyard which US don't have remote capability to defend against. PRC simply that big in scale, i.e. their acquisition of 1m loitering munitions on top of 1m drones and cruise missile Gigafactory that can churn 1000 components (likely floor) per day makes any US posture in 1/2IC not survivable outside of cope war games. PRC has the fire power to literally fight everyone simultaneously, with domestic resources (no imports) to maintain war economy basically indefinitely.

Ultimately, if PRC starts TW blockading, US will likely look at ledger/force balance and bail because PRC sees through US bluff. Doesn't matter if pacifist muricans demand intervention if PRC throws every TWnese in torment nexus, ultimately US unlikely to out attrite PRC in backyard, and more fundamentally, cannot out reconstitute faster than PRC after the fact. US isn't gambling shipyards, energy infra, semi fabs, hyperscalers, payment processors, boeing/lockheed plants over TW. Now 10 years ago, when US could theoretically asymmetrically hit PRC without CONUS vulnerability, US intervention strategically likely, but this 2026, we see the new national security strategy. Much more sensible for US planners to retreat to hemisphere and accept spheres of influence arrangement. Americans being powerless to US foreign policy is an (often unfortunate) American trait.

You're speaking of a hot war which isn't ever going to happen owing to nuclear weapons. And if it did happen it precludes many of your scenarios. For instance naval vessels are highly vulnerable to modern weapons technology. Aircraft carriers were constantly sunk in WW2. The main factor that shifted after WW2 is that nukes precluded direct war between major powers, so they ended up being exclusively used against places incapable of defending themselves. More generally Ukraine has provided many lessons in modern war, and among them is that experience in invading these sort of countries is not only useless but perhaps even harmful as it can contribute to flawed assumptions.

That 15% no longer has the majority of the economic power in the world, or anywhere near it. There's a great visualization of the G7 vs BRICS here. [1] That's obviously not all countries, but those omitted aren't going to change the result nor trend. Just as important is what "economy" means. When we speak of war we're referring to the ability to go from ploughshares to swords, but most of the 15% have neglected their core manufacturing competencies and transitioned to service economies where these large numbers don't really translate into economic might of the sort we might imagine. Again, yet another lesson from Ukraine.

[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...

PPP is misapplied here; you literally get more PPP by having less economic power.

You think a hot war won't happen over Taiwan? I mean, I hope you are right. But if China wants to invade, it's going to turn into a hot war including the US and probably a number of other regional neighbors.

My guess is that MAD will keep the war conventional even though people have nukes. After all, Russia has nukes and they haven't used them despite their failure on the battlefield.

I'm curious where you are from? You don't sound like you understand the mentality of Americans. Your reasoning sounds quite a lot like the theories of victory circulating among Japanese leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

PPP is the exchange rate normalized cost of a basket of goods in different countries. The way you have a high PPP is by having an economy where people can buy a lot with a little. Whether that lot happens to be eggs, steel, or artillery shells. The US is avoiding a hot war with Russia over Ukraine. They will never, ever, engage in a hot war with China over Taiwan. They'll feed weapons to Taiwan and let the Taiwanese fight to the last man, somehow try to frame the eventual defeat as a victory, wash our hands of it, and rapidly move on to the next war.

And if you think Russia is failing, then I'm not sure you know what victory looks like when fighting a competent adversary. The Ukrainian army is being fueled by endless and increasingly brutal forced conscription, and backed by Western weapons, tech, hardware, and intelligence. But instead of the present, let's go 4 years back after the invasion and when the West decided to get overtly involved. Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.

  > Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.

"Four years" alone would've raised eyebrows.

If four years ago anyone had said that Russia would invade Ukraine with everything it got and that four years later it would still stuck fighting for the first eastern provinces, with casualties exceeding a million and no end in sight, they would've been dismissed as an insane doomer. And yet here we are.

By now, the war against Ukraine is among the worst disasters in the entire military history of Russia, far worse than the 1979 invasion Afghanistan and the 1904 Russo-Japanese war, which until recently were regarded as the worst catastrophies of the modern era. Notable Russian fascist Maxim Kalashnikov goes much further. He says that Russia tried to subjugate Ukrainians, but failed, and Ukrainians will return for revenge. He calls it a "cultural and civilizational defeat": https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1985270960321130516

I take this as more or less confirmation that you are not American and are so detached from American culture that you haven't the faintest idea what Americans will do over Taiwan.

That adage about being doomed to repeat history would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

I thought your question was quite childish as it's effectively a masked ad hominem to avoid dealing with the fundamentally illogical points in your argument. I expect deep inside you know full well that you're living in a bubble, and that bubble's reality and the world's reality have long since diverged.

Part of the reason people are doomed to repeat history is precisely this effect. By the time Hitler was greenlighting the Volkssturm, he certainly knew it was over. But he refused to step outside of his cognitive dissonance, to the net result that vast numbers of Germans ended up dying for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

You've offered unsupported opinions about American attitudes and future behavior. Since you're setting yourself up as an expert on Americans, I'm impeaching your credibility. Strictly speaking this is not ad homenim.

Reread the thread. You've built something up in your mind that isn't accurate. Obviously I'm American, though it's completely inconsequential to what I have said.

I think that, if China tries to take Taiwan, rather than a direct military confrontation, the US might just block the Straits of Malacca against oil heading for China - or maybe against anything heading for China.

China would enforce a blockade against Taiwan. The US might or might not be able to break it. But China would have a very hard time breaking a US blockade down there.

You really believe that "the rest of the world" countries should conscript citizens and go to war to help Taiwan? Most people if faced with this choice would direct you to the place where the sun does not shine.

Based on how cowardly the world acted when Russia invaded Ukraine (and continues to act) I don't have much hope for Taiwan.

rightly or wrongly, I'm quite confident the US will not go to war with China if it invades Taiwan - the American people simply wouldn't support it. It's one thing to get public support for dropping a few bombs on a tiny opponent with little risk, as the US regularly does, it's another entirely to go to war with a major power with a very high casualty rate. The US wouldn't have even entered WW2 (as much as the administration may have wanted to) if the Japanese hadn't foolishly attacked Pearl Harbor and then Germany declared war as well. But unlike Japan and Germany, China has the manufacturing capacity and access to raw resources that would make it a very different enemy.

> Hong Kong proves the one country two system policy is a failure.

Does Macau prove one country two systems is a success?

In 1997, China had nowhere near the leverage it has today.

It's not like relations between China and the West aren't already as hostile as the West can tolerate.

Where are you from?

The US shifted from "China is an economic power we should worry about" to "China is a military power we should worry about", but to me it seems to be a recent mind shift serving the current administration narrative.

As a European, I don't think there is much hostility against China here. Sure, people don't like the overall humanitarian situation with Uyghurs; and there are the usual issues with lobbying, intelligence, and currency manipulation, but overall the general public sentiment is rather neutral I would say.

It is amazing in fact how willingly Europe seems to be running into the arms of the actual fascist dictator, Xi, at the first sign of turmoil in the US. The US is written off as a lost cause and you cozy up with a government that is everything you dislike about the current US administration but on steroids. All because the US wants the EU to pay for its own war.

youll get cheaper EVs though I guess

That’s quite an interesting take. You don’t think Europe doing more trade with China (I assume this is what cozying up means?), is a result of a wildly unpredictable trade policy and threats to invade Europe? Instead because the US with their global military presence are sick of footing the bill for it?

You’ll get cheaper oil though I guess?

Not at all. Perhaps you weren't paying attention but the narrative around relations with China started shifting during the Obama administration circa 2011. The bipartisan national security establishment is now broadly aligned with treating China as an adversary and strategic competitor.

>"China as an adversary and strategic competitor."

Nut sure about adversary. As for strategic competitor - this is normal state of affairs. Countries do compete and it is healthy

Be sure. The US national security establishment absolutely considers China to be an adversary. Look for terms like "pacing threat" when they discuss military acquisition programs.

This is an existential issue. Health has nothing to do with it.

>"The US national security establishment absolutely considers China to be an adversary"

I think any country that does not agree that the US should rule the world and is able to challenge it is considered an adversary.

Just out of curiosity, what country manufactured the device you typed that comment on? There’s a lot of room for relations to get more hostile.

> It's not like relations between China and the West aren't already as hostile as the West can tolerate.

It's just the US that's publicly wary of china, heck, it's just Trump

Nonsense. They can and should push back much more. If Europe were to show a united front there's little China could do to punish them. Their only option would be to cosy up to America/Trump, which is a realistic possibility, but it's something they would be very uncomfortable with.

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