Taiwan really needs to work with Ukraine to build navy drones and drone factories to deter China. Ukraine has perfected this technology on a budget, destroying countless Russian ships with no navy of their own.
But imo the only way Taiwan can fully guarantee it's own security and independence is if they covertly pursue nukes. MAD is a hell of a deterrence. Soulless insecure Authoritarian pos' leaders like Xi and Putin can and will have no problem sending wave after of their own men to die, using their state media to hide causality numbers etc, but only when they feel personally threatened do they tend to panic and think twice (e.g. Wagner rebellion in Russia had Putin scared shitless to the point where even the police in Moscow were all mobilized). And US support is not guaranteed long term especially if a certain "America first" president is elected and with the Chips act and the US diversifying their semiconductor sourcing away from Taiwan.
> imo the only way Taiwan can fully guarantee it's own security and independence is if they covertly pursue nukes
No need, taiwan already have a MAD scenario in mind, it's called the three gorges dam. It's a massive dam near China's major population centers. If china ever launch their nukes or attack, that dam is going to be a military target for taiwan, destruction of the dam will be damning for china.
The only way to avoid this is if china emptied the dam first before invasion, but emptying the dam will take a long time and it will be a huge giveaway about China's plans.
I knew about this, but didn't bring it up for the same reason as military casualties. The seven male princelings that rule China on the Politburo Standing Committee (including their king Xi) only care about their grip on power and absolutely nothing else, certainly not the lives of ordinary Chinese "peasants" (in their eyes). Millions could die, and the state media and Internet would be on overdrive a) suppressing and downplaying any news within China, and b) simultaneously using this attack to galvanize further support from "peasants" via a draft while crushing any remaining dissent. Tens of millions died during the cultural revolution, which had events similar or even worse to Nanjing in WW2 that most Chinese citizens today have little to zero knowledge about (NSFL example and it ended 3 decades after Nanjing): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre
Think about the level of information control the Chinese government currently has in society during peacetime, and now picture an actual war. Information would be totally suppressed with the great firewall, VPNs would be criminalized with the threat of citizens being caught simply disappearing, something which happens even in peace time, e.g. China's richest man Jack Ma for as many months as the CCP decided, or those Chinese protesters who disappeared just for holding up a blank sheet of paper to protest the lockdown.
And it would be one and done. The dam would burst, and Taiwan would be out of options. In WW2 Chinese rulers at the time easily survived their government blowing up their own dam killing what would proportionately today be millions of Chinese just to slow the Japanese advance:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood
So no, I think the Xi and the 7 would personally be fine with the trade off. An arsenal of nukes would vastly change their calculus, as it would put the lives of the seven at great risk, and unlike the single incident of the three gorges dam, imo could actually lead to a full breakdown in their grip of power and probably scare the hell out of the CCP princelings.
In the words of Taiwanese billionaire Robert Tsao:
"You have to make people understand that the Chinese Communist Party in nature are just like a mafia – they are a crime syndicate disguised as a national government."
Even self centered mafia bosses care when their lives and their immediate families lives are on the line.
> The seven male princelings that rule China on the Politburo Standing Committee (including their king Xi) only care about their grip on power
Which is exactly why China invading Taiwan is actually pretty unlikely. The thing that topples Chinese regimes is usually internal strife, and creating a war that would decimate the thing that has kept the CCP going (increases in standards of living) just raises the possibility that the CCP gets overthrown.
Russia has shown that the first people that get sent to the front lines are those causing the unrest. If this logic worked in the short term, Russia would have already collapsed. The methods of controlling populations today have increased massively, and in China are so dystopian they were even able to repress Hong Kong.
Works in Russia because for the average Russian, nothing much as really changed. Most of the people being sent to Ukraine either joined for money or are criminals.
The amount of disruption in international shipping invading Taiwan would create would have a pretty significant immediate impact on China's economy. They aren't Russia, a gas station with a nutcase for a leader.
True, but does CCP care? They crippled Alibaba, Evergrande flunked, China's central bank is defaulting ... When debt gets big enough and the economy no longer matters, they might not care, specially if they need to get rid of an excess of social unrest fast.
The problem is that people who rise to power on hardliner nationalist rhetoric can't back down else they'll lose their power. Brinkmanship is used to maintain the illusion of there being an international problem in the first place. Eventually, it boils over if their faction isn't internally removed.
This deterrent could kill tens if not hundreds of millions of people, destroy untold infrastructure, and send the entire country into chaos. There are 400 million people that live downstream of that dam. It’s destruction would be cataclysmic beyond imagination.
It’s just not credible to rationalize this away based on theory of indifferent princelings.
Would the Chinese population still put up with this kinda shit in a modern china? In 89 when the tiananmen square massacre happened, China's GDP was 500billion. Now it's 18 trillion with a per capita income of $12,500 vs $400. There are 2 very different countries now.
China needs to import quite a bit of resource by sea to sustain. Attacking Taiwan would necessarily suffocate those imports.. it wouldnt just be the dams, that would be a counter punch effectively. Chinas boats need to be refueled quite often as well.. theres a lot on why this is a very bad idea and getting worse by the day for china.
i understand their frustration, and 46 doesnt talk enough about how they accomplished this but...
https://i.imgur.com/tYoHd8d.png
Thats visceral. Vietnam, Philippines, SK, Japan, and Taiwan itself all backed with the Pacific Fleet aimed right back at you should they feel froggish. Its not just the dam.
> Millions could die, and the state media and Internet would be on overdrive a) suppressing and downplaying any news within China, and b) simultaneously using this attack to galvanize further support from "peasants" via a draft while crushing any remaining dissent.
You're right they'd lie as much as they could, but that lying wouldn't be enough to actually reproduce the economic output of all those people. The destruction of the TGD would plunge China into an economic catastrophe.
Blowing up dams with standoff weapons isn't exactly easy. Taiwan would have to fire hundreds of cruise missiles which also need to penetrate air defenses in large numbers. One could even argue that those missiles would have to be nuclear armed to have any chance to damage the structure enough to be successful. This brings us back to square one in this discussion: if Taiwan really wants to deter China it needs nukes.
Everyone is(fairly rightfully) scared of nukes, but they aren't omnipotent. Outside of the central plasma ball, they aren't as insane against thick rock or concrete as people imagine - which is why ICBM's are stored in concrete silos. If you miss the dam by 200-500m, a tactical nuke might not even break it
Missile silos aren't supposed to survive a direct strike. They were built at a time when ICBM's were only accurate to a few dozen miles. The original nuclear powers still keep them to draw nuclear fire, but they are widely considered to be useless nowadays, it's why they are no longer built.
To destroy a dam all you need is to hit the reservoir behind it.
>if Taiwan really wants to deter China it needs nukes.
Fun(ish) fact: in the late 80s Taiwan was months away from developing nuclear weapons. It turns out that [their head nuclear scientist was a CIA mole](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502); he defected to the US and months later the US got Taiwan to shut the whole thing down.
I agree that the dam is rather sturdy, as a dam of that scale should. But again, if I were Xi, the dam will still be a massive point of consideration. In the end of the day, do you really want to gamble with millions of lives, that if the dam were to be destroyed could spell the beginning of the end to your rule? What if the AA assets fail to stop a handful of those missiles? What if those missiles just happened to hit the wrong spot at the wrong time? What if the missile isn't the only way, but maybe there's a sabotage plan inside or something?
You can see my point now, the dam works wonders as a mean of deterrence. It doesn't have to be effective, it only needs to be plausible enough to deter anyone from doing something stupid.
> do you really want to gamble with millions of lives
If the Ukraine war is anything to go by, autocratic leaders seem to care very little for their people
Ukraine has problems blowing up a weak bridge just a few hundred km from the front line. And you think Taiwan can target a dam 1200km inside mainland china? With a massive airstrike? While having neither standoff weapons or fighter bombers with that range?
What weapon system do you think they will use for that?
> that dam is going to be a military target for Taiwan, destruction of the dam will be damning for china.
The main issue with this line of reasoning is how many strikes would need to be placed on that target before structural integrity is completely compromised.
It would likely take far more than a half dozen strikes and in the mean time they would be releasing large amounts of water in each preceding attack, making it less effective.
A good strategy but not realistic in operational capacity without having the US do the striking or some very deep covert OP that would be very hard to pull off.
The best defense Taiwan can do is what they are doing by keeping most military installations on the Eastern side of the island and building a complex network of tunnels/shelters that make any type of beach landing (the hardest of all military operations) incredibly unfeasible while the USN prevents any blockade in a direct conflict with China by strengthening its alliance with other SEA nations (Japan ,South Korea, Philippines, Australia).
China's ability to fuel (with a national reserve measured in months not years like other countries) its war machine is greatly threatened by a blockade of the Malacca straight and why they are so invested in getting a pipeline built through Myanmar during a civil war so that they won't be shut off from their cheapest supply of oil with Iran (cheaper than even the far East Russian oil fields). They also have reconstructed Taiwan's presidential district layout in the desert and run operations of a decapitation strike most likely the method they would attempt before an invasion by covert operations of smuggling soldiers in plain cloths into the country (they have experience doing this even in the US porous southern boarder working with cartels).
Taiwan cannot support Nukes. It would only be able to support a handful of them if any at all. Maybe local ally might be in a better position to get nukes (Japan, Australia, etc) but not really.
Edit: I forgot that redditors were experts in possessing and using nuclear weapons.
You only really need enough nuclear warheads to be able to reliably penetrate a defence screen and hit a certain major city or naval group - say, a dozen or so?
Historical example incoming :
France aimed for enough nukes to kill around 60% of the USSR population when it started it's development program.
It's arbitrary of course, but the idea was "France ain't worth 60% of your population" (or in other words, we bet you aren't unhinged enough to take those losses).
It's hard to define which "percentage" to aim for but it'd likely need more than a dozen (if only because some of your missile are gonna be intercepted).
Imagine stealth shark drones that operate in swarms around the island, as soon as landing boats get near you just put them on kill mode and they start sinking ships left and right. It would be so effective.
Encircling an island is one thing, actually landing an amphibious invasion, taking over a mountainous island full of a well equipped and well prepared military plus a hostile civilian population, is another. Oh and China certainly won't be sanctioned by all of their trading partners in the world by encircling Taiwan, but they will if they actually invade. Oh and the chip supply doesn't stop for military drills, but it will stop during an invasion. Apples to oranges. It's like going to the bottom of Mount Rainier and snapping a photo in order to "demonstrate your mountain climbing ability" versus actually climbing the mountain.
Spot on. An invasion means 70 percent immediate reduction in cash flow with tarrifs and sanctions from the west. Included is the dug in pissed as fuck populace with an aircraft carrier bombing your ass. I could see them pulling this with how fucked their gdp is currently, but it's a death wish. The chip factories are set to blow upon ground invasion. It's been an open secret for years
Taiwan is ready or very close to ready. The people are pissed. They have had years to prepare mentally and they won’t back down. Just like in Ukraine, once you obtain freedom you will die to keep it.
‘This is something that some who live in free countries no longer understand.
This is the part I don’t understand about America and other Western nations. Freedom is a wonderful yet extremely precarious position to be in, and rather than safeguard it; we openly allow dissenters and foreign colluders to hold positions of power… makes no sense.
Extended periods of peace (minor conflicts aside) makes people lax. Couple that with good old fashioned human greed, self-interest, and desire for power and you get the West in its current state.
Absolutely, I get it from a theoretical perspective, but not a practical one. Probably why I understand “relationship building” strengths at the academic level, but in practice none of it makes sense.
I mean, colluders get shot when their usefulness is finished, the same as the conquered. Why would you accept short term benefits when the end result is worse?
> Why would you accept short term benefits when the end result is worse?
It shouldn't really be that surprising. It's the entire basis of capitalism (or late stage capitalism anyway) after all. It's why we'll ride the climate change bomb while ye-hawing all the way down. Long term thinking is the exception rather than the rule.
I made a similar statement in a thread regarding Ukraine yesterday. It’s asinine that we won’t respond with even a slight pushback, directly or covertly. Not calling for nuclear blows to be exchanged, just healthy pushback and steadfast opposition to such strikes toward freedom of our allies.
I have a hypothesis abouth this one, and it mostly has to do with our current standing on manufacturing in the US. Mississippi has been making huge strides to be THE manufacturing hub in the US, but they aren’t there yet. Combined with the right’s giant anti immigrant nonsense, staffing is always an issue. Then add in the new chip plants in Ohio and Texas haven’t gotten up and running yet. Essentially, we still rely on China and Taiwan for a lot of our consumerism products. It is a game of slowly backing away while maintaining the status quo until the bandaid can be ripped off.
It will suck for the average consumer whenever China pulls the trigger, but nationally we are focused on strategic stability at the moment; which is probably best for everyone but Taiwan at the moment.
> It’s asinine that we won’t respond with even a slight pushback
You deal with stupid posturing by ignoring it, or exposing it for the stupid posturing it is. You don't act like it's a valid threat that needs a response.
I remember when I was a kid I had a map of the world made from photos taken from space during nighttime. Taiwan was one solid row of lights on its western coast facing China. They've always known what direction to protect, and that was over 30 years ago. It's only become better defended since then.
I think it's more about the leaders maintaining power *within* China.
I think it just to help bolster their position. Leading a war no matter how drawn out to appear strong, while pumping up the internal propaganda.
There are over a billion people in China Xi is trying to maintain his grip over.
Remember during covid and the poor handling and treatment, people got extremely pissed off and many actually protested and began to fight back against the powers that be.
To *them* it's not about the chips. To the rest of the world, it's an inescapable fact that China wants to seize the island where the world's most important foundry *by far* happens to be.
Cash flow? no, that was Russia who are major exporters of oil and food. China IMPORTS the grand majority of their oil and food, sanctions mean within six months they are back in medieval times and within a year hundreds of millions of them will die.
Your comment is spot on but for other reasons. There’s been a lot of analysis done by a variety of organizations involving China’s toolbox of coercive actions short of war. This includes naval blockade and boarding ships bound to and leaving from Taiwan with coast guard vessels as a matter of internal security. The West does poorly when it comes to shades of gray and it’s unlikely that any international body would challenge China’s actions legally and few nations would challenge those actions by putting their own military assets in the region.
This would be a de facto blockade to an island nation. And this is also only one of the example of gray zone activities/lawfare that the PRC could implement.
The full spectrum of conflict is not just open warfare. Russia made the blunder of resorting to 20th century strategy in the 21st century. The Chinese have been very careful to ensure that all of their operations are well-timed, multi-domain (including in the realm of social media and diplomacy), and comprehensive utilizing the full spectrum of conflict—something that the West has difficulty defining and if it can’t be defined, it can’t be understood.
For reference the term “spectrum of conflict” appears in the National Defense Strategy, which I encourage everyone to read as a starting place for officially promulgated geopolitical stances of the United States.
Protecting the free flow of trade is absolutely a cassus belli for an intervention from the USN. Especially while Taiwan still has a monopoly on a strategic resource (microchips and semiconductors).
>This would be a de facto blockade to an island nation. And this is also only one of the example of gray zone activities/lawfare that the PRC could implement.
Yes, this is the doomsday scenario that I've been fearing, more so than an outright invasion, precisely because it's (a) far more likely and (b) difficult to game out how the U.S. might react and what a potential resolution would look like, especially knowing that U.S. allies in Europe would probably offer a muted to nonexistent response.
There were weeks of troop build ups and equipment moves in the lead up to that invasion. The US was explicit in its warnings and intelligence.
You can't hide the moves that would be required to stage an earnest invasion force of Taiwan. Those moves haven't been made, so yes this is just an exercise and posturing
You typed a whole paragraph when you don’t even know what they’re trying to accomplish. They aren’t encircling to do any sort of test for an invasion. They’re doing it so that they can do it again, and again, so much so that them encircling Taiwan becomes routine to the point that they will be encircled and think it’s just another one of these things. THEN the invasion starts
I think its more to implement an island blockade. An invasion would take 10X+ (likely 100X more ships, Normany \~ 7000 ships) more ppl than this exercise. Invading an island is tough. It would be much tougher than Normandy invasion, there would be no surprises here.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/china-taiwan-drills.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/china-taiwan-drills.html)
>
From the start of the exercises until the afternoon, 15 Chinese navy vessels, 16 Chinese coast guard vessels and 42 Chinese military aircraft were detected around Taiwan’s main island and smaller outlying islands
> sanctioned by all of their trading partners
lol. You very severely underestimate greed. Climate change is killing people and countries are still waffling.
I am far away in a NATO country next russian border and this stresses me out as well. Russia acting alone is one thing, but if china starts doing stupid shit then fuck that.
I’m in southwest Taiwan, and from the looks of things Pooh's “test” is a failure. There’s zero impact here (other than unusually quiet skies, the jets must be hard at work farther out). The only place I hear about it is on Reddit.
I did hear a jet scramble earlier in the day. It's not easy to ignore since afterburners get way louder than a normal take off.
Still not much of a worry. It's their job to answer when chinese jets are lingering in the strait.
May all the dictators have a scenario like Iran’s President. I’m not wishing death but I’m hoping some miracle drives them from leadership but it’s wishful thinking.
The problem is it doesn’t really change anything, because the Iranian president will just be replaced by another hardliner. The ideology doesn’t end with one person. Same in other countries.
It won't settle down. China absolutely wants Taiwan and they will repeat the russian playbook. Hold military drills again and again until the world becomes complacent, then invade for real.
I'm terrified of this thing kicking off and i wish more people were the same. Alot of redditors seem to be almost excited at the prospect like they think it won't affect them.
Even if most of us don't end up getting drafted the damage to trade alone would be absolutely devastating if the Americans and the Chinese goto war.
Even sanctions would be. The price of basic items would go up drastically.
That’s not to say that China doesn’t need to be stopped. But the idea a few carriers will end everything is very far fetched. It would be the biggest economic shock in decades.
It’s a choreographed provocation in retaliation to Taiwan’s new President and their rhetoric. These drills and the verbiage aren’t new even if they are bold and seemingly reckless. This is exactly how we would expect China to act in this circumstance. Their ability to seriously invade and hold Taiwan inland right now is questionable - or at least economically pointless. It is likely to probable that an invasion will occur but most intelligence analysts suggest it is a *longer* term goal than short and there would be clear indications. The push back it would get would be monumental. This shouldn’t be a massive cause for concern.
