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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.