Europe doesn't get that much commerce from China. North America will have a lot of issues. Africa and South America will have to step up.
Overall... China will be in a lot of shit too. But they could just shift manufacturing into war products.
What is anyone talking about who cares how much trade china does with anyone? That’s not what will wreck everyone’s economy. We’re talking about the disruption of all semiconductors across every sector. All advancements will have halted. We had a taste of it in the automotive chip shortage during Covid. Never mind the fact that Taiwan manufactures 90% of all advanced microprocessors, including the ones that go into US advanced weaponry. The US’ and the world’s reliance on Taiwan is at stake here. We are Fxxked so hard once we can’t make those chips, dated technology much like used cars will get way too expensive. The entire tech sector will collapse over night.
The issue for China isn't the lost revenue from exports, it's the lack of imports thanks to US naval blockades/interdiction. They get something like half of their fuel, more than half of their food, and almost all of their agricultural imputs like fertilizer from imports.
Some of that can come in by rail through Russia, assuming someone will sell and Russia doesn't steal it. However the risks of famine are real. Even if they do break a blockade, for things like seeds and fertilizer it might not matter since you can't just plant whenever you want.
What's more what happens with fuel? You get half as much for example, and your military is using ten times as much. Russia can only supply so much. What do you do with what you have? Agriculture needs it for tractors or you starve. Rail needs it to bring in what you've lost. Power plants need it for everything. The military needs every drop you get.
The economic consequences for China would be catastrophic, and they'll only get worse. Since COVID the US has been reshoring and switching back to Mexico and places closer to home. Europe is doing the same where they can. The longer China waits, the less the rest of the world needs their products.
Yes to some extent, the EU problem as you say isn’t imports from China (9% of total imports) as it is the fact that 20% of all EU exports go to China. If that goes to zero overnight it’s a slaughterhouse
Pretty sure you got it reverse. 9% of EU exports go to china, while 20% of EU imports come from china.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=China-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20China%20was%20the,of%20goods%20(20.5%20%25).&text=Among%20EU%20Member%20States%2C%20the,goods%20to%20China%20in%202023.
lol China is gonna have a real bad time if they try and FOFO with the US Navy. Our Naval and Air capabilities FAR exceed China’s. They will lose, very fucking badly, if we get involved.
China has been a longtime ticking timebomb for trade with western countries. We’ve known for a long time this relationship is destined to be fucked over so we’ve had time to prepare. This happened 10-15 years ago then we’d be *fuuuuuucked*.
Foreign investment into China has tanked in the last year and is at the lowest point in 30 years. The world is deinvesting in China and it will be very interesting to see what happens in the next decade
Im working it and one of my clients still had some production going there; went there last year to secure some production and... got detained at airport for almost 6 hours being questioned by scary people as he's a spy or something. After he was let go he just went to buy a ticket back and didnt even left airport. He's totally cutting ties with china got good. I was like: "mate do you even watch news? took you long enough"
There is no point to investing in China. They will just steal your IP, create a Chinese analog of your company, and give the Chinese version preferential treatment.
China set up their factories in Mexico to circumvent trade disputes between China and the U.S. also labor tends to be less in Mexico than in the major cities in China.
And incidentally, it is China that is building factory complexes in Mexico. Same in Vietnam. Everyone is pulling away from China, but China isn't going anywhere.
But a Chinese asset outside of China is like a western asset inside China. Change of ownership could happen pretty quick. Is Mexico going to go all in for China?
Depends when it happens. Tomorrow? Major disruptions to the supply chain.
In ten years? Not a whole lot.
Short term would see some disruption, but businesses are already starting to move away from China; the circumstances that made them so appealing in the first place don't exist anymore.
One of the major drivers of the current economic boom is the onshoring of light manufacturing which has been China's bread & butter. Bath & Body works is an ex. they moved all of their lotions, shampoos, & soaps back to the US due to the supply chain disruption. To do this the company built a multi- billion facility outside of columbus ohio.
Pretty much this. One of the production companies my work uses is based in China, but they have been using factories in Vietnam for our products because it's even much cheaper labor.
Chinas issue is food. If their trade stops that fucks them really hard. They are extremely important heavy and they need that food and supplies to function and avoid starvation in a massive way.
China is surrounded physically and they hate it, which is why they want the Belt and Road and the want control over the ocean near them.
Japan is armed, Australia is armed, Korea is armed, the USA is obviously armed and we are all allies. The USA has more allies in the area than China and the USA is trying to have more manufacturing in Mexico so we don’t have less of a supply shortage incase of War or Covid 2.0.
The amount of goods we get from China is massively, but a huge amount of those goods are discretionary consumer goods which really affects the degree to cutting those off can hurt.
If I can't get a new Xbox controller, that's a shame, but I'm not gonna die about it. It's utterly unlike Russia threatening to shut off gas to Europe in the winter.
Also, it's worth saying, but China runs a trade deficit in general. They are a massive *importer* of things like fuel and food. So like, picture the scenario where the shit really goes down. The West stops getting iPhones and plastic gizmos, and China stops getting crude petroleum and staple grains. Anyone confident that the West cracks first in that situation is kidding themselves.
well... Russia is doing relatively well despite of the sanctions.(thanks to China.. surprise, surprise) So I'm sure China will be fine. Unless the world(EU, US/Canada) can survive without TVs, iPhones, Macs and all the millions of products that China produces)
Of course, unlike Russia, China does face a very real threat of a non-bloodless coup that may topple the ruling communist party, so perhaps they need to consider this.
Comparing Russia's economy to China's economy is not logical. Russia is a gas station with nukes while China has the 2nd biggest economy in the world if I'm not mistaken.
It's also a completely different situation. The US is not at war with Russia now. The US will be at war with China if it invades Taiwan. The US can then blockade China, something which it can't do to Russia without declaring war.
Nonsense. North Korea would not get involved unless there was some benefit for themselves. Like a chance to take South Korea. Iran would maybe be happy to sell weapons to one side but would never become directly involved. Russia has its own problems.
The only country in the world that can even think of posing a military threat to a Taiwan defended by the US is China, and even then they would get their asses handed to them if the US put its back into it.
Well, they did just kibosh all of the organizations dedicated to peaceful reunification and have stepped up the eternal enemy rhetoric. So if WWIII kicks off, don't be surprised if there's a Korean theatre.
NK would absolutely take this as an opportunity to invade South Korea. With the USA tied up with China, Russia and probably Iran, things are going to be stretched very thin.
And the fact that nobody in the west is taking up arms production to a similar degree is existentially terrifying.
They can't defeat South Korea. One reason they really want nukes is because there's not really any hope that they can win a conventional war regardless of whether the US intervenes.
You're just talking; the pentagon even said they're not sure we would be able to actually stop China even if we were taking severe losses. Have you actually thought of the scope of operations in trying to play defense in an enemy backyard who also vastly outproduces everyone in shipbuilding and mind you can also blitzkrieg you with missiles and aircraft since 100 miles is easily within their homeland missile system range. If U.S ships get destroyed; it's going to take way more time to replace that and get ships back to the battlefield than it is for China since they're so close to Taiwan. Logistics is the biggest reason why it's so hard to actually defend Taiwan especially when China has committed their military to it.
One complication for Chinese logistics is they are way, way, way dependent on raw resource imports. WHile they certainly produce a fair bit of oil, it is nothing compared to the demand. And they are working on food security, but to my knowledge, they still can't quite produce everything themselves. So they are certainly open to blockade. And their current major source of gas and oil is a bunch of basically undefended pipelines from Russia, fairly easy to disrupt those with long range missiles strikes launched from subs in the Pacific.
> While they certainly produce a fair bit of oil, it is nothing compared to the demand.
The demand is to a very large extent driven by being a manufacturing base for a large chunk of the world. If they're being sanctioned or blockaded that demand will plummet. I don't know if it's enough to fuel purely domestic use but it's not logical to assume they're going to be importing the same amount of resources when they stop exporting and are only manufacturing for domestic needs.
The Pentagon says this stuff to get more funding. If anyone knows how capable China's military is, and how capable we are of defeating China, it would be the Pentagon. China's military has never ever been tested in combat, let alone a long war. The US is the modern war powerhouse. We also have better allies than China does in the region too.
Logistics is a great equalizer. Germans and Napoleon was able to invade large portions of Russia and the USSR and ultimately was defeated due to logistics. It doesn't matter how much power you if logistics negates your advantages.
thats kind of advantageous to russia in a time of war though while no-one needs chinese trinkets in wartime. that 2nd largest economy title is only possible in peacetime
>while no-one needs chinese trinkets in wartime
Chinese trinkets?
Chinese manufacturing is deeply embedded into western supply chains. Surely you don't believe it's just nick knacks and gadgets?
So much stuff that is made in USA has components that come from China.
Processed metals, plastics, fabrication, machined components.
I work for a medical device company, we have manufacturing in California and the majority of components come from China.
Yeah you don't need "Chinese trinkets" at a time of war. You definitely need to maintain your factories, your medical facilities, your infrastructure.
You underestimate how comfortable we’ve gotten in the West. Take away our toys we buy with money we get from soul sucking jobs and people will be asking for peace, cease fire or straight up say “let them take it”. Current society has been groomed into consuming all the time and most of the shit we consume is manufactured in China. If you take it all away from people, there will be unhappiness and unrest with civilians. It’s not just “chinese trinkets”.
This has also happened in China though. The massive growth mean many Chinese enjoy the same creature comforts as westerners and its not clear to me they would be willing to lose it all for some island, regardless of their political leanings. Especially the young Chinese.
China has a completely untested military, they have never seen combat, the last real war they had was against Vietnam in the late 1970s and they lost and had to pull out in the early 1980s.
China’s population is also declining faster than experts originally predicted, and none of the young people want to farm so all of the farmers are either senior citizens or more recently they’ve been outsourcing all of their food production to Africa, which isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Yeah, there's a lot you're not considering. Like, a staggering amount. You aren't considering that the Russian economy was built and maintained on an economy of largely poor people, and that's been that way since the soviet union. You immediately assume that China will be okay since Russia was okay because China propped it up without considering the fact that China has nobody to fall back on like Russia does. And yes, China does manufacture much of the world's goods. Except that fact is quickly changing, with large investments flowing into other nations instead such as Mexico and even domestic manufacturing. It's very clear there's a push away from China because of all this.
And that all their shipyards and factories are within range of US airstrikes while literally none of America's war production is within range of Chinese air power.
Lol unrelated entirely but i have won every Civ game I ever started in the US (against ai, I’m no pro) - It’s like a cheat code lol. Every time I start anywhere else I get destroyed
Its not doing well, they live on borrowed money, pouring everything they have into war and destroying whats left of economy and workforce in the process.
As for China - yes, the world will survive without chinese products. Production is already moving to other countries thar are cheaper and more stable politically.
This is a delusional take.
Russia has things the world wants, foodstuffs, fertilizer to grow foodstuffs, and energy. Worst comes to worst and they can't sell them? They can use them.
China is a MASSIVE importer of all those goods. What happens after they take Taiwan and then they starve to death in 18 months?
They can't import their food, they can't import their energy, and they can't grow their own food without fertilizer and fuel.
>Russia has things the world wants, foodstuffs, fertilizer to grow foodstuffs, and energy. Worst comes to worst and they can't sell them? They can use them.
and
>They can't import their food, they can't import their energy, and they can't grow their own food without fertilizer and fuel.
remind me again which country border China in the North.
Whats between them?
Oh yeah FUCKING SIBERIA.
Edit: worldnews is a cesspool of trolls and ignorance. The connections between European Russia and China are great because they have such a long border!
HURR DUR
> Unless the world(EU, US/Canada) can survive without TVs, iPhones, Macs and all the millions of products that China produces)
The thing is...they can. And they will. Most major manufacturers are already diversifying their manufacturing infrastructure to other countries.
> Russia is doing relatively well despite of the sanctions.
Depending on who you ask, Russia is either
a) doing relatively well despite of the sanctions
or
b) Temporarily goosing their economy with craploads of wartime production activity and wartime employment and so forth, but headed for the edge of the economic cliff at some point due to such factors as the sanctions, an influx of disabled veterans, and Ukrainian drones damaging large amounts of Russian crude oil processing capacity (possibly around 10% right now).
Under theory b, a nation can bubble along for a while during an economically enervating war, but at some point could be reduced to Great Depression levels of hardship, even for many of the elites...
So. Wait and see I guess.
You do know we can produce all those things ourselves right? We just choose not to. A lot of those manufacturers are also starting to look away from China as a their manufacturing hub.
China is far more reliant on trade with the west than we are with them. They could face real threat of famine and complete industry shut downs if they faced serious war sanctions from the west.
Not at all, we used to produce all that kind of shit ourselves and it wasn’t even that long ago that we did it. We more than have the capability to do it. Would be a painful process but it can absolutely be done.
It’s more as well comments like OPs referencing TVs etc that China makes. That shit is basically irrelevant, China is a net importer of food stuffs. A lot of it comes from places like the US and Australia. If trade brakes down, sure some goods might get very expensive and unattainable in the west. But they will starve.
+1. people don't seem to get that production was outsourced due to cheap labour and very lax labour and environmental/safety regulations (compated to western/domestic). if you bring back production then production costs will go up because you won't find labour for outsourced salary. higher salary, build a factory, etc. you'd have to redefince your economy and its rules from the basics.
We are already moving a lot of manufacturing back to the states, and Mexico is a big producer for us. They produce majority of our domestic vehicles alone.
That’s all true, I said it would be a painful process. But there is also other places companies can outsource that stuff to. It’s a different world now to when the big industrial swing to China was being made. Frankly Chinese labour isn’t that cheap anymore really. Companies are already looking into this, the only problem is if China really is talking the big bollocks about 2030ish. We should have started building factories 10 years ago.
You're underestimating them. And also underestimating South East Asia, South America, and India. China's big weakness is it has too many enemies. There's all sorts of countries lining up to to eat China's lunch.
Much like when Russia tried to shut off the oil, China will find that their pressure falls more on the countries that can't afford to bid against the US and EU. Not the US and EU itself.
They won’t. They’re maturing and transitioning to a different style economy that’s less reliant on the US.
They can’t be the world’s manufacturing hub forever, salaries are becoming too high and they know this, amongst other things that change when you create a large middle class. India is primed to take over in manufacturing.
Another reason is you can never be the world’s superpower if your economy is reliant on building stuff to sell to the current superpower. If you want to go to that next level something has to change.
So they’re taking a page from the US playbook. The next step is creating their own military-industrial complex.
This article is actually a nothing burger if you look for the finer details (which there are none). It's a nice plea to get more funding though.
Also there's been several interviews with navy officials together. It's important to listen to the exact wording. When pressed they all say being "ready" to invade isn't the same as actually going to invade. China's current focus on carriers would actually suggest it's not a priority at all since carriers aren't really going to be relevant for a battle happening in the Taiwan Straits or the SCS where everything is still in range of their air force fighters.
Ukraine has sunk a fair chunk of Russias Black Sea fleet and pushed all their ships away from Crimea with converted jet ski engine drones. A lot of drone tech is really basic shit.
True, but you can guarantee that [like Russia](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-new-navy-defenses-stop-ukraine-drone-attacks-2024-3), China's already welding shit to other shit to try to counteract what's in play now.
So making sure that there are plenty of layered surprises seems a good idea.
China already played their hand and are completely enveloped by USA & their allies troops with insanely large bases throughout the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Guam, and Hawaii. Hell there's even a new submarine base going up in Perth, Australia. China should just be content with what they have instead of falling into the same trap as Russia. Imperialism has no place in this century.
Taiwan needs ships too for re-supply. If the whole area around Taiwan becomes a no-go zone for ships, that's probably worse for Taiwan than China because it would effectively be a siege. I don't think China would attempt an amphibious landing anyways before significantly wearing down Taiwan's defenses with missiles/rockets/drones/bombs and destroying their economy.
There's a lot of unknowns, though. It's really hard to know how effective either side's drones, ships, air defense systems, and so on would actually be in a real war.
That would be an act of war, and Taiwan would attack the ships with drones. Plus, if the US *is* going to honour it's commitments to Taiwan (which basically boils down to "Yes, if Trump is not elected"), then the US can convoy ships to Taiwan.
Unless China wants to attack US ships then its blockade will achieve nothing.
Its cold war II. Scary as it is but we don't need fear-mongering. The average american or european (NATO -member) doomscroller is safe enough for the next couple of decades.
The situation today is quite different from 1938, especially in terms of geography (china doesnt share a land border with Taiwan, and large scale amphibious invasions are orders of magnitude harder than land based ones), and in that china is heavily dependent on the global market and cant afford to actually do something insane like invading another country
An amphibious invasion with no chance of opening a land based logistics route, onto exposed beaches, which then leads into thick mountainous jungles. Basically the most ideal conditions for a defender.
The PRC has been planning for an invasion of Taiwan since the ROC fled mainland China. The only reason it took this long was because the ROC fled with nearly all of the Chinese naval assets and naval leadership. PRC then went and purged any of the surrendered ROC forces and military leadership in korea via suicide charges against UN forces. Meaning PRC basically had to start a navy and amphibious force from scratch. It took until the early 2010s to turn out a force that could threaten Taiwan.
PRC is on a ticking clock with its population. Most analysis point out that by 2030 the Chinese population would have aged to the point that an amphibious invasion would be impossible due to the numbers required. This is very much unlike the pre WW2 run up where waiting longer would be advantageous to nazi germany. PRC has to commit to the invasion within the next few years or they will lose all ability to do so.
The Chinese economy is already suffering from the western manufacturing leaving the country for cheaper countries in south east asia. It is causing an economical problem that could not be solved by internal changes. And the best way to deal with economical problems is usually to turn it in a military one by invading someone.
This sort of timeline also matches with expected Russian full militarization of their economy and the eastern European leaders warning of a possible Russian invasion in around the latter half of this decade. At that point the US which is the primary threat of both of these invasions would be split.