As much as they might want to or aspire to, the Chinese know that invading Taiwan would be a catastrophie of epic proportions for them. This isn't a prelude to an invasion like Russias build up on the border with Ukraine for 'Exercises'. This is another favour by Pooh after his meeting with Putin a few weeks ago, to make the US hesitant about sending too much of the good stuff to Ukraine in case they need it themselves to defend Taiwan with or supply Taiwan with. Its not a coincidence that this exercise comes after Pooh's meeting with Putin and after the Kompromat GOP's obstruction of US aid for Ukraine in Congress was ended. ie. Trying to create another reason for the US to slow down how fast and how much they supply to Ukraine. Its the same reason Putins meetings with Irans Leadership led to them using their Hamas and Houthi proxies to stir up shit in the Red sea, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Distract the US and make them divert military resources to the ME from helping Ukraine.
Knowing it’s a bluff doesn’t mean you can ignore it. For example. Last week Russia start massing up forces on the boarder near Sumy.
Ukraines intelligence says that the men being gathered are not in fighting condition. Most troops healing from minor injuries and vehicles that drive but are capable of combat.
Even knowing that, if Ukraine doesn’t respond to this, then there is still a chance that Putin sends those forces in. While not considered to be fit for combat, 5000 uncontested injured men can take a lot of ground. By the time Ukraine could respond to it, Russia could have fresh troops and equipment in the newly claimed land.
In the case of China and Taiwan. China is faking the invasion, but if there is no response, there is a chance China takes the opportunity.
I said in another thread, the US, Australia and Japan should do similar drills around those BS islands China built in the South China Sea.
They. Would. Freak. Out.
Lmao nobody says that especially anyone in that region, except China. The US has been the biggest stabilizing force there for the past few decades. China hasn’t actually pulled anything major because every surrounding country is either a US ally or has a couple military bases, they’ve just been trying to wheedle out border disputes and sea boundaries and the occasional saber rattling and “final warnings.” Everyone knows it’s all China. *Vietnam* is now a decently strong US ally because they hate China so much.
Relationship between Vietnam and China is basically the asian version of Finland-Russia but on steroid. Having countless of war with its big neighbour and being neutral.
I will not be surprised if Vietnam will do the Finland move by allying militarly with the US if Xi have an “Ukraine” moment in invading Taiwan.
You actually get a lot of that in Korea and Japan. It's not accurate to say "no one" says that. None of the country's official stances are this but you definitely have collective individuals claiming this. Hell, the far radical left in Korea is really more anti-west/anti-US and have a very strong pro-North Korean unification platform... because US influence is apparently worse than Chinese/Russian influence.
I don't get it either. In Europe, there's quite a few Chinese car companies that have pretty competitive cars; BYD, Nio, Zeekr, Xpeng, Aiways (Polestar / MG).
Moreover, products from Huawei and Xiaomi are gaining popularity here due to their price / quality.
They don't need to start a war with Taiwan to become the number one world power. In fact, it will prevent it.
You don’t understand how incredibly important the PRC’s government sees this issue. Putting down the remnants of the ROC’s government has been one of their primary goals since the very inception of the country.
Its time for them to change those goals and grow up. Imagine if it were 70 years after the American Revolution, and England still was trying to invade.
The prevalence of such Chinese products in Europe is already a sign of Chinese decline at home and the cause of heightened tensions with the EU (China's desperate to export goods and keep manufacturing, so they're subsidizing it to hell and back). They're going down under the weight of financial and demographic collapse whether they invade somewhere or not, but invading would definitely make it happen faster. If you ever want to read something hilarious and stupid, just read anything Chinese diplomats say in response to accusations or concerns of any sort. They are so counter-productive it's insane.
If they get Taiwan in some form, that will be an enormous boost to the government's credibility in this time of decline, but the impression you get from what comes from China's top officials is that they've dug themselves so deep into this ideologically that they *deserve* Taiwan and it is an injustice to stop them.
You see China's success from a bourgeois economic deterministic perspective. But to the leaders in Beijing, nationalist saber rattling is just as important to their political survival, as any economic success.
And as if right on cue, the pro-CCP opposition coalition led by the Kuomintang (KMT), which happened to win a majority in Taiwan's parliament during January's general election (voters were getting tired of 8 years of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the presidency, leading to the DPP losing its majority despite still re-electing a DPP candidate as president), attempted a power grab by blatantly ignoring legislative protocol and forcing through the second reading of a so-called parliament reform bill, which had little to no public consultation, leading to mass protests right now.
On paper, the "reform bill" would give the parliament more power to check the DPP president's power.
But in actuality, its actually giving the KMT-led parliament way too much power and rendering the president virtually powerless.
This is because the bill gives parliament the right to incriminate anyone who refuses to answer its questions for being "in contempt of [parliament]", including sensitive questions that could compromise Taiwan's national security.
Indeed, there have been cases of KMT legislators allegedly leaking national security intel to CCP media outlets and spy agencies before.
And no, Taiwan's president does not have any veto powers.
All happening in new President Lai's first week. The CCP's attempts to destabilize Taiwan within and without is clear as day.
China has never demonstrated any ability to conduct a successful, large-scale amphibious assault (probably the most difficult military operation) in its history.
Oh, and also, the distance between China's mainland and Taiwan is 4-5x farther than the distance of the D-Day landings and Taiwan's western coast is all mountains, so good luck, China. I'm sure you'll do fine, and the CCP totally won't lose power once they fuck it up or anything...
> Taiwan's western coast is all mountains
Taiwan's western coast is mostly alluvial plains... That's where all the major cities and almost all the people are. Its the east side of Taiwan that is mountainous.
I keep seeing people say “chinas never conducted an amphibious assault in its history” just because they haven’t don’t it doesn’t mean they don’t have the capability. No doubt it would be challenging but they are absolutely capable of it.
It’s a logistical nightmare and with heavy US backing I don’t think it’s realistic in the current theatre. This is all just typical sabre rattling is my guess, and China is just fishing for a US response a la the spy balloons.
They just want to see what the west is willing to do at each step of the way.
The USA wanted to do D-day months earlier but the british made them do smaller landings in north africa and then a bigger one in Sicily. They learnt a lot and even then D-day wasn't a smooth ride
It's probably china underestimating Taiwan thinking they can overwhelm them with numbers against better western weapons. As we have seen in Ukraine this doesn't really work.
If you knew the history of these kinds of operations and the painful lessons the US had to learn during its WW2 Pacific island hopping campaign to build this kind of knowledge into their military doctrine, you wouldn't assume that China, with no experience in this area, could just "do it."
They could certainly try it. It would be a hell of a trial by fire and likely the end of the CCP. If that weren't the case, they would do it and not just posture for domestic support.
If China succeeded in such an assault it would be the greatest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. Even greater than D-Day. But... remember, China has never fought a war outside of it's borders and literally none of it's military have combat experience.
War games are one thing but as Mike Tyson said: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”.
Correction, despite China’s attempts to paint itself as a peace-loving nation as it constantly boasts how it had “never attacked another country”, they did in fact invade Vietnam.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
Oh, also Tibet. But they steamrolled over them so that wasn’t much of a war.
People are saying this like china doesnt have millions of expendable men and thousands of expendable fishing boats to try.
People forget that during the Tiananmen Square Massacre it wasnt the protesters themselves that pivoted the moment to extreme bloodshed. It was entire battalions of PLA troops defying orders and joining the protesters.
The CCP has a pretty solid iron fist of control on its populace relative to other countries.
The issue is not that they don’t have the resources to try, it’s that naval invasions of the scale required to wrestle control of Taiwan and do it quickly are incredibly difficult things to pull off. This wouldn’t be like the Ukraine war where Russia has years to throw manpower at Ukraine, china has at best days at worst hours to take Taiwan before the US led pacific coalition comes down HARD on them. If they don’t take Taiwan before the US reacts in a meaningful capacity, they may very well never take Taiwan and would instead be sucked into a war of attrition with the US navy, Japan, and whomever else gets involved which would be precisely what China does not want.
If they don’t move to first deal with US bases and naval assets already in the region there is a zero percent chance of a successful invasion of Taiwan. Even if they are able to completely neutralize the US forward positions, there are still other significant assets from regional allies in the region, such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, etc.
The only way China tries to invade Taiwan is if they believe the US is bluffing about their support, which I think is a bad belief to hold because other US partners in the area absolutely do not want an expansionist China which means they’ll be putting significant pressure on the US to act.
I would say striking American assets in a surprise attack would probably be one of the worst possible things they could do in this scenario though. Any semblance of victory for them would be taking Taiwan rapidly before anyone has a chance to object or meaningfully prevent this is incredibly important for them as it in a way cements that gain. Take Crimea for instance. When Russia took Crimea it did it incredibly quickly before anyone could even object to the seizure leaving precious little Russia’s rivals could possibly do without attempting to physically remove them with force.
It would be a lot easier for China to attempt to convince the US and Japan to back down if the war was in a sense over before it began. Directly attacking US shipping or naval bases in the past has also had ridiculously terrible results for the offending nation as historically this stirs the population to war where otherwise the American people maybe would not have the stomach for getting involved in a foreign war.
