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If china wants to see how it’s ships fare against anti ship missiles and submersible drone boats, I think they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t think the US

If china wants to see how it’s ships fare against anti ship missiles and submersible drone boats, I think they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t think the US will bat an eye to breaking such a blockade either. The US cares a lot more about Taiwan than it cares about Ukraine.

rapsey 4y ago
They are however rapidly strengthening their navy and air force. Eventually the US navy in the area might be outgunned to a degree that forces their retreat.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  "Eventually" here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's possible it will happen, of course, but is not within the realm of possible futures within the next ten to fifteen years. For better or worse, the US is easily the most powerful force projection entity in world history. This was true before Russia was revealed to be badly broken and is more true now.
  - rapsey 4y ago
    The US is however spread out over the worlds seas.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    The superior ability of the US to project force in distant places does not inherently translate to the ability to beat China in its own backyard. The US has more and (much) better carriers, but China has, well, China, and a whole lot of missiles and planes there.
mordae 4y ago
Not to the point of going to the war with China.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  You’re welcome to disagree. But I think they are down to clown.
scarmig 4y ago
The thing about a blockade is that you just have to get commercial vessels to not want to enter targeted ports. Even excluding financial and economic tools that China can leverage against companies and supposing China's military couldn't compete with the US near its coasts (debatable), a world where the strait is littered with mines and blasted with missiles is a world where Taiwan is effectively blockaded. And the US cares a lot more about Taiwan than Ukraine, but there's an equally large gap between how much China cares about Taiwan and how much the US does.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  It doesn’t really matter though. If the CCP blockades Taiwan it just declared economic war on the west. Will China be able to guarantee continued oil shipments safely reaching China? Food? Can China afford a slow economic burn while it blockades Taiwan for ambiguous gains?
  - scarmig 4y ago
    I'm not arguing that China wouldn't wreck its economy by invading Taiwan. It would, and economic disaster would not be an overstatement. But it would be able to wage its war. For food it's fine, although people would certainly be eating much less pork for a long time. Oil is the critical limiting resource; China consumes around 15 million barrels a day. But it domestically produces 4 million barrels a day (it once was doing around 5, but shut down some as they became uneconomic), can scale up to around a million barrels per day of imports from Russia and Central Asia, and has a stockpile of around a billion barrels. Most manufacturing except for militarily relevant industries would be shut down, and it would impose domestic rationing to decrease its baseline consumption by a couple million barrels. Depending on how you model things, China could maintain its wartime footing for at least a year and potentially indefinitely. Painful for China, yes, but also economically horrendous for the rest of the world. As soon as the war starts, all of East Asia would be thrown into an immediate depression, as at a minimum 10% of economic activity is shut down overnight. Oil prices fall, putting severe pressure on oil producers whose economies themselves collapse. The EU and the USA themselves tumble into recession, as supply chains are destroyed. Domestic politics would react negatively to the new reality, and there'd be no Pearl Harbor event to motivate Western voters to prosecute a war for an island most can't even locate on a map. Everyone would be in for a world of pain, and everyone would want a resolution of the crisis as quickly as possible. If China starts a war, it will be because it believes it can maintain itself in an economic calamity longer than the US and its allies can.

rapsey 4y ago

They are however rapidly strengthening their navy and air force. Eventually the US navy in the area might be outgunned to a degree that forces their retreat.

foobiekr 4y ago
"Eventually" here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's possible it will happen, of course, but is not within the realm of possible futures within the next ten to fifteen years. For better or worse, the US is easily the most powerful force projection entity in world history. This was true before Russia was revealed to be badly broken and is more true now.
- rapsey 4y ago
  The US is however spread out over the worlds seas.
- scarmig 4y ago
  The superior ability of the US to project force in distant places does not inherently translate to the ability to beat China in its own backyard. The US has more and (much) better carriers, but China has, well, China, and a whole lot of missiles and planes there.

mordae 4y ago

Not to the point of going to the war with China.

oneoff786 4y ago
You’re welcome to disagree. But I think they are down to clown.

scarmig 4y ago

The thing about a blockade is that you just have to get commercial vessels to not want to enter targeted ports. Even excluding financial and economic tools that China can leverage against companies and supposing China's military couldn't compete with the US near its coasts (debatable), a world where the strait is littered with mines and blasted with missiles is a world where Taiwan is effectively blockaded. And the US cares a lot more about Taiwan than Ukraine, but there's an equally large gap between how much China cares about Taiwan and how much the US does.

oneoff786 4y ago
It doesn’t really matter though. If the CCP blockades Taiwan it just declared economic war on the west. Will China be able to guarantee continued oil shipments safely reaching China? Food? Can China afford a slow economic burn while it blockades Taiwan for ambiguous gains?
- scarmig 4y ago
  I'm not arguing that China wouldn't wreck its economy by invading Taiwan. It would, and economic disaster would not be an overstatement. But it would be able to wage its war. For food it's fine, although people would certainly be eating much less pork for a long time. Oil is the critical limiting resource; China consumes around 15 million barrels a day. But it domestically produces 4 million barrels a day (it once was doing around 5, but shut down some as they became uneconomic), can scale up to around a million barrels per day of imports from Russia and Central Asia, and has a stockpile of around a billion barrels. Most manufacturing except for militarily relevant industries would be shut down, and it would impose domestic rationing to decrease its baseline consumption by a couple million barrels. Depending on how you model things, China could maintain its wartime footing for at least a year and potentially indefinitely. Painful for China, yes, but also economically horrendous for the rest of the world. As soon as the war starts, all of East Asia would be thrown into an immediate depression, as at a minimum 10% of economic activity is shut down overnight. Oil prices fall, putting severe pressure on oil producers whose economies themselves collapse. The EU and the USA themselves tumble into recession, as supply chains are destroyed. Domestic politics would react negatively to the new reality, and there'd be no Pearl Harbor event to motivate Western voters to prosecute a war for an island most can't even locate on a map. Everyone would be in for a world of pain, and everyone would want a resolution of the crisis as quickly as possible. If China starts a war, it will be because it believes it can maintain itself in an economic calamity longer than the US and its allies can.