duhhhh....
oh what's that? we were right again, and liberals were easily duped by US propaganda into becoming disgusting war-mongering hawks baying for blood? no shit.
You just have to look at their military logistics, the airforce and navy do not have the planes and ships to transport and sustain the troops and any such buildup would take years and would be noticed. It is sabre rattling for internal consumption + hyped abroad for militerism.
A lot of what's happening in the Taiwanese Straight is simply escalating tit-for-tat between the US and China.
Taiwan claims the Chinese mainland as their airspace and flies within spitting distance of the border, so Beijing sends a fleet of drones to circle the island in their own show of force. The US sends a boat through the straight so China sends a boat in the other direction. Pelosi personally visits Taipei so Xi pisses all over downtown Hong Kong before doing a lap around the Persian Gulf.
All this shit ends as soon as DC wants it to end. Beijing's plans for Taiwan involve the same strategy as Hong Kong. They're going to lasso the island through economic expansion, knowing the hyper-capitalist Taiwanese will sell them the rope to do it. They don't need an occupying military presence in Taiwan any more than they need one in Shanghai or Singapore or California. They just need the manufacturing side of the supply chain.
Beijing’s plans for Taiwan involve the same strategy as Hong Kong. They’re going to lasso the island through economic expansion, knowing the hyper-capitalist Taiwanese will sell them the rope to do it.
The UK formally handed over Hong Kong to the PRC, there won't be anything similar happening with regards to Taiwan. So how would it be possible to replicate the same scenario then?
The UK formally handed over Hong Kong to the PRC
Formally, sure. But the real transition took place through the municipal government. Beijing's control over Hong Kong stems from the number of seats on the Executive and Legislative Council occupied by Beijing loyalists.
And control of the these Councils is established through functional constituencies, which are organized by profession.
This is some Deep Statecraft shit, but the TL;DR; of it is that Hong Kong is ruled by prevailing business interests. And as Beijing business leaders own the bulk of the capital and debts, they select the city's leadership.
So how would it be possible to replicate the same scenario then?
Through the formation of economic partnerships and dependencies between Taiwanese municipal/business leadership and Beijing loyal constituents.
Taiwan doesn't operate like Hong Kong, but it remains highly vulnerable to economic pressure groups and local financial interests.
Taiwan's own corrupt kleptocracy will open the gates to Beijing bureaucrats without any need for a military invasion.
You just have to look at their military logistics, the airforce and navy do not have the planes and ships to transport and sustain the troops and any such buildup would take years and would be noticed.
There's some interesting debate on this topic IMO. Chinese ship building clearly has the capacity to spit out a lot more landing ships and LHDs than it currently is. This points to either a complete lack of a plan to land on Taiwan, or alternative plans that don't involve massive use of military landing vessels. Personally, I find the latter to be more likely, though I'm not sure if this means ferrying troops and supplies across in People's Maritime Militia boats, civilian freighters, or some combination of both.
As for the build up being noticed, I think that used to be true but following the training exercises following Pelosi's visit that may have changed. Now China can respond to American or Taipei provocations with large scale exercises and any build up would be hard to tell apart from an exercise until too late.
you can hide troop movements and build ups with exercises, ask Egypt about that, but you cant hide that more ships are being built
You *can * hide it, but it's going to be more expensive. Submarine construction is often hidden, back in the day whole battleships were built in secrecy (e.g. Yamato).
Personally, I find the latter to be more likely, though I’m not sure if this means ferrying troops and supplies across in People’s Maritime Militia boats, civilian freighters, or some combination of both.
If anything, it is interesting to think about what is in the plan(s) in some general's filing cabinet at PLA HQ for this sort of thing. Hopefully Taiwan and the rest of East Asia remain peaceful and are less tense in future decades than they are today so it never comes to that.
There's no duping involved, it's what the liberals already wanted. Moderates love seeing their enemies get weakened as long as they don't have to lift a finger themselves.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, which I was sure they weren't going to do, I don't trust my thoughts on things. The US said Russia was going to invade, they had better info than I did I guess, or were lucky. Now with Taiwan, I think there's no reason or chance that China will invade, but the US is saying they will. I have self doubt.
I think it's different in that for Ukraine, Putin absolutely wanted to invade and it was in line with factions of Russian policy, but no one thought he'd be dumb enough to do it right then, when he could have annexed the Donbas and carved Ukraine up piece by piece over a decade.
China has Geopolitical concerns with Taiwan, but there's no benefit to invading. They've got no political base there yet and no benefit to irredentist occupation as long as the status quo is maintained. China has everything to gain from keeping Taiwan open and trading and nominally a part of China while they work on turning the KMT to pro-unification over a few decades. Also Xi doesn't need to show himself as a strongman.
China has Geopolitical concerns with Taiwan, but there’s no benefit to invading. They’ve got no political base there yet and no benefit to irredentist occupation as long as the status quo is maintained.
I have an alternative take on this. While China's military and economic position vis Taiwan is only ever going to improve over time, waiting also gives the Cai regime time to try to erase existing political, social, and cultural links between Taiwan and China. There's already signs of this happening, a recent example being schools in Taiwan teaching "Taiwanese language" as opposed to "Chinese language". Even yanks only call English "American" as a joke.
There's also an unknown number of KMT loyalists who grew up in China and consider themselves Chinese. Some even say that if Chiang Kai Shek or Sun Zhong Shan were alive today they'd both seek reunification with China. As time wears on, these people die or retire and are replaced with people with no physical or historic links to the mainland.
Also, right now China seems to have penetrated the RoC military to an almost comical extent, so there's a bloc on the inside who would probably consider laying down arms rather than fighting fellow Chinese. Who knows if that'll still hold true in 20 years?
the material reality is no war but the liberal high ground is to be antagonizing for consumption because you don't want feel bad for consuming treats from a dictatorship