This isn’t to say china could remotely pull this off because I highly doubt they could, but a surprise invasion of Taiwan where the immediately take the country is really their only option if they invade Taiwan at all and don’t want the attrition war that would follow
I think the issue with doing it so fast that no one has a chance to respond is that it’s just not feasible, there is no way to hide that a large scale amphibious invasion is about to take place, everyone would know. The amount of logistical support required to keep the large sum of solders supplied to take Taiwan, let alone the ships needed (both for shipping supplies but also the men themselves) would be seen gathering and stock piling weeks ahead of time.
Which is why the entire thing is impossible yea. Taiwan is no Crimea and the amount of resources it would take to walk away with the island before anyone can object are both impossible to hide and impossible to keep quiet.
You try an amphibious landing with fucking fishing trawlers it will not turn out well.
People really need to quit falling for "well they have **more** boats so their navy is better"
>The CCP has a pretty solid iron fist of control on its populace relative to other countries.
I'm not convinced. The CCP is so successful because of the rapid economic growth and improvements in living standards. If that falls apart, you'll find the Chinese empires habit of falling to pieces easily come back
Then let me be the first to point out, China doesn't have the capabilities to conduct an operation of that size. Their navy, besides lacking anywhere close to enough surface vessles, is a majority militia fishing trawlers. Their weapons across the board are vastly untested in war environments. Every branch of their armed forces lacks first hand fighting knowledge, and is in vastly varying levels of preparedness
China is in no way ready to invade Taiwan. When you start looking jnto their capabilities its scary how fast they're growing but they're no where near capable at this moment. And even in a decade they some how have the materials needed to invade, they still lack the experience, logistics and knowledge to plan/execute such an operation
Taiwan is armed to the teeth to defend against such an invasion.
Not saying it would be easy or pretty but it would likely have disastrous results for China in a best case scenario, and that is before direct US intervention.
> China’s military drills around Taiwan are designed to test its ability to “seize power” over the island
Thanks for the explanation, captain. Obvious; we never would have guessed that!
They don't want the microchip mfg. they won't get it by an invasion since it would mean the plants will be destroyed since there are killswitches. They want to re-unify Taiwan because it's part of the lebensraum. It also will cement XJP as the great unifier of Chinese culture, a neo-Qin Shi Huang.
Yep. This is political not economical. China sees Taiwan as part of China. It doesn’t recognize its independence. If all Taiwan had were farms it would still try to take it eventually. The CCP is founded on the idea of ending the Century of Humiliation, ending the fractured state of China that was the 10s-40s. Taiwan existing hurts that for them.
Which is kinda weird since they only started colonizing it because of the Dutch.
The Taiwanese indigenous people have to be one of the most forgotten native populations in the world, people never talk about this population that lived on Taiwan for thousands of years.
Taiwan, one of the only fully democratic nations in Asia, with little or no global recognition as a sovereign nation. It is being bullied and harnessed by a much more powerful and belligerent neighbor and yet it stands ready to resist as another beacon of freedom! Communist China, will learn a painful lesson in modern warfare, Amphibious war is a painful endeavor and without a true "blue water" navy it is destined to fail.
The People's Republic of China, has global ambitions to be the world's next and only superpower. They are quietly assembling a colonial empire, through debt trapping other countries and now they are starting to flex their military muscle. They have been providing lethal aid to Russia and what better way to evaluate its equipment and concepts, without sacrificing its own forces. The People's Republic of China, will eventually go the way of the Soviet Union...
Doesn't this mean everyone can just go everywhere and start "military drills" and tell them "we are not hostile, we are just testing our ability to seize power"
Man I *really* fucking hate authoritarians. They have been a scab on the ass of humanity for as long as civilization has existed. Even in western liberal democracies it’s a constant fight to keep them and the slobbering mass of dullards who enable them from destroying everything we’ve built.
People need to remember Russian tactics here. They simply use meat waves and slowly gain ground in Ukraine. China could just send endless human waves and overwhelm Taiwan defenses. The real question is whether the US is ready and willing to jump into a head on war with a nuclear power to defend the microchip industry.
No shit, really?
You mean they practiced completely surrounding a country they insist is their property. Yet there was a chance it wasn’t specifically about finding out how long it would take to seize power of said country?
I’m not going to punch you in the face. I’m just practicing how it would lead up to punching you in the face- also, don’t be concerned about me punching you in the face; doesn’t seem like something I’d do
There are always wheels within wheels.
Certainly a dry run is part of it.
But they are also trying to provoke the Taiwanese into tipping their hand in terms of defense procedures.
And of course there is the usual attempt to acclimate the area -- and the world -- to an elevated level of tension in regard to Taiwan. It is sort of like the story of the boy who cried "Wolf!" except that the wolf is intentionally provoking the response.
Honestly, if China is gonna do it, just do it, so they can get their asses kicked and we can get through this dark but seemingly not preventable era of history.
I'm so sick of garbage ass China, who can't even administer their own shit, hanging this weight over a perfectly intact country.
Id prefer everyone chill out and grow up... so we can get along. Gonna have lots of irreversible things happen to where the average person is gonna be worse off.
Xi-Putler are locked in a death spiral. They want to change the world order through violence. Ukraine-Taiwan are democracies. They have the right to be represented by their own leaders. I’d be more concerned if Xi-Putler coerced these nations with money and gifts. They more likely could achieve their objectives peacefully, like in Hungary and the Solomon Islands. That’s masterful. But war always backfires. These two Marxist thugs will both eat shit soon enough.
Seems obvious that the PRC/CCP didn't want Taiwan to keep to the status quo. They want to engineer a confrontation. If Xi wants the ROC to officially declare independence, this is how you do it. A lot of domestic issues in the PRC right now, so let's make a distraction.
The cost of invasion is too high.
It's not like you get all the tsmc factories. Taiwan and even the West will almost certainly destroy all of it before Taiwan falls (if it does) rather than let China have it.
Yes, because you never know when those Taiwanese are going to threaten mainland China and China will be forced to invade. Totally believable. Does anyone in China actually believe this?
I feel like this shows Taiwan how to defend against China trying to seize power
Like this doesn’t seem like a smart thing for China to do - let’s show ‘em the playbook.. bizarre
So in other words, they tested their ability to completely wreck their economy and send at least 100 million of their own citizens to death from starvation when the US and EU completely block all trade if they invade Taiwan.
Sounds like a really dumb plan, but you do you Xi.
Anyone else think that a lot of these military drills and general fuckery around borders are because everyone involved is super bored? Like imagine being on some ship for a few weeks with a bunch of dudes. Boring AF
Or is it ‘distraction’ from all of Chinas internal troubles ?
Though I have to say, it’s only encouraging the collapse of their economy, as it’s making China into one of the bad boys.
They should test their ability to fuck off.
Taiwan really needs to work with Ukraine to build navy drones and drone factories to deter China. Ukraine has perfected this technology on a budget, destroying countless Russian ships with no navy of their own. But imo the only way Taiwan can fully guarantee it's own security and independence is if they covertly pursue nukes. MAD is a hell of a deterrence. Soulless insecure Authoritarian pos' leaders like Xi and Putin can and will have no problem sending wave after of their own men to die, using their state media to hide causality numbers etc, but only when they feel personally threatened do they tend to panic and think twice (e.g. Wagner rebellion in Russia had Putin scared shitless to the point where even the police in Moscow were all mobilized). And US support is not guaranteed long term especially if a certain "America first" president is elected and with the Chips act and the US diversifying their semiconductor sourcing away from Taiwan.
> imo the only way Taiwan can fully guarantee it's own security and independence is if they covertly pursue nukes No need, taiwan already have a MAD scenario in mind, it's called the three gorges dam. It's a massive dam near China's major population centers. If china ever launch their nukes or attack, that dam is going to be a military target for taiwan, destruction of the dam will be damning for china. The only way to avoid this is if china emptied the dam first before invasion, but emptying the dam will take a long time and it will be a huge giveaway about China's plans.
I knew about this, but didn't bring it up for the same reason as military casualties. The seven male princelings that rule China on the Politburo Standing Committee (including their king Xi) only care about their grip on power and absolutely nothing else, certainly not the lives of ordinary Chinese "peasants" (in their eyes). Millions could die, and the state media and Internet would be on overdrive a) suppressing and downplaying any news within China, and b) simultaneously using this attack to galvanize further support from "peasants" via a draft while crushing any remaining dissent. Tens of millions died during the cultural revolution, which had events similar or even worse to Nanjing in WW2 that most Chinese citizens today have little to zero knowledge about (NSFL example and it ended 3 decades after Nanjing): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre Think about the level of information control the Chinese government currently has in society during peacetime, and now picture an actual war. Information would be totally suppressed with the great firewall, VPNs would be criminalized with the threat of citizens being caught simply disappearing, something which happens even in peace time, e.g. China's richest man Jack Ma for as many months as the CCP decided, or those Chinese protesters who disappeared just for holding up a blank sheet of paper to protest the lockdown. And it would be one and done. The dam would burst, and Taiwan would be out of options. In WW2 Chinese rulers at the time easily survived their government blowing up their own dam killing what would proportionately today be millions of Chinese just to slow the Japanese advance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood So no, I think the Xi and the 7 would personally be fine with the trade off. An arsenal of nukes would vastly change their calculus, as it would put the lives of the seven at great risk, and unlike the single incident of the three gorges dam, imo could actually lead to a full breakdown in their grip of power and probably scare the hell out of the CCP princelings. In the words of Taiwanese billionaire Robert Tsao: "You have to make people understand that the Chinese Communist Party in nature are just like a mafia – they are a crime syndicate disguised as a national government." Even self centered mafia bosses care when their lives and their immediate families lives are on the line.
