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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:there's probably a more nuanced term for the precise nature of the modern day relationship- 'client' 'vassal' or 'proxy' all have arguments for and against- but it gets the essentials across So... how is Taiwan an "American puppet/client/vassal/proxy"? Unless you consider [figuratively] 99% of the countries on earth that same term I guess 
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May 23, 2022 19:43
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How are u posted:Taiwan is a thriving democracy, it is not run by a US-backed "strongman". The Taiwanese government does not serve at the pleasure of the United States, it is freely elected by the Taiwanese people. also was established as the last redoubt of a US backed strongman who had failed in his bid to conquer China during a civil war, and has spent most of its existence as a military dictatorship with American backing. some aftereffects have endured. the Taiwanese government is far freer than it once was! It is also very much aware that like its brother states scattered around the world, there are a number of political options that if taken will result in their prompt replacement with someone more amenable to American aims. the dream for Afghanistan was that it could become a Taiwan. the fear of Taiwan is that its partnership with America will end like Afghanistan.
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May 23, 2022 19:44
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:what it seems like to you is, of course, your business. to me it is not a question of 'which side will support them more.' it is a question of if American assurances of support are worth treating seriously. An amphibious 100 mile invasion of a mountainous island of 23 million people is not in any way a fait accompli even for a great power’s military lol.
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May 23, 2022 19:46
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:there are a number of political options that if taken will result in their prompt replacement with someone more amenable to American aims. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:the dream for Afghanistan was that it could become a Taiwan. the fear of Taiwan is that its partnership with America will end like Afghanistan. Would you be able to cite some evidence or something that backs up these claims? I don't think the US would lift a finger if, tomorrow, the Taiwanese people decided they actually 100% want to cede all of their autonomy to the CCP and elected a government to do that. I'm also curious about your claim that the US wanted to make Afghanistan "a Taiwan". I could imagine reading that in some neo-con's manifesto from the early 2000s, I suppose. Do you have a source or link?
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May 23, 2022 19:51
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Putting aside for a moment the clearly erroneous descriptor of US allies and partners as "puppets" the US actually seems to have a pretty good track record. The US more or less immediately came back to Iraq's aid when ISIS reared its ugly head. The US has been steadfast not only to its commitment to NATO, but is doing a lot to help Ukraine resist invasion from the entirely unprovoked war of aggression from Russia. South Korea still stands; what happened in Afghanistan was unfortunately but hardly a trend setting pattern.
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May 23, 2022 19:52
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And for all that talk about American lies, remember that American openly announced they were pulling out over a year before it actually happened. The problem there was the Afghan government refused to believe the Americans were telling the truth despite the obvious. Everyone assumed that first Trump would make a 180 and stop pulling out, and then later that Biden would make a 180. In the end, America did exactly what they said they would do many, many times over.
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May 23, 2022 20:50
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How are u posted:I'm glad Biden is being clear about this. The world is changing, Russia's imperial war of aggression is just another step away from the post-war order. Now is the time to be clear about our commitment to our allies. I'm also glad that Japan appears to want to step up to the plate and further guard against Chinese aggression. Chinese dominance of East Asia is not inevitable. Hate to burst your bubble but the US is not going to militarily defend Taiwan if China invades
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May 23, 2022 21:49
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Red and Black posted:Hate to burst your bubble but the US is not going to militarily defend Taiwan if China invades Where do you get this idea from? It does seem very strongly the case that if China were to invade Taiwan out of the blue that the US would send air and naval assets to aid in their right to self-defence. It's like the entire purpose of the 7th fleet.
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May 23, 2022 22:05
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Red and Black posted:Hate to burst your bubble but the US is not going to militarily defend Taiwan if China invades You have a source for this?
