4 ms·

It would most likely not be a very short war if the people of Taiwan are serious about their independence. What's an embargo really going to do? Piss off the wh

by audunw 6y ago

It would most likely not be a very short war if the people of Taiwan are serious about their independence. What's an embargo really going to do? Piss off the whole world and create a shitload of sanctions on China. Taiwan is not a city state. They'd be devastated economically, but they'd survive for a good while. Taiwan is now building their own long range missiles to enable them to counter-attack strategic locations (marine bases etc) along the China mainland coast. A war would be devastating to China, both economically and to their military. Trying to actually invade Taiwan would incur huge loses considering how defensible Taiwan is. If Taiwan managed to weaken them, it's a real possibility that the US will step in to defend. And most likely China would have to back off if the US made anything resembling a serious threat. The US has stepped into global conflicts for far less. A war or embargo on Taiwan would be the biggest crisis in the international economy since the oil crisis of the 1970s. I'm split on whether China would actually do this. I'm certain it'd be a huge mistake, but the CCP has no regard for what's reasonable outside of their own self-preservation. They are facing the biggest senior citizen boom in history, and they have really not built up their economy well enough to face it. They're getting stuck in an unfortunate situation where they want to move low-value manufacturing out of China to continue to grow. But they have not built up enough international trust to do high-value design and manufacturing for export. Not at a scale that'd support one billion people. It's possible that the CCP will make moves on Taiwan to drum up support and distract from a growing economic crisis. It might work, but the Chinese people are not stupid. They'd not be happy. I don't think a large peoples uprising is likely, but it could destabilize the party internally, shifting power from one faction to another. It'd be extremely destabilizing, and stability and economic prosperity is really the main thing that has built support for the CCP. There's a small chance that it'd trigger some uprising in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Hong Kong too.

christophilus 6y ago
You’ve summed it up well. But, I still think Taiwan is next. China has been getting more and more aggressive there. A friend of mine lives in Taiwan, and told me that the Chinese have sent fighter jets deeper and deeper into the island’s airspace of late. The US will make a lot of noise, but I’m going to say there’d be no hot war between the US and China. Also, I suspect the PRC will do a fair bit of soft work before making that move. You’ll see pro PRC activism rise in Taiwan so that an invasion no longer seems so black and white. Now, if China ever made a move on Japan, things would be different. But I don’t see that happening. Once China has Taiwan, they control the waters in that area, and there is no need to invade Japan. Japan would basically have to comply with China at that point. From there, China just does their thing, expanding their sphere of influence, etc, taking over small targets that won’t raise too much ire from the rest of the world. Anyway, if we’re making predictions, that’s my current one.
- quink 6y ago
  > You’ll see pro PRC activism rise in Taiwan Pro-PRC activism is so dead that even anti-CCP activism in the form of the KMT is starting to look on life support. Yeah, there's media organisations that have ties with the PRC and CCP. There's businesspeople that do. But the population at large is more and more that of the fiercely sovereign independent nation of Taiwan. Saying Taiwan is an independent country would "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" is more and more like saying Austria is an independent country would "hurt the feelings of the German people".
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    You are naïve if you think it matters. What matters is if pro-CCP activism is in international news or not. Not if it actually represent the average citizen. It would only matter if it was a vote.
quink 6y ago
China is a pretty soft target with things like the Three Gorges Dam. The 1938 Yellow River flood is taught as one of the great crimes of the KMT and is in the consciousness of most of the mainland Chinese as one of the unforgivable crimes of the KMT. It's in fact one of the big ways in which the CCP took control. They also know it can happen again, with the Three Gorges Dam or some other infrastructure and the KMT has very little to lose, it's already taken the reputational hit for decades and independent Taiwan will do it as required for self-preservation - they're not internationally recognised so any prosecution for war crimes is likely to be irrelevant. Beyond being cancelled out by China's aggression in such a scenario in itself anyway.
ekianjo 6y ago
> Piss off the whole world and create a shitload of sanctions on China. Since China provides the rest of the world with everything + owns the debt of countries like the USA, It would be highly doubtful anyone takes even remotely significant sanctions against China.

by audunw 6y ago

christophilus 6y ago

You’ve summed it up well. But, I still think Taiwan is next. China has been getting more and more aggressive there. A friend of mine lives in Taiwan, and told me that the Chinese have sent fighter jets deeper and deeper into the island’s airspace of late. The US will make a lot of noise, but I’m going to say there’d be no hot war between the US and China. Also, I suspect the PRC will do a fair bit of soft work before making that move. You’ll see pro PRC activism rise in Taiwan so that an invasion no longer seems so black and white. Now, if China ever made a move on Japan, things would be different. But I don’t see that happening. Once China has Taiwan, they control the waters in that area, and there is no need to invade Japan. Japan would basically have to comply with China at that point. From there, China just does their thing, expanding their sphere of influence, etc, taking over small targets that won’t raise too much ire from the rest of the world. Anyway, if we’re making predictions, that’s my current one.

quink 6y ago
> You’ll see pro PRC activism rise in Taiwan Pro-PRC activism is so dead that even anti-CCP activism in the form of the KMT is starting to look on life support. Yeah, there's media organisations that have ties with the PRC and CCP. There's businesspeople that do. But the population at large is more and more that of the fiercely sovereign independent nation of Taiwan. Saying Taiwan is an independent country would "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" is more and more like saying Austria is an independent country would "hurt the feelings of the German people".
- Daho0n 6y ago
  You are naïve if you think it matters. What matters is if pro-CCP activism is in international news or not. Not if it actually represent the average citizen. It would only matter if it was a vote.

quink 6y ago

China is a pretty soft target with things like the Three Gorges Dam. The 1938 Yellow River flood is taught as one of the great crimes of the KMT and is in the consciousness of most of the mainland Chinese as one of the unforgivable crimes of the KMT. It's in fact one of the big ways in which the CCP took control. They also know it can happen again, with the Three Gorges Dam or some other infrastructure and the KMT has very little to lose, it's already taken the reputational hit for decades and independent Taiwan will do it as required for self-preservation - they're not internationally recognised so any prosecution for war crimes is likely to be irrelevant. Beyond being cancelled out by China's aggression in such a scenario in itself anyway.

ekianjo 6y ago

> Piss off the whole world and create a shitload of sanctions on China. Since China provides the rest of the world with everything + owns the debt of countries like the USA, It would be highly doubtful anyone takes even remotely significant sanctions against China.