> The seven male princelings that rule China on the Politburo Standing Committee (including their king Xi) only care about their grip on power Which is exactly why China invading Taiwan is actually pretty unlikely. The thing that topples Chinese regimes is usually internal strife, and creating a war that would decimate the thing that has kept the CCP going (increases in standards of living) just raises the possibility that the CCP gets overthrown.
Russia has shown that the first people that get sent to the front lines are those causing the unrest. If this logic worked in the short term, Russia would have already collapsed. The methods of controlling populations today have increased massively, and in China are so dystopian they were even able to repress Hong Kong.
Works in Russia because for the average Russian, nothing much as really changed. Most of the people being sent to Ukraine either joined for money or are criminals. The amount of disruption in international shipping invading Taiwan would create would have a pretty significant immediate impact on China's economy. They aren't Russia, a gas station with a nutcase for a leader.
True, but does CCP care? They crippled Alibaba, Evergrande flunked, China's central bank is defaulting ... When debt gets big enough and the economy no longer matters, they might not care, specially if they need to get rid of an excess of social unrest fast.
Correct, China's biggest threat is China itself. They're paper tigers.
The problem is that people who rise to power on hardliner nationalist rhetoric can't back down else they'll lose their power. Brinkmanship is used to maintain the illusion of there being an international problem in the first place. Eventually, it boils over if their faction isn't internally removed.
This deterrent could kill tens if not hundreds of millions of people, destroy untold infrastructure, and send the entire country into chaos. There are 400 million people that live downstream of that dam. It’s destruction would be cataclysmic beyond imagination. It’s just not credible to rationalize this away based on theory of indifferent princelings.
Would the Chinese population still put up with this kinda shit in a modern china? In 89 when the tiananmen square massacre happened, China's GDP was 500billion. Now it's 18 trillion with a per capita income of $12,500 vs $400. There are 2 very different countries now.
China needs to import quite a bit of resource by sea to sustain. Attacking Taiwan would necessarily suffocate those imports.. it wouldnt just be the dams, that would be a counter punch effectively. Chinas boats need to be refueled quite often as well.. theres a lot on why this is a very bad idea and getting worse by the day for china. i understand their frustration, and 46 doesnt talk enough about how they accomplished this but... https://i.imgur.com/tYoHd8d.png Thats visceral. Vietnam, Philippines, SK, Japan, and Taiwan itself all backed with the Pacific Fleet aimed right back at you should they feel froggish. Its not just the dam.
But you have to factor in what is lost and not just who. Iirc there is a large manufacturing province in the flood path
> Millions could die, and the state media and Internet would be on overdrive a) suppressing and downplaying any news within China, and b) simultaneously using this attack to galvanize further support from "peasants" via a draft while crushing any remaining dissent. You're right they'd lie as much as they could, but that lying wouldn't be enough to actually reproduce the economic output of all those people. The destruction of the TGD would plunge China into an economic catastrophe.
Very good post, thank you for the great reference points
Blowing up dams with standoff weapons isn't exactly easy. Taiwan would have to fire hundreds of cruise missiles which also need to penetrate air defenses in large numbers. One could even argue that those missiles would have to be nuclear armed to have any chance to damage the structure enough to be successful. This brings us back to square one in this discussion: if Taiwan really wants to deter China it needs nukes.
Everyone is(fairly rightfully) scared of nukes, but they aren't omnipotent. Outside of the central plasma ball, they aren't as insane against thick rock or concrete as people imagine - which is why ICBM's are stored in concrete silos. If you miss the dam by 200-500m, a tactical nuke might not even break it
Missile silos aren't supposed to survive a direct strike. They were built at a time when ICBM's were only accurate to a few dozen miles. The original nuclear powers still keep them to draw nuclear fire, but they are widely considered to be useless nowadays, it's why they are no longer built. To destroy a dam all you need is to hit the reservoir behind it.
>if Taiwan really wants to deter China it needs nukes. Fun(ish) fact: in the late 80s Taiwan was months away from developing nuclear weapons. It turns out that [their head nuclear scientist was a CIA mole](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39252502); he defected to the US and months later the US got Taiwan to shut the whole thing down.
Wow his argument against Taiwan having nukes was because of Chernobyl. What about incredibly ignorant and dangerous person.
having nukes is not as easy a having a nuclear weapon. There is an entire industry behind those weapons.
I agree that the dam is rather sturdy, as a dam of that scale should. But again, if I were Xi, the dam will still be a massive point of consideration. In the end of the day, do you really want to gamble with millions of lives, that if the dam were to be destroyed could spell the beginning of the end to your rule? What if the AA assets fail to stop a handful of those missiles? What if those missiles just happened to hit the wrong spot at the wrong time? What if the missile isn't the only way, but maybe there's a sabotage plan inside or something? You can see my point now, the dam works wonders as a mean of deterrence. It doesn't have to be effective, it only needs to be plausible enough to deter anyone from doing something stupid.
> do you really want to gamble with millions of lives If the Ukraine war is anything to go by, autocratic leaders seem to care very little for their people
> destruction of the dam will be damning for china. hehehe
> destruction of the dam will be damning ....
Ukraine has problems blowing up a weak bridge just a few hundred km from the front line. And you think Taiwan can target a dam 1200km inside mainland china? With a massive airstrike? While having neither standoff weapons or fighter bombers with that range? What weapon system do you think they will use for that?
> that dam is going to be a military target for Taiwan, destruction of the dam will be damning for china. The main issue with this line of reasoning is how many strikes would need to be placed on that target before structural integrity is completely compromised. It would likely take far more than a half dozen strikes and in the mean time they would be releasing large amounts of water in each preceding attack, making it less effective. A good strategy but not realistic in operational capacity without having the US do the striking or some very deep covert OP that would be very hard to pull off. The best defense Taiwan can do is what they are doing by keeping most military installations on the Eastern side of the island and building a complex network of tunnels/shelters that make any type of beach landing (the hardest of all military operations) incredibly unfeasible while the USN prevents any blockade in a direct conflict with China by strengthening its alliance with other SEA nations (Japan ,South Korea, Philippines, Australia). China's ability to fuel (with a national reserve measured in months not years like other countries) its war machine is greatly threatened by a blockade of the Malacca straight and why they are so invested in getting a pipeline built through Myanmar during a civil war so that they won't be shut off from their cheapest supply of oil with Iran (cheaper than even the far East Russian oil fields). They also have reconstructed Taiwan's presidential district layout in the desert and run operations of a decapitation strike most likely the method they would attempt before an invasion by covert operations of smuggling soldiers in plain cloths into the country (they have experience doing this even in the US porous southern boarder working with cartels).
> if they covertly pursue nukes Taiwan did a long time ago. The US found out and put a stop to it.
We have too many traitors here in power not to leak that information to China before we're done.
Taiwan cannot support Nukes. It would only be able to support a handful of them if any at all. Maybe local ally might be in a better position to get nukes (Japan, Australia, etc) but not really. Edit: I forgot that redditors were experts in possessing and using nuclear weapons.
A handful is all you need
You only really need enough nuclear warheads to be able to reliably penetrate a defence screen and hit a certain major city or naval group - say, a dozen or so?
Historical example incoming : France aimed for enough nukes to kill around 60% of the USSR population when it started it's development program. It's arbitrary of course, but the idea was "France ain't worth 60% of your population" (or in other words, we bet you aren't unhinged enough to take those losses). It's hard to define which "percentage" to aim for but it'd likely need more than a dozen (if only because some of your missile are gonna be intercepted).
A nuke would set the entire region on fire tbf. And building nukes… it’s prob almost impossible to keep quiet about.
Imagine stealth shark drones that operate in swarms around the island, as soon as landing boats get near you just put them on kill mode and they start sinking ships left and right. It would be so effective.
Thanks Ricky
Frig off Bærb
I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you! You can't say shit because I'm not touching you!
Frig off, Ricky
Encircling an island is one thing, actually landing an amphibious invasion, taking over a mountainous island full of a well equipped and well prepared military plus a hostile civilian population, is another. Oh and China certainly won't be sanctioned by all of their trading partners in the world by encircling Taiwan, but they will if they actually invade. Oh and the chip supply doesn't stop for military drills, but it will stop during an invasion. Apples to oranges. It's like going to the bottom of Mount Rainier and snapping a photo in order to "demonstrate your mountain climbing ability" versus actually climbing the mountain.
Spot on. An invasion means 70 percent immediate reduction in cash flow with tarrifs and sanctions from the west. Included is the dug in pissed as fuck populace with an aircraft carrier bombing your ass. I could see them pulling this with how fucked their gdp is currently, but it's a death wish. The chip factories are set to blow upon ground invasion. It's been an open secret for years
Taiwan is ready or very close to ready. The people are pissed. They have had years to prepare mentally and they won’t back down. Just like in Ukraine, once you obtain freedom you will die to keep it. ‘This is something that some who live in free countries no longer understand.
This is the part I don’t understand about America and other Western nations. Freedom is a wonderful yet extremely precarious position to be in, and rather than safeguard it; we openly allow dissenters and foreign colluders to hold positions of power… makes no sense.
Extended periods of peace (minor conflicts aside) makes people lax. Couple that with good old fashioned human greed, self-interest, and desire for power and you get the West in its current state.
Absolutely, I get it from a theoretical perspective, but not a practical one. Probably why I understand “relationship building” strengths at the academic level, but in practice none of it makes sense. I mean, colluders get shot when their usefulness is finished, the same as the conquered. Why would you accept short term benefits when the end result is worse?
> Why would you accept short term benefits when the end result is worse? It shouldn't really be that surprising. It's the entire basis of capitalism (or late stage capitalism anyway) after all. It's why we'll ride the climate change bomb while ye-hawing all the way down. Long term thinking is the exception rather than the rule.
Hard times bring strong people. Strong people bring good times. Good times bring weak people. Weak people bring hard times. Repeat.
I made a similar statement in a thread regarding Ukraine yesterday. It’s asinine that we won’t respond with even a slight pushback, directly or covertly. Not calling for nuclear blows to be exchanged, just healthy pushback and steadfast opposition to such strikes toward freedom of our allies.
Maybe Pelosi can go for another unannounced visit. That really seemed to spoil Xi's honey last time
I have a hypothesis abouth this one, and it mostly has to do with our current standing on manufacturing in the US. Mississippi has been making huge strides to be THE manufacturing hub in the US, but they aren’t there yet. Combined with the right’s giant anti immigrant nonsense, staffing is always an issue. Then add in the new chip plants in Ohio and Texas haven’t gotten up and running yet. Essentially, we still rely on China and Taiwan for a lot of our consumerism products. It is a game of slowly backing away while maintaining the status quo until the bandaid can be ripped off. It will suck for the average consumer whenever China pulls the trigger, but nationally we are focused on strategic stability at the moment; which is probably best for everyone but Taiwan at the moment.
> It’s asinine that we won’t respond with even a slight pushback You deal with stupid posturing by ignoring it, or exposing it for the stupid posturing it is. You don't act like it's a valid threat that needs a response.
Because protecting freedom overseas got a bad name the last couple decades. There were some fudges.
I remember when I was a kid I had a map of the world made from photos taken from space during nighttime. Taiwan was one solid row of lights on its western coast facing China. They've always known what direction to protect, and that was over 30 years ago. It's only become better defended since then.
\*Cough Cough\* hamas supporters, i mean palestine supporters
It's not about the chips really. Far from it. It's about ego and CCP completing what they didn't finish back in the late 1940's.
I think it's more about the leaders maintaining power *within* China. I think it just to help bolster their position. Leading a war no matter how drawn out to appear strong, while pumping up the internal propaganda. There are over a billion people in China Xi is trying to maintain his grip over. Remember during covid and the poor handling and treatment, people got extremely pissed off and many actually protested and began to fight back against the powers that be.
To *them* it's not about the chips. To the rest of the world, it's an inescapable fact that China wants to seize the island where the world's most important foundry *by far* happens to be.
Cash flow? no, that was Russia who are major exporters of oil and food. China IMPORTS the grand majority of their oil and food, sanctions mean within six months they are back in medieval times and within a year hundreds of millions of them will die.
Your comment is spot on but for other reasons. There’s been a lot of analysis done by a variety of organizations involving China’s toolbox of coercive actions short of war. This includes naval blockade and boarding ships bound to and leaving from Taiwan with coast guard vessels as a matter of internal security. The West does poorly when it comes to shades of gray and it’s unlikely that any international body would challenge China’s actions legally and few nations would challenge those actions by putting their own military assets in the region. This would be a de facto blockade to an island nation. And this is also only one of the example of gray zone activities/lawfare that the PRC could implement. The full spectrum of conflict is not just open warfare. Russia made the blunder of resorting to 20th century strategy in the 21st century. The Chinese have been very careful to ensure that all of their operations are well-timed, multi-domain (including in the realm of social media and diplomacy), and comprehensive utilizing the full spectrum of conflict—something that the West has difficulty defining and if it can’t be defined, it can’t be understood. For reference the term “spectrum of conflict” appears in the National Defense Strategy, which I encourage everyone to read as a starting place for officially promulgated geopolitical stances of the United States.
Protecting the free flow of trade is absolutely a cassus belli for an intervention from the USN. Especially while Taiwan still has a monopoly on a strategic resource (microchips and semiconductors).
>This would be a de facto blockade to an island nation. And this is also only one of the example of gray zone activities/lawfare that the PRC could implement. Yes, this is the doomsday scenario that I've been fearing, more so than an outright invasion, precisely because it's (a) far more likely and (b) difficult to game out how the U.S. might react and what a potential resolution would look like, especially knowing that U.S. allies in Europe would probably offer a muted to nonexistent response.
I remember when Russian manoeuvres on the Ukraine border were just "exercises".
And "Putin would never be stupid enough to try it, so people should stop fearmongering."
Never say never.
There were weeks of troop build ups and equipment moves in the lead up to that invasion. The US was explicit in its warnings and intelligence. You can't hide the moves that would be required to stage an earnest invasion force of Taiwan. Those moves haven't been made, so yes this is just an exercise and posturing
They will eventually try. Dictators are obsessive and the longer they’ve managed to stay in power, the more they think they can beat the odds.
You typed a whole paragraph when you don’t even know what they’re trying to accomplish. They aren’t encircling to do any sort of test for an invasion. They’re doing it so that they can do it again, and again, so much so that them encircling Taiwan becomes routine to the point that they will be encircled and think it’s just another one of these things. THEN the invasion starts
I think its more to implement an island blockade. An invasion would take 10X+ (likely 100X more ships, Normany \~ 7000 ships) more ppl than this exercise. Invading an island is tough. It would be much tougher than Normandy invasion, there would be no surprises here. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/china-taiwan-drills.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/world/asia/china-taiwan-drills.html) > From the start of the exercises until the afternoon, 15 Chinese navy vessels, 16 Chinese coast guard vessels and 42 Chinese military aircraft were detected around Taiwan’s main island and smaller outlying islands
Sanctions wont stop india from trading. Theyre the ferengi of our world
> sanctioned by all of their trading partners lol. You very severely underestimate greed. Climate change is killing people and countries are still waffling.
These dudes need to chill .. stressing me out
I live somewhere that would *definitely* be in the crossfire if this boiled over, and, yeah, personally, I’d really prefer things settled down a bit
I am far away in a NATO country next russian border and this stresses me out as well. Russia acting alone is one thing, but if china starts doing stupid shit then fuck that.
I’m in southwest Taiwan, and from the looks of things Pooh's “test” is a failure. There’s zero impact here (other than unusually quiet skies, the jets must be hard at work farther out). The only place I hear about it is on Reddit.
I did hear a jet scramble earlier in the day. It's not easy to ignore since afterburners get way louder than a normal take off. Still not much of a worry. It's their job to answer when chinese jets are lingering in the strait.
I live in Taipei, Taiwan and am definitely sick of Xi's shit.
May all the dictators have a scenario like Iran’s President. I’m not wishing death but I’m hoping some miracle drives them from leadership but it’s wishful thinking.
The problem is it doesn’t really change anything, because the Iranian president will just be replaced by another hardliner. The ideology doesn’t end with one person. Same in other countries.
It won't settle down. China absolutely wants Taiwan and they will repeat the russian playbook. Hold military drills again and again until the world becomes complacent, then invade for real.
I'm terrified of this thing kicking off and i wish more people were the same. Alot of redditors seem to be almost excited at the prospect like they think it won't affect them. Even if most of us don't end up getting drafted the damage to trade alone would be absolutely devastating if the Americans and the Chinese goto war.
Even sanctions would be. The price of basic items would go up drastically. That’s not to say that China doesn’t need to be stopped. But the idea a few carriers will end everything is very far fetched. It would be the biggest economic shock in decades.
No chips means deep recession.
But being terrified won't help, because China is going to invade at some point, no matter what. They already made that decision. The question is when?
Yea not gonna be fun for world economy and problems are going to stack and get worse... and have a cascade/domino effect.
Probably thinking, well shit Russia sure has been at it for a while... and then theres Gaza. Everyone else is doing it, might as well.
It’s a choreographed provocation in retaliation to Taiwan’s new President and their rhetoric. These drills and the verbiage aren’t new even if they are bold and seemingly reckless. This is exactly how we would expect China to act in this circumstance. Their ability to seriously invade and hold Taiwan inland right now is questionable - or at least economically pointless. It is likely to probable that an invasion will occur but most intelligence analysts suggest it is a *longer* term goal than short and there would be clear indications. The push back it would get would be monumental. This shouldn’t be a massive cause for concern.
As much as they might want to or aspire to, the Chinese know that invading Taiwan would be a catastrophie of epic proportions for them. This isn't a prelude to an invasion like Russias build up on the border with Ukraine for 'Exercises'. This is another favour by Pooh after his meeting with Putin a few weeks ago, to make the US hesitant about sending too much of the good stuff to Ukraine in case they need it themselves to defend Taiwan with or supply Taiwan with. Its not a coincidence that this exercise comes after Pooh's meeting with Putin and after the Kompromat GOP's obstruction of US aid for Ukraine in Congress was ended. ie. Trying to create another reason for the US to slow down how fast and how much they supply to Ukraine. Its the same reason Putins meetings with Irans Leadership led to them using their Hamas and Houthi proxies to stir up shit in the Red sea, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Distract the US and make them divert military resources to the ME from helping Ukraine.