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May 23, 2022 22:06
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So let's see. The US/NATO didn't intervene in Ukraine. And Ukraine is a sovereign country with friendly relations with NATO. The US didn't intervene because to do so would have a high likelihood of escalating into nuclear war. The same is true with Taiwan. What's different with Taiwan however is that very few countries consider it a sovereign country. This includes the US which formally hasn't had an embassy in Taiwan since the 80s. There's maybe half a dozen countries in the world that do. As far as most of the world is concerned Taiwan is a territory of China. So if the US won't intervene against a nuclear power when it has invaded a sovereign country, why should it intervene when China invades what is internationally recognized to be its own territory? Sure, the US will be happy to use an invasion as a pretext to sanction China and isolate it diplomatically, but they're also not suicidally insane enough to risk everything to defend a client state they already threw under the bus in the 80s. It should be plainly obvious that Biden is bluffing.
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May 23, 2022 22:13
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:what it seems like to you is, of course, your business. to me it is not a question of 'which side will support them more.' it is a question of if American assurances of support are worth treating seriously. If the Taiwanese government were to look at Afghanistan as the bare minimum of US commitments, it would mean that they would get at least 20 years of direct military support and financial aid. I'm not sure why that amounts to nothing
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May 23, 2022 22:20
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Red and Black posted:Hate to burst your bubble but the US is not going to militarily defend Taiwan if China invades While I'm inclined to agree, please support your claims.
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May 23, 2022 22:26
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The comparisons to Afghanistan are silly and nonsensical.Red and Black posted:So let's see. The US/NATO didn't intervene in Ukraine. And Ukraine is a sovereign country with friendly relations with NATO. The US didn't intervene because to do so would have a high likelihood of escalating into nuclear war. This, however, is a good analysis of the situation. If Ukraine has roughly unanimous support from all of our biggest allies, and the US is still (rightly) cautious about engaging in a hot war with a nuclear power, theres no chance that the motivation to do so for Taiwan exists. Hell, I'm not even sure you could get agreement on anything like the same levels of sanctions.
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May 23, 2022 22:36
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Red and Black posted:So let's see. The US/NATO didn't intervene in Ukraine. And Ukraine is a sovereign country with friendly relations with NATO. The US didn't intervene because to do so would have a high likelihood of escalating into nuclear war. It seems like every part of this is wrong. The US/NATO did intervene in Ukraine. They instituted sanctions on Russia, are training Ukrainian troops in US/NATO territory; are providing "guns and butter" this is like saying the US didn't do anything in WW2 before Japan attacked which is just historically wrong. The US may not have a no-fly zone or sending US troops to partake in the hostilities but they're doing everything just short of it and its basically costed Russia the war. Regarding Taiwan you seem to be confused and as a result are interpreting the complexities of international diplomacy and geopolitics in an reductionist manner. Most nations swapped who they recognized as "China" in the 1970s and "de facto" consider the PRC to be China, but this isn't to say they "view" Taiwan as "not a real country" or its people as not meeting the threshold of which they'd be deserving of recognition as the situation is complex; swapping such recognition didn't automatically result in recognizing the PRC's claims; it isn't accurate to suppose that most of the world recognizes Taiwan as being a part of China. At least 59 countries including the United States hold "unofficial" diplomatic relations with Taiwan, show casing the desire for China and Taiwan to work out a peaceful solution while being prepared to take actions if China were to unilaterally force a change in the status quo using military force. The American Institute in Taiwan is basically a de facto embassy. It's deceptive to try to paint the situation as the world as not "recognizing" Taiwan ergo they'd stand aside and do nothing. The US has already interfered plenty of nuclear powers, the USSR was a nuclear power during the Korean war and US and USSR pilots traded blows; there's no reason to take it as some self-evident categorical true that it is impossible for there to be a US-Sino conflict without nuclear weapons; as long as China continues their policy of No-First Use why would the US use nuclear weapons? It doesn't seem particularly suicidal for the US and its Allies to intervene, costly yes, suicidal or at all an existential threat? No. The US parking its ships and airplanes in the Taiwan Straits (I am being metaphorical, obviously it would be silly to park your ships directly off of China's coast) doesn't actually escalate things towards nuclear war beyond China already choosing to invade another country. Another element being overlooked is the domestic political environment. The US domestically flipped its poo poo when the US "lost" China back in 1949 resulting in the Red Scare and McCarthyism; defending Taiwan is up there along with the Cuban Florida exiles in terms of being a major domestic political interest group. There would be a strong bipartisan push to intervene militarily should push come to shove. And additionally Russia has had a consistent policy of stating they will "escalate to deescalate" with nuclear weapons, basically pursuing a policy of Man Man Theory to keep NATO on its toes; China in contrast has pursued a much more level headed and sane nuclear posture, as they wish to be able to use conventional ballistic missiles in an anti-ship role and they can't do that unless their nuclear force posture is unambiguous. I would 100% expect in the case of China invading Taiwan unprovoked, that a US-led coalition including Japan, Australia, Canada, and the UK to enter into the conflict in a limited matter to aid in repulsing the invasion forces and in enforcing a blockade.
