Isn't this comparing, umm, apples and oranges? China doesn't want to lose Apple's business. China can't lose all business relationship with America (or maybe it can, but it will be extremely painful), which is what will likely happen if China invades Taiwan.
You are trying to look at it from a rational person point of view with your own biases, but the other side may think entirely differently. For instance, they may come to a conclusion that they have enough know how to go their own way. Feed some nationalist delusions, discouragement of critical thinking growing over the years and the nation may believe this is actually achievable. Then they may think the attack on Taiwan is just the right thing to do and if "imperialist America" does not like it, they can eat their Apple themselves. Etc.
If anything, such intertwining of economies may actually prevent countries willing to help the attacked side from doing anything apart from token gestures out of fear their supply chains get destroyed. After all why should they care about some island thousands miles away, whereas if they weren't in any way dependent they could have rushed to help.
Well I m in China myself so unlike the person you re replying to, it's not just a bias but my entire life depending on not invading Taiwan. Nobody here or in other cities I know wants to invade Taiwan: people think it's already Chinese anyway, and it's just a political disagreement (ofc in TW they think otherwise and I agree with them to an extent: they re a country but they built all their identity on being "the true China").
Our dependency on the US, but also Japan, India, the EU and to some extent the rest of the world is bound to force us to keep a slow grind rather than blatant violence. At least outside of China.
I know Russia disproved the theory: they were dependent on the EU and fuck it all up anyway but... Russia then proceeded to prove the disaster it is for the country, the people and even the war: you cant win territory easily by murdering blindly left and right your commercial partners and your cultural cousins and unlike what some may believe, even some past expansion had to be based on mutual interest to last.
Before 1949, the Republic of China controlled both mainland China and the island of Taiwan.
After the communist revolution, the government of the RoC retreated to Taiwan. The communists called their government the People's Republic of China.
Both the RoC and the PRC agree that mainland China and the island of Taiwan are "China", and they both agree that one government should be in control. They just disagree on which government that should be.
> Both the RoC and the PRC agree that mainland China and the island of Taiwan are "China", and they both agree that one government should be in control. They just disagree on which government that should be.
That’s not entirely true; the coalition led by the KMT in Taiwan agrees with the PRC on the One China issue, the (currently governing) DPP led coalition does not and views Taiwan as already independent and territorially distinct from the PRC, and does not accept the One China idea.
You are not really disagreeing with the GP. Your reply provides the context behind which parties are in disagreement in the GP’s last sentence which you quoted in your reply:
“They just disagree on which government that should be.”
GP claims: Both the RoC and the PRC agree that mainland China and the island of Taiwan are "China", and they both agree that one government should be in control. They just disagree on which government that should be. This is false. The PRC believes that, and the RoC, currently, does not.
In more detail, the RoC’s KMT/pan-Blue coalition agrees with the PRC that the two are one China but disagrees on which government should be in charge. But, while they governed the RoC exclusively before free elections and intermittently since, they aren’t the RoC or its currently governing faction.
The DPP/pan-Green coalition, which has been dominant for several years in the RoC disagrees with the KMT and PRC and sees the PRC and RoC as two separate, geographically distinct states.
If Russia will "collapse" economically (so far it hasn't, not really) it won't be just because their relations with Europe broke down, but because a united front that includes Europe, but also the US, Canada, Australia, and most of their allies has all decided to impose sanctions.
Yes but much of Russia’s exports are commodities, which are traded on a global market. If Russia loses Europe, they can find other buyers. They may have to adjust the price, but they will still be able to sell to somebody.
It’s different from China which is exporting far more finished goods. If America stops buying high end electronics from Chinese factories and starts buying from Vietnamese factories, then those exports just vanish from China’s economy. There is no backup America to buy the goods to keep the factories running.
The logic of the sanctions is that in the long term they prevent Russia from profitably exporting by denying them any imports to improve their productivity.
In simpler terms, how can you just switch to a different market when the pump to make the gaz is unavailable to you.
It becomes pretty hard to do business or build internation relationships when you assume that the other side will stop being rational at any point in time.
Imagine it from the other side of the table: would any country rely on US companies for their OS or business tools if tomorrow the US could start a war against them ?
That's a possibility that is never frown away, and any countries with enough resources will make efforts to mitigate it, but that can't be the base assumption behind the relationship.
Hah, funny you bring that issue up. When Trump was president, indeed other countries regarded the USA as having stopped being rational. I can’t even begin to tell you how bewildering it was to watch that shitshow from over the pond — let alone the storming of the capitol, and Trump not being declared an enemy of the people after. That was the lowest point in your history. There was just so much lost that day.
What’s worse, when he’ll inevitably be elected again, our trust in the US as a partner will be gone completely.
Not a trump supporter, but in both Russia and China he appears to have been spot on, where everyone else has been wrong. Remember his so called ties to Russia? He even warned Germany not be reliant on them for gas, while they snickered at him.
Will they also include the fact that it's extremely hard to execute a naval invasion without absolute air and sea superiority in that calculation? They would probably do worse than Russia did in Ukraine even without direct American involvement. China could only feasibly annex Taiwan peacefully (at least in the foreseable future)
The window for China to successfully execute an amphibious assault on Taiwan is closed.
It would be a cluserfuck of the highest order.
It would also be telegraphed years in advance just by the sheer number of troops and landing craft needed and they would not have air or naval superiority in any realistic scenario.
Taiwan is heavily defended.
Taiwan can be destroyed (nukes) but cannot be annexed by force in any realistic assessment of capability.
I think a naval blockade is most likely. If they block all ships in and out (except food), then the Taiwan economy will crumble. Taiwan will be forced to negotiate for a peaceful annexation. Also, they will take the islands very close to Fujian province on Day One. Just like Russia took Crimea. If the US military tries to interfere, China will threaten to nuke the US, so US military will back down. There will be a global depression for many reasons: (1) no chip exports from TSMC, (2) the whole industrialised world will try to decouple from China ASAP -- like Russia but with 100x economic impact.
To be clear: I don't like any of these scenarios, but this is my "real politik" view. None of it would be rational for Mainland China, but it is a dictatorship. Dictators don't play by the rules.
Love how you jump from a naval blockade of taiwan to threatening to nuke the US.
The US might not get involved in an all out war over Taiwan but they are likely to support Taiwan in case China attempts a blockade. The US frequently undertakes freedom of navigation drills and would most likely exercise such rights to circumvent China.
Now, will that escalate to a direct conflict is debatable but any genuine threats of nuking US would probably taken as a declaration of war.
Here is my reasoning for China threatening to use a nuclear bomb against the US. Imagine a series of events like this:
1. Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan
2. US will send navy + air force from Japan bases.
3. No shots fired between US and China (too risky due to both nuclear powers).
4. Optional: China may immediately claim sovereignty over Taiwan without negotiations with Taiwanese gov't.
5. China will declare that any attack on Chinese military (in the area) or military aid to Taiwan will be viewed as an "invasion" (whatever that term really means). Thus, China will declare that the use of nuclear weapons is valid to protect against invasion by US military.
6. This declaration will be interpreted by US as a nuclear threat.
7. China will refute this US claim.
8. Conclusion: US-China stalement with words only. China takes Taiwan.
To refine my earlier post, simply threatening to (nuclear) bomb / torpedo a US navy carrier strike group is enough. No need to threaten US territory. I'm not sure ICMBs from mainland China can reach mainland US, but they can certainly hit Hawai'i and other US posessions. Also, they have nuclear warheads on subs. I doubt they will work on first try, but the threat is great enough to force US to standdown.
Lastly, I don't like or support any of this, but, it is the most likely scenario.
Taiwan can't, but didn't I hear about one of their neighbours doing such a thing? Oh yeah... Australia. Funnily enough, the contract for the next-gen fleet they were building with France got cancelled and re-made with the US + UK, which is an interesting coincidence considering who the largest non-Chinese force in that region is.
About your last clause: <<which is an interesting coincidence considering who the largest non-Chinese force in that region is>>
I assume you are referring to the United States. Is the US military based in East Asia larger than Japan Self-Defence Forces? Honestly, I'm not sure. JSDF is much larger than most people realize. And to be clear, the UK has almost no presence in East Asia now. Every few years, they have a global tour, but nothing else.
And regarding the Australia submarine deal, France would only build diesel-electric subs. US+UK promised to help Australia build nuclear subs. To me, that is the #1 reason why Australia cancelled the France deal. I am sure they negotiated for months behind the scenes to upgrade to nuclear. When rejected, they announced the Ausuk deal.
In terms of largest number of people, sure the JSDF might be larger, but in terms of raw fire power, I don't think anything comes close to America. And it's not like America has just one or two bases in the region to project from.
I agree with your comment about "power projection". Yes, nothing compares to US in APAC. That said, I do think the technical prowess of JSDF Navy is under-rated. They have some very advanced equipment and have excellent integration with US forces. However, Mainland China is a serious counter-threat to US regional military dominance. Honestly, it is weird that China is investing so much in aircraft carriers. After the 2005 Swedish HSMS Gotland training incidents with a new US carrier, it was demonstrated that the era of _effective_ invicibility for carrier groups is over. It was already true, but less obvious, during the Falklands War with the Agentine carrier that was kept out of action by the mere _threat_ of highly advanced UK subs. Asymmetric warfare is the future. Mainland China should be investing more in asymmetric warfare (crouching tiger / samurai type of stuff: air/ocean/undersea drones, submarines, hypersonic missiles, etc.)
