Summary
Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.
Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.
If Fascist China thinks the EU and US will give up their largest producer of semiconductors then they’re severely mistaken
What do you think they would do to stop it?
The us would probably enter war to stop it, Taiwan is pretty valuable to us
Zero chance.
“Us” being? Taiwan didn’t send me a Christmas card.
Bet they made the processor you used to write that comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites
That’s not where they produce their cutting edge chips though… https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-will-spend-14-billion-on-manufacturing-chips-at-tsmc-report
War is necessary… so I can text grandma? Do ya’ll not hear yourselves?
More like: War is necessary… so a dictator can stroke his own ego
Remember who is the aggressor here.
The Kuomintang fought a civil war and lost, would we be okay if the Confederacy kept Florida and wouldn’t give it back?
The Confederacy retreated to Florida. Then internally the people of Florida turned it around, repealed slavery, defeated the original Confederacy government, started a new democracy and is now thriving. Nope, leave them alone.
How would you keep the imperialists from stealing land?
Are you talking about the White Terror?
No, not even a little bit.
I’m talking about imperialists stealing land. What land was stolen by the Taiwanese during the White Terror?
For example, the Soviet Union would have stolen Finland if they could, but Finland was (still is) heavily armed and it would not have been worth the Soviets’ trouble. This is a clear example that when it comes to imperialists like the Soviet Union, the threat of war is necessary to prevent it. This isn’t about starting war. It’s about preventing it.
So much Death. Just so much. For reference look at the aircraft carrier HMS United Kingdom in World War 2. The world’s only unsinkable ship, capable of producing it’s own weapons even. Now update that to 2024 with modern, missiles, torpedoes, and submarines. China would likely win a protracted, non nuclear, limited engagement. But not before significant areas in China and the entirety of Taiwan were nothing but a rubble hellscape.
So at the end of the day, the obvious price of death and destruction, even without nukes. But in the past Presidents have made clear that Taiwan is under the MAD umbrella. So non-nuclear is not a given, and of course we all lose in a nuclear scenario.
How does
“Naval assets filling the sky with a stupidly impossible number of militarized drone swarms using highly classified AI-augmented coordination and cyber warfare which will dump a ton of really nasty crap into an already struggling ocean”
sound?
Because that’s the plan, apparently. =\
https://www.wired.com/story/china-taiwan-pentagon-drone-hellscape
Send the US navy to blockade the strait and finalise the sale of the billions of dollars worth of weapons already waiting on the island for exactly that purpose
…trump’s trivially manipulated: the next four years are china’s best shot and they know it…
That’s a joke, right? Taiwan is literally about 90 miles away from mainland China. The USA could park every ship we have and that still wouldn’t work. If China wants Taiwan, then they will get it even if Taiwan is largely destroyed doing it.
The USA already prevents the Chinese from getting the top processors from Taiwan, so blowing up the factory will hurt the USA much more than China. Not to mention kneecap Musk and the tech bros that have been supporting Trump.
No, it’s not a joke. And putting a small amount of thought into it makes clear that the US believes it can effectively defend Taiwan - it wouldn’t keep such volumes of weaponry there if it believed it would trivially fall into China’s hands.
The US’ Center for Strategic and International Studies has wargamed this 24 times for conventional warfare only and 15 times for consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. In both scenarios, they found they would likely be able to successfully preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.
I think you deeply underestimate just how difficult and expensive in manpower and materiel it is to perform a naval invasion, especially against a nation whose military is specialised for pretty much exclusively that purpose.
Naval superiority is naval superiority; if you can’t get your military to the other side of the strait, you can’t invade the island, regardless of distance. The actual question is whether Taiwan would be able to hold off an invasion for long enough for the US navy to reach and control the strait, which is reasonably likely given the US rents a large number of naval bases in the region for just this purpose.
I’m going to just go ahead and ignore your second paragraph, since it’s entirely unrelated to the US’s military capability wrt to Taiwan.
Haven’t both Taiwan and China both been stockpiling an essentially unlimited supply of long range anti-ship missiles for about a decade now? I can’t imagine China having a fun time even landing troops but it’d be equally hellish for any US ships attempting to exist in the general area.
The US surface ships can sit outside the Chinese medium range envelope and attack only the landing forces. They don’t need to hit Chinese mainland, that’s what the 71 submarines are for. The long range missiles are then easy to defeat because there aren’t enough to saturate the air defense.
I think you nearly overestimate the appetite of the USA government or people to engage in such a massive conflict over Taiwan. The new administration has made it clear support for Ukraine is on thin ice and a deal can be made with Russia to end the fighting. Why not with China as well?
How do you know? My impression is that any deal without security guarantees from the West will just be violated in about two years or so by Russia, and Russia would refuse to make a deal with such security guarantees for exactly that reason.
If Russia changes its mind and says it would be willing to accept such a deal, I would change my mind. Actually I still wouldn’t because Russia are the lyingest bastards I know, but whatever. It hasn’t happened. It would never happen.
Imperialists cannot be reasoned with without credible threats of violence. If it were otherwise, they wouldn’t be imperialist.
One of the primary reasons trump wants to reduce the US’ focus on Russia and Ukraine is to prioritise their position towards China. That’s not to say Trump might not decide against direct involvement; he’s famously erratic, but the semiconductor production of Taiwan is an critical economic dependency that can’t be replaced in the short term.
That’s 5 hours in the open, with every weapon system in the Pacific Ocean firing at you. Good luck?
There has been work to replicate the capabilities in Taiwan on US soil. While it hasn’t been going great, it has been progressing. At some point it is quite possible that Taiwan will no longer be as strategic a partner with America as they are now, which doesn’t bode well for their continued assistance from America. But if there comes a time that China will take Taiwan you can be guaranteed that everything possible will be done to reduce the risk of technology transfer.
But you have to factor in deliberate effort already to eliminate the CHIPS act by Congress. I’m sure it will get the axe in the new administration.
The rush had been increased because of the efforts Western governments like the USA have made to prevent China from getting the chips from Taiwan, that encourages the Chinese to develop their own capacity but also eliminated the hit they would take if processor production in Taiwan was crippled by conflict.
The actual ace in the hole protecting Taiwan is the fact that the Chinese want the Taiwanese to join willingly, but if the Chinese economy has continued trouble than Xi will be under pressure to demonstrate strength and that is where they could make a move on Taiwan.
Unleash the 22
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is the 22?
The F-22 Raptor. It’s never been deployed.
Theres a single dam in China which is extremely vulnerable, if hit by a rocket the majority of Chinas food supply would be destroyed.
That’s about as likely as America performing a preemptive nuclear strike on China. The international “fallout” would be pretty much the same.
It’s not the same at all. Ok the US would get blamed, but they wouldn’t be fired at back with nuclear weapons
The Taiwanese know of it’s existence too, and have the capability to hit it. Furthermore we currently have a president who views war crimes as going above and beyond instead of criminal behavior. I would not bet against someone blowing it up.
Oh damn. Taiwan wouldn’t do it now, but if China invaded, they absolutely would.
I have no doubt that Trump is capable of giving the order. As it stands, there is no way the order is obeyed. Trump will of course start trying to install loyalists in military leadership, but I doubt even the generals could successfully get such an order obeyed today. The entire military culture would need to be replaced, and I think the protections against that will require more time than Trump has to do it.
Thankfully, incompetence is a core trait of fascism, and I don’t think Trump or his people have the juice.
Hitting that dam is a lot harder to disobey as an illegal order than violating Posse Comitatus. Especially if we’re on the brink of nuclear war that would create massive civilian casualties anyways. We expect a big pushback if Trump tries to deploy the military domestically. Going to war is another matter entirely.
They know US can be bought for cheap and EU are too coward.
That’s why TSCM now has a chip plant in Arizona, to ensure production.