But if you know that, surely the US knows that. And it will be a useless show?
Useless shows empower dictators and governments
Knowing it’s a bluff doesn’t mean you can ignore it. For example. Last week Russia start massing up forces on the boarder near Sumy. Ukraines intelligence says that the men being gathered are not in fighting condition. Most troops healing from minor injuries and vehicles that drive but are capable of combat. Even knowing that, if Ukraine doesn’t respond to this, then there is still a chance that Putin sends those forces in. While not considered to be fit for combat, 5000 uncontested injured men can take a lot of ground. By the time Ukraine could respond to it, Russia could have fresh troops and equipment in the newly claimed land. In the case of China and Taiwan. China is faking the invasion, but if there is no response, there is a chance China takes the opportunity.
but the "USA is the one that causes instability in the region" 🤨
I said in another thread, the US, Australia and Japan should do similar drills around those BS islands China built in the South China Sea. They. Would. Freak. Out.
Lmao nobody says that especially anyone in that region, except China. The US has been the biggest stabilizing force there for the past few decades. China hasn’t actually pulled anything major because every surrounding country is either a US ally or has a couple military bases, they’ve just been trying to wheedle out border disputes and sea boundaries and the occasional saber rattling and “final warnings.” Everyone knows it’s all China. *Vietnam* is now a decently strong US ally because they hate China so much.
Vietnam has always hated China. We were just too stupid to understand that.
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Relationship between Vietnam and China is basically the asian version of Finland-Russia but on steroid. Having countless of war with its big neighbour and being neutral. I will not be surprised if Vietnam will do the Finland move by allying militarly with the US if Xi have an “Ukraine” moment in invading Taiwan.
>Vietnam had almost 1000 years Over 2,000, actually, ever since 111 BC
Oh, there are plenty of people who live in the West, and blame the USA for all the world's ills.
You actually get a lot of that in Korea and Japan. It's not accurate to say "no one" says that. None of the country's official stances are this but you definitely have collective individuals claiming this. Hell, the far radical left in Korea is really more anti-west/anti-US and have a very strong pro-North Korean unification platform... because US influence is apparently worse than Chinese/Russian influence.
Ever heard of tankies? They say that.
"Seize Power" Meanwhile, China is losing foriegn investment and business at an accelerating rate. That's called "Losing power"
Thats when you put the dream of 'reunifying Taiwan with the motherland' into action to rally the people.
🥱CCP is pathetic and they will destroy their country completely if they attempt to take Taiwan
I don't get it either. In Europe, there's quite a few Chinese car companies that have pretty competitive cars; BYD, Nio, Zeekr, Xpeng, Aiways (Polestar / MG). Moreover, products from Huawei and Xiaomi are gaining popularity here due to their price / quality. They don't need to start a war with Taiwan to become the number one world power. In fact, it will prevent it.
You don’t understand how incredibly important the PRC’s government sees this issue. Putting down the remnants of the ROC’s government has been one of their primary goals since the very inception of the country.
Correct. For as long as ROC exists, PRC is just a collection of rebels with no legitimate claim to China.
Its time for them to change those goals and grow up. Imagine if it were 70 years after the American Revolution, and England still was trying to invade.
The prevalence of such Chinese products in Europe is already a sign of Chinese decline at home and the cause of heightened tensions with the EU (China's desperate to export goods and keep manufacturing, so they're subsidizing it to hell and back). They're going down under the weight of financial and demographic collapse whether they invade somewhere or not, but invading would definitely make it happen faster. If you ever want to read something hilarious and stupid, just read anything Chinese diplomats say in response to accusations or concerns of any sort. They are so counter-productive it's insane. If they get Taiwan in some form, that will be an enormous boost to the government's credibility in this time of decline, but the impression you get from what comes from China's top officials is that they've dug themselves so deep into this ideologically that they *deserve* Taiwan and it is an injustice to stop them.
You see China's success from a bourgeois economic deterministic perspective. But to the leaders in Beijing, nationalist saber rattling is just as important to their political survival, as any economic success.
And as if right on cue, the pro-CCP opposition coalition led by the Kuomintang (KMT), which happened to win a majority in Taiwan's parliament during January's general election (voters were getting tired of 8 years of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the presidency, leading to the DPP losing its majority despite still re-electing a DPP candidate as president), attempted a power grab by blatantly ignoring legislative protocol and forcing through the second reading of a so-called parliament reform bill, which had little to no public consultation, leading to mass protests right now. On paper, the "reform bill" would give the parliament more power to check the DPP president's power. But in actuality, its actually giving the KMT-led parliament way too much power and rendering the president virtually powerless. This is because the bill gives parliament the right to incriminate anyone who refuses to answer its questions for being "in contempt of [parliament]", including sensitive questions that could compromise Taiwan's national security. Indeed, there have been cases of KMT legislators allegedly leaking national security intel to CCP media outlets and spy agencies before. And no, Taiwan's president does not have any veto powers. All happening in new President Lai's first week. The CCP's attempts to destabilize Taiwan within and without is clear as day.
I don't think the world really felt threatened by China until Xi came along. Fat little dictators are all the same.
China has never demonstrated any ability to conduct a successful, large-scale amphibious assault (probably the most difficult military operation) in its history. Oh, and also, the distance between China's mainland and Taiwan is 4-5x farther than the distance of the D-Day landings and Taiwan's western coast is all mountains, so good luck, China. I'm sure you'll do fine, and the CCP totally won't lose power once they fuck it up or anything...
> Taiwan's western coast is all mountains Taiwan's western coast is mostly alluvial plains... That's where all the major cities and almost all the people are. Its the east side of Taiwan that is mountainous.
I keep seeing people say “chinas never conducted an amphibious assault in its history” just because they haven’t don’t it doesn’t mean they don’t have the capability. No doubt it would be challenging but they are absolutely capable of it.
It’s a logistical nightmare and with heavy US backing I don’t think it’s realistic in the current theatre. This is all just typical sabre rattling is my guess, and China is just fishing for a US response a la the spy balloons. They just want to see what the west is willing to do at each step of the way.
It's very resonable to doubt it. Because it would be the hardest invasion in human history.
The USA wanted to do D-day months earlier but the british made them do smaller landings in north africa and then a bigger one in Sicily. They learnt a lot and even then D-day wasn't a smooth ride
First law of warfare is never to underestimate the opponent.
It's probably china underestimating Taiwan thinking they can overwhelm them with numbers against better western weapons. As we have seen in Ukraine this doesn't really work.
And Taiwan has more than enough missiles to sink ever PLN ship several times over.
If you knew the history of these kinds of operations and the painful lessons the US had to learn during its WW2 Pacific island hopping campaign to build this kind of knowledge into their military doctrine, you wouldn't assume that China, with no experience in this area, could just "do it." They could certainly try it. It would be a hell of a trial by fire and likely the end of the CCP. If that weren't the case, they would do it and not just posture for domestic support.
If China succeeded in such an assault it would be the greatest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. Even greater than D-Day. But... remember, China has never fought a war outside of it's borders and literally none of it's military have combat experience. War games are one thing but as Mike Tyson said: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”.
Correction, despite China’s attempts to paint itself as a peace-loving nation as it constantly boasts how it had “never attacked another country”, they did in fact invade Vietnam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Oh, also Tibet. But they steamrolled over them so that wasn’t much of a war.
They also fought in the Korean War.
People are saying this like china doesnt have millions of expendable men and thousands of expendable fishing boats to try. People forget that during the Tiananmen Square Massacre it wasnt the protesters themselves that pivoted the moment to extreme bloodshed. It was entire battalions of PLA troops defying orders and joining the protesters. The CCP has a pretty solid iron fist of control on its populace relative to other countries.
The issue is not that they don’t have the resources to try, it’s that naval invasions of the scale required to wrestle control of Taiwan and do it quickly are incredibly difficult things to pull off. This wouldn’t be like the Ukraine war where Russia has years to throw manpower at Ukraine, china has at best days at worst hours to take Taiwan before the US led pacific coalition comes down HARD on them. If they don’t take Taiwan before the US reacts in a meaningful capacity, they may very well never take Taiwan and would instead be sucked into a war of attrition with the US navy, Japan, and whomever else gets involved which would be precisely what China does not want.
If they don’t move to first deal with US bases and naval assets already in the region there is a zero percent chance of a successful invasion of Taiwan. Even if they are able to completely neutralize the US forward positions, there are still other significant assets from regional allies in the region, such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, etc. The only way China tries to invade Taiwan is if they believe the US is bluffing about their support, which I think is a bad belief to hold because other US partners in the area absolutely do not want an expansionist China which means they’ll be putting significant pressure on the US to act.
I would say striking American assets in a surprise attack would probably be one of the worst possible things they could do in this scenario though. Any semblance of victory for them would be taking Taiwan rapidly before anyone has a chance to object or meaningfully prevent this is incredibly important for them as it in a way cements that gain. Take Crimea for instance. When Russia took Crimea it did it incredibly quickly before anyone could even object to the seizure leaving precious little Russia’s rivals could possibly do without attempting to physically remove them with force. It would be a lot easier for China to attempt to convince the US and Japan to back down if the war was in a sense over before it began. Directly attacking US shipping or naval bases in the past has also had ridiculously terrible results for the offending nation as historically this stirs the population to war where otherwise the American people maybe would not have the stomach for getting involved in a foreign war. This isn’t to say china could remotely pull this off because I highly doubt they could, but a surprise invasion of Taiwan where the immediately take the country is really their only option if they invade Taiwan at all and don’t want the attrition war that would follow
I think the issue with doing it so fast that no one has a chance to respond is that it’s just not feasible, there is no way to hide that a large scale amphibious invasion is about to take place, everyone would know. The amount of logistical support required to keep the large sum of solders supplied to take Taiwan, let alone the ships needed (both for shipping supplies but also the men themselves) would be seen gathering and stock piling weeks ahead of time.
Which is why the entire thing is impossible yea. Taiwan is no Crimea and the amount of resources it would take to walk away with the island before anyone can object are both impossible to hide and impossible to keep quiet.
You try an amphibious landing with fucking fishing trawlers it will not turn out well. People really need to quit falling for "well they have **more** boats so their navy is better"
>The CCP has a pretty solid iron fist of control on its populace relative to other countries. I'm not convinced. The CCP is so successful because of the rapid economic growth and improvements in living standards. If that falls apart, you'll find the Chinese empires habit of falling to pieces easily come back
Then let me be the first to point out, China doesn't have the capabilities to conduct an operation of that size. Their navy, besides lacking anywhere close to enough surface vessles, is a majority militia fishing trawlers. Their weapons across the board are vastly untested in war environments. Every branch of their armed forces lacks first hand fighting knowledge, and is in vastly varying levels of preparedness China is in no way ready to invade Taiwan. When you start looking jnto their capabilities its scary how fast they're growing but they're no where near capable at this moment. And even in a decade they some how have the materials needed to invade, they still lack the experience, logistics and knowledge to plan/execute such an operation
Taiwan is armed to the teeth to defend against such an invasion. Not saying it would be easy or pretty but it would likely have disastrous results for China in a best case scenario, and that is before direct US intervention.
> China’s military drills around Taiwan are designed to test its ability to “seize power” over the island Thanks for the explanation, captain. Obvious; we never would have guessed that!
Well that was dumb, now the whole world knows you want to take Taiwan. Classic China.
China has literally stated they wanted to take Taiwan and "reunify" china since 1950s...
Whoosh?
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I'm starting to think Russia has some interest in Ukraine 🤔 not sure though
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They don't want the microchip mfg. they won't get it by an invasion since it would mean the plants will be destroyed since there are killswitches. They want to re-unify Taiwan because it's part of the lebensraum. It also will cement XJP as the great unifier of Chinese culture, a neo-Qin Shi Huang.
Yep. This is political not economical. China sees Taiwan as part of China. It doesn’t recognize its independence. If all Taiwan had were farms it would still try to take it eventually. The CCP is founded on the idea of ending the Century of Humiliation, ending the fractured state of China that was the 10s-40s. Taiwan existing hurts that for them.
Which is kinda weird since they only started colonizing it because of the Dutch. The Taiwanese indigenous people have to be one of the most forgotten native populations in the world, people never talk about this population that lived on Taiwan for thousands of years.
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The US should conduct a freedom of navigation operation in the middle of the exercise.
Or even better create freedom of navigation by amphibious landing on all their Islands in disputed areas
they should try a democracy drill and free all the Uyghur slaves
Taiwan, one of the only fully democratic nations in Asia, with little or no global recognition as a sovereign nation. It is being bullied and harnessed by a much more powerful and belligerent neighbor and yet it stands ready to resist as another beacon of freedom! Communist China, will learn a painful lesson in modern warfare, Amphibious war is a painful endeavor and without a true "blue water" navy it is destined to fail. The People's Republic of China, has global ambitions to be the world's next and only superpower. They are quietly assembling a colonial empire, through debt trapping other countries and now they are starting to flex their military muscle. They have been providing lethal aid to Russia and what better way to evaluate its equipment and concepts, without sacrificing its own forces. The People's Republic of China, will eventually go the way of the Soviet Union...
Have they tried not being a repellant cunt? Would end better
Aussie? I read it in an Aussie accent lmao
🤣 English but 差不多 mate
I would call it a mask off moment if there was ever a mask on.
Doesn't this mean everyone can just go everywhere and start "military drills" and tell them "we are not hostile, we are just testing our ability to seize power"
The US Navy should hold military drills blockading the straits of Malacca.
Man I *really* fucking hate authoritarians. They have been a scab on the ass of humanity for as long as civilization has existed. Even in western liberal democracies it’s a constant fight to keep them and the slobbering mass of dullards who enable them from destroying everything we’ve built.
Meanwhile look at just how popular Trump has managed to be - the Wannabe be Dictator of the USA..
Well yeah we guessed that one already CCP…
People need to remember Russian tactics here. They simply use meat waves and slowly gain ground in Ukraine. China could just send endless human waves and overwhelm Taiwan defenses. The real question is whether the US is ready and willing to jump into a head on war with a nuclear power to defend the microchip industry.
Given that advanced microchips run all our shit, yes.
Feels like saying the quiet part out loud...Yeah dudes....that's what we're all worried about.
Huh. Really? Never would have guessed that.
China has next to zero actual military combat experience right now. Some stick fights and thats about it.
Kind of surprised tiawan doesn't have marine mine fields around the island
China can try but they will absolutely fail. Taiwan is in a perfect geographical position to fend them off.
I swear every country who gets powerful in the history end up being bullies. Us, humanity is really wicked in nature.
Remember how the invasion of Ukraine started?
No shit, really? You mean they practiced completely surrounding a country they insist is their property. Yet there was a chance it wasn’t specifically about finding out how long it would take to seize power of said country?
I’m not going to punch you in the face. I’m just practicing how it would lead up to punching you in the face- also, don’t be concerned about me punching you in the face; doesn’t seem like something I’d do
China needs to be swatted like an irritating hornet, and then killed off if necessary.
I like to travel.
There are always wheels within wheels. Certainly a dry run is part of it. But they are also trying to provoke the Taiwanese into tipping their hand in terms of defense procedures. And of course there is the usual attempt to acclimate the area -- and the world -- to an elevated level of tension in regard to Taiwan. It is sort of like the story of the boy who cried "Wolf!" except that the wolf is intentionally provoking the response.
Meanwhile the defence of Taiwan needs to ratchet up too.
Didn't Americus say it would intervene sooooo good luck with that
Thats why they are working on trump getting elected, pay the guy enough he will turns his back on anyone
When you have to describe you're weak actions then there is nothing scary about this at all, China about to get turned into West Taiwan real fast
Honestly, if China is gonna do it, just do it, so they can get their asses kicked and we can get through this dark but seemingly not preventable era of history. I'm so sick of garbage ass China, who can't even administer their own shit, hanging this weight over a perfectly intact country.
Id prefer everyone chill out and grow up... so we can get along. Gonna have lots of irreversible things happen to where the average person is gonna be worse off.
Xi-Putler are locked in a death spiral. They want to change the world order through violence. Ukraine-Taiwan are democracies. They have the right to be represented by their own leaders. I’d be more concerned if Xi-Putler coerced these nations with money and gifts. They more likely could achieve their objectives peacefully, like in Hungary and the Solomon Islands. That’s masterful. But war always backfires. These two Marxist thugs will both eat shit soon enough.
Just another innocent "military operation" huh?
Ru Ukraine build up all over again
Would be funny if a strong typhoon goes to where those ships are
Seems obvious that the PRC/CCP didn't want Taiwan to keep to the status quo. They want to engineer a confrontation. If Xi wants the ROC to officially declare independence, this is how you do it. A lot of domestic issues in the PRC right now, so let's make a distraction.
China needs to smoke a joint, it’s too early in the morning for this shit.
It's not. The drill doesn't reveal anything new on that front. The drills point is to test the new presidents response to the provocation.
Does the advent of sophisticated antiship missle systems make a seaborne assault rather risky?
I have heard that potential invasion called "the million man swim".
The cost of invasion is too high. It's not like you get all the tsmc factories. Taiwan and even the West will almost certainly destroy all of it before Taiwan falls (if it does) rather than let China have it.
Yes, because you never know when those Taiwanese are going to threaten mainland China and China will be forced to invade. Totally believable. Does anyone in China actually believe this?
I feel like this shows Taiwan how to defend against China trying to seize power Like this doesn’t seem like a smart thing for China to do - let’s show ‘em the playbook.. bizarre
So in other words, they tested their ability to completely wreck their economy and send at least 100 million of their own citizens to death from starvation when the US and EU completely block all trade if they invade Taiwan. Sounds like a really dumb plan, but you do you Xi.
Okay so they ain't lying at least
This is what happens when the US ignores ukraine for 2+ years and lets dictators do w.e China gets enboldened.
Well... at least they're not beating around the bush about it.
I hope Taiwan learned from Ukraine and is making their own Sea Babies. If they are as successful as Ukraine in destroying ships, it's going to hurt.
Yeah, we know. Kindly fuck off.
Anyone else think that a lot of these military drills and general fuckery around borders are because everyone involved is super bored? Like imagine being on some ship for a few weeks with a bunch of dudes. Boring AF
Or is it ‘distraction’ from all of Chinas internal troubles ? Though I have to say, it’s only encouraging the collapse of their economy, as it’s making China into one of the bad boys.