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May 23, 2022 22:45
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Red and Black posted:So let's see. The US/NATO didn't intervene in Ukraine. And Ukraine is a sovereign country with friendly relations with NATO. The US didn't intervene because to do so would have a high likelihood of escalating into nuclear war. When did the USA state they would militarily intervene if Russia invaded Ukraine? You seem to have made this an underlying assumption for how these two situations are similar, but I don't recall Washington ever saying that they would (and nothing came up with a quick Google search)...
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May 23, 2022 22:50
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Going straight to 'if China invades' skips quite a few steps where the US has options to act to make an invasion untenable.
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May 23, 2022 22:55
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Muh melty lungs https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1528848802337153029 (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 23, 2022 22:59
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I feel it's worth noting that the US isn't the only country that has to make decisions here - China needs to weigh up whether or not to invade in the first place and their estimates of what the US is likely to do will help impact their decision-making. You COULD make the argument that "the US won't intervene because of the possibility of nukes," but the question is, how much does China want to rely on that argument and how willing at they to potentially court nuclear fire themselves on the assumption that the US will definitely, absolutely back down? Or to put it another way, if you're arguing that backing down and not risking nuclear war is the safe, sane option for the US, couldn't you also argue that not starting a war in the first place and thus potentially inviting nuclear war is the safe, sane option for China as well? Either way hopefully the entire situation is moot because China is looking at Ukraine and deciding that sticking their dick into a blender maybe isn't the best idea. Hopefully.
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May 23, 2022 23:02
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Look what Ukraine is doing to Russia with only 8 years of preparing for an invasion. Taiwan has been preparing for, poo poo, almost ten times that long. And in this comparison, Russia has a huge advantage because they can just drive into Ukraine, they don't have to do an amphibious landing onto an island that has more artillery per square kilometer than nearly anywhere else on earth. Anyways China's economy is currently contracting in no small part because there was broadly a realization that the risks of a Russian style sanctions regime on Chinese investments had not been properly accounted for should they invade Taiwan. Whatever the US will or will not do, idk if there's any way that China could move on Taiwan without ending up crippled by sanctions at best and, at worst, uniting the region against them in the same way that Russia recently managed in Europe. Tomn posted:I feel it's worth noting that the US isn't the only country that has to make decisions here - China needs to weigh up whether or not to invade in the first place and their estimates of what the US is likely to do will help impact their decision-making. You COULD make the argument that "the US won't intervene because of the possibility of nukes," but the question is, how much does China want to rely on that argument and how willing at they to potentially court nuclear fire themselves on the assumption that the US will definitely, absolutely back down? Or to put it another way, if you're arguing that backing down and not risking nuclear war is the safe, sane option for the US, couldn't you also argue that not starting a war in the first place and thus potentially inviting nuclear war is the safe, sane option for China as well? Analyses of just how willing the US is to take actions that would provoke nuclear armed countries really need to be re-evaluated from the ground up in light of 2022, too. quote:Either way hopefully the entire situation is moot because China is looking at Ukraine and deciding that sticking their dick into a blender maybe isn't the best idea. Hopefully. Yeah I very much hope it is this. Just on the human side of the economic level, looking at the cost of pricing in 'you might lose your entire investment in 4 years when China launches an invasion of Taiwan and it suddenly becomes illegal to do business in China' is not really a level of risk that can really just be absorbed. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:10 on May 23, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 23:03
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Red and Black posted:So let's see. The US/NATO didn't intervene in Ukraine. And Ukraine is a sovereign country with friendly relations with NATO. The US didn't intervene because to do so would have a high likelihood of escalating into nuclear war. This is nonsensical to an absurd degree. The US/NATO definitely have intervened in Ukraine, and done everything possible short of sending in their own soldiers. I think you know this, and are purposefully keeping your definition of "intervention" narrow in order to support your broader argument vis a vis Taiwan. The other thing worth noting is that Taiwan has immense economic importance, and these two charts should easily demonstrate why:   You know how the world has started feeling the impacts of increased food and energy prices due to the situation in Ukraine? Multiply that by tenfold if China invades Taiwan, because virtually everything that has even a low-end chip in it would instantly skyrocket in price, and the downstream impacts of that are unimaginable.
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May 23, 2022 23:08
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I doubt china could take taiwan even if the US didnt interfere. Amphibious landings against a fortified position are basically impossible.
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May 23, 2022 23:10
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It's also just nonsense that most of the world doesn't consider Taiwan a sovereign state. Most of the world agrees to play along with China's insistence that there is only one China as long as that is part of a status quo that involves a de-facto sovereign Taiwan. Obviously if China decides to change the status quo then the calculation on whether it's worth making the concession on form changes.
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May 23, 2022 23:13
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Alchenar posted:It's also just nonsense that most of the world doesn't consider Taiwan a sovereign state. Most of the world agrees to play along with China's insistence that there is only one China as long as that is part of a status quo that involves a de-facto sovereign Taiwan. Obviously if China decides to change the status quo then the calculation on whether it's worth making the concession on form changes. Yeah exactly. China loving lost its mind on Lithuania and embargoed it completely for Taiwan is office using the name Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei. No sane person will risk an economic embargo over a name. But if the choice is instead over an invasion, people dying, not being able to import semiconductors the calculus changes dramatically
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May 23, 2022 23:19
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Despera posted:I doubt china could take taiwan even if the US didnt interfere. Amphibious landings against a fortified position are basically impossible. Eh, I wouldn't go that far. The real question is if the PLA has the training and equipment necessary to overcome the logistical and tactical/operational challenges and be able to adapt to changing circumstances at the required tempo. Unlike Russia which found itself initially reluctant to use its shiny toys like PGMs, I don't think China is going to be as reluctant. Immobile concrete emplacement might have been formidable against the 1970s PLA, but the 2020s PLA actually has at least on paper, answers to such obstacles. It will be difficult, but without support from the US and other Pacific rim allies nations I don't see Taiwan ultimately winning, at least on paper. In the next couple of decades as China deploys more aircraft carriers the ability to extent air supremacy over if not at least the landing zones but also the entire island to keep the ROC's airforce from regrouping and retiring safely from sorties only gets worse; and if China does manage to keep an advantage in the air that really hurts the ability of the defender to maintain a mobile defence in depth, while China would be free to more freely pick and choose where and when to attack. We're seeing in Ukraine what happens if you don't have air superiority; Ukraine is able to use its interior lines of communication to respond to Russia's most threatening thrusts one at a time and defeat them in piece meal. We're also seeing of course that long range cruise missile attacks don't seem to be that effective at suppressing air defence and air fields but this could be due to a multitude of Russia specific reasons that might not apply to China if the PLA is even somewhat more competent and less corrupt.
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May 23, 2022 23:34
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I think it's pretty obvious from the context that what I mean by "military intervention" is an intervention by the US using its armed forces. That kind of intervention has not manifested itself in the case of Ukraine for the same reasons it will not manifest itself in the case of Taiwan. Going to war with a nuclear power risks everything. The US will eagerly throw Taiwan under the bus to avoid that. In fact, it already did throw Taiwan under the bus after the three communiques which set the US's official relationship with Beijing (and dropping official recognition of the ROC). The idea that countries are OK with not recognizing Taiwan under current circumstances, but will turn their official stances on a dime if China invades is just wishful thinking. For many of these nations China is their largest trading partner, and for virtually all of them China is an immeasurably larger trading partner than Taiwan. There's no practical benefit for them to officially recognize Taiwan. Unless you actually believe these nations care more about the ideals of liberal democracy for a small island more than hundreds of billions of dollars of trade annually. If you do believe that please pick up a history book and get caught up on the last 300 years of history. Disillusion yourself. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:The other thing worth noting is that Taiwan has immense economic importance, and these two charts should easily demonstrate why: The mainland's economic importance is much much much more immense. Also you can rebuild factories for manufacturing cheap electronics and it's considerably better than nuclear armageddon. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 00:04 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 23:59
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If it's easy to rebuild chip manufacturing, why is China still nearly a decade behind Taiwan's manufacturing capability? The best a chinese company is doing is 9nm afaik?
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May 24, 2022 00:39
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Red and Black posted:I think it's pretty obvious from the context that what I mean by "military intervention" is an intervention by the US using its armed forces. That kind of intervention has not manifested itself in the case of Ukraine for the same reasons it will not manifest itself in the case of Taiwan. Going to war with a nuclear power risks everything. The US will eagerly throw Taiwan under the bus to avoid that. In fact, it already did throw Taiwan under the bus after the three communiques which set the US's official relationship with Beijing (and dropping official recognition of the ROC). Once again, when has the US stated they were going to militarily intervene if Russia invaded Ukraine? Why are you trying to compare situations in which the US's public statements have been very different?
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May 24, 2022 00:51
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To theorize a little bit, I think a Taiwanese Invasion would probably come from within. That would be a coup d'etat and then the new administration inviting the PRC to keep the peace. In the business we call this a silk glove approach. China's not going to bomb Taiwan into submission. It's just pointless, I know I said the same thing about Russia not wanting to bomb Ukraine's infrastructure but I think this is a very different situation in terms of the technological means that Taiwan possesses.
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May 24, 2022 00:58
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killer_robot posted:It's not. This nonsense is DOA once you realize it assumes the US will have strong hiring. It won't, it will have strong firing: https://twitter.com/MenthorQpro/status/1528879653859258368
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May 24, 2022 01:09
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Dasar posted:This nonsense is DOA once you realize it assumes the US will have strong hiring. It won't, it will have strong firing: Where are the statements from Amazon/Walmart stating they are overstaffed? Who is this random twitter account making this claim with a graph that only shows the total number of employees and no other context/listed sources? Based on the name/symbol, I'm assuming it's a Qanon based twitter profile....... Kalit fucked around with this message at 01:32 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 01:27
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Yeah exactly. China loving lost its mind on Lithuania and embargoed it completely for Taiwan is office using the name Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei. No sane person will risk an economic embargo over a name. But if the choice is instead over an invasion, people dying, not being able to import semiconductors the calculus changes dramatically the more important question behind 'will the US engage militarily or not' is the question as to whether or not the they're signing into effective layered disincentive against invasion there's a large number of people that hold as an article of personal faith that Taiwan will be forcibly reincorporated under the mainland government. Sometimes it's a long held fatalist view, and other times it's just a measure of ideological comfort — because they just support PRC nationalism and they believe this is a righteous reincorporation, so of course it's going to happen. Either type of view has seemed slow to re-analyze what things look like after the HK protests and the invasion of Ukraine, which each provide their lessons in terms of if nationalist unification can be seeded internally or through the premise of "china can just steamroll them and the rest of the world will have to stand by to not risk nuclear war" what we'll instead have to look at is what's being done to make it so that any even remotely sane mainland government will never have a window of opportunity where they could ever convince themselves that it's a good time to go all-in on forced nullification of the island's sovereignty
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May 24, 2022 01:47
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Nobody’s taking any land in the 21st century without inflicting massive, pointless misery on millions of people who did nothing to deserve it. And that’s if they have a clean, quick win. Having said all that, it’s very confident administrations that overreach in this way. The US’s catastrophically bad overseas interventions happened during its unipolar moment. China’s government right now is very, very confident in itself.
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May 24, 2022 03:01
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the US is still pursuing a strategy of ambiguity regarding Taiwan which is fine? Taiwan is pursuing a strategy of ambiguity regarding Taiwan. That may change some day! But for now it hasn't. For now East and Southeast Asia prefers to maintain perpetual talks about talks. India is the only one of China's neighbours to learn recently that the materially rational pursuit of peaceful ambiguity and careful wording can abruptly transform into the materially rational pursuit of territorial conquest by fait accompli the next day. For the rest, the concern over e.g. the CCGL 海警法 is still premised on a hypothetical of a shooting naval conflict with China in the 9D area. Until it actually happens there would be no wave of domestic nationalist fury to support committing to a provocative militarisation. Same reason the US withdrew ships from the Black Sea even at the same time it was publicly predicting an invasion of Ukraine, really. Those boots must actually storm the border posts first.
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May 24, 2022 04:12
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Red and Black posted:I think it's pretty obvious from the context that what I mean by "military intervention" is an intervention by the US using its armed forces. That kind of intervention has not manifested itself in the case of Ukraine for the same reasons it will not manifest itself in the case of Taiwan. Going to war with a nuclear power risks everything. The US will eagerly throw Taiwan under the bus to avoid that. In fact, it already did throw Taiwan under the bus after the three communiques which set the US's official relationship with Beijing (and dropping official recognition of the ROC). As people mentioned, the US has made very different statements in regards to Ukraine, and in fact even in the case of Ukraine its easy to see a situation where the US does eventually intervene. Such as if Russia were to begin attacking staging areas in Poland or Romania out of desperation, at which point the gloves are off and the US isn't going to ignore direct attacks on their allies. You are once again insisting on a point as though it were self-evident, and it is not. You've also I note, not responded to the point as to how nuclear war would even happen, the US isn't likely to resort to nuclear weapons, and China pledges no first use, seems to me that the risk is pretty low. Regardless, even the risks of nuclear war must be measured according to a geopolitical calculus; if there existed some sort of pop culture utilitarian example I would quote it but one doesn't seem to be coming to mind for some reason, oh well, suffice it to say that it's bad logic to suppose that the US won't intervene because it risks "nuclear war", the US was willing to risk a whole lot regarding Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, even as going as far as deploying US forces to stop Soviet flagged ships from entering Cuban waters. Not intervening if Taiwan is invaded just makes it clear that the US might not be there if Japan is invaded next, or South Korea, or Canada. By the logic you're using it is never worth it to risk "nuclear war" because resisting at all risks nuclear war at any step along the path. It is ultimately better to draw a red line before half of the pacific is taken over. This argument seems to be justifying perpetual permanent appeasement if the power in question has nuclear weapons. The fact is, the US during the Cold War was willing to do a whole lot against the Soviet Union to maintain a policy of containment, nuclear weapons or no. So there's basically no basis to the argument that the US wouldn't do anything if China were to invade Taiwan. It's an argument made out of whole cloth that overemphasizes the importance of nuclear weapons. It was already pointed out to you that it isn't just the US making a risk if it decides to do something, China is also making a risk when they choose in this hypothetical to invade Taiwan; why should they be excluded from the "they would be risking everything" argument? Russia was a pretty big trading partner for a lot of European nations, but many of them have agreed to sanction Russia on many goods that they trade with Russia regarding. Just because countries are a major trading partner with China doesn't mean anything; France and Germany afterall were each others major trading partners before World War 1. Which isn't to suggest that every such nation would change their foreign policy, some nations are presumably in China's court, but most Western countries are going to condemn China for their act of aggression and work to officially recognize the independence of Taiwan especially should Taiwan declare it. Some countries don't just abide by a calculus as to what is the most pragmatic, sometimes nations abide by ideals too. Perhaps not as their sole concern but it exists as a consideration along a spectrum of geopolitical realities and interests and for many nations trade with China is important; when China is acting in good faith as a cooperative member of the international community; this completely changes when they embark in unprovoked wars of aggression and it tends to make nations reconsider doing business with them. Just as how many nations are reconsidering key energy deals with Russia over the invasion of Ukraine. Maybe you're the one who needs a history lesson, why did the UK care about German rearmament in the 1930's when the most pragmatic thing to do is either to keep up appeasement or do nothing and encourage them to keep going East? Why did the US care about what Japan or other European powers