this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Who are we going to need to fight against right now that would require significant ammunition stocks?
Clearly Russia can't do jack shit to anyone else right now, they're far too busy even just trying to hold the small chunk of Ukraine they invaded.
Do we think China is going to take this opportunity to invade a NATO ally?
Possibly Taiwan, especially if they think the US is overextended and unwilling to invest in another conflict.
Taiwan is not a NATO ally, only the US has said they are going to get involved. Also the US clearly isn't overextended given that they have no troops at all in Ukraine. It wouldn't be a war of bullets and artillery either, it's going to be ships and aircraft and missiles. None of which are committed to Ukraine.
Why would they do that when they're strategy of peaceful economic integration has been working so well?
People always harp about Chinese airplanes flying in (as the US has established) international airspace. Prior to American FONOPs in the region, China stayed on their "side" of the strait and Taiwan stayed on their "side," and they would request entry as expected of sovereign airspace. After American FONOPs (which make the strait international waters and thus the air above it international airspace), China no longer requests entry because there's no requirement to announce entry of international airspace. Really makes you think, doesn't it?
The status quo circa 2016 was going to lead to a peaceful balance. Not necessarily reunification, but definitely economic and cultural co-dependence. Since then, relations have deteriorated significantly.
This is intentionally provocative and aggressive. All of these actions occurred in the span of 1 year, Mar 2022-Mar 2023. This is what military aggression looks like. To deny that is disingenuous.
Three supposed incursions into territorial waters by unmanned aircraft (supposed, because judging by how they plotted it looks like they discretized movements and just linearly interpolated).
Flying in international airspace is neither provocative nor aggressive. Flying in sovereign airspace is. That's literally been the American position justifying their incursions into the SCS. Frankly, they're not wrong. If the area is international, they are entirely within their rights to sail through it or fly through it. Whether that area is international is up to debate, but under the claim that it is (which Taiwan has not challenged), these operations are entirely legal and entirely justified, just like American FONOPs through the strait are entirely legal and entirely justified and neither provocative nor aggressive.
Oh god... theyre getting ready for the PLA to swim to Taiwan... oh fuck
^^^ the seriousness which those links deserve
Ah yes, simply dismiss any sources that say things that you don't like. Brilliant strategy, not transparent at all.
And where are your sources which support your point of view?
Your sources are great, if you wanted to support the claim that western media is saber rattling around China. They do a great job of framing stuff like "China flies jets in Chinese airspace" as aggressive moves on China's part.
Read governance of China for starters.
Citing a four-volume series, which I don't have on my shelf, doesn't count as providing a source. This is not a current news article, it is a collection of essays.
Furthermore because the author is Xi Jinping, this is a first-party source which makes it biased by default - it is inherently self-interested, it cannot be otherwise. This would only be a valid counter if I had posted a link to a publication produced by the government of Taiwan itself, written by its president.
Reuters, AP News, the Guardian, and Al Jazeera (among the sources I linked) are all far more reliable and more importantly independent third-party sources.
Oh, sorry, didn't realize you wanted me to take you seriously and you also didn't want to read what Chinese government officials think of the situation. You dont have to read the whole book, you can just read the relevant sections.
You still haven't provided any credible independent third-party sources.
And neither have you? You're citing bourgeois media. Do you think that theyre some impartial observers and not aligned with the interests of their capitalist class?
Same reason Russia did it. The allmighty leader gets older and wants to see it happen before he dies as some stupid form of legacy.
Fine, let's play this game. What does China gain from capturing Taiwan? How does China rev up their population to invade Taiwan?
Remember, Taiwan's economy is mostly derived from complex high-value-add industries, Taiwan and China share one of the largest bilateral trade relationships in the world, Taiwan and China are tightly integrated in terms of culture (the best selling artist in China is Taiwanese, for example), and bilateral migration between China and Taiwan is extremely high. Meanwhile, Taiwan is literally a fortress with a massive force of military-trained personnel.
China's key policy goals are twofold: 1. Economic integration of Taiwan into the greater Chinese economy and 2. Taiwanese neutrality (or at least, no Taiwanese alignment with the West). Essentially, Taiwan is China's Cuba (but if Cuba was populated by people who look the same, speak the same language, have similar culture, and didn't have nuclear missiles).
China wants direct control over the chip fabrication capabilities of TSMC, which produces ~90% of microchip fabrication in the 5-10nm range and ~60% of all microchip fabrication. Exerting control over the rest of the world's access to advanced microchip fabrication is the primary goal. Don't pretend China's aggressive behavior is about anything else.
Less than 12% of Taiwanese citizens support unification with the PRC, while 50% support Taiwanese independence and 25% support maintaining the status quo (see section 10). Additionally, 62% support Taiwan seeking international recognition as a sovereign nation (section 6).
Of course it is, they are being threatened by an aggressive authoritarian nation with a vastly larger military.
Nobody can control TSMC except TSMC lol. The equipment is incredibly delicate and incredibly precise. If TSMC decided to wake up one day and destroy their entire business, they could be done before lunch. Anyway, TSMC is only really relevant because government subsidies allowed it to outlast American and Korean fabs. Whereas GloFo had to pull out and Intel burned almost a decade on delays, TSMC was able to make progress. That's not a long-term objective worth invading over.
Moreover, note how I talked about integration. Recent calls for independence have mostly been driven by DPP politicking. Oddly enough, the DPP is funded rather heavily by US interests, which I'm sure is a complete coincidence.
An invasion isn't happening and pretending that one is is harmful to stability in the region.
Except China has a vibrant democracy with a 95 percent approval rating, Xi isn't that old, and Russia is a nakedly corrupt bourgeois "democracy", sure
Or literally any historical analysis as opposed to marvel movie understandings of politics
"Approval ratings" are rather nebulous. By the divisive and partisan nature of American politics, approval ratings in America are naturally going to be low because both parties exist solely to shit on each other. In China, "approval ratings" get measured from the perspective of "is my life improving?" rather than "would my life be improving more under someone else?"
Honestly? I think asking if someone's life has improved is a more fair polling question to ask, but it's one that's difficult to differentiate in the US because of how radicalized everyone is.
Basically, what I'm saying is that the US would have a higher effective approval rating in the Chinese context than it does today, because many American lives ARE improving under the American government. People just think (often incorrectly) that it would improve more if the other party had power.
Wow, an actual useful metric for whether the government is responsive to the populations needs.
Except for life expectancy reductions, child malnutrition, literacy rate reductions, etc
Sure, I agree. The US is basically adopting Deng Xiaoping's policies on common prosperity: to develop some regions and pray that it drives less-developed regions.
Of course, that doesn't really work in a capitalist structure.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/