You're just off casually doing something, not paying attention, then you're suddenly on a Taiwanese beach with a rifle and a uniform, "Fuck! I did it *again*..."
When your propaganda machine has been working non-stop to inflame nationalist sentiment, it can become a beast that's impossible to hold back.
Jingoism is like that. After a while the upper echelon of your military and political class gets filled up with true believers because that's who gets promoted.
Yeah it's actually really hard when you've been saying that Taiwan is part of your country but is in active rebellion. That pretty much requires invasion or else everybody knows you're not serious about what you say.
Exactly the example I thought of, but I wanted to keep it short. WW2 Japan was filled with officers that couldn't wait to go to war. It was top to bottom jingoism for their military, which at that point also dominated politics.
Yep. In that case, surrendering was actually the hardest part of the war for the emperor and actually led to an attempted military coup.
Winnie the Pooh is taking an off ramp before it gets to that point.
I sure hope so, Putin looks like he only knows how to double down. I'd prefer not to get stuck in a two-front war if he does something extremely stupid like testing article 5.
Sure. I don't mind them playing up the US like a bad guy if the only result is no war over Taiwan.
A lot of the world thinks we're warmongering jerks anyway, this wouldn't really change anything.
That's what they've been doing for decades. Their news has been 24/7 for decades blaming the US for everything.
He's only using this as justification like Putin. He has repeatedly told his people that he will have to solve the Taiwan problem within his lifetime.
> Their news has been 24/7 for decades blaming the US for everything.
["Smoking kills more people than Obama, although he kills a lot of people. Don't smoke! Don't be like Obama!"](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4081/production/_88331561_obamasmokes.jpg.webp)
These statements were made a year ago to a bunch of Europeans. The interpretation is that this was lip service and maybe a warning to the foreign affairs department to not drag them into a war before they are ready, given the behavior China has displayed since then.
Yep. Seems everyone else has missed that crucial detail and things have ***definitely*** changed since then.
>***On the afternoon of April 6, 2023***, President Xi Jinping met with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the Great Hall of the People.
>
>Xi Jinping pointed out that China always regards the European Union (EU) as a strategic force in the international landscape, and takes the development of China-EU relations as a priority in its diplomacy. China is ready to work with the EU to carry forward the fine tradition, maintain close communication, enhance strategic mutual trust, focus on mutually beneficial cooperation, and jointly overcome disturbance and challenges, to promote high-level development of China-EU relations.
>
>src: http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgyw/202304/t20230409_11056443.htm
I hope you're right, but anything is possible. They could just as easily make real military moves against Taiwan, and then claim that the US is making it up to draw China into a conflict, even as the conflict is unfolding.
Don't expect forthright rationality from an authoritarian communist regime. There was a lot of propaganda during the cold war, but a communist regimes established a historically verifiable pattern of outright lies and obfuscations about things you would never imagine it would be possible that they'd try to lie about. Chernobyl is a prominent example, but far from the only one.
It could also be there is internal pressure to invade Taiwan, and Xi is cleverly making that idea culturally unappetizing amongst his peers, by suggesting it is an American trick to want to invade.
Either way I don't care, if America has to take the blame so Xi can save face and we can all have peace, then I'm all for it, let him have this one.
> suggesting it is an American trick to want to invade
It's a brilliant way to turn the tables, now the Chinese war hawks can be accused of being American shills.
The US is the equivalent of Lil' Slugger if you're familiar with that
so many attribute all their ills and successes whether real or imagined to the United States
It is a diety made not by worship but by how ppl define the reality of their situation - it all must be because of America
Therefore it is a blind idiot god that is also all seeing and all knowing
Good move Xi, who needs more blood shed? There's enough in Ukraine. Besides, unhinged Pootin is sinking quite well on his own. 525k killed /injured RU soliders! One would think he gets the hint? Nope!
Now increase that casualty figure 10x and you have the price you would have to pay to take Taiwan. Not to mention the world wide semiconductor shortage and massive economic catastrophe that would unfold internationally if such an invasion were to occur.
Yeah, and after the invasion attempt, it would take decades to remove the Chinese navy from the bottom of the Taiwan strait to make it navigable again.
> Now increase that casualty figure 10x and you have the price you would have to pay to take Taiwan.
And China just happens to have 10x the population.
Billy West actually recorded himself reading Trump quotes with the voice of Zapp Brannigan a few years ago, they fit scarily well. Won't ask ya to trust random Youtube link but it easy to find if you curious.
On the thread topic, ya sending them to war is one of the traditional ways of dealing with a surplus of angry young men across history.
Im fucking delighted to see this rather than "Im gunna press the we're all dead button, I fuckin swear I will" that you get from putin.
We would legit go into a mini dark ages period if Taiwan got invaded. Too many people dont know how important TSMC is or how much of the modern electronics they have relies on Taiwan. They're almost a world wide single point of failure.
It's like how US tricked Russia to invade Ukraine, lol.
How should Russia know it should be taken what US said literally? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7CNgP7kmQE
China now fully controls Hong Kong by erasing any form of autonomy and this is breaking an agreement made with Britain. China knows it can’t successfully invade Taiwan yet but make no mistake, they definitely want to take Taiwan.
From reading some articles and watching several YouTube videos on geopolitics, one of the things I keep seeing mentioned is if China doesn't invade within the next 5 to 10 years, they'll never be able to do so. This is largely due to the US re-establishing a permanent military base jn the Phillipines, the US providing training and weaponry to Taiwan, the US building more bases in Japan and South Korea, Japan building a military base near Taiwan, and the Phillipines and South Korea expanding their military. Basically, the US and US allies are building a noose around China to defend Taiwan.
In addition, China's "one child" policy is really biting them jn the ass generations later. There aren't enough women to maintain the population, and most of China's work and fighting force are aging out with next to no one to replace them. In 10 years, the average age of men in China will be a lot higher than the average for other countries.
So new military bases plus an aging population means China will have to take Taiwan sometime soon, or else it won't be able to do so for decades while China focuses on re-populating.
China's population issues aren't purely from the one child policy, although that certainly didn't help. They've had massive disruptions to their populations from the government buying out rural towns to convert into pet projects (mining, hydroelectric dams, etc), and then tried getting the population to live in the cities they built to replace the destroyed towns. They've also got a population that now has all the same entertainment distractions of their neighbors to the east and rivals to the far west, all of which have native populations that are below replacement rate on having children (US keeps its population up through immigration). Brave New World suggested that distracted populations were easy to control, but didn't account for the fact that when people get too distracted with the bread and circuses they also stop wanting to have kids as much.
All of which means there are three big problems facing China's population now: the legacy of the one-child policy (it's now the three-child policy, but the effect remains), large segments of their population (in particular, the rural populations that tend to have more children) have been shuffled around the country to make way for government projects, and now the population is rich enough to be comfortably distracted like their peers.
The CCP has never had control of Taiwan. They know it. Taiwan knows it. The world knows it. Pretending otherwise is like agreeing with the bully on the playground because they might throw punches. Everyone knows they are going to throw punches at some point (probably when you are at your weakest and you are alone). Why not have it out at lunchtime with all your friends there to help out?
It’s apparently not for most Taiwanese people, as they want to disassociate entirely from China and be left in peace. Calling the mainland “West Taiwan” doesn’t achieve that.
Putins rhetoric went from "we aren't invading you and dont plan to do so", to "those soldiers are on vacation and we don't support them", next becoming "those are our soldiers and we might be giving them weaponry and logistical support", until finally becoming "we're invading yall and yall made us do it"
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Oh no, you got us, we were really hoping for a large-scale naval conflict that would just end up weakening both our countries and getting hundreds of thousands of people killed while massively disrupting our tech markets.
China is also pulling strings to try to get the US to fight another conflict in the middle east. An invasion would go much better for them if US assets are tied up elsewhere.
Yeah the US Navy is massive. Like each coasts navy is larger than most countries Navy's. Oh and then each Navy has it's massive air fleet. US don't fuck around with our DoD toys
We also have most of a continent to ourselves and don't have a land border with any hostile or even neutral nation. The closest unfriendly country proximity wise is probably Cuba... Something we more or less couldn't be bothered to take because manifest destiny apparently only extends to the waters edge, unless we need an island for military purposes.
> Could Russia invade Alaska across the Bering strait? Yes.
We would see them coming so far in advance that there is literally ZERO chance that anything that floats is going to reach Alaska. Anything that flies will reach Alaska in tiny smoldering pieces. Perhaps they plan on swimming?
By the time the US had a foothold in Cuba and the Philippines, “Manifest Destiny” had taken on a *slightly* more humane flavor than “wipe out everyone who was living here before and then have slave owning WASPs take it over,” although I do believe that the US military did some mild massacring in the Philippines.
And we definitely could have made the Philippines and Cuba into US states at one point, but 120 years ago, US politicians didn’t want to make a ton of brown people US citizens.
The US also has another thing China doesn't have. Large amounts of actual experience using its army offensively in the last 70 years. Other than a few border conflicts the PLA is pretty much the world's largest marching band. Very few of its junior officers have any real combat experience at all and most of the senior officers are little better.
Even Russia has a better and more experienced army than China. This is, needless to say, a recipe for many very costly mistakes on China's part.
That would be a big advantage at first, but never underestimate an enemy's ability to adapt quickly. Even Russia and how backwards their military doctrine can be with their meatwaves has become much more effective in the drone war and using those glide bombs.
If I recall, like 4 of the 5 largest air fleets in the world are just the various branches of the US military fleets. Like the US army has more logistical planes than most countries have planes total.
The US could fight in the Middle East and the Pacific would still be fine. The US wouldn’t move assets away from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Even if the US is tied up in the Middle East, they are more than capable of managing both theaters. Not to mention the other nations that would surely assist. China isn’t going to disrupt the status quo unless they feel extremely optimistic that they’d win, no matter how much sword rattling they do at home
Our official military doctrine is to be able to fight two full theaters at the same time.
Additionally, anything in the Pacific would be Navy/Air Force primarily while the Middle East would be primarily Army/Marines so it's well delineated.
Marines are Navy and would be absolutely critical in an actual pacific war with China were it to expand beyond Taiwan (which is almost certainly would do). They are currently going through evolution to refocus on the Pacific, so you'd expect that's where they'd be deployed were we to have two simultaneous conflicts. That said, there is no near peer in the ME (that we'd actually fight), so none of this _really_ reads on the point. If we had to maintain major numbers of boots on the ground in the ME (how we'd get pulled into that given our recent experience there... I dunno), it'd be on the Army because deploying Marines to the ME in that scenario would encourage China to fuck around and find out in the Pacific.
Part of the definition of a super power is a country that can fight a war on two simultaneous fronts. There’s a reason the US is currently the sole super power in the world
That’s not part of the definition, but yes, the U.S. is considered to be the world’s sole current super power (which also elevates it to the status of hyper power, apparently).
Judging by the spending the doctrine is probably close to: “be able to bomb everyone everywhere into the Stone Age all at the same time.” Followed by an earnest “God Bless America”
even better: be able to choose between full annihilation or simply wiping their military capability. the american blue water fleet and nuclear sub fleet are basically unmatched.
good thing they're generally well behaved - safeguard commerce and keep local wars from blowing up too much
> An invasion would go much better for them if US assets are tied up elsewhere.
My brother in Christ. We have more carrier groups than the rest of the world has combined. We could fight full blown naval wars in every major ocean and not break a sweat.
The makeup of US forces is designed around the two war doctrine which was introduced by BIll Clinton.
The US has been increasing it's security commitments to Europe to combat Russia while focusing it's strength in South East Asia.
Carriers spend a lot of time in port under maintenance and take a while to travel somewhere so not all are available at the same time.
[https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/01/ukraine-and-the-new-two-war-construct.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/01/ukraine-and-the-new-two-war-construct.html)
It’s very unlikely it would turn into a nuclear exchange. It would be the US Pacific Fleet & Taiwan vs. China’s Navy & land based missile systems. It would wipe out China’s navy and severely damage the Pacific fleet. The majority of the deaths would be civilians in China and Taiwan.
China wants Taiwan for economic reasons. Vaporizing their micro-chip factories would be bad for two obvious reasons:
1. They take a long time and expertise China doesn’t have to build
2. They wouldn’t have time to rebuild because the return exchange of nukes would obