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I think China won't attack soon. It seems they play a long time game vs Taiwan, where they try to bring Taiwan, closer, weeken it's ties to its allies and slowl

I think China won't attack soon. It seems they play a long time game vs Taiwan, where they try to bring Taiwan, closer, weeken it's ties to its allies and slowly making Taiwan to become more dependent on China. China is convinced they will get Taiwan back and whether that happens in 20,50 or 100 years, that is good enough. At least until China builds a self sufficient semiconductor industry, I don't think they are going to attack Taiwan.

maxglute 2y ago
I don't think they want to go kinetic first either, but I think natural byproduct of PRC military modernizing, and modernizing specifically with taking TW _AND_ fighting US+co in mind, is if things pop off for whatever reason, the escalation will snowball. And it will snowball somewhere very destructive because all parties in this game are ramping up capabilities to deter, but when deterrence fails, there's lots of hardware that's not going to do deterring but shooting. As for PRC waiting, I think they can wait, even past 2049, PRC centennial, but they're not going to wait for ever. TW indentity growing, a few more generations and culture completely disentangle (aging pro-ish PRC, KMT cohorts not going to be around forever). At some point, PRC isn't going to see TWneses as "fellow Chinese" occupying TW, a Chinese province. But a foreign culture occupying Chinese land, and that's going to generate all manners of opennings for conflict.
- contrarian1234 2y ago
  On the one hand you have a point, and they're drifting apart culturally - but at the same time Taiwan is not keeping up economically or culturally at all. If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, in a decade it's going to be hard to look at the evil communists across the straight who are much better off living standards wise. Taipei is a bit drab and ugly that hasn't seen any development in the last decade. It looks worse than second tier cities in China. Just my surface level impression is that you fly across the straight and people are dressed nicer and look better off on the subway there. On the cultural front they're also not doing hot.. the domestic culture is anemic. They don't make movies like they did in the 90s. Nobody cares about Taiwan's cultural output (other than bubble tea). The art scene is honestly.. pathetic here. In large part b/c they can't engage with anything historic other than recent history of the White terror. There is an eww factor with regards to engaging with Chinese history - its seen as the culture of the "other" and so you see it in every day life.. no tea ceremony, no hanfu, no interest in history. There is also no real "Taiwanese culture" that would be alien to a Chinese person (I can only think of Pili?). There is some stuff built on top of Fujianese culture.. but it's got no legs so far. The elephant in the room is that Taiwanese are also starting to consume more and more Chinese media - which was kinda garbage quality for a long time but has vastly improved in the last 5 years. I think this will take off. You can already see it on Tiktok and stuff.. people use a lot more mainland terms and expressions. If the Chinese were smart they'd build 10-20 ferries and offer people free trips to Xiamen/Shanghai. Most Taiwanese never travel to China and have little sense for the cultural similarities If the Chinese manage to ramp up chip production then Taiwanese is really screwed. TSMC is some insane percentage of the GDP. The other insane fraction is of course businesses that work in China like Foxconn.. China already has this place by the balls unfortunately
  - eru 2y ago
    > If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, [...] Not going to happen. So far in all economies, catchup growth has inevitably slowed down as they moved to the global technological frontier. Taiwan was famously one of the Asian tigers. As you already noticed, her growth has slowed down a lot. PR China has seen enormous growth, but has also slowed down in the last ten years or so, and looks to slow down further. At the moment, PR China as a whole is a lot poorer per capita than Taiwan. Though you can argue that for our purposes here, Taiwanese people would compare themselves to the coastal provinces of PR China. (Of course, they would also look at Hong Kong as the obvious comparison for a (semi-) independent entity joining PR China. And just going by raw growth, officially joining China doesn't seem to have accelerated HK growth at all.)
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      Computer programmers from Taiwan go to the PRC to earn more money. Heck, programmers from Japan and ROK find they can get more money in China as well with the right specialty. It is just one small segment of their economy, but the money China is willing to spend on tech is no joke, and dwarfs its neighbors in terms of salaries.
    - contrarian1234 2y ago
      My point is that just from .. on the ground "feel" and quality of life .. Hong Kong, Taipei and large Chinese cities are all at rather similar levels (each having their own pluses and minuses). And I don't see them growing at the same rate from here on out. People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan. I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now. All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.
eru 2y ago
> I think China won't attack soon. It seems they play a long time game vs Taiwan, where they try to bring Taiwan, closer, weeken it's ties to its allies and slowly making Taiwan to become more dependent on China. That might be a sensible strategy. But: sabre rattling now is exactly the wrong way to go about weakening Taiwan's ties with her allies.

maxglute 2y ago

I don't think they want to go kinetic first either, but I think natural byproduct of PRC military modernizing, and modernizing specifically with taking TW _AND_ fighting US+co in mind, is if things pop off for whatever reason, the escalation will snowball. And it will snowball somewhere very destructive because all parties in this game are ramping up capabilities to deter, but when deterrence fails, there's lots of hardware that's not going to do deterring but shooting. As for PRC waiting, I think they can wait, even past 2049, PRC centennial, but they're not going to wait for ever. TW indentity growing, a few more generations and culture completely disentangle (aging pro-ish PRC, KMT cohorts not going to be around forever). At some point, PRC isn't going to see TWneses as "fellow Chinese" occupying TW, a Chinese province. But a foreign culture occupying Chinese land, and that's going to generate all manners of opennings for conflict.

contrarian1234 2y ago
On the one hand you have a point, and they're drifting apart culturally - but at the same time Taiwan is not keeping up economically or culturally at all. If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, in a decade it's going to be hard to look at the evil communists across the straight who are much better off living standards wise. Taipei is a bit drab and ugly that hasn't seen any development in the last decade. It looks worse than second tier cities in China. Just my surface level impression is that you fly across the straight and people are dressed nicer and look better off on the subway there. On the cultural front they're also not doing hot.. the domestic culture is anemic. They don't make movies like they did in the 90s. Nobody cares about Taiwan's cultural output (other than bubble tea). The art scene is honestly.. pathetic here. In large part b/c they can't engage with anything historic other than recent history of the White terror. There is an eww factor with regards to engaging with Chinese history - its seen as the culture of the "other" and so you see it in every day life.. no tea ceremony, no hanfu, no interest in history. There is also no real "Taiwanese culture" that would be alien to a Chinese person (I can only think of Pili?). There is some stuff built on top of Fujianese culture.. but it's got no legs so far. The elephant in the room is that Taiwanese are also starting to consume more and more Chinese media - which was kinda garbage quality for a long time but has vastly improved in the last 5 years. I think this will take off. You can already see it on Tiktok and stuff.. people use a lot more mainland terms and expressions. If the Chinese were smart they'd build 10-20 ferries and offer people free trips to Xiamen/Shanghai. Most Taiwanese never travel to China and have little sense for the cultural similarities If the Chinese manage to ramp up chip production then Taiwanese is really screwed. TSMC is some insane percentage of the GDP. The other insane fraction is of course businesses that work in China like Foxconn.. China already has this place by the balls unfortunately
- eru 2y ago
  > If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, [...] Not going to happen. So far in all economies, catchup growth has inevitably slowed down as they moved to the global technological frontier. Taiwan was famously one of the Asian tigers. As you already noticed, her growth has slowed down a lot. PR China has seen enormous growth, but has also slowed down in the last ten years or so, and looks to slow down further. At the moment, PR China as a whole is a lot poorer per capita than Taiwan. Though you can argue that for our purposes here, Taiwanese people would compare themselves to the coastal provinces of PR China. (Of course, they would also look at Hong Kong as the obvious comparison for a (semi-) independent entity joining PR China. And just going by raw growth, officially joining China doesn't seem to have accelerated HK growth at all.)
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Computer programmers from Taiwan go to the PRC to earn more money. Heck, programmers from Japan and ROK find they can get more money in China as well with the right specialty. It is just one small segment of their economy, but the money China is willing to spend on tech is no joke, and dwarfs its neighbors in terms of salaries.
  - contrarian1234 2y ago
    My point is that just from .. on the ground "feel" and quality of life .. Hong Kong, Taipei and large Chinese cities are all at rather similar levels (each having their own pluses and minuses). And I don't see them growing at the same rate from here on out. People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan. I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.). Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now. All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.

eru 2y ago

> I think China won't attack soon. It seems they play a long time game vs Taiwan, where they try to bring Taiwan, closer, weeken it's ties to its allies and slowly making Taiwan to become more dependent on China. That might be a sensible strategy. But: sabre rattling now is exactly the wrong way to go about weakening Taiwan's ties with her allies.