China puts targeted sanctions on the State of California and Pelosi's donor network. They mimic US language of oligarchs and foreign interference repeated ad nauseum by US media and government. They outline her financial interest in Taiwan and abuse of power to become wealthy during her political career. The PR campaign and heavy sanctions work to politically isolate her from allies and neuter her influence, she's left out to pasture to "Spend more time with her grandchildren" shortly after the election where Democrats get obliterated.
The stupid imperialistic gesture finally ends the reign of one of the worst neo-liberal ghouls of a generation and China stays winning.
The scenario you outlined isn't realistic at all. No propaganda campaign the Chinese government can conduct will be able to sway the opinion of the American people. The US' own propaganda network is way stronger and will counter any Chinese propaganda with ease. I fully expect China to enact some kind of sanction in retaliation, but the idea that they could pull of a propaganda campaign that actually harms pelosi's standing is laughably unrealistic
Death to America
This whole thing is just like wow
Biden didn't want her to go
She persisted
Pentagon didn't want her to go
She persisted
Taiwan didn't want her to go
She persisted
Like how does no one have control over a 80 year old corpse?
She's going to cement her self in the history books as the reason Taiwan no longer exists
Critical support to Comrade Pelosi for being instrumental in the reunification of China
Biden and Pentagon didn't want her to go? They literally sent aircraft carriers and fighter jets to escort her.
Posturing. "Look we didn't want to start WWIII but that commie from California left us no choice."
This whole thing is just like wow
They're doing military exercises encircling Taiwan lol.
It's fully in their power to make inflation worse and potentially start another chip shortage. Idk why Nancy Pelosi did this, zero gain, lots of potential for retaliation.
Idk why Nancy Pelosi did this
Entirely for the Blue MAGA back home. She's currying favor with Falun Gong and the dissident Chinese community, as well as all the California corporate types that profit off of Taiwanese cheap labor.
Imo I think it's out of desperation. To distract people from all the news about her inside trading and other shit. Like the only thing the majority of Americans can get behind hating on more than her is China. Anyone that still supports this old hag is either some oligarch or absolutely insane libs.
hate to break it to you but the Chinese govt is not nearly as adept at PR/propaganda as the US
The US propaganda machine has been on the fritz since at least the Bush Admin. We're losing Latin America at a rapid pace. We're losing Europe. Even the fucking Turks, the Saudis, and Israelis are Going Their Own Way, wrt China and Russia. The US is no longer this mythologized shining beacon on a hill. If it were, we've slammed the door shut on even the most zealous pro-America migrants so we can't harbor a bunch of psycho self-hating ex-pats to re-injected into their home countries every generation.
The Dulles Brothers are dead. Pappa Bush is dead. Kissinger hasn't been anywhere near a lever of power in thirty years. The only people the US has left have all drunk their own kool-aid.
Meanwhile, look to the South Pacific. Look to Macau and Hong Kong. Look to the Korean Peninsula and Indonesia and Malyasia and the entire East African seaboard. China's propaganda machine is doing just fine, because China is doing just fine. They've got something to offer more valuable than empty promises and greedy failson CEOs. China is the future and everyone secretly knows it. That's the most powerful propaganda you can bring to bare.
That's because China isn't really doing anything. They could probably create a huge foreign propaganda department out of thin air in less than a year if they wanted to, but right now their only propaganda asset is Chen Weihua.
The west never hears from China directly, they never even try to reach foreign audiences. They don't really care what the west thinks and therefore they're letting the US control the narrative entirely unfortunately.
Why would you roll in the mud with the :porky-happy:, when that's their natural habitat?
Congress polls in the single digits, but the incumbency rate is typically over 90%. When push comes to shove, people vote for China with their wallets.
Past that, the US propaganda machine is having a more challenging time exiting the black hole of its own domestic politics. As we waffle from the doctrines of Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, more and more of our long-term foreign policy is sold off for short-term partisan gains. AIPAC will step in to quash a sanctions bill against Russia because it might hurt Israeli businesses. Apple will kill anything that threatens their supply of electronics out of the Pacific Rim. Nancy will fly to Taiwan, raise a bunch of money, and make a bunch of promises that future Speaker McCarthy has no interest in keeping. Meanwhile, McConnell's wife's Taiwanese-based shipping company will fight any effort that threatens her family fortune.