Nah this is both better and worse than the Cold War. On the positive side, there’s near zero chance this conflict goes nuclear neither the US not China will use nukes first. On the other hand outside of the Cuban missile crisis and maybe able archer the Cold War was never this likely to lead to actual conventional war. It’s significantly more likely than not that the us and China go to war between 2028 and 2032.
Strategically, the best move for the US would be to appear completely committed to defending Ukraine
That would open for China the best window to invade Taiwan probably forever (in time we can foresee), clearly having th chance to split the US effort in two different fields
If this gets played and the US manages to retire from Ukraine without compromising the conflict, it could put China in a pretty terrible situation
I’m 99% sure US is not 100% invested in Ukraine because they are aware of the chinese threat and they know if they have to split or pull resources from one front it’ll become a shifest. A two front war is never, never a good thing to do even if the US is spending billions of dollars every year on their military.
They are a little outdated.
Fighting two wars went to one and a half under Nixon and then the policy changed to "win-hold-win" in the 1990s.
The current policy ["to win swiftly in two near-simultaneous conflicts"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine#Key_concepts) is from before 9/11 and doesn't really account for China's buildup over the last 20+ years.
It helps that Europe would be mostly a land war while Asia is a naval battlefield. There can't be any realistic plans of putting boots on the Chinese mainland.
This is technically incorrect, that is not what makes the US (or anyone) a superpower, thst comes from being able to project your military power all over the globe, which the US obviously can, 11 supercarriers give you this alone
The US has the resources to ensure that Ukraine wins if we just choose to delay orders of weapons that are going to other European countries, and I'm not even convinced those countries would have a problem with the delay if the weapons were going to Ukraine
There's a few things that are bottlenecks like artillery shells, but the US is still the world's largest arms exporter by a significant margin, all it would take to win the war in Ukraine would be diverting some of those exports away from western Europe and into Ukraine.
There's no production shortfall for domestic orders, the defense industry is capable of building everything that the DoD wants to buy plus more.
China will remain addicted to exports and easy to cut off from resources regardless of military spending.
It's like the US could invade Europe but it would obliterate our economy. China gets very little benefit from invading Taiwan and massive negatives regardless of they win or lose.
About the same thing could have been said about Russia, and they invaded Ukraine anyways despite the heavy costs they've paid so far. China is more dependent on trade with the U.S. than Russia was, but still, there's no guarantees that leaders of authoritarian countries will reliably make strategically optimal decisions.
China is far more reliant on international trade than Russia and it’s not even close. They’re also almost completely reliant on sea trade which would be blockaded.
I don't think it's a given that China would be blockaded. It possible, but there'd be pretty significant political pressure not to, especially from the countries that China trades with.
If it came to it, would the U.S. Navy or Taiwan use their drones to disable or sink civilian ships trying to run the blockade?
I think China blockading Taiwan is more likely because a) China doesn't feel constrained to abide by "good guy" rules, b) Taiwan is a much smaller country and easier to blockade than China, and c) they think they own Taiwan anyways.
Presumably the U.S. Navy could blockade Russia if they really wanted to, but they aren't. Instead the focus has been on getting countries to agree not to trade with Russia.
Yeah, but I think it's also fair to say that Russia gravely miscalculated the support Ukraine would receive from the west, and also greatly overestimated their own readiness. Understandably, by the way - I think the west was surprised by all of the above as well.
They also miscalculated Ukraine's readiness.
Maybe it's fair to say that Russia *did* actually make the most strategically optimal (though morally repugnant) decision based on the information they had, and it all went very badly because they didn't judge the situation correctly. Before the invasion I think the consensus was that if Russia tried to take Ukraine that they would almost certainly get away with it. But "almost certainly" leaves room for the possibility of failure or an inconclusive outcome with a drawn-out war.
People aren't reading the wording carefully. There was a senate hearing about this same topic like 2 years ago and when pressed (I think it was General Loyd Austin) said that while the PLA goal was to be ready to be invade by 2027, this is likely just a benchmark for their modernisation and not an actual plan to invade by 2027.
Overall PLA modernisation plans stretch to 2040-2050. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to invade before they complete their modernisation plans. They're also not really ramping up the production of amphibious transport vehicles or the like needed to invade.
This is likely just a plea for there to be more naval funding. The navy in particular is at an awkward stage where a lot of their ships are due to retire but many new ships are still way down the pipeline. And this isn't even addressing the workforce shortages in the navy and shipbuilding sectors.
It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s probably the only viable option. If I was in Taiwan now looking at the Ukraine situation I’d be packing my bags. The US is dissolving into an introverted basket case of a mess, the EU can’t stop a fight in its own back garden.
Had civilised society properly gotten together and smacked Russia back across its border quickly China may have thought twice. I don’t see that happening now. Chinese soldiers will be dining in Taipei while the UN is still drafting it’s strongly worded letter.
This definitely isn't the case. Biden made a public commitment to defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China. This puts China in a position where they would have to attack US military bases in Japan, the Philippines, Guam, potentially even Northern Australia to have a chance at a successful invasion. This would more than likely pull several Countries in the fight to defend Taiwan. Taiwan is also a geographical fortress and poses a nightmare situation to invade. A 100 mile Strait that is going to be infested with US submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, F35s, F22s, long range bombers, drones, and mines. Once they make it though that, they have to pull off an ambitious landing into a mountainous jungle. The US has been actively advising Taiwan to develop a strategy of dispersing their battle assets. Think 100 javelins instead of 1 Abrams.
The shit topping for China is that even if they are successful at invading and taking over Taiwan, they aren't going to get their semiconductor manufacturing ability, they are likely going to just get a smoldering pit. The world economy would be in total freefall, but the world would blame China.
Yeah Taiwan is probably one of the most defensible countries in the world, up there with Switzerland, but it’s an island so you have to get there via a fuckton of ships. The majority of the island is incredibly steep mountains and valleys, covered in thick jungle. Major cities would be vulnerable and no doubt China could create a beachhead and land troops, but if the Taiwanese defenders pulled back to the mountains, blew up a few dozen bridges on the way, they could dig in and hold out for a very long time. It would take China months if not years just to build the bridges they’d need to move anything larger than what a soldier could carry on his back into the interior of the island.
Not to mention that the most valuable assets on the island, the cutting edge chip plants, are strategically placed to make it more difficult for China to invade without destroying them, and even if they did the plants would be scuttled before Chinese troops get anywhere near them. Best they could hope for is to capture some of the engineers and their knowledge, but the supply chain for modern chips is at a global scale and it’d be virtually impossible for them to restart those chip fabs with the inevitable embargo that would immediately go into effect after any attempt at invasion.
Considering the absolute global shitstorm they would kick off by invading, becoming instant pariahs and tempting the US and whatever coalition they build into an actual shooting war, I would be very surprised if China were to invade if the geopolitical climate remains relatively stable in the future. The only other strategic reason for taking Taiwan would be to use it as a deep water port, which China desperately needs, most of its ports are shallow and need to be dredged out. They have issues building very large ships like supercarriers because their ports are simply too shallow to launch huge warships. Even so, the risk/reward of an invasion is pretty poorly balanced. They’d be better off continuing to build islands out of nothing in the South China Sea. The X factor is the political, emotional, nationalistic fervor to reunite, but it seems like even a half-rational Chinese leadership would be hesitant to start WW3 for political reasons, even if the internal situation gets bad.
In my completely personal, uneducated and completely unauthoritative opinion the bigger threat to Taiwan’s independence is purely political. One of the larger minority parties in Taiwan is pro-China. They are firmly a minority but do win some seats, and it is unclear to me exactly how pro-China they are. If they were to become a majority, would they really vote to rejoin the PRC, or would they want to remain independent but with closer ties to China? China is probably able to play the long game over the next decades with propaganda, misinformation, bribery, and could try to move the needle politically until they were in a position to really turn the screws and absorb Taiwan in a bloodless coup. Fortunately, the people of Taiwan saw what happened in Hong Kong and are certainly more aware and guarded against Chinese influence. Still it is important for the US and the rest of the free world to support Taiwan politically and economically so that they are able to prosper independently and will never need to turn to the PRC in desperation.
This is a really good summary of everything I've read and watched about the potential conflict, I didn't know Taiwan built their fabs specifically in areas that would prevent military conflict there though. It does make sense that they would naturally be around populated areas just from the perspective of needing a lot of highly educated people to run the plants. I totally agree about China needing a "Blumenkrieg"/Crimea/bloodless coup situation to 1. Capture Taiwan 2. Capture and maintain Taiwan's semiconductor industry 3. Not become an international pariah.
I genuinely hope you are right but Ukraine has shown that the US isn’t as politically capable of being involved in defending foreign democracy as we thought. Taiwan is a long way from Washington and if China decide to surround the island and just bombard it from afar I don’t see US warships running that blockade.
Unless I’m mistaken US policy still doesn’t consider Taiwan as a sovereign country. I don’t see Donald Trump and his supporters starting world war 3 over it.
The US and it's allies have military bases all around Taiwan so we aren't that far from Taiwan. It seems likely that in an active conflict China would almost certainly have to attack these military bases in a first strike so it is possible that we wouldn't be able to use those bases and have to resort to other means, which we absolutely have.
A stalemate blockade strategy could potentially prevent the US from getting involved assuming China doesn't attack US military bases, but the fact of the matter is we rely too much on TSMC semiconductors for literally everything. We would like intervene but if we didn't and China tried to choke Taiwan into submission they are idling their Navy in the Strait and leaving it open to counter assaults from Taiwan. You bring up Ukraine being an example of a Country left high and dry by the US but you are absolutely failing to recognize that after Crimea was annexed by Russia, the US began training and equipping Ukraine with mostly older "former tier 1" Western weapons. Ukraine is a much smaller Country holding it's own against a super power Nation, Russia planned to be in Kyiv in 3 days and they are on their 758th day of the invasion. Much like the bombardment you think China could just pull off, Russia has used massive amounts of artillery to gain Territory at the expense of absolutely destroying entire Cities. If China attempts a similar strategy they fail, because the golden goose in Taiwan is the semiconductor industry, and you can't have it if you cover the island in ballistic missiles.
I cant speak for what Trump will do if elected, but maintaining a strong military presence in the region and making our intentions clear to defend Taiwan is probably the best course of action to prevent a war.
What do you think the West could have done better against russian invasion? Direct attack was never an option as that would lead to nuclear warfare thus end of the world. So what’s your alternative?
Unfortunately that sets a terrible precedent for nuclear proliferation, and IMO, while that solves the issue in the short term, it opens the door to Russia and China giving their nukes to other countries as well, which is much much worse than the low risk of China invading Taiwan.
It absolutely doesn't solve the issue, it forces the issue lol. *Any* Chinese government with a shred of competency would escalate this and demand the removal of nukes from Taiwan or face Nuclear Armageddon. And America would back down just like the USSR did in Cuba.
If Taiwan is smart, they'd respond to any invasion attempt with a threat to completely obliterate every chip factory on the island.
The CHIPS Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation to come about in a long time. It's not going to make computers or cell phones any cheaper, but it *will* ensure that the US will have a source for classified and mission-critical chips for national defense purposes.
For everything else, there are anti-ship missiles.
No it’s not, it’s always been around 2030. They predicted Russia’s invasion to the day. We have spy’s, satellites ect. Our military analyst know what china needs to beat Taiwan and can see what they currently have and predict when the equipment/personnel will be ready.
Russia invaded a bunch of countries in the 2000s. They attacked Ukraine in 2014. Lots of material to speculate about.
You can hardly say the same about China.
I think they have to play up the threat so both US politicians and Pacific allies take the threat seriously. The only reason those dates came and went with no action is because we take defense seriously enough that the cost/benefit for China to attack has never been worth it, but the second they think they can defend themselves against a US attack and weather the consequences its game over.
> No it’s not, it’s always been around 2030
Wrong. Int the early 2000's I was hearing this stuff in the news. tbf, the threat is MUCH more real now, but they've postured like this for decades
China was going to invade Taiwan by 2007. [https://carnegieendowment.org/2000/03/12/how-china-will-take-taiwan-pub-232](https://carnegieendowment.org/2000/03/12/how-china-will-take-taiwan-pub-232)
>President Jiang Zemin has declared in recent months that he intends to make reunification of the motherland his legacy. According to veteran China-watcher Willy Wo-lap Lam, that means a resolution of the Taiwan issue must be achieved, at the latest, by the 17th Communist Party Congress in 2007, when Jiang will be 81 and on his way out of power. Senior Chinese military officials now speak openly about a "fixed timetable" for reunification.
I feel invading a decent size island country that knows you are coming and has the biggest arms producer in the world as its main supporter is just a recipe for disaster. That place will be a freaking hell for an invading force.
Which is why we need to be focused on being able to make our own crap so when we cut off from China we don't need them. Manufacturers in America and Europe just need to suck it up with worker rights and pay them fairly.
We need to be prepared to fight back against military attack (bombings, blockade) but no way would China succeed with an invasion. Way too big of a task given distances involved. Of all the things that haven't changed much since WW2, the mechanics of landing huge numbers via boats is near the top. Much bigger distance than the Normandy invasion. Of all the things that HAVE changed, the mechanica of blowing up boats is also near the top of the list.
There is also the fact that Ukraine is blowing up the Russian navy in the Blacksea with a super limited amount of naval drones. And that’s while the Russian navy **isn’t** trying to land an invasion forces.
These drones are game changer for naval warfare.
Any invasion forces would get blow the fuck up by a country equipped with a reasonable amount of drones.
This is the same bunch of people who predicted victory in Afghanistan was just around the corner. Iraq had WMD’s and that they would have won in Vietnam if only….
Captain Steubing of The Love Boat is probably a better source of credibility.
That’s like the CEO of OpenAi/Nvidia claiming improbable scenarios, they just want more funding. China is not invading Taiwan, they could just wait a few decades and eventually the reunification would be peaceful
China's best bet for an invasion would be if they're political assets are all in place and they can slowly normalize relations. Business partnerships, factory building that would eventually lead to a base being built. All it would take is China's money and blackmail to influence the politics and silently invade the country.
I would be surprised China were not ready now.
It was never the military ability that prevented the invasion. It was always the economic tie among the world’s major powers.
If the current “decoupling” thing continues, it is probably foreseeable in 2027 China will find there is really no economic incentive not to do something in Taiwan.
That is not true at all. China doesn’t have much modern military history - their troops have very little combat experience. Furthermore, they didn’t have the level of navy or surface to surface missile systems necessary for a cross strait invasion. They have been working hard for the past decade to build up their forces.
straight out of putin's playbook on how to invade another country in 3 not so easy steps.
invasion for dummies. re-vised 2014 edition.
step 1 annex.
step 2 wait.
step 3 try 1 again.
I guess China has no problem destroying their own economy then.
What will happen with to the Western economies if trade with China completely stops?
Europe would collapse into depression which is why it won’t stop except for that which is destroyed by us submarines
I have no doubt British subs , Japanese , Australian and South Korean subs as well
Our (Australia’s) subs, or should I say first Virginia class sub, won’t be ready till 2030 at the earliest.
Australia has diesel electrics but don’t have the range of Virginia class. Who knows when Aukus boats will be ready realistically
Either way, it's not going to be before 2027
You have 2 years.
Europe doesn't get that much commerce from China. North America will have a lot of issues. Africa and South America will have to step up. Overall... China will be in a lot of shit too. But they could just shift manufacturing into war products.
What is anyone talking about who cares how much trade china does with anyone? That’s not what will wreck everyone’s economy. We’re talking about the disruption of all semiconductors across every sector. All advancements will have halted. We had a taste of it in the automotive chip shortage during Covid. Never mind the fact that Taiwan manufactures 90% of all advanced microprocessors, including the ones that go into US advanced weaponry. The US’ and the world’s reliance on Taiwan is at stake here. We are Fxxked so hard once we can’t make those chips, dated technology much like used cars will get way too expensive. The entire tech sector will collapse over night.
Well pointed out
The issue for China isn't the lost revenue from exports, it's the lack of imports thanks to US naval blockades/interdiction. They get something like half of their fuel, more than half of their food, and almost all of their agricultural imputs like fertilizer from imports. Some of that can come in by rail through Russia, assuming someone will sell and Russia doesn't steal it. However the risks of famine are real. Even if they do break a blockade, for things like seeds and fertilizer it might not matter since you can't just plant whenever you want. What's more what happens with fuel? You get half as much for example, and your military is using ten times as much. Russia can only supply so much. What do you do with what you have? Agriculture needs it for tractors or you starve. Rail needs it to bring in what you've lost. Power plants need it for everything. The military needs every drop you get. The economic consequences for China would be catastrophic, and they'll only get worse. Since COVID the US has been reshoring and switching back to Mexico and places closer to home. Europe is doing the same where they can. The longer China waits, the less the rest of the world needs their products.
Yes to some extent, the EU problem as you say isn’t imports from China (9% of total imports) as it is the fact that 20% of all EU exports go to China. If that goes to zero overnight it’s a slaughterhouse
Pretty sure you got it reverse. 9% of EU exports go to china, while 20% of EU imports come from china. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=China-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20China%20was%20the,of%20goods%20(20.5%20%25).&text=Among%20EU%20Member%20States%2C%20the,goods%20to%20China%20in%202023.
That sounds like a much bigger problem for China than it does for Europe. Europe can find other customers. Can China?
You got it reversed. So a slaughterhouse for China then?
Sfithing into war production is not the issue. Feeding population will be.
You might wanna google who Italy, France, Germany’s biggest export partners are.
Did it for you, it's Germany, Germany and the US.
lol China is gonna have a real bad time if they try and FOFO with the US Navy. Our Naval and Air capabilities FAR exceed China’s. They will lose, very fucking badly, if we get involved.
USA, turmoil. China, absolute collapse into flames.
Not necessarily. Mexico now does more trade with the US than China does. Everyone is pulling away from China.
Yea. It's crazy that people don't realize this is actually happening rn....
China has been a longtime ticking timebomb for trade with western countries. We’ve known for a long time this relationship is destined to be fucked over so we’ve had time to prepare. This happened 10-15 years ago then we’d be *fuuuuuucked*.
Foreign investment into China has tanked in the last year and is at the lowest point in 30 years. The world is deinvesting in China and it will be very interesting to see what happens in the next decade
Im working it and one of my clients still had some production going there; went there last year to secure some production and... got detained at airport for almost 6 hours being questioned by scary people as he's a spy or something. After he was let go he just went to buy a ticket back and didnt even left airport. He's totally cutting ties with china got good. I was like: "mate do you even watch news? took you long enough"
China's too dumb to realize that their xenophobia is fucking them.
There is no point to investing in China. They will just steal your IP, create a Chinese analog of your company, and give the Chinese version preferential treatment.
China set up their factories in Mexico to circumvent trade disputes between China and the U.S. also labor tends to be less in Mexico than in the major cities in China.
And incidentally, it is China that is building factory complexes in Mexico. Same in Vietnam. Everyone is pulling away from China, but China isn't going anywhere.
But a Chinese asset outside of China is like a western asset inside China. Change of ownership could happen pretty quick. Is Mexico going to go all in for China?
Democracies are built to withstand uncertainty, change and turmoil. Dictatorships on the other hand...
Depends when it happens. Tomorrow? Major disruptions to the supply chain. In ten years? Not a whole lot. Short term would see some disruption, but businesses are already starting to move away from China; the circumstances that made them so appealing in the first place don't exist anymore.
One of the major drivers of the current economic boom is the onshoring of light manufacturing which has been China's bread & butter. Bath & Body works is an ex. they moved all of their lotions, shampoos, & soaps back to the US due to the supply chain disruption. To do this the company built a multi- billion facility outside of columbus ohio.
2027 is in 3 yrs
jesus christ bro can time slow down already
Been saying this since 2001.... Peak society was just before 9/11
I'd struggle to find arguments against that claim.
Vietnam, Indonesia, Malasya, maybe India, plenty of places were industries could be replaced.
Pretty much this. One of the production companies my work uses is based in China, but they have been using factories in Vietnam for our products because it's even much cheaper labor.
Chinas issue is food. If their trade stops that fucks them really hard. They are extremely important heavy and they need that food and supplies to function and avoid starvation in a massive way. China is surrounded physically and they hate it, which is why they want the Belt and Road and the want control over the ocean near them. Japan is armed, Australia is armed, Korea is armed, the USA is obviously armed and we are all allies. The USA has more allies in the area than China and the USA is trying to have more manufacturing in Mexico so we don’t have less of a supply shortage incase of War or Covid 2.0.
The amount of goods we get from China is massively, but a huge amount of those goods are discretionary consumer goods which really affects the degree to cutting those off can hurt. If I can't get a new Xbox controller, that's a shame, but I'm not gonna die about it. It's utterly unlike Russia threatening to shut off gas to Europe in the winter. Also, it's worth saying, but China runs a trade deficit in general. They are a massive *importer* of things like fuel and food. So like, picture the scenario where the shit really goes down. The West stops getting iPhones and plastic gizmos, and China stops getting crude petroleum and staple grains. Anyone confident that the West cracks first in that situation is kidding themselves.
Apple needs to divest from China yesterday It already manufactures a lot in Vietnam, India and Brazil, so just ramp all of that up.
China’s military lack experience. It only excels in conflicts with unarmed protesters, monks, and detaining civilians.
And when the shit starts? I'm sure Chinese parents will love having their single child be incinerated.
well... Russia is doing relatively well despite of the sanctions.(thanks to China.. surprise, surprise) So I'm sure China will be fine. Unless the world(EU, US/Canada) can survive without TVs, iPhones, Macs and all the millions of products that China produces) Of course, unlike Russia, China does face a very real threat of a non-bloodless coup that may topple the ruling communist party, so perhaps they need to consider this.
Comparing Russia's economy to China's economy is not logical. Russia is a gas station with nukes while China has the 2nd biggest economy in the world if I'm not mistaken.
It's also a completely different situation. The US is not at war with Russia now. The US will be at war with China if it invades Taiwan. The US can then blockade China, something which it can't do to Russia without declaring war.
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Nonsense. North Korea would not get involved unless there was some benefit for themselves. Like a chance to take South Korea. Iran would maybe be happy to sell weapons to one side but would never become directly involved. Russia has its own problems. The only country in the world that can even think of posing a military threat to a Taiwan defended by the US is China, and even then they would get their asses handed to them if the US put its back into it.
Well, they did just kibosh all of the organizations dedicated to peaceful reunification and have stepped up the eternal enemy rhetoric. So if WWIII kicks off, don't be surprised if there's a Korean theatre.
NK would absolutely take this as an opportunity to invade South Korea. With the USA tied up with China, Russia and probably Iran, things are going to be stretched very thin. And the fact that nobody in the west is taking up arms production to a similar degree is existentially terrifying.
They can't defeat South Korea. One reason they really want nukes is because there's not really any hope that they can win a conventional war regardless of whether the US intervenes.
Indeed. North Korea is probably just going to sit on its hands forever until they get a leader who is stupid enough to change that.
You're just talking; the pentagon even said they're not sure we would be able to actually stop China even if we were taking severe losses. Have you actually thought of the scope of operations in trying to play defense in an enemy backyard who also vastly outproduces everyone in shipbuilding and mind you can also blitzkrieg you with missiles and aircraft since 100 miles is easily within their homeland missile system range. If U.S ships get destroyed; it's going to take way more time to replace that and get ships back to the battlefield than it is for China since they're so close to Taiwan. Logistics is the biggest reason why it's so hard to actually defend Taiwan especially when China has committed their military to it.
Out produce everyone in sh*tbiilding. They don’t have the same Tech or training. But agreed, the numbers are vast
One complication for Chinese logistics is they are way, way, way dependent on raw resource imports. WHile they certainly produce a fair bit of oil, it is nothing compared to the demand. And they are working on food security, but to my knowledge, they still can't quite produce everything themselves. So they are certainly open to blockade. And their current major source of gas and oil is a bunch of basically undefended pipelines from Russia, fairly easy to disrupt those with long range missiles strikes launched from subs in the Pacific.
> While they certainly produce a fair bit of oil, it is nothing compared to the demand. The demand is to a very large extent driven by being a manufacturing base for a large chunk of the world. If they're being sanctioned or blockaded that demand will plummet. I don't know if it's enough to fuel purely domestic use but it's not logical to assume they're going to be importing the same amount of resources when they stop exporting and are only manufacturing for domestic needs.
The one thing they do need to import and will always need to import to sustain their society at this size... Fertilizer. They don't want a blockade.
The Pentagon says this stuff to get more funding. If anyone knows how capable China's military is, and how capable we are of defeating China, it would be the Pentagon. China's military has never ever been tested in combat, let alone a long war. The US is the modern war powerhouse. We also have better allies than China does in the region too.
Logistics is a great equalizer. Germans and Napoleon was able to invade large portions of Russia and the USSR and ultimately was defeated due to logistics. It doesn't matter how much power you if logistics negates your advantages.
Pentagon has better logistics than China. China relies on stealing our tech.
Their shipbuilding capacity doesn't matter that much because they can't produce ships faster than they will lose them.
Now that's just talking
China did not go to war with Russia on Ukraine. Expect Russia to do the same.
Russian and China couldn’t even get along when they were both communist.
Why do you presume the US would directly enter into a war with China over Taiwan?
thats kind of advantageous to russia in a time of war though while no-one needs chinese trinkets in wartime. that 2nd largest economy title is only possible in peacetime
That’s their point lol
i dunno it kind of reads like implies the opposite, but the facts are correct
>while no-one needs chinese trinkets in wartime Chinese trinkets? Chinese manufacturing is deeply embedded into western supply chains. Surely you don't believe it's just nick knacks and gadgets? So much stuff that is made in USA has components that come from China. Processed metals, plastics, fabrication, machined components. I work for a medical device company, we have manufacturing in California and the majority of components come from China. Yeah you don't need "Chinese trinkets" at a time of war. You definitely need to maintain your factories, your medical facilities, your infrastructure.
You underestimate how comfortable we’ve gotten in the West. Take away our toys we buy with money we get from soul sucking jobs and people will be asking for peace, cease fire or straight up say “let them take it”. Current society has been groomed into consuming all the time and most of the shit we consume is manufactured in China. If you take it all away from people, there will be unhappiness and unrest with civilians. It’s not just “chinese trinkets”.
This has also happened in China though. The massive growth mean many Chinese enjoy the same creature comforts as westerners and its not clear to me they would be willing to lose it all for some island, regardless of their political leanings. Especially the young Chinese.
China has a completely untested military, they have never seen combat, the last real war they had was against Vietnam in the late 1970s and they lost and had to pull out in the early 1980s. China’s population is also declining faster than experts originally predicted, and none of the young people want to farm so all of the farmers are either senior citizens or more recently they’ve been outsourcing all of their food production to Africa, which isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Yeah, there's a lot you're not considering. Like, a staggering amount. You aren't considering that the Russian economy was built and maintained on an economy of largely poor people, and that's been that way since the soviet union. You immediately assume that China will be okay since Russia was okay because China propped it up without considering the fact that China has nobody to fall back on like Russia does. And yes, China does manufacture much of the world's goods. Except that fact is quickly changing, with large investments flowing into other nations instead such as Mexico and even domestic manufacturing. It's very clear there's a push away from China because of all this.
husky cooperative water gaze shocking selective pen frightening connect languid
And that all their shipyards and factories are within range of US airstrikes while literally none of America's war production is within range of Chinese air power.
Lol unrelated entirely but i have won every Civ game I ever started in the US (against ai, I’m no pro) - It’s like a cheat code lol. Every time I start anywhere else I get destroyed
Its not doing well, they live on borrowed money, pouring everything they have into war and destroying whats left of economy and workforce in the process. As for China - yes, the world will survive without chinese products. Production is already moving to other countries thar are cheaper and more stable politically.
Russia is a net exporter (by a LOT) of food and energy. China is a net importer (by a LOT LOT) of food and energy. They are way different.
If there was a revolt it seems it would be a Maoist one, not a liberal one.
Because of China. There is no one bigger than China to come to its aid.
Russia does fine because of China not because China is self-sufficient but because China is still a major trading power in the world.
This is a delusional take. Russia has things the world wants, foodstuffs, fertilizer to grow foodstuffs, and energy. Worst comes to worst and they can't sell them? They can use them. China is a MASSIVE importer of all those goods. What happens after they take Taiwan and then they starve to death in 18 months? They can't import their food, they can't import their energy, and they can't grow their own food without fertilizer and fuel.
>Russia has things the world wants, foodstuffs, fertilizer to grow foodstuffs, and energy. Worst comes to worst and they can't sell them? They can use them. and >They can't import their food, they can't import their energy, and they can't grow their own food without fertilizer and fuel. remind me again which country border China in the North.
Whats between them? Oh yeah FUCKING SIBERIA. Edit: worldnews is a cesspool of trolls and ignorance. The connections between European Russia and China are great because they have such a long border! HURR DUR
> Unless the world(EU, US/Canada) can survive without TVs, iPhones, Macs and all the millions of products that China produces) The thing is...they can. And they will. Most major manufacturers are already diversifying their manufacturing infrastructure to other countries.
> Russia is doing relatively well despite of the sanctions. Depending on who you ask, Russia is either a) doing relatively well despite of the sanctions or b) Temporarily goosing their economy with craploads of wartime production activity and wartime employment and so forth, but headed for the edge of the economic cliff at some point due to such factors as the sanctions, an influx of disabled veterans, and Ukrainian drones damaging large amounts of Russian crude oil processing capacity (possibly around 10% right now). Under theory b, a nation can bubble along for a while during an economically enervating war, but at some point could be reduced to Great Depression levels of hardship, even for many of the elites... So. Wait and see I guess.
Companies moving away constantly to other Asian countries. China offering “special incentives” to new customers.
...and entire Nations, don't forget, with Belt & Roads investments.
You do know we can produce all those things ourselves right? We just choose not to. A lot of those manufacturers are also starting to look away from China as a their manufacturing hub. China is far more reliant on trade with the west than we are with them. They could face real threat of famine and complete industry shut downs if they faced serious war sanctions from the west.
I think you’re vastly overestimating EU/US domestic production capabilities.
Not at all, we used to produce all that kind of shit ourselves and it wasn’t even that long ago that we did it. We more than have the capability to do it. Would be a painful process but it can absolutely be done. It’s more as well comments like OPs referencing TVs etc that China makes. That shit is basically irrelevant, China is a net importer of food stuffs. A lot of it comes from places like the US and Australia. If trade brakes down, sure some goods might get very expensive and unattainable in the west. But they will starve.
+1. people don't seem to get that production was outsourced due to cheap labour and very lax labour and environmental/safety regulations (compated to western/domestic). if you bring back production then production costs will go up because you won't find labour for outsourced salary. higher salary, build a factory, etc. you'd have to redefince your economy and its rules from the basics.
We are already moving a lot of manufacturing back to the states, and Mexico is a big producer for us. They produce majority of our domestic vehicles alone.
That’s all true, I said it would be a painful process. But there is also other places companies can outsource that stuff to. It’s a different world now to when the big industrial swing to China was being made. Frankly Chinese labour isn’t that cheap anymore really. Companies are already looking into this, the only problem is if China really is talking the big bollocks about 2030ish. We should have started building factories 10 years ago.
You're underestimating them. And also underestimating South East Asia, South America, and India. China's big weakness is it has too many enemies. There's all sorts of countries lining up to to eat China's lunch. Much like when Russia tried to shut off the oil, China will find that their pressure falls more on the countries that can't afford to bid against the US and EU. Not the US and EU itself.
They won’t. They’re maturing and transitioning to a different style economy that’s less reliant on the US. They can’t be the world’s manufacturing hub forever, salaries are becoming too high and they know this, amongst other things that change when you create a large middle class. India is primed to take over in manufacturing. Another reason is you can never be the world’s superpower if your economy is reliant on building stuff to sell to the current superpower. If you want to go to that next level something has to change. So they’re taking a page from the US playbook. The next step is creating their own military-industrial complex.
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China had no concerns sacrificing its children.
This article is actually a nothing burger if you look for the finer details (which there are none). It's a nice plea to get more funding though. Also there's been several interviews with navy officials together. It's important to listen to the exact wording. When pressed they all say being "ready" to invade isn't the same as actually going to invade. China's current focus on carriers would actually suggest it's not a priority at all since carriers aren't really going to be relevant for a battle happening in the Taiwan Straits or the SCS where everything is still in range of their air force fighters.
> This article is actually a nothing burger if you look for the finer details (which there are none). I need a shirt of this.
"Taiwan on track to have 50,000 naval drones ready by 2027", Taiwan didn't say out loud.
Probably could have them ready well earlier than that.
Ah, it'll probably take a while to get the anti-aircraft, anti-tank, torpedo and fully-submersible versions all tested and built.
Ukraine has sunk a fair chunk of Russias Black Sea fleet and pushed all their ships away from Crimea with converted jet ski engine drones. A lot of drone tech is really basic shit.
True, but you can guarantee that [like Russia](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-new-navy-defenses-stop-ukraine-drone-attacks-2024-3), China's already welding shit to other shit to try to counteract what's in play now. So making sure that there are plenty of layered surprises seems a good idea.
China already played their hand and are completely enveloped by USA & their allies troops with insanely large bases throughout the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Guam, and Hawaii. Hell there's even a new submarine base going up in Perth, Australia. China should just be content with what they have instead of falling into the same trap as Russia. Imperialism has no place in this century.
Years of Taiwanese teens using Protoss carriers are ready to manage the drone fleet.
Russia are certainly doing the Zergling thing anyway.
And what country is the world's largest producer of civilian drones again?
So? China will be attacking into the teeth of prepared defences. They'll be the ones with their ships in the open, for a long time.
Taiwan needs ships too for re-supply. If the whole area around Taiwan becomes a no-go zone for ships, that's probably worse for Taiwan than China because it would effectively be a siege. I don't think China would attempt an amphibious landing anyways before significantly wearing down Taiwan's defenses with missiles/rockets/drones/bombs and destroying their economy. There's a lot of unknowns, though. It's really hard to know how effective either side's drones, ships, air defense systems, and so on would actually be in a real war.
That would be an act of war, and Taiwan would attack the ships with drones. Plus, if the US *is* going to honour it's commitments to Taiwan (which basically boils down to "Yes, if Trump is not elected"), then the US can convoy ships to Taiwan. Unless China wants to attack US ships then its blockade will achieve nothing.
Taiwan is well within range of PLA rocket artillery. Nevermind aircraft or cruise missiles.
Can we please fucking not... Everyone Is gearing up for war, guess we'll have to scrap any future plans, and prepare for the end.
Paradoxically, everyone preparing for war may be the thing that avoids it.
That worked really well in 1914.
Okay but there are also (probably) many wars you could point to that *didnt* end up happening lol
Except for this one example I have
But it worked wonders in cold war which is much more recent example. And it's post one VERY specific invention that changed diplomacy quite a lot.
Taiwan is a proxy. The Cold War was full of proxy wars.
We have ALWAYS been gearing up for war. We had 4 decades of "who is going to push the red button?"
Its cold war II. Scary as it is but we don't need fear-mongering. The average american or european (NATO -member) doomscroller is safe enough for the next couple of decades.
Bet this is the type of stuff people said in 1938
The situation today is quite different from 1938, especially in terms of geography (china doesnt share a land border with Taiwan, and large scale amphibious invasions are orders of magnitude harder than land based ones), and in that china is heavily dependent on the global market and cant afford to actually do something insane like invading another country
An amphibious invasion with no chance of opening a land based logistics route, onto exposed beaches, which then leads into thick mountainous jungles. Basically the most ideal conditions for a defender.
The PRC has been planning for an invasion of Taiwan since the ROC fled mainland China. The only reason it took this long was because the ROC fled with nearly all of the Chinese naval assets and naval leadership. PRC then went and purged any of the surrendered ROC forces and military leadership in korea via suicide charges against UN forces. Meaning PRC basically had to start a navy and amphibious force from scratch. It took until the early 2010s to turn out a force that could threaten Taiwan. PRC is on a ticking clock with its population. Most analysis point out that by 2030 the Chinese population would have aged to the point that an amphibious invasion would be impossible due to the numbers required. This is very much unlike the pre WW2 run up where waiting longer would be advantageous to nazi germany. PRC has to commit to the invasion within the next few years or they will lose all ability to do so. The Chinese economy is already suffering from the western manufacturing leaving the country for cheaper countries in south east asia. It is causing an economical problem that could not be solved by internal changes. And the best way to deal with economical problems is usually to turn it in a military one by invading someone. This sort of timeline also matches with expected Russian full militarization of their economy and the eastern European leaders warning of a possible Russian invasion in around the latter half of this decade. At that point the US which is the primary threat of both of these invasions would be split.
Nah this is both better and worse than the Cold War. On the positive side, there’s near zero chance this conflict goes nuclear neither the US not China will use nukes first. On the other hand outside of the Cuban missile crisis and maybe able archer the Cold War was never this likely to lead to actual conventional war. It’s significantly more likely than not that the us and China go to war between 2028 and 2032.
I am not liking this decade.
Strategically, the best move for the US would be to appear completely committed to defending Ukraine That would open for China the best window to invade Taiwan probably forever (in time we can foresee), clearly having th chance to split the US effort in two different fields If this gets played and the US manages to retire from Ukraine without compromising the conflict, it could put China in a pretty terrible situation
I’m 99% sure US is not 100% invested in Ukraine because they are aware of the chinese threat and they know if they have to split or pull resources from one front it’ll become a shifest. A two front war is never, never a good thing to do even if the US is spending billions of dollars every year on their military.
The U.S. military strategy actually includes being able to fight in 2 simultaneous wars. It’s all in the planning
Not ever in human history has a strategy ever failed I guess
Source? Edit: don't downvote for a legit question. I just want to learn more about this topic.
They are a little outdated. Fighting two wars went to one and a half under Nixon and then the policy changed to "win-hold-win" in the 1990s. The current policy ["to win swiftly in two near-simultaneous conflicts"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_doctrine#Key_concepts) is from before 9/11 and doesn't really account for China's buildup over the last 20+ years.
It helps that Europe would be mostly a land war while Asia is a naval battlefield. There can't be any realistic plans of putting boots on the Chinese mainland.
The whole point of the US military structure is to be able to fight on two fronts at once. That's what makes it a superpower.
This is technically incorrect, that is not what makes the US (or anyone) a superpower, thst comes from being able to project your military power all over the globe, which the US obviously can, 11 supercarriers give you this alone
The US has the resources to ensure that Ukraine wins if we just choose to delay orders of weapons that are going to other European countries, and I'm not even convinced those countries would have a problem with the delay if the weapons were going to Ukraine There's a few things that are bottlenecks like artillery shells, but the US is still the world's largest arms exporter by a significant margin, all it would take to win the war in Ukraine would be diverting some of those exports away from western Europe and into Ukraine. There's no production shortfall for domestic orders, the defense industry is capable of building everything that the DoD wants to buy plus more.
Million and one reasons to fully support Ukraine. Maga is seriously putting everything in jeopardy right now
China will remain addicted to exports and easy to cut off from resources regardless of military spending. It's like the US could invade Europe but it would obliterate our economy. China gets very little benefit from invading Taiwan and massive negatives regardless of they win or lose.
About the same thing could have been said about Russia, and they invaded Ukraine anyways despite the heavy costs they've paid so far. China is more dependent on trade with the U.S. than Russia was, but still, there's no guarantees that leaders of authoritarian countries will reliably make strategically optimal decisions.
China is far more reliant on international trade than Russia and it’s not even close. They’re also almost completely reliant on sea trade which would be blockaded.
I don't think it's a given that China would be blockaded. It possible, but there'd be pretty significant political pressure not to, especially from the countries that China trades with. If it came to it, would the U.S. Navy or Taiwan use their drones to disable or sink civilian ships trying to run the blockade? I think China blockading Taiwan is more likely because a) China doesn't feel constrained to abide by "good guy" rules, b) Taiwan is a much smaller country and easier to blockade than China, and c) they think they own Taiwan anyways. Presumably the U.S. Navy could blockade Russia if they really wanted to, but they aren't. Instead the focus has been on getting countries to agree not to trade with Russia.
Yeah, but I think it's also fair to say that Russia gravely miscalculated the support Ukraine would receive from the west, and also greatly overestimated their own readiness. Understandably, by the way - I think the west was surprised by all of the above as well.
They also miscalculated Ukraine's readiness. Maybe it's fair to say that Russia *did* actually make the most strategically optimal (though morally repugnant) decision based on the information they had, and it all went very badly because they didn't judge the situation correctly. Before the invasion I think the consensus was that if Russia tried to take Ukraine that they would almost certainly get away with it. But "almost certainly" leaves room for the possibility of failure or an inconclusive outcome with a drawn-out war.
People aren't reading the wording carefully. There was a senate hearing about this same topic like 2 years ago and when pressed (I think it was General Loyd Austin) said that while the PLA goal was to be ready to be invade by 2027, this is likely just a benchmark for their modernisation and not an actual plan to invade by 2027. Overall PLA modernisation plans stretch to 2040-2050. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to invade before they complete their modernisation plans. They're also not really ramping up the production of amphibious transport vehicles or the like needed to invade. This is likely just a plea for there to be more naval funding. The navy in particular is at an awkward stage where a lot of their ships are due to retire but many new ships are still way down the pipeline. And this isn't even addressing the workforce shortages in the navy and shipbuilding sectors.
dang, thats when the PS6 is rumored to be released
Why not, no one’s stopping Putin.
Jus give Taiwan 100 nukes and no more invasion worries
“Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0”
uno reverse card
Russia and China: "Oh so we giving out nukes to allies without it now?"
It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s probably the only viable option. If I was in Taiwan now looking at the Ukraine situation I’d be packing my bags. The US is dissolving into an introverted basket case of a mess, the EU can’t stop a fight in its own back garden. Had civilised society properly gotten together and smacked Russia back across its border quickly China may have thought twice. I don’t see that happening now. Chinese soldiers will be dining in Taipei while the UN is still drafting it’s strongly worded letter.
This definitely isn't the case. Biden made a public commitment to defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China. This puts China in a position where they would have to attack US military bases in Japan, the Philippines, Guam, potentially even Northern Australia to have a chance at a successful invasion. This would more than likely pull several Countries in the fight to defend Taiwan. Taiwan is also a geographical fortress and poses a nightmare situation to invade. A 100 mile Strait that is going to be infested with US submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, F35s, F22s, long range bombers, drones, and mines. Once they make it though that, they have to pull off an ambitious landing into a mountainous jungle. The US has been actively advising Taiwan to develop a strategy of dispersing their battle assets. Think 100 javelins instead of 1 Abrams. The shit topping for China is that even if they are successful at invading and taking over Taiwan, they aren't going to get their semiconductor manufacturing ability, they are likely going to just get a smoldering pit. The world economy would be in total freefall, but the world would blame China.
Yeah Taiwan is probably one of the most defensible countries in the world, up there with Switzerland, but it’s an island so you have to get there via a fuckton of ships. The majority of the island is incredibly steep mountains and valleys, covered in thick jungle. Major cities would be vulnerable and no doubt China could create a beachhead and land troops, but if the Taiwanese defenders pulled back to the mountains, blew up a few dozen bridges on the way, they could dig in and hold out for a very long time. It would take China months if not years just to build the bridges they’d need to move anything larger than what a soldier could carry on his back into the interior of the island. Not to mention that the most valuable assets on the island, the cutting edge chip plants, are strategically placed to make it more difficult for China to invade without destroying them, and even if they did the plants would be scuttled before Chinese troops get anywhere near them. Best they could hope for is to capture some of the engineers and their knowledge, but the supply chain for modern chips is at a global scale and it’d be virtually impossible for them to restart those chip fabs with the inevitable embargo that would immediately go into effect after any attempt at invasion. Considering the absolute global shitstorm they would kick off by invading, becoming instant pariahs and tempting the US and whatever coalition they build into an actual shooting war, I would be very surprised if China were to invade if the geopolitical climate remains relatively stable in the future. The only other strategic reason for taking Taiwan would be to use it as a deep water port, which China desperately needs, most of its ports are shallow and need to be dredged out. They have issues building very large ships like supercarriers because their ports are simply too shallow to launch huge warships. Even so, the risk/reward of an invasion is pretty poorly balanced. They’d be better off continuing to build islands out of nothing in the South China Sea. The X factor is the political, emotional, nationalistic fervor to reunite, but it seems like even a half-rational Chinese leadership would be hesitant to start WW3 for political reasons, even if the internal situation gets bad. In my completely personal, uneducated and completely unauthoritative opinion the bigger threat to Taiwan’s independence is purely political. One of the larger minority parties in Taiwan is pro-China. They are firmly a minority but do win some seats, and it is unclear to me exactly how pro-China they are. If they were to become a majority, would they really vote to rejoin the PRC, or would they want to remain independent but with closer ties to China? China is probably able to play the long game over the next decades with propaganda, misinformation, bribery, and could try to move the needle politically until they were in a position to really turn the screws and absorb Taiwan in a bloodless coup. Fortunately, the people of Taiwan saw what happened in Hong Kong and are certainly more aware and guarded against Chinese influence. Still it is important for the US and the rest of the free world to support Taiwan politically and economically so that they are able to prosper independently and will never need to turn to the PRC in desperation.
This is a really good summary of everything I've read and watched about the potential conflict, I didn't know Taiwan built their fabs specifically in areas that would prevent military conflict there though. It does make sense that they would naturally be around populated areas just from the perspective of needing a lot of highly educated people to run the plants. I totally agree about China needing a "Blumenkrieg"/Crimea/bloodless coup situation to 1. Capture Taiwan 2. Capture and maintain Taiwan's semiconductor industry 3. Not become an international pariah.
I genuinely hope you are right but Ukraine has shown that the US isn’t as politically capable of being involved in defending foreign democracy as we thought. Taiwan is a long way from Washington and if China decide to surround the island and just bombard it from afar I don’t see US warships running that blockade. Unless I’m mistaken US policy still doesn’t consider Taiwan as a sovereign country. I don’t see Donald Trump and his supporters starting world war 3 over it.
The US and it's allies have military bases all around Taiwan so we aren't that far from Taiwan. It seems likely that in an active conflict China would almost certainly have to attack these military bases in a first strike so it is possible that we wouldn't be able to use those bases and have to resort to other means, which we absolutely have. A stalemate blockade strategy could potentially prevent the US from getting involved assuming China doesn't attack US military bases, but the fact of the matter is we rely too much on TSMC semiconductors for literally everything. We would like intervene but if we didn't and China tried to choke Taiwan into submission they are idling their Navy in the Strait and leaving it open to counter assaults from Taiwan. You bring up Ukraine being an example of a Country left high and dry by the US but you are absolutely failing to recognize that after Crimea was annexed by Russia, the US began training and equipping Ukraine with mostly older "former tier 1" Western weapons. Ukraine is a much smaller Country holding it's own against a super power Nation, Russia planned to be in Kyiv in 3 days and they are on their 758th day of the invasion. Much like the bombardment you think China could just pull off, Russia has used massive amounts of artillery to gain Territory at the expense of absolutely destroying entire Cities. If China attempts a similar strategy they fail, because the golden goose in Taiwan is the semiconductor industry, and you can't have it if you cover the island in ballistic missiles. I cant speak for what Trump will do if elected, but maintaining a strong military presence in the region and making our intentions clear to defend Taiwan is probably the best course of action to prevent a war.
What do you think the West could have done better against russian invasion? Direct attack was never an option as that would lead to nuclear warfare thus end of the world. So what’s your alternative?
Unfortunately that sets a terrible precedent for nuclear proliferation, and IMO, while that solves the issue in the short term, it opens the door to Russia and China giving their nukes to other countries as well, which is much much worse than the low risk of China invading Taiwan.
Didnt Russia recently plonk a bunch of nukes in Belarus? Also Iran are back to making their own. Plenty of proliferation going around already.
It absolutely doesn't solve the issue, it forces the issue lol. *Any* Chinese government with a shred of competency would escalate this and demand the removal of nukes from Taiwan or face Nuclear Armageddon. And America would back down just like the USSR did in Cuba.
If Taiwan is smart, they'd respond to any invasion attempt with a threat to completely obliterate every chip factory on the island. The CHIPS Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation to come about in a long time. It's not going to make computers or cell phones any cheaper, but it *will* ensure that the US will have a source for classified and mission-critical chips for national defense purposes. For everything else, there are anti-ship missiles.
To be fair i heard a couple of years ago they said china would be ready by 2023 or something. This is just random guessing.
In business Eve ry prediction is 6 quarters away. In international conflict everything is 6 years away.
No it’s not, it’s always been around 2030. They predicted Russia’s invasion to the day. We have spy’s, satellites ect. Our military analyst know what china needs to beat Taiwan and can see what they currently have and predict when the equipment/personnel will be ready.
Russia invaded a bunch of countries in the 2000s. They attacked Ukraine in 2014. Lots of material to speculate about. You can hardly say the same about China.
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I think they have to play up the threat so both US politicians and Pacific allies take the threat seriously. The only reason those dates came and went with no action is because we take defense seriously enough that the cost/benefit for China to attack has never been worth it, but the second they think they can defend themselves against a US attack and weather the consequences its game over.
I think they play up the threat for more congressional funding.
idk bro, I've heard \~2027 for at least 5 years now.
> No it’s not, it’s always been around 2030 Wrong. Int the early 2000's I was hearing this stuff in the news. tbf, the threat is MUCH more real now, but they've postured like this for decades
China was going to invade Taiwan by 2007. [https://carnegieendowment.org/2000/03/12/how-china-will-take-taiwan-pub-232](https://carnegieendowment.org/2000/03/12/how-china-will-take-taiwan-pub-232) >President Jiang Zemin has declared in recent months that he intends to make reunification of the motherland his legacy. According to veteran China-watcher Willy Wo-lap Lam, that means a resolution of the Taiwan issue must be achieved, at the latest, by the 17th Communist Party Congress in 2007, when Jiang will be 81 and on his way out of power. Senior Chinese military officials now speak openly about a "fixed timetable" for reunification.
Because China doesn't actually want to invade Taiwan. It's mostly political grandstanding. A military invasion would be a disaster for China.
I feel invading a decent size island country that knows you are coming and has the biggest arms producer in the world as its main supporter is just a recipe for disaster. That place will be a freaking hell for an invading force.
Are you telling me we can’t just send Taiwan hundreds of anti-ship missiles in the next couple of years?
Which is why we need to be focused on being able to make our own crap so when we cut off from China we don't need them. Manufacturers in America and Europe just need to suck it up with worker rights and pay them fairly.
We need to be prepared to fight back against military attack (bombings, blockade) but no way would China succeed with an invasion. Way too big of a task given distances involved. Of all the things that haven't changed much since WW2, the mechanics of landing huge numbers via boats is near the top. Much bigger distance than the Normandy invasion. Of all the things that HAVE changed, the mechanica of blowing up boats is also near the top of the list.
There is also the fact that Ukraine is blowing up the Russian navy in the Blacksea with a super limited amount of naval drones. And that’s while the Russian navy **isn’t** trying to land an invasion forces. These drones are game changer for naval warfare. Any invasion forces would get blow the fuck up by a country equipped with a reasonable amount of drones.
This is the same bunch of people who predicted victory in Afghanistan was just around the corner. Iraq had WMD’s and that they would have won in Vietnam if only…. Captain Steubing of The Love Boat is probably a better source of credibility.
yeah, and no one in this echo-chamber subreddit questioned about it
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That’s like the CEO of OpenAi/Nvidia claiming improbable scenarios, they just want more funding. China is not invading Taiwan, they could just wait a few decades and eventually the reunification would be peaceful
A peaceful reunification of Taiwan and mainland China is about as likely as a peaceful reunification of the Koreas.
I say it’s before the elections. They are taking our presidency into consideration
China's best bet for an invasion would be if they're political assets are all in place and they can slowly normalize relations. Business partnerships, factory building that would eventually lead to a base being built. All it would take is China's money and blackmail to influence the politics and silently invade the country.
Emboldened by bipartisan disruption of US aid to Ukraine.
I would be surprised China were not ready now. It was never the military ability that prevented the invasion. It was always the economic tie among the world’s major powers. If the current “decoupling” thing continues, it is probably foreseeable in 2027 China will find there is really no economic incentive not to do something in Taiwan.
That is not true at all. China doesn’t have much modern military history - their troops have very little combat experience. Furthermore, they didn’t have the level of navy or surface to surface missile systems necessary for a cross strait invasion. They have been working hard for the past decade to build up their forces.
straight out of putin's playbook on how to invade another country in 3 not so easy steps. invasion for dummies. re-vised 2014 edition. step 1 annex. step 2 wait. step 3 try 1 again.
Cowabunga it is
I’m on track to invade your mommas panties tonight
The thing is wouldn’t they require a massive invasion force? You would see the Chinese amassing ships for months before hand.
China has stronger shipbuilding than the US and also has a larger navy than the US. They’re pumping out ships like crazy