before it were doing in China? Why did the US care about containing the spread of authoritarian communism when the most pragmatic thing to do is to not care about the USSR walling off their own little sandbox and just continue doing business with them as though it was still the 1920's and 30's? Why care about South Korea when it wasn't under the US's defence umbrella at the time of invasion by North Korea? Sometimes nations do act on interests beyond self-interest. Others have mentioned it but to further elaborate it is really not possible for China to replace Taiwan's output on chips; you're talking about extremely export controlled technology to even build the machines that make the chips whose backlog goes on for decades currently. China is not at the level to even make chips at the same quality and certainly can't ramp up production to make the chips they can make, it takes billions of dollars of investment and years to make the facilities which China currently shows no signs of doing anytime soon, the importance of Taiwan's output has an strategic value of absolute. And you know what that means. Right now as Ronya mentions the US has a strategic policy of ambiguity, they may or may not intervene, because they don't want to spook China into doing anything rash, but this can change at anytime and it would have no value of deterrence if one of the possibilities didn't include direct intervention.
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May 24, 2022 04:41
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If the US and western powers sit by and do nothing while China invades Taiwan, it'll be a massive indicator that the western world has decided that there's absolutely nothing they can do in the face of China's Economic Power and that China can basically do whatever the hell they want. I suspect this is something that the western world would be loathe to so transparently admit no matter what the pain to their constituents.
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May 24, 2022 07:09
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It swings both ways though doesn’t it. China benefits massively from the status quo. Why would they want to upset that when doing so unleashes a massive can of worms that could have a major impact on the average Chinese person, who the government has shown to go well out of their way to keep control of.
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May 24, 2022 12:46
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CareyB posted:It swings both ways though doesn’t it. China benefits massively from the status quo. Why would they want to upset that when doing so unleashes a massive can of worms that could have a major impact on the average Chinese person, who the government has shown to go well out of their way to keep control of. The rational calculus is that they won't, and over time Taiwan will willingly or not naturally be subsumed into China's sphere of influence. The worrying analysis is that Xi might do what Putin has done and decide that it is *legacy building time* and that he wants the history books to say that he reunification China rather than leave unfinished business for his successor.
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May 24, 2022 12:58
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Red and Black posted:The mainland's economic importance is much much much more immense. Also you can rebuild factories for manufacturing cheap electronics and it's considerably better than nuclear armageddon. This is "the US won't intervene because the earth is flat and they'd sail off the edge" level of economic analysis. First off semiconductor fabs are not where "cheap electronics" are manufactured. They're the base inputs to pretty much every important piece of machinery/technology/equipment we manufacture in modern society. And secondly, semiconductor manufacture is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, industries to develop capacity for in human history. In terms of initial capital outlay, R&D requirements, institutional knowledge requirements, and lead time on manufacture of capital equipment. The chip foundries in Taiwan are major strategic resource that makes Iraqi oilfields look quaint.
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May 24, 2022 13:46
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CareyB posted:It swings both ways though doesn’t it. China benefits massively from the status quo. Why would they want to upset that when doing so unleashes a massive can of worms that could have a major impact on the average Chinese person, who the government has shown to go well out of their way to keep control of. Why escalate against India in Ladakh in 2020? India had not undertaken any substantive changes from the border status quo. Rather, China was not seeing India backing down despite a massive surge of Chinese military and economic investment in Tibet and the Indian Ocean simultaneously, but instead India unrealistically maintaining an attitude that nothing had fundamentally changed since the 1993 or 2013 border agreements. Likewise: what does China get from investing massively in 9d fortifications? If all that ASEAN can put on the table is a continuation of existing de facto control from the 2002 agreement, why would anyone expect Beijing to find this satisfactory?
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May 24, 2022 15:16
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Surprised this hasn't already been mentioned: great and chilling article from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps
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May 24, 2022 16:48
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