The more I look at it, the more the ancient siege seems more likely than an invasion.
China doesn't want to destroy Taiwan.
Plus, destroying non-Taiwanese vessels and planes trying to break the siege seems like it would be more palatable to Chinese leaders' domestic audience.
China seemed to do a dress rehearsal for this strategy a month or two ago.
The US would recreate the Berlin Airlift in that case. If China wants to shoot down US military cargo aircraft, well... they might as well have launched a full-scale invasion. It will cost them just as much.
That's not what they're going to do. They're going to lay thousands of smart mines. The US military ships will have to either spend weeks demining, shoot down Chinese mine-layers and fire the first shot, commit suicide, or give up.
I don't think you understand how modern naval mines work. In relatively shallow waters, bottom mines can be employed, which are not visible on sonar, and they use a variety of sensors so that it is incredibly difficult to trick them into detonating. Others burrow underground at higher depths still and then fire a torpedo at passing ships. So generally modern mines have to be disabled one-by-one, and without firing on Chinese forces, the Chinese would be laying more mines than the US Navy can disable. It will definitely take weeks if a path is ever completed.
Even fairly primitive mines in relatively smaller numbers (scarcely more than a thousand - China has at least 100,000) in the Iraq War were able to score a mission kill and a major hit on US ships. And that was without US ships actually docking in Iraq.
Do you know how long it took to sweep just over 1000 of those quite primitive mines in Iraq? Around 3 months.
If you look at the iPhone, China's contribution is basically only final assembly. The parts that are being assembled actually come from US/Japan/Korea/Taiwan - so it's not quite as straightforward as it seems.
PRC went from capturing $8 in final assembly fees on iphone3s to ~$100 / ~25% of BOM cost of iPhone X. More highend PRC components are making their way as well (hence YMTC about to get boot). PRC is also like 1/3 of semi market (400B), that's a lot of western semi R&D that industrial policy like 52B CHIPs act spread over multiple years isn't close to replacing.
Probably Russia has made the same calculation about Germany. The biggest economy in Europe entirely dependent on Russian energy. If their "special operation" actually lasted a couple of weeks as they promised (it's hard to believe Germany didn't know about this way in advance), it is unlikely Europe, under German leadership, would have done anything apart from token sanctions.
The contributing factor was of course the US and NATO projecting weakness after debacle in Afghanistan.
Putin high on his own delusions, surrounded by yes-men, thought that was the once in a lifetime opportunity to pounce.
If European economies weren't so dependent on Russian energy supplies, this war could probably have ended much quicker and thousands wouldn't have died needlessly.
> it's hard to believe Germany didn't know about this way in advance
Considering that their spy chief was caught "pants down" in Kyiv when invasion started [0] and had to be evacuated by special forces it is highly likely they had no clue. Unless of course they intentionally orchestrated the whole debacle to look like they didn't know, but that sounds more like a conspiracy theory...
Germany's the richest EU country and doesn't hesitate to throw its weight around to get things done their way which is why many refer to the EU as having a German leadership and it's why many other EU countries are unhappy as some German policies are highly unpopular at EU level (supporting illegal mass migration, anti-nuclear "green" stance while burning gas and coal, long term pro-Russian stance, etc.), as are their politicians at EU level like Ursula who have a track record of incompetence and corruption yet are still in power.
It still has way more influence than any other EU member and can push its internal agenda more easily.
And since it's also the biggest market in the EU, whatever quirky internal rules and regulations Germany has, get pretty much automatically carried out at EU level by any and all companies looking to do business in the EU.
We won't stop eating beef 3x a day even though we know it's literally destroying the world, we still buy diamonds mined by child slaves and clothes sewn by people making pennies per hour and even the sanctions against Russia carved out exceptions for everything the West really wanted/needed.
We didn't stop doing business with China for a genocide in Tibet, an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the brutality in Hong Kong or the human rights violations in current lockdowns.
If China invades Taiwan, we'll buy iPhones from them anyway and tweet that we don't like what they're doing. Maybe we'll send a few billion dollars to Lockheed and Raytheon to make some weapons for Taiwain, but we won't do anything that actually requires an American to give up the slightest bit of comfort.
An invasion of Taiwan would be a major disruption to global semiconductor industry even if we kept buying from China in the meantime because it would grind TSMC to a halt. There is no way we could switch manufacturing over to Samsung, or spin up fabs elsewhere for that volume of chips.
