They have three examples of China starting a war and three examples of China nearly starting a war: "by firing artillery or missiles at or near Taiwanese territory" from 1950-1996.

Globally, opinion polls show that fear and mistrust of China has reached a post–Cold War high.

:michael-laugh: "Globally" doing a lot of work there.

The CCP has spent $3 trillion over the past three decades building a military that is designed to defeat Chinese neighbors while blunting American power.

oh holy fuck :data-laughing: THREE entire trillions, fuck me.

The CCP has staked its legitimacy on reabsorbing these areas and has cultivated an intense, revanchist form of nationalism among the Chinese people. Schoolchildren study the century of humiliation. National holidays commemorate foreign theft of Chinese lands. For many citizens, making China whole again is as much an emotional as a strategic imperative.

People from the most propagandised nation in the world is saying that those DAMN chinese are actually indoctrinating their youth into harmful nationalism.

In August 2021, a record 68 percent of the Taiwanese public identified solely as Taiwanese and not as Chinese, and more than 95 percent wanted to maintain the island’s de facto sovereignty or declare independence.

Would love to see the sources for these.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-Japan alliance, once a barrier to Japanese remilitarization, is becoming a force multiplier. Tokyo has reinterpreted its constitution to fight more actively alongside the U.S. Japanese forces regularly operate with American naval vessels and aircraft; American F-35 fighters fly off of Japanese ships; U.S. and Japanese officials now confer routinely on how they would respond to Chinese aggression—and publicly advertise that cooperation.

Now this is actually interesting, apparentely you can just turn your defense force back into an army if you feel like it. Cool.

An authoritarian CCP, always mindful of its precarious domestic legitimacy, would not want to concede defeat even if it failed to achieve its initial objectives.

But enough about the USA.

calmly firming up multilateral plans, involving Japan, Australia, and potentially India and Britain, for responding to Chinese aggression could make Beijing realize how costly such aggression might be.

Why are the :british-maw: even included in this list?

China’s historical warning signs are already flashing red. Indeed, taking the long view of why and under which circumstances China fights is the key to understanding just how short time has become for America and the other countries in Beijing’s path.

:xi-plz:

Michael Beckley is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where his research focuses on U.S.-China competition, and is an associate professor at Tufts University.

Hal Brands is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US foreign policy and defense strategy, and is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The clowns themselves.

Thanks for this, funniest shit I'll read today. :meow-coffee: