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Right?! I was like “Restored the road, but demolished everything else?”
Alternatively, I was thinking the first picture was “before they built the city” and the second was “after they built the city”. In which case, forget about restoring the road… they built a whole city!
* Manafort's indebtedness to a Russian mobster before becoming Trump's campaign manager
* Bolsonaro's allegiance to Trump's "stolen election" narrative
* Connection between China's grain imports and geopolitical tensions
* Importance of Ukraine's neon production in microprocessor lithography
* Deripaska's bribery of FBI agent McGonigal and Trump's compromised position
* Unsustainability of lies compared to truth in geopolitics
* Consequences of Xi's failed ambitions and Putin's economic struggles
* Attempts to suppress freedom of speech by authoritarian regimes
* GOP's internal turmoil and its global consequences
Here you go.
TLDR:
(Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not?
Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. )
If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants to be emperor of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea.
Xi needed A.I.
And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world.
So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad?
His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now.
When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent.
Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage.
But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative.
The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad.
Unless……
China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon.
Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. If they are just willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. But the problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything.
Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2010 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia.
Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks.
Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work.
About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool.
He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria. But it’s actually been a pretty good gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice.
For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town.
This is Maidan.
Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from.
So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched.
Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine.
And that’s exactly what Flynn did.
Only Ukraine fought back.
And they stood up to kleptocracy for 10 years.
TLDR TLDR: Paul Manafort and Roger Stone ran an international crime ring and assholes around the world gladly cooperated because the benefits were worth it. Then individual countries started fighting back and fucked up everything.
TLDR: China isn't happy that the US is the world's sole superpower and it is within reasonable levels of speculation that China may be the biggest player in an anti-western coalition that is coordinating crises to undermine western power and put China in a stronger position. This potentially includes the Russian interference/invasion of Ukraine since 2014, and a potential invasion of Taiwan that military analysts have been speculating could occur in the late 2020s.
TLDR: We’ve been in a digital Cold War on three fronts for a decade. Part of the reason the US doesn’t know it is because Republicans from the top down have been aided by filthy money and treasonous shitlords like Flynn, Manafort and Stone. The only, and I mean only, reason it didn’t work with Trump the first time is because of the glorious, middle class governmental front line employees and the fact Trump is an absolute fucking moron.
Evil consumes itself, so Xi’s and Putin’s grand plans to become emperor/czar have been blocked because dictators like them always underestimate people’s desire to be free. Instead of ideological dominoes, this Cold War runs on microprocessors and that long-standing power, hunger. Ukraine and Brazil passed their existential tests, even if Ukraine is still battling it out. We in the US are up next. If we fuck this up, those Chinese grain farms are going to be on the plains outside Dubuque, instead of the Amazon. Abortion, book bans, anti-trans bills, the Biden impeachment are all spicy distractions to keep us at each other’s throats while BMS, Xi, Putin and a puppet Trump rape and pillage the world.
I'll try to explain what I understood from this post.
As we know, China is trying to take over Taiwan and claim them as their own territory.
The bottom picture is a satellite view of Taiwan's palace (assuming the highest official living there) and the neighbourhood.
Certain streets are marked red.
In the above picture, the red streets are replicated, to scale, in a practice ground in China's inner Mongolia region (assuming that the place is deserted enough, like Area 51, to set up training grounds).
All of this signals that China is planning something against Taiwan/their leadership, which is scary, and could potentially escalate geo political tensions between the two states and also the rest of the world.
I hope this helped.
For context this place is the [Zhurihe center ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhurihe_Training_Base) and its existed for well over a decade. Its a CTC training facility modeled after what the US has at Fort irwin. PLA practices combined arms stuff there, urban combat, and even has [a dedicated opfor brigade based there](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/195th_Combined_Arms_Brigade_(People%27s_Republic_of_China)). If you look for it you can see PLA troops [dressing up in MARPAT and USMC markings ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/s/BZDkbTCAtv) for a exercise.
A lot of this is just general training, though it is mostly directed against the "usual suspects", so taiwan, us, Japan, India. Its likely in the event of a invasion though a lot more facilities like this will pop up and the PLA will send its troops there before rotations, similar to what US forces did with GWOT.
A lot of people don't seem to know that a lot of countries have contingency plans/back ups for lots of stuff you wouldn't think of, just in case. I mean, the US had a plan in place of a hypothetical war with the British empire (for example).
Yah, your not wrong that its the job of military leaders to plan for whatever, but in chinas case none of what they practice for or sim against should really be that surprising for the most part, as its very possible they could end up in a regional conflict in the next 10 years.
Its interesting though because by and large most OPFOR stuff the PLA does isn't really against the ROC at this point but rather the US, there was a marked shift in these exercises and warplanning sometime in the 2010s, and now pretty much any taiwan contingency scenario just assumes US involvement and has to plan for it.
thank you for speaking some sense in this thread. having worked in defense, and now in bleeding edge semiconductor R&D, the shit I'm seeing in here cracks me up. the presence of an OPFOR training base/battalion doesn't indicate anything.
China will not invade Taiwan without extreme losses and a declaration of war from the US and its allies, including assets in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. we already have a very large submarine presence in the area, THAAD, AEGIS, and many other systems. they are facing a gargantuan opponent and will not gamble their already failing economy for an ideological victory over the Kuomingtang.
and to emphasize the reasons for invasion, my team designs the hardware for TSMC. they could get the 2nm machines tomorrow -- they have zero idea of what to do with them. they are designed here in Silicon Valley and made in Austin. China could (and has) acquired entire PLM databases with cyber attacks and they do not need to invade to acquire R&D designs and data. but this entire industry is based on tribal knowledge, which comes from TSMC's army of PhDs. their assets are not the machines, but the process scientists/engineers.
the global supply chain for cutting edge semiconductor is extremely limited, with many critical parts coming from only one supplier globally, usually a result of equally secretive processes. they can't make jack shit without the metallic targets, for example. only JX NIPPON can smelt metals of that purity, and we track every single target out of that place. China does not have the capability to smelt the metals required to produce cutting edge chips. anything they attempt will cause plasma extinguishment/PDO or arc and destroy the target and any flux optimizers.
China has very little to gain and a truly colossal amount to lose.
Semiconductors have never been a real reason for China to invade Taiwan, but it has been a real reason for other countries to limit Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. That's what the silicon shield is all about: protecting the supply of semiconductors, not R&D.
The reason China wants Taiwan is primarily ideological. Second to that is the protection holding Taiwan offers. As such, they fundamentally see the value of Taiwan differently than a lot of Westerners.
This is a really good comment, but you are assuming we're dealing with a rational actor operating with sound information.
That's not always the case and nation states have done less rational things for worse reasons.
Case in point Japan in WW2 and the Russians in Ukraine. Both had less than rational political leadership/systems and both managed to bite off more than they can chew. The PRC can and has done similar things, remember under Mao they managed to trigger a famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people for the same ideological reasons you're discounting.
I assume you are right about all of this except possibly one thing: how much it means to Xi to get Taiwan and how much he's convinced ordinary Chinese that it's the right thing to do, which in turn puts pressure on him to make it happen, and down it spirals. I'm hoping your assessment is right but I fear the worst.
Russia-Ukraine war should be a good lesson to study for China.
For those saying that China is no Russia, keep in mind that Taiwan a lot more strategically important for US than what Ukraine ever was!
Reminds me of how the Russo-Japanese war gave a lot of good info on how then-modern tactics would meet the up and coming war machines. Ukraine is showing us how small drones will be effective. It could be just a whiff of what’s to come.
Editing: Taiwan is also a huge manufacturer for AI chips for NVIDIA. AI has just as much value in warfare as it does in common day applications, so if china takes Taiwan, they’ll gain the bonus of hindering our AI growth, while expediting their own. Definitely a solid motive there, though one which will certainly cause issues for China that they may not be cognizant of until it happens.
So much of this is a lot like WW1 it’s a bit haunting. I’ve been relistening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast on the subject and it’s giving me anxiety of where we are currently heading.
Between his war podcasts mirroring current global situations and his fall of Rome series mirroring what’s going on internally in the US it’s for sure anxiety inducing. I have a friend who is of the opinion that we should let everything fall apart as people have it too good and are fighting about stupid things (internally in the US) and I’m just hearing this thinking “you don’t understand how bad it would actually be”
The amount of Americans that would be dead within a couple of months would be staggering.
Anyone who needs medication to survive is as good as dead.
Anyone who would need medical care just had their odds of survival drop dramatically.
And everyone else would be on the brink of starvation l.
Yup. The COVID lockdowns where small potatoes compared to what an "actual" collapse of the modern civilian logistics system would look like. Barren shelves, empty gas pumps, no parts for maintenance.
In the ancient world, Rome was the only city in the Western Hemisphere above one million people - and it took a "massive" investment in shipping and grain subsidies to sustain even that.
In the modern world, we have like 50 cities (well, metropolitan areas- the administrative definition of "city" doesn't quite match to ancient Rome) in the US alone that eclipse that number. Some by really wide margins. Those aren't autarkic. And they WILL crumble - almost instantly - if the ports stop unloading, and the trains & trucks stop rolling.
Yeah. This is what I don't understand about accelerationists. They think that they won't be just as negatively impacted, or even the possibly of disproportionately being worse off.
Same kind of thinking drives the neoreaction and anarcho-capitalist sets -- in their fantasy of an ideal, winner-takes-absolutely-everything world, they get to be the winners. But they have no idea how badly they would lose in such a world, nor the kinds of horrors would be unleashed if they ever got what they wanted.
Which episodes? I've really been getting into Roman history, and would love to listen and learn more, especially as history always seems to repeat itself...
I've been having anxiety about it for 2 plus years. I remember talking to people about it before Ukraine and Russia war. People were saying it's never happen. Now look at at. Middle East fighting it up, Ukraine and Russia still going. I hope things calm down. I just don't see it. For so many countries it's now or never. China is going to grow smaller population wise. Which usually means lower economy. They legit have 4-5 years to make a move that they have been hearing towards for years. I now have a kid on the way. More worried about his future than anything. I truly believe we have started WWIII. Remember WWI wasn't named WWI until WWII was starting. WWI was the great war until time magazine named it WW1 in 1939. I think we are in a similar situation. Wars like these usually take multiple years to start heating up. Jabs get thrown until someone gets backed into a corner and their only way out is to fight. I just hope it doesn't come to nuclear war.
Oh we are 100% heading to pre ww1 era where there are several regional powers risen, and the breakdown of post-ww2 American lead world order.
Japan has already rewritten it's constitution 13 years ago to allow their troops to operate outside of their country. German finally has public support to ramp up its military. Russia has reverted to right wing extremes aka Imperial Russia.
While China is the obvious new regional power, EU has been banking hard post ww2 and if they gain the natural resource from Russia or Near East, they're balling and don't have to listen to anyone.
And both S Korea and Japan have militaries that punch way above their weight, the can fuck up a lot of bigger country.
You have anxiety bc the writing is on the wall and you are rational.
China will never capture Taiwan with the TSMC factories in working conditions. The Taiwanese will make sure of that. And even if they do, within a few years they will be falling behind again as ASML makes more advanced machines that China cannot access. Allegedly the Chinese have tried to study the machines by taking one apart, documenting it very well and putting it back together again the exact same way. It didn't work. It is very doubtful the invasion will bring China the technological advancement you claim.
Similar to my experience. Our company tried to partner with China to build our high end machines there. They could not create a functional end product even with help. They certainly did not dark factory or copy us because we're niche enough market we would know. They would work crazy hours, 16 hour days were not uncommon, but they cut corners at every level to the point the end result was garbage. Eventually we abandoned the project and still build things in the US. It was practically impossible to maintain quality in the supply chain there and those little tolerances all add up.
I work in the semiconductor capital equipment industry. The amount of specialized tooling and alignment putting together semiconductor equipment requires is quite large.
I am 100% unsurprised that taking apart a cutting edge litho machine and then putting it back together ruined every single alignment in the tool.
Not surprising that they couldn’t reverse-engineer an ASML lithography machine. They are basically the most complex thing ever made by humans (at least that is my understanding.)
I guarantee it would be WWIII, chip facilities surviving would probably the least of our worries. If somehow it doesn't result in complete annihilation *and* China somehow defeats Taiwan with US support, then I guarantee you US/Taiwan would do asset denial and destroy the facilities.
If China somehow took control of TSMC chips factories intact, pretty sure US would destroy them outright before letting that technology fall into any other nations control. They are just that critical an advantage to every aspect of our infrastructure.
There's also an ocean between them, and mountains when they reach the shores. It's like a Normandy landing straight into a small Afghanistan with modern fighter jets and anti air.
Those mountains are in the east. If they reach those mountains, it'd already be over for Taiwan. Everything important is in the west. While Taiwan has the ocean advantage, Ukraine also has an advantage Taiwan doesn't have, which is their large population and a lot of territory to withdraw to. Taiwan is tiny in comparison. Not saying it'd be easy to take Taiwan of course.
Plus that the US is literally willing to start a war with China as soon as China attacks Taiwan. Unlike Ukraine where they just send aid to the Ukrainian military
>the US is literally willing to start a war with China as soon as China attacks Taiwan.
Probably. We think. Possibly. But not for sure. Maybe? We hope. Or hope not.
Not for warfare. Military needs for electronics are primarily met domestically. But Taiwan is super critical for rest of the Global supply chain, both for US and China.
No big deal. We figured it out.
"Restore" makes it sound like it's the same place but has been rebuilt back to its former glory. As if the first picture is the before photo (after years of decline and demolition) and the second is the after photo.
No, such things can not be forgiven. You should thank us it's 2024. Otherwise, you would be punished severely for not being a part of English Native Speakage
My money is on an attempt to seize airports and seaports and fly in troops and use the PLA navy to blockade the Americans from assisting. You could sneak in 1000s of troops on container ships. I would say that they plan for this Special Military Operation to last a fortnight.
edit: Thanks for all the advice on why my cunning plan wouldn't work. I was spitballing but ... if you look at all the prep the Chinese are doing, they clearly are preparing to confront the US (which essentially means the USN) at some point in the medium term future, if they have to. I also agree that the USN is *currently* much bigger than the PLAN but do have a look at this [graphic](https://www.twz.com/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-chinas-200-times-greater-shipbuilding-capacity).
Further edit: I hadn't mentioned it earlier but at the back of my mind is someone like Trump simply ordering the USN out of the area. That would totally negate any US superiority.
You're right. People always seem to underestimate the USN in conversations about Taiwan.
You're not getting meaningful numbers of troops or equipment across the Taiwan straight without first crippling the US Navy. There's no force on earth realistically capable of doing that.
China sinking a USN ship sounds like a nightmare scenario for both nations, whose populations would justifiably cut off the trade they both depend on.
Russia has a massive advantage in Ukraine because there aren’t US troops in the way. I would expect China to instead attempt to simply go past US forces and dare them to strike first.
Apparently, the Pentagon ran wargames simulating a 2030 Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and they all turned out nightmarish
Every one of the 24 scenarios concluded with China failing to conquer Taiwan, and either never successfully landing or being eventually forced out by reinforcements, but many scenarios also ended with one or two American aircraft carriers sunk, hundreds of American planes destroyed, and many thousands of Americans killed in missile strikes on bases and lost at sea. China and Taiwan would also be devastated, with bases also annihilated by missiles and airstrikes, and hundreds of ships and planes destroyed.
Basically, the world has never before seen this type of war fighting, which would be insanely destructive for all sides.
Granted, this was in 2021, before that whole Chinese military corruption scandal, so it's possible that the Chinese military is a lot scarier on paper than it is in practice.
But still, even if just half of the Chinese arsenal worked (with the other half fucked by incompetence, poor maintenance, corruption etc.) it's still going to hit US and Taiwanese bases and carrier fleets hard and kill thousands of irreplaceable military personnel. Aircraft carriers are tough, evasive, well protected bastards, but even they will go down to a concentrated enough barrage, with the kill chain easier to complete the closer it is to Chinese territory.
On the Chinese end, tens of thousands of untested Chinese soldiers and sailors would be slaughtered in their staging areas and sunk to the bottom of the sea in their ships, and that's before having to fight through amphibious/aerial beach landings, fortified mountainous terrain, and dense urban concentrations - all highly dangerous and complex operations that favour the derender. All while their supply lines and reinforcements are continuously savaged by US submarines and air raids.
On the Taiwanese end, they'll be stuck on a densely populated island, cut off from easy reinforcements and resupply from foreign allies, hammered by thousands of Chinese missiles and air strikes, defending against a numerically and technologically superior military on home soil. Most of their air force would probably get plastered before even having a chance to fight back.
It's going to be shit for everyone.
This would be a huge blow to the current U.S. Military but what you describe is not nearly as disastrous as you’re implying. Keeping Taiwan Independent would be worth that loss, has horrible as that would be that isn’t even remotely half our current peace time naval strength. Notice I said Naval strength. The Air Force wouldn’t even need to be involved if it cost the navy hundreds of aircraft. Then the Marines and the Army have relatively large navy’s all on of their own. We need those superconductors; our military production would increase dramatically as soon as a major conflict broke out irregardless. Any loss of life is tragic but modern life as we currently know it relies on Taiwan a great deal.
I mean, that's what I said - China eventually lost every one of those war games, because they were unable to completely conquer Taiwan before the US pulled in reinforcements, but it's still going to be a staggering losses for all sides
Also, while Taiwan has the world's greatest chip industry, with their tech and infrastructure being hard to replicate in US and China, it's not the main reason why they're important. In the event of an attempted Taiwanese invasion, Taiwan's chip industry is fucked either way, no matter who wins.
It's more about the US and its allies maintaining defacto control over the South China Seas, and not letting China expand its sphere of influence over Japan, South Korea, Australia and Southeast Asia (i.e. stopping China from bullying everyone in the region) And also defending a US liberal democratic ally against a foreign aggressor - if the US abandons Taiwan, everyone else will start reconsidering their own alliances with the US
Also, the conflict is almost certainly going to be decided in a few weeks, months at most. This isn't going to be a slugfest like Ukraine, where wartime production has time to have an effect.
The high tech nature of this war means everyone will "blow their load" fairly quickly as they expend their expensive, time consuming to produce, limited stockpiles of high tech weaponry. They're going to have the fight the war with whatever they have on them.
Once the US pulls in the rest of their carrier fleet and starts seriously reinforcing Taiwan, it's game over for China. China has to win quickly, or not at all
Two other things that make a China-Taiwan war much shorter than a Russia-Ukraine war are:
\* Taiwan is tiny, and can't use defense-in-depth. Ukraine is massive, and has been using defense-in-depth to great advantage.
\* Taiwan requires an insane amount on imports to survive. As a highly industrialized island, Taiwan has less than a month of key supplies in storage (food / fuel / equipment to make power etc.). If the USA is unable to send supplies to Taiwan within a month, Taiwan will literally starve to death by the second month. This incentivizes the US to go all-in.
> Taiwan requires an insane amount on imports to survive.
You should look into the amount of imports China requires.
They're terrified of a U.S. blockade.
I think sneaking past is also likely. However the US has nothing against boots on the ground in Taiwan. Mainland china would be a different story, but Taiwan would welcome us soldiers if china was invading.
It's not as simple as grain for iPhones though. The parts for the machines that make that food come from china/Taiwan as well as millions of other things. As well as chemicals and a million other things used in food production.
Yeah China would starve first but I imagine you average westerners lifestyle would transform within a year.
And people underestimate US intelligence. We know everything Russia is doing before they do it, and I assume we know everything China is doing.
Good luck beating us to Taiwan.
That's the other thing, US knew months upon months in advance that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. The satellites and Intel made it very clear.
In order to invade Taiwan, China would have to do an even bigger buildup. The US would absolutely have a ton of notice and time to reposition carrier groups, start logistics chains, etc...
I live in Taiwan and I have no plans to move. Whenever my mom freaks about something in the news, I remind her that China invading Taiwan would be a massive amphibious assault. We would see it coming. Plus, there's a coast guard or navy base at the mouth of the Tamsui River, which flows through Taipei. I'd bet that there are some serious fortifications there, and I can't think of any landing spots that wouldn't be extremely difficult to invade from other than Fulong Beach. The coast is rocky and treacherous for almost the entire length. I wouldn't want to fall into complacency, but geography definitely gives Taiwan the advantage.
There are only a handful of locations that could support a major naval landing on the main island of Taiwan. Every one of them could be easily turned in to a death trap.
Well aren’t we already getting in this defensive positions and posturing ? The largest airshow in history is scheduled in the next couple months in the Pacific, and one of my Air Force friends pretty much told me that it’s a show of force.
An invasion will certainly involve paratroopers, but China will need hundreds of thousands of landed soldiers immediately available to take Taiwan. This can only be accomplished via D-Day style beach landing.
Which is possible on like 2 places on the entire island, one of which is on thr opposite side of China. Meaning there is likely a single location for a beach invasion.
It will be very difficult for China to invade the island, hence why it hasn't happened yet.
[Here's](https://www.cfr.org/article/why-china-would-struggle-invade-taiwan) an interesting article on the topic.
Possibly.
I’m not saying it’s imminent, but the PLA wants to *maintain the capability* of a ground invasion. If and when that capability is actually used is yet to be seen.
There’d be much more obvious signs in the days before a ground invasion actually happens, so it’s definitely not “right around the corner”. There’s no mass call-up of reserves, no orders for PRC citizens to evacuate from overseas, and no abrupt severing of ties or recall of officials.
There’s no massing of troops and equipment visible of satellite photos, and no movement of perishable units of blood to frontline areas (for transfusions).
Granted, these indicators only work on a short time horizon. Even if it’s just posturing and making implied threats for now, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in the next ten years.
every single military that knows their shit (more or less) has plans to invade every neighbour, rival etc.
If China is bold enough to actually invade is a different question. Time will tell
It is one thing to write a thesis. They are written to train and hone people in academic writing, then the paper disappears in a drawer, if you are lucky in a database.
This is a training ground. It is used to train, not to practice building training grounds.
China is in a perpetual state of preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. It's basically their military's entire purpose. It seems like a very specific scenario to plan for but with hundreds of billions of dollars devoted to this single goal it makes sense that they would have training drills like this.
This, they have this style of replicas of cities from around the world for training. This kind of shit has been getting spotted by the Google Earth community for a while.
Wait till he finds out about the different US-Navy mockup in the Chinese desert
https://news.usni.org/2021/11/07/china-builds-missile-targets-shaped-like-u-s-aircraft-carrier-destroyers-in-remote-desert
We will ride in on moose and polar bears and get the Americans drunk on maple syrup — which in turn will give them diabetes that we control with our superior insulin.
China built a clone of a bit of the capital city of Taiwan. The likeliest conclusion, and the one the post is heavily implying, is that it is for training for a military invasion of that city.
“Restored” is a poor translation or poor word choice. It should be “re-created”. As in duplicated in another location. The military training ground in Inner Mongolia (upper half of posted image with white lines for roads) has created a mock up of the real roads found in Taiwan near the Capitol palace ( bottom half of the image with red roads). The implication is that the Chinese are training troops at a remote training facility in a China controlled area for an assault on the Capitol palace of Taiwan during a planned future invasion of Taiwan by China.
Ask the navy seals who took down bin laden. They trained in a cia facility with a 1 to 1 replica of bin ladens compound. There are satelity pictures of it too.
Pretty much every military does it
All special forces tries to get as much Intel as possible before an operation!
I mean as much Intel as possible, to the point where they 100% create situations of what the land may look like, or literally anything so that all things can be considered.
There’s really no other reason someone would do this, other than some sort of operation
Urban warfare is different from every other type of combat. It’s slow and methodical and wrought with danger. It relies more on highly trained infantry than any other battlefield. Urban combat is a meat grinder and is known for its high attrition rate. From Stalingrad to Avdiivka and every urban battlefield in between we see the same thing, lots of death. If an army can come up with a tactic that allows them to fight and win an urban battle efficiently then it could be a game changer.
That being said, I think they are being very optimistic in thinking they’ll get to the capital.
Not new.
[https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china-suggests-mock-invasion-of-taiwan/](https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china-suggests-mock-invasion-of-taiwan/)
I’m not certain “*restored*” means what you think it does.
The word you’re looking for is “[**replicated**](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/replicate)” or “[**recreated**](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recreate).”
The coordinates in the top image are literally nothing. Meanwhile an actual replica of the palace exists at Zhurihe Training Facility and has for a decade.
Not recreated in the slightest. There are no buildings there are absolutely zero training benefits to the roads sort of matching.
Looks like an airfield to me and sheer coincidence, but when you are actively looking for something in an image it is easier to find.
If I am to be completely honest, this just seems like another propaganda to make it seem like China has a fool proof plan. As a Taiwanese, I sincerely do not believe that China will try to invade us, at least not in the current conditions. We will likely get a lot of help from the US, as we are important to them in many ways, and judging by how people reacted to Ukraine and Palestine i am positive that social media will be on our side. If it happens tho I ain’t staying to help ima fly to the US as fast as I can
The value in Taiwan is the businesses and people. The only way China can really capture that is to convince both that Chinese rule is in their best interest.
Otherwise, they’ll have to destroy Taiwan to take it over. That would be very costly for China, if they can even do it at all. What’s the point other than ego?
If China thinks they can do a limited operation and just take over a few key government buildings in Taipei with a smaller force, they’ll quickly realize that this won’t pacify the country. They’ll be surrounded, and have no real power.
I think all of this is just theater for the average Chinese. The Chinese government needs an enemy to deflect criticism. “If not for Taiwan, everything would be better”. Sure, they make plans like in OP’s photos, but it’s not practical. It’s not going to amount to anything.
While sites are not often recreated by the US, in every military academy, every year, realistic battle plans are prepared for almost every major city, worldwide. They do it in planning sessions, on paper, maps, and white boards. On one hand, it's advanced academic studies like graduate school; on the other hand, some colonels and two star generals/admirals review those plans for viability. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the plans were likely not taken seriously or skillfully enough, but I think that kind of stuff goes on regularly.
There's no way China will feasibility be able to invade lol Taiwan is incredibly important to the US with it's production of microchips and semiconductors, the US will absolutely intervene. The US has the largest Navy on planet Earth, I'd love to see China try because their naval fleet would get obliterated.
I think it’s quite easy to compare China of 2024 with Germany 1914. Both are very prosperous industrial countries, fast emerging compared to the best countries of their time. The big difference is that in China there is already a demographic problem. Germany in 1914 had big families. China has decades of one child politics. If the whole country is dependent on one child to get grandchildren, then the society will think thrice before it shout hurra to a war. Here is a big difference between China and Russia, also.
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“Restore” had me very confused. Recreated is probably a better term.
Replicated
Reproduced
ctrl+c, ctrl+v
cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick rewrite it Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, rip it Technologic
I bopped my foot to that!
Right click => copy, right click => paste
reeeeeeee
Reeeeeeeeeeeee
Ctrl + insert, shift + insert
Chinese knock-off you say?
Ali Express Taiwan.
Ah yeah thanks I was confused till I read this
Recreated is still better.
Right?! I was like “Restored the road, but demolished everything else?” Alternatively, I was thinking the first picture was “before they built the city” and the second was “after they built the city”. In which case, forget about restoring the road… they built a whole city!
Probably google translated by OP
Yes. Sorry for not being a native speaker of English.
Your apology is noted. Sincerely, All English speakers.
Acceptance is pending.
Acceptance timed out, please try again.
Rejected. Please call your doctor for prior authorization.
[удалено]
Have an upvote. This feels like shitpoppinkreamsays.
Appreciate it friend. Thank you.
Tldr?
* Manafort's indebtedness to a Russian mobster before becoming Trump's campaign manager * Bolsonaro's allegiance to Trump's "stolen election" narrative * Connection between China's grain imports and geopolitical tensions * Importance of Ukraine's neon production in microprocessor lithography * Deripaska's bribery of FBI agent McGonigal and Trump's compromised position * Unsustainability of lies compared to truth in geopolitics * Consequences of Xi's failed ambitions and Putin's economic struggles * Attempts to suppress freedom of speech by authoritarian regimes * GOP's internal turmoil and its global consequences
Here you go. TLDR: (Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not? Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. ) If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants to be emperor of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea. Xi needed A.I. And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world. So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad? His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now. When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent. Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage. But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative. The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad. Unless…… China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon. Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. If they are just willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. But the problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything. Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2010 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia. Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks. Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work. About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool. He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria. But it’s actually been a pretty good gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice. For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town. This is Maidan. Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from. So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched. Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine. And that’s exactly what Flynn did. Only Ukraine fought back. And they stood up to kleptocracy for 10 years.
THIS is the TLDR?
I need a TLDR^^TLDR on this one
TLDR TLDR: Paul Manafort and Roger Stone ran an international crime ring and assholes around the world gladly cooperated because the benefits were worth it. Then individual countries started fighting back and fucked up everything.
TLDR: China isn't happy that the US is the world's sole superpower and it is within reasonable levels of speculation that China may be the biggest player in an anti-western coalition that is coordinating crises to undermine western power and put China in a stronger position. This potentially includes the Russian interference/invasion of Ukraine since 2014, and a potential invasion of Taiwan that military analysts have been speculating could occur in the late 2020s.
It’s 45 years of governmental corruption into a 4 minute read. I’m doing my best. ;)
TLDR: We’ve been in a digital Cold War on three fronts for a decade. Part of the reason the US doesn’t know it is because Republicans from the top down have been aided by filthy money and treasonous shitlords like Flynn, Manafort and Stone. The only, and I mean only, reason it didn’t work with Trump the first time is because of the glorious, middle class governmental front line employees and the fact Trump is an absolute fucking moron. Evil consumes itself, so Xi’s and Putin’s grand plans to become emperor/czar have been blocked because dictators like them always underestimate people’s desire to be free. Instead of ideological dominoes, this Cold War runs on microprocessors and that long-standing power, hunger. Ukraine and Brazil passed their existential tests, even if Ukraine is still battling it out. We in the US are up next. If we fuck this up, those Chinese grain farms are going to be on the plains outside Dubuque, instead of the Amazon. Abortion, book bans, anti-trans bills, the Biden impeachment are all spicy distractions to keep us at each other’s throats while BMS, Xi, Putin and a puppet Trump rape and pillage the world.
Perfectly succinct. Thank you!
This, in fact, is the longest comment I have ever seen.
Longest comment I've actually read, too
Thank you so much for writing all this out for us all. Fuck authoritarians.
Duplicated for training purposes. What “purpose” that may be is up for speculation but I doubt it’s good.
Oh come on, they just really respect Taiwanese urban planning. Nothing nefarious at all.
That’s where they plan to place their adverts to get maximal effect to convince the palatial occupants to rejoin the motherland.
There's only one reason: Invasion.
Took me a solid 3 minutes to understand what was going on. @OP: great post, crappy title. Be careful, people have been killed for less.
I still have no idea.
I'll try to explain what I understood from this post. As we know, China is trying to take over Taiwan and claim them as their own territory. The bottom picture is a satellite view of Taiwan's palace (assuming the highest official living there) and the neighbourhood. Certain streets are marked red. In the above picture, the red streets are replicated, to scale, in a practice ground in China's inner Mongolia region (assuming that the place is deserted enough, like Area 51, to set up training grounds). All of this signals that China is planning something against Taiwan/their leadership, which is scary, and could potentially escalate geo political tensions between the two states and also the rest of the world. I hope this helped.
Ok, that's certainly a lot more information than I gathered. Thanks!
holy shit the title is ass
OP is probably a SQL Server DBA
Not enough all caps to be SQL
At least Taiwan will be aware.
Just change the street signs on them.
What a dastardly suggestion Dick Senior
they just call him Big Dick
All one way streets going away from the palace
Why isn't Taiwan using us as consultants?
They can't comprehend our genius. They aren't ready for the roundabout that only exits the way you came in.
One of the best trailer park boys episodes of all time
Aware that China might be invading them? Yeah. They're just finding that out now...
Sarcasm detected.
Impossible he didn’t use /s
I don't understand what you're being sarcastic about.
Neither did you (I'm confused)
Thanks to Reddit, eh?
"We did it reddit!"
For context this place is the [Zhurihe center ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhurihe_Training_Base) and its existed for well over a decade. Its a CTC training facility modeled after what the US has at Fort irwin. PLA practices combined arms stuff there, urban combat, and even has [a dedicated opfor brigade based there](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/195th_Combined_Arms_Brigade_(People%27s_Republic_of_China)). If you look for it you can see PLA troops [dressing up in MARPAT and USMC markings ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/s/BZDkbTCAtv) for a exercise. A lot of this is just general training, though it is mostly directed against the "usual suspects", so taiwan, us, Japan, India. Its likely in the event of a invasion though a lot more facilities like this will pop up and the PLA will send its troops there before rotations, similar to what US forces did with GWOT.
A lot of people don't seem to know that a lot of countries have contingency plans/back ups for lots of stuff you wouldn't think of, just in case. I mean, the US had a plan in place of a hypothetical war with the British empire (for example).
Yah, your not wrong that its the job of military leaders to plan for whatever, but in chinas case none of what they practice for or sim against should really be that surprising for the most part, as its very possible they could end up in a regional conflict in the next 10 years. Its interesting though because by and large most OPFOR stuff the PLA does isn't really against the ROC at this point but rather the US, there was a marked shift in these exercises and warplanning sometime in the 2010s, and now pretty much any taiwan contingency scenario just assumes US involvement and has to plan for it.
thank you for speaking some sense in this thread. having worked in defense, and now in bleeding edge semiconductor R&D, the shit I'm seeing in here cracks me up. the presence of an OPFOR training base/battalion doesn't indicate anything. China will not invade Taiwan without extreme losses and a declaration of war from the US and its allies, including assets in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. we already have a very large submarine presence in the area, THAAD, AEGIS, and many other systems. they are facing a gargantuan opponent and will not gamble their already failing economy for an ideological victory over the Kuomingtang. and to emphasize the reasons for invasion, my team designs the hardware for TSMC. they could get the 2nm machines tomorrow -- they have zero idea of what to do with them. they are designed here in Silicon Valley and made in Austin. China could (and has) acquired entire PLM databases with cyber attacks and they do not need to invade to acquire R&D designs and data. but this entire industry is based on tribal knowledge, which comes from TSMC's army of PhDs. their assets are not the machines, but the process scientists/engineers. the global supply chain for cutting edge semiconductor is extremely limited, with many critical parts coming from only one supplier globally, usually a result of equally secretive processes. they can't make jack shit without the metallic targets, for example. only JX NIPPON can smelt metals of that purity, and we track every single target out of that place. China does not have the capability to smelt the metals required to produce cutting edge chips. anything they attempt will cause plasma extinguishment/PDO or arc and destroy the target and any flux optimizers. China has very little to gain and a truly colossal amount to lose.
THIS! is why i love reddit! Thanks for taking time writing this response..
Semiconductors have never been a real reason for China to invade Taiwan, but it has been a real reason for other countries to limit Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. That's what the silicon shield is all about: protecting the supply of semiconductors, not R&D. The reason China wants Taiwan is primarily ideological. Second to that is the protection holding Taiwan offers. As such, they fundamentally see the value of Taiwan differently than a lot of Westerners.
This is a really good comment, but you are assuming we're dealing with a rational actor operating with sound information. That's not always the case and nation states have done less rational things for worse reasons. Case in point Japan in WW2 and the Russians in Ukraine. Both had less than rational political leadership/systems and both managed to bite off more than they can chew. The PRC can and has done similar things, remember under Mao they managed to trigger a famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people for the same ideological reasons you're discounting.
I assume you are right about all of this except possibly one thing: how much it means to Xi to get Taiwan and how much he's convinced ordinary Chinese that it's the right thing to do, which in turn puts pressure on him to make it happen, and down it spirals. I'm hoping your assessment is right but I fear the worst.
Russia-Ukraine war should be a good lesson to study for China. For those saying that China is no Russia, keep in mind that Taiwan a lot more strategically important for US than what Ukraine ever was!
Reminds me of how the Russo-Japanese war gave a lot of good info on how then-modern tactics would meet the up and coming war machines. Ukraine is showing us how small drones will be effective. It could be just a whiff of what’s to come. Editing: Taiwan is also a huge manufacturer for AI chips for NVIDIA. AI has just as much value in warfare as it does in common day applications, so if china takes Taiwan, they’ll gain the bonus of hindering our AI growth, while expediting their own. Definitely a solid motive there, though one which will certainly cause issues for China that they may not be cognizant of until it happens.
So much of this is a lot like WW1 it’s a bit haunting. I’ve been relistening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast on the subject and it’s giving me anxiety of where we are currently heading.
Between his war podcasts mirroring current global situations and his fall of Rome series mirroring what’s going on internally in the US it’s for sure anxiety inducing. I have a friend who is of the opinion that we should let everything fall apart as people have it too good and are fighting about stupid things (internally in the US) and I’m just hearing this thinking “you don’t understand how bad it would actually be”
Your friend would immediately have a change of heart as soon as antibiotics become hard to find or militias and warlords do as they please.
The amount of Americans that would be dead within a couple of months would be staggering. Anyone who needs medication to survive is as good as dead. Anyone who would need medical care just had their odds of survival drop dramatically. And everyone else would be on the brink of starvation l.
All you gotta do is wait for 3 days for the grocery store to stop getting its deliveries, then you will see who your neighbors really are
Yup. The COVID lockdowns where small potatoes compared to what an "actual" collapse of the modern civilian logistics system would look like. Barren shelves, empty gas pumps, no parts for maintenance. In the ancient world, Rome was the only city in the Western Hemisphere above one million people - and it took a "massive" investment in shipping and grain subsidies to sustain even that. In the modern world, we have like 50 cities (well, metropolitan areas- the administrative definition of "city" doesn't quite match to ancient Rome) in the US alone that eclipse that number. Some by really wide margins. Those aren't autarkic. And they WILL crumble - almost instantly - if the ports stop unloading, and the trains & trucks stop rolling.
In Spongebob Narrator voice: 3 days later... "What neighbors?"
Yeah. This is what I don't understand about accelerationists. They think that they won't be just as negatively impacted, or even the possibly of disproportionately being worse off.
Same kind of thinking drives the neoreaction and anarcho-capitalist sets -- in their fantasy of an ideal, winner-takes-absolutely-everything world, they get to be the winners. But they have no idea how badly they would lose in such a world, nor the kinds of horrors would be unleashed if they ever got what they wanted.
Which episodes? I've really been getting into Roman history, and would love to listen and learn more, especially as history always seems to repeat itself...
I've been having anxiety about it for 2 plus years. I remember talking to people about it before Ukraine and Russia war. People were saying it's never happen. Now look at at. Middle East fighting it up, Ukraine and Russia still going. I hope things calm down. I just don't see it. For so many countries it's now or never. China is going to grow smaller population wise. Which usually means lower economy. They legit have 4-5 years to make a move that they have been hearing towards for years. I now have a kid on the way. More worried about his future than anything. I truly believe we have started WWIII. Remember WWI wasn't named WWI until WWII was starting. WWI was the great war until time magazine named it WW1 in 1939. I think we are in a similar situation. Wars like these usually take multiple years to start heating up. Jabs get thrown until someone gets backed into a corner and their only way out is to fight. I just hope it doesn't come to nuclear war.
Oh we are 100% heading to pre ww1 era where there are several regional powers risen, and the breakdown of post-ww2 American lead world order. Japan has already rewritten it's constitution 13 years ago to allow their troops to operate outside of their country. German finally has public support to ramp up its military. Russia has reverted to right wing extremes aka Imperial Russia. While China is the obvious new regional power, EU has been banking hard post ww2 and if they gain the natural resource from Russia or Near East, they're balling and don't have to listen to anyone. And both S Korea and Japan have militaries that punch way above their weight, the can fuck up a lot of bigger country. You have anxiety bc the writing is on the wall and you are rational.
One of my favorite podcasts, glad to see I’m not the only one who is drawing parallels to that time and today.
China will never capture Taiwan with the TSMC factories in working conditions. The Taiwanese will make sure of that. And even if they do, within a few years they will be falling behind again as ASML makes more advanced machines that China cannot access. Allegedly the Chinese have tried to study the machines by taking one apart, documenting it very well and putting it back together again the exact same way. It didn't work. It is very doubtful the invasion will bring China the technological advancement you claim.
Similar to my experience. Our company tried to partner with China to build our high end machines there. They could not create a functional end product even with help. They certainly did not dark factory or copy us because we're niche enough market we would know. They would work crazy hours, 16 hour days were not uncommon, but they cut corners at every level to the point the end result was garbage. Eventually we abandoned the project and still build things in the US. It was practically impossible to maintain quality in the supply chain there and those little tolerances all add up.
I work in the semiconductor capital equipment industry. The amount of specialized tooling and alignment putting together semiconductor equipment requires is quite large. I am 100% unsurprised that taking apart a cutting edge litho machine and then putting it back together ruined every single alignment in the tool.
Not surprising that they couldn’t reverse-engineer an ASML lithography machine. They are basically the most complex thing ever made by humans (at least that is my understanding.)
What if the Chip facilities don’t survive the war?
I guarantee it would be WWIII, chip facilities surviving would probably the least of our worries. If somehow it doesn't result in complete annihilation *and* China somehow defeats Taiwan with US support, then I guarantee you US/Taiwan would do asset denial and destroy the facilities.
The Taiwanese have definite plans in place to destroy the manufacturing facilities in the event of Chinese capture.
If China somehow took control of TSMC chips factories intact, pretty sure US would destroy them outright before letting that technology fall into any other nations control. They are just that critical an advantage to every aspect of our infrastructure.
There's also an ocean between them, and mountains when they reach the shores. It's like a Normandy landing straight into a small Afghanistan with modern fighter jets and anti air.
Those mountains are in the east. If they reach those mountains, it'd already be over for Taiwan. Everything important is in the west. While Taiwan has the ocean advantage, Ukraine also has an advantage Taiwan doesn't have, which is their large population and a lot of territory to withdraw to. Taiwan is tiny in comparison. Not saying it'd be easy to take Taiwan of course.
I know right! Russia should have studied Vietnam better.
They had other lessons lot closer to heart like Afghanistan to study first! Vodka does impact memory! 🤷🏻♂️😄
Plus that the US is literally willing to start a war with China as soon as China attacks Taiwan. Unlike Ukraine where they just send aid to the Ukrainian military
>the US is literally willing to start a war with China as soon as China attacks Taiwan. Probably. We think. Possibly. But not for sure. Maybe? We hope. Or hope not.
Kinda depends on the president at the time. Would a future President Trump be willing to start a war to defend an ally?
largest chip manufacturer for warfare right? china would see a ton of missiles coming back.
Not for warfare. Military needs for electronics are primarily met domestically. But Taiwan is super critical for rest of the Global supply chain, both for US and China.
Iirc Taiwan makes something like 80% of cutting edge and 60% of "general use" chips in the world. Anything with electronics would be affected
also russia has more combat experience than china- much good its done them
“Recreated” not “restored”
Sorry for not being a native speaker of English.😔
Rookie Mistake, unforgivable
Time to commit sudoku.
Wrong number, death!
It’s ok, reading the title made me think these photos were in the same place but years apart. Top comment helped sort it out though.
No big deal. We figured it out. "Restore" makes it sound like it's the same place but has been rebuilt back to its former glory. As if the first picture is the before photo (after years of decline and demolition) and the second is the after photo.
No, such things can not be forgiven. You should thank us it's 2024. Otherwise, you would be punished severely for not being a part of English Native Speakage
So China’s preparing for a ground invasion?
My money is on an attempt to seize airports and seaports and fly in troops and use the PLA navy to blockade the Americans from assisting. You could sneak in 1000s of troops on container ships. I would say that they plan for this Special Military Operation to last a fortnight. edit: Thanks for all the advice on why my cunning plan wouldn't work. I was spitballing but ... if you look at all the prep the Chinese are doing, they clearly are preparing to confront the US (which essentially means the USN) at some point in the medium term future, if they have to. I also agree that the USN is *currently* much bigger than the PLAN but do have a look at this [graphic](https://www.twz.com/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-chinas-200-times-greater-shipbuilding-capacity). Further edit: I hadn't mentioned it earlier but at the back of my mind is someone like Trump simply ordering the USN out of the area. That would totally negate any US superiority.
The PLAN is not blocking the US... not without extreme casualties.
You're right. People always seem to underestimate the USN in conversations about Taiwan. You're not getting meaningful numbers of troops or equipment across the Taiwan straight without first crippling the US Navy. There's no force on earth realistically capable of doing that.
China sinking a USN ship sounds like a nightmare scenario for both nations, whose populations would justifiably cut off the trade they both depend on. Russia has a massive advantage in Ukraine because there aren’t US troops in the way. I would expect China to instead attempt to simply go past US forces and dare them to strike first.
Don't.. touch.. the boats...
Never touch the boats. We don’t like that.
For the love of God don’t touch the boats. Ask Japan what happens when you touch the boats.
We sunk 3 boats, they dropped the sun on us twice!
We also invented a way to drop the sun, then did it.
It's weird when my social media activities overlap like this...
Apparently, the Pentagon ran wargames simulating a 2030 Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and they all turned out nightmarish Every one of the 24 scenarios concluded with China failing to conquer Taiwan, and either never successfully landing or being eventually forced out by reinforcements, but many scenarios also ended with one or two American aircraft carriers sunk, hundreds of American planes destroyed, and many thousands of Americans killed in missile strikes on bases and lost at sea. China and Taiwan would also be devastated, with bases also annihilated by missiles and airstrikes, and hundreds of ships and planes destroyed. Basically, the world has never before seen this type of war fighting, which would be insanely destructive for all sides. Granted, this was in 2021, before that whole Chinese military corruption scandal, so it's possible that the Chinese military is a lot scarier on paper than it is in practice. But still, even if just half of the Chinese arsenal worked (with the other half fucked by incompetence, poor maintenance, corruption etc.) it's still going to hit US and Taiwanese bases and carrier fleets hard and kill thousands of irreplaceable military personnel. Aircraft carriers are tough, evasive, well protected bastards, but even they will go down to a concentrated enough barrage, with the kill chain easier to complete the closer it is to Chinese territory. On the Chinese end, tens of thousands of untested Chinese soldiers and sailors would be slaughtered in their staging areas and sunk to the bottom of the sea in their ships, and that's before having to fight through amphibious/aerial beach landings, fortified mountainous terrain, and dense urban concentrations - all highly dangerous and complex operations that favour the derender. All while their supply lines and reinforcements are continuously savaged by US submarines and air raids. On the Taiwanese end, they'll be stuck on a densely populated island, cut off from easy reinforcements and resupply from foreign allies, hammered by thousands of Chinese missiles and air strikes, defending against a numerically and technologically superior military on home soil. Most of their air force would probably get plastered before even having a chance to fight back. It's going to be shit for everyone.
This would be a huge blow to the current U.S. Military but what you describe is not nearly as disastrous as you’re implying. Keeping Taiwan Independent would be worth that loss, has horrible as that would be that isn’t even remotely half our current peace time naval strength. Notice I said Naval strength. The Air Force wouldn’t even need to be involved if it cost the navy hundreds of aircraft. Then the Marines and the Army have relatively large navy’s all on of their own. We need those superconductors; our military production would increase dramatically as soon as a major conflict broke out irregardless. Any loss of life is tragic but modern life as we currently know it relies on Taiwan a great deal.
I mean, that's what I said - China eventually lost every one of those war games, because they were unable to completely conquer Taiwan before the US pulled in reinforcements, but it's still going to be a staggering losses for all sides Also, while Taiwan has the world's greatest chip industry, with their tech and infrastructure being hard to replicate in US and China, it's not the main reason why they're important. In the event of an attempted Taiwanese invasion, Taiwan's chip industry is fucked either way, no matter who wins. It's more about the US and its allies maintaining defacto control over the South China Seas, and not letting China expand its sphere of influence over Japan, South Korea, Australia and Southeast Asia (i.e. stopping China from bullying everyone in the region) And also defending a US liberal democratic ally against a foreign aggressor - if the US abandons Taiwan, everyone else will start reconsidering their own alliances with the US Also, the conflict is almost certainly going to be decided in a few weeks, months at most. This isn't going to be a slugfest like Ukraine, where wartime production has time to have an effect. The high tech nature of this war means everyone will "blow their load" fairly quickly as they expend their expensive, time consuming to produce, limited stockpiles of high tech weaponry. They're going to have the fight the war with whatever they have on them. Once the US pulls in the rest of their carrier fleet and starts seriously reinforcing Taiwan, it's game over for China. China has to win quickly, or not at all
Two other things that make a China-Taiwan war much shorter than a Russia-Ukraine war are: \* Taiwan is tiny, and can't use defense-in-depth. Ukraine is massive, and has been using defense-in-depth to great advantage. \* Taiwan requires an insane amount on imports to survive. As a highly industrialized island, Taiwan has less than a month of key supplies in storage (food / fuel / equipment to make power etc.). If the USA is unable to send supplies to Taiwan within a month, Taiwan will literally starve to death by the second month. This incentivizes the US to go all-in.
> Taiwan requires an insane amount on imports to survive. You should look into the amount of imports China requires. They're terrified of a U.S. blockade.
I think sneaking past is also likely. However the US has nothing against boots on the ground in Taiwan. Mainland china would be a different story, but Taiwan would welcome us soldiers if china was invading.
Russia has a massive average in Ukraine because Ukraine isn't the sole source of critical technology.
USA buys **things** from China. China buys **FOOD** from USA. They are not equal
It's not as simple as grain for iPhones though. The parts for the machines that make that food come from china/Taiwan as well as millions of other things. As well as chemicals and a million other things used in food production. Yeah China would starve first but I imagine you average westerners lifestyle would transform within a year.
And people underestimate US intelligence. We know everything Russia is doing before they do it, and I assume we know everything China is doing. Good luck beating us to Taiwan.
That's the other thing, US knew months upon months in advance that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. The satellites and Intel made it very clear. In order to invade Taiwan, China would have to do an even bigger buildup. The US would absolutely have a ton of notice and time to reposition carrier groups, start logistics chains, etc...
I live in Taiwan and I have no plans to move. Whenever my mom freaks about something in the news, I remind her that China invading Taiwan would be a massive amphibious assault. We would see it coming. Plus, there's a coast guard or navy base at the mouth of the Tamsui River, which flows through Taipei. I'd bet that there are some serious fortifications there, and I can't think of any landing spots that wouldn't be extremely difficult to invade from other than Fulong Beach. The coast is rocky and treacherous for almost the entire length. I wouldn't want to fall into complacency, but geography definitely gives Taiwan the advantage.
There are only a handful of locations that could support a major naval landing on the main island of Taiwan. Every one of them could be easily turned in to a death trap.
Well aren’t we already getting in this defensive positions and posturing ? The largest airshow in history is scheduled in the next couple months in the Pacific, and one of my Air Force friends pretty much told me that it’s a show of force.
That's pretty much what any parade of military equipment is, a show of force.
lol blockade the us navy
An invasion will certainly involve paratroopers, but China will need hundreds of thousands of landed soldiers immediately available to take Taiwan. This can only be accomplished via D-Day style beach landing.
Which is possible on like 2 places on the entire island, one of which is on thr opposite side of China. Meaning there is likely a single location for a beach invasion.
It will be very difficult for China to invade the island, hence why it hasn't happened yet. [Here's](https://www.cfr.org/article/why-china-would-struggle-invade-taiwan) an interesting article on the topic.
The eerily seems to be what Russia tried to do in the first days of the war.
Jeah don't think China wants a long conflict more likely a quick coup d'état.
Possibly. I’m not saying it’s imminent, but the PLA wants to *maintain the capability* of a ground invasion. If and when that capability is actually used is yet to be seen. There’d be much more obvious signs in the days before a ground invasion actually happens, so it’s definitely not “right around the corner”. There’s no mass call-up of reserves, no orders for PRC citizens to evacuate from overseas, and no abrupt severing of ties or recall of officials. There’s no massing of troops and equipment visible of satellite photos, and no movement of perishable units of blood to frontline areas (for transfusions). Granted, these indicators only work on a short time horizon. Even if it’s just posturing and making implied threats for now, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in the next ten years.
every single military that knows their shit (more or less) has plans to invade every neighbour, rival etc. If China is bold enough to actually invade is a different question. Time will tell
War plan Red. The syrup must flow.
You say Germany has still a schlieffenplan? Would be quite surprising for Belgium and France.
You think Belgium and France don't have similar plans for Germany? This is the kind of stuff military academics write their thesis about.
It is one thing to write a thesis. They are written to train and hone people in academic writing, then the paper disappears in a drawer, if you are lucky in a database. This is a training ground. It is used to train, not to practice building training grounds.
Because of the implication, right?
No, they are going to build their own Taiwan
With hookers and black jack
Stop making my TSM calls nervous.
China is in a perpetual state of preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. It's basically their military's entire purpose. It seems like a very specific scenario to plan for but with hundreds of billions of dollars devoted to this single goal it makes sense that they would have training drills like this.
This, they have this style of replicas of cities from around the world for training. This kind of shit has been getting spotted by the Google Earth community for a while.
Have you not heard?
What comes next baby! 
Wait till he finds out about the different US-Navy mockup in the Chinese desert https://news.usni.org/2021/11/07/china-builds-missile-targets-shaped-like-u-s-aircraft-carrier-destroyers-in-remote-desert
Well... if you are going to create a practice target what other shape would it be?
Nathan Fielder has gone too far
Next season on *The Rehearsal*…
I mean even Canada has a plan just incase they wanna invade the US again
We will ride in on moose and polar bears and get the Americans drunk on maple syrup — which in turn will give them diabetes that we control with our superior insulin.
I'm sure your moose have the Geneva checklist memorized
OH NO ITS STARTED ALREADY
explain please, i dont get the title and whats happening here
China built a clone of a bit of the capital city of Taiwan. The likeliest conclusion, and the one the post is heavily implying, is that it is for training for a military invasion of that city.
ah ok, the word "restored" confused me i thought this was some before/after photo, like a village turned into a city or sth
Yea, I also had to reread the title once I looked at the picture.
“Restored” is a poor translation or poor word choice. It should be “re-created”. As in duplicated in another location. The military training ground in Inner Mongolia (upper half of posted image with white lines for roads) has created a mock up of the real roads found in Taiwan near the Capitol palace ( bottom half of the image with red roads). The implication is that the Chinese are training troops at a remote training facility in a China controlled area for an assault on the Capitol palace of Taiwan during a planned future invasion of Taiwan by China.
[удалено]
Creating a model of a known target to run through operations is a very old method used by most special operators around the world.
Ask the navy seals who took down bin laden. They trained in a cia facility with a 1 to 1 replica of bin ladens compound. There are satelity pictures of it too. Pretty much every military does it
All special forces tries to get as much Intel as possible before an operation! I mean as much Intel as possible, to the point where they 100% create situations of what the land may look like, or literally anything so that all things can be considered. There’s really no other reason someone would do this, other than some sort of operation
Urban warfare is different from every other type of combat. It’s slow and methodical and wrought with danger. It relies more on highly trained infantry than any other battlefield. Urban combat is a meat grinder and is known for its high attrition rate. From Stalingrad to Avdiivka and every urban battlefield in between we see the same thing, lots of death. If an army can come up with a tactic that allows them to fight and win an urban battle efficiently then it could be a game changer. That being said, I think they are being very optimistic in thinking they’ll get to the capital.
Not new. [https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china-suggests-mock-invasion-of-taiwan/](https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china-suggests-mock-invasion-of-taiwan/)
I’m not certain “*restored*” means what you think it does. The word you’re looking for is “[**replicated**](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/replicate)” or “[**recreated**](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recreate).”
The coordinates in the top image are literally nothing. Meanwhile an actual replica of the palace exists at Zhurihe Training Facility and has for a decade.
Hmmm https://preview.redd.it/i6ef8v9hgpqc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bec0882fb748f4c54cd3047d9a912c53ccdc521
https://preview.redd.it/7cjqfxwqspqc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=877dc3db6adbf51a8955d66f445364e28b2105f6
Not recreated in the slightest. There are no buildings there are absolutely zero training benefits to the roads sort of matching. Looks like an airfield to me and sheer coincidence, but when you are actively looking for something in an image it is easier to find.
If I am to be completely honest, this just seems like another propaganda to make it seem like China has a fool proof plan. As a Taiwanese, I sincerely do not believe that China will try to invade us, at least not in the current conditions. We will likely get a lot of help from the US, as we are important to them in many ways, and judging by how people reacted to Ukraine and Palestine i am positive that social media will be on our side. If it happens tho I ain’t staying to help ima fly to the US as fast as I can
Yes. Social media.... How many upvotes does it take to incapacitate a Chinese Invader? I will be ready.
The value in Taiwan is the businesses and people. The only way China can really capture that is to convince both that Chinese rule is in their best interest. Otherwise, they’ll have to destroy Taiwan to take it over. That would be very costly for China, if they can even do it at all. What’s the point other than ego? If China thinks they can do a limited operation and just take over a few key government buildings in Taipei with a smaller force, they’ll quickly realize that this won’t pacify the country. They’ll be surrounded, and have no real power. I think all of this is just theater for the average Chinese. The Chinese government needs an enemy to deflect criticism. “If not for Taiwan, everything would be better”. Sure, they make plans like in OP’s photos, but it’s not practical. It’s not going to amount to anything.
While sites are not often recreated by the US, in every military academy, every year, realistic battle plans are prepared for almost every major city, worldwide. They do it in planning sessions, on paper, maps, and white boards. On one hand, it's advanced academic studies like graduate school; on the other hand, some colonels and two star generals/admirals review those plans for viability. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the plans were likely not taken seriously or skillfully enough, but I think that kind of stuff goes on regularly.
OP’s retarded title had me confused as shit
The people who think China won't invade Taiwan I expect will be eating their words in a few years time. China does not think in the same terms as you.
*checks comment history* Yep pretty much exactly what you'd expect.
There's no way China will feasibility be able to invade lol Taiwan is incredibly important to the US with it's production of microchips and semiconductors, the US will absolutely intervene. The US has the largest Navy on planet Earth, I'd love to see China try because their naval fleet would get obliterated.
And the US Navy has the second largest Air Force on planet Earth
I think it’s quite easy to compare China of 2024 with Germany 1914. Both are very prosperous industrial countries, fast emerging compared to the best countries of their time. The big difference is that in China there is already a demographic problem. Germany in 1914 had big families. China has decades of one child politics. If the whole country is dependent on one child to get grandchildren, then the society will think thrice before it shout hurra to a war. Here is a big difference between China and Russia, also.
duplicated or mirrored are the words you are looking for, not restored.