US Propaganda doesn't work on any of these special interests. It only works to misdirect the accumulated anger and frustration of American domestics against one another. So Americans will grow increasingly hostile to Taiwanese ex-pats for "looking Chinese", while the US policy towards China is sandbagged by all the economic interests that profit from the relationship.
Your mutual aid group just needs a bunch of friendly DC lobbyists behind it.
Their PR towards the "international community" doesnt matter since no population amongst them will in a meaningful capacity become friendly to them under the zeitgeist of immense concent manufacturing in the last few years and in the future. And it literally doesnt matter if it was good since there arent mediums for it to reach and resonate since the social and other media and press is fully controlled by the west
Towards the developing world and "non international community" their mutualy benefitial relations and positive material impact, their lack of interventionism and warmongering along with the widespread distrust for the west and US is and has been better than western style PR and propaganda cause its about tangible and material things. Billions of people and the population of the most of the world give zero shit about Xi or China "losing face" over this or will support them more or less in the Taiwan issue no matter how good they become in western style media propaganda. Most didnt know or give a shit about it happening
good point, i should have specified that i meant that the scenario outlined by the OP is unrealistic
i guess we agree you're just adding more context
the DPA guy suggested China may take one or more of Taiwan's small island military bases which would be relatively limited in scope and a quick easy "win" for China. It seems pretty plausible to me
They're supposedly holding drills surrounding the island in the next few days, but I don't think that's what you would consider an appropriate military reaction.
dont know how we like or dont like the guy this week but what do you think of this thread and the possibility of the DPP rather than america forcing China's hand (tho its treating the US as noticibly more level headed than it might be)
https://twitter.com/notXiangyu/status/1554539713385701377
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The DPP hasn't had any policy successes since Tsai's election in 2016. All it has going for it politically is its political strategy of building on a "distinct" Taiwanese identity to make the youth feel good about being Taiwanese with little to back it.
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Pelosi's visit is part of the DPP's strategy to make Taiwan seem more visible. The DPP and Tsai also control much of the media at this point, and Tsai has partnerships with various internet influencers, forming a very deep echo chamber that's not grounded in reality.
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The only thing Taiwan has going for it economically right now is TSMC. It's used it to its advantage, causing chip shortages to gain political leverage. This only works in the short term, though. Both mainland China and the US are investing in homegrown chipmaking tech.
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The US is investing $100 billion and mainland China $52 billion. By the next election in 2024, TSMC will lose its monopoly on chip manufacturing. This puts Taiwan in a situation like Saudi Arabia if oil becomes $10 per barrel on the international market.
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This means a recession will hit when the new leader is elected, and if that new leader is Lai Ching-te, who represents a more hardline faction of the DPP (remember, Tsai is a moderate), he will have to deal with an economically desperate constituent.
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And remember, the only thing DPP has going for it is getting the youth to circlejerk over their identity. Pelosi's already visited. Another high level visit like Pelosi's won't cause the same level of excitement among the baizuo liberals (the DPP's ideological footsoldiers)
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What does he have left? Well referendums are called on odd years. He coasts through his first year in office, and in 2025, his party potentially calls an independence referendum to abolish the "Republic of China" and replace it with a "Republic of Taiwan."
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Of course, such a move will be met with a response from mainland China, and forceful reunification will happen. It's playing with fire, but the DPP has successfully convinced its baizuo footsoldiers that daddy America will come in to save the day.
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This cannot be further from the truth, however, and military experts in the US say the same. The closest aircraft carriers can get to China without getting attacked by the PLA is 1000 nautical miles. Their missiles can currently only fly 800. See the problem?
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Even if the US commits itself to intervention, it cannot win. And will the US commit itself to intervention? Look at how the US hung its Ukrainian puppets out to dry.
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According to military assessments by top US military experts, in all scenarios short of nuclear war, China can reunify the country by force without a problem. So why hasn't the CPC done so? The answer is simple: Chinese people do not wish to kill Chinese people.
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Not to mention, reunification under such a scenario, while doable, will mean a much more difficult transition period for the Taiwanese people, and it'll make Taiwan even more volatile than it already is.
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This does not benefit the Chinese people on either side of the strait at all, but it does benefit the imperialists who seek to use Taiwan to cause destabilization in the rest of China. Look at Hong Kong in 2019.
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The job at hand right now is to lay out the economic and political realities of how things will turn out if the DPP is allowed to continue with its insanity, enabled by its brainwashed radlib footsoldiers.
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Common folks in Taiwan see this reality, but their voices are being repressed "democratically." Look at the series of laws the DPP has passed, eroding the very same liberal democracy it fought for in the 1980s.
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China may respond militarlily to Taiwan, probably not to the US. I don't think we're quite at the point where the US would start a nuclear war over Taiwan yet. We're getting there, but not quite yet.
Isn't the "One China" policy integral to US trade agreements? Is there any reason China wouldn't halt exports over this?
The PRC imports a lot of food from the US which is one of a few severe limitations on them taking aggressive economic action
I think China will respond militarily
Against whom? We're a bit far from China straight opening fire on US navy or aircraft. And I don't see any proxies in the region who would be worth the conflict. This isn't like Ukraine, where you've got a sizable chunk of Russian-aligned nationalists sitting right on your border that you can just step in and annex. China's already either allied with or a major business partner of all of its neighbors.
If anything, I might see them try some kind of Cuba-style embargo of Taiwan. But that would have a comparative impact on public sentiment, driving the island that much farther away from the Chinese political and cultural sphere.
China has limited time window to respond to show the US that they cannot antagonize China over the Taiwan issue at their whims.
So long as the US and Taipei are allies, the US absolutely can. What Beijing needs is a large anti-colonial movement in Taiwan, akin to what they had in Hong Kong. And they're decades away from anything close to that kind of political hegemony. This is just going to be an indignity they'll have to endure, until Pelosi (or her Republican replacement) trips over their own balls trying to Own The CCP and turns public sentiment against the US.
The massive amount of :crab-party: posting would break the site all over again
In the spirit of criticism and self-criticism, I admit it's hard to resist the whole instant gratification and instant karma complex of the internet & consumerist culture, especially when it comes to someone whose every single brain cell is geared toward hubris and optics (literally gave us :liberalism:)
So I guess I'll quote this dialogue from the 2010 Chinese film Let the Bullets Fly (meaning, let the situation play out a bit — it's rather telling it's the no. 1 legendary film in Chinese internet culture):
"You fucked up."
"I fucked up?"
"Yeah, you fucked up!"
"Really? Cuz I think it's just begun."
I've definitely got some self crit to do regarding the nihilism that came up regarding this crisis. The urge for something to happen was strong this morning, and there was definitely a lack of consequential thought in my head. Gotta be patient
I don't think it's nihilistic to wish for someone like Pelosi to finally get a comeuppance. These people treat the world and everyone in it like they own us and have never had any reason to think otherwise
Obviously the long term consequences of the wrong move would be dire, since the US is rabid, but wanting something to happen is just a basic sense of justice.
Maybe a naive one, but idk I don't think that's nihilism
It's nihilistic to think that the visceral enjoyment of shooting down a US representatives plane is worth the price of nuclear Armageddon, imo. Obviously it comes from a place of genuine emotion, even a desire for justice and comeuppance, but the disappointment that the PRC didn't further escalate nuclear tensions isn't justified because of that
I was thinking more along the lines of economic retaliation than military. Yeah, wishing for military escalation probably leans into the nihilistic camp
How about Li Keqiang flying to Hawaii to meet with indigenous independence groups?
Who the hell is even running the CIA right now? Aren't they too busy fumbling the ball in Latin America and Eastern Europe to fuck up a plane bomb in Taiwan?
CIA seems to be quietly ramping up business in Africa, last I've heard since the Biden admin took over.
The last refuge of scoundrels. Maybe we'll get another Congolese War out of it, but I doubt the continent will look more favorably on the US for our trouble.
China might think that as China wants a weak America right now hindering the political career of Nancy Pelosi is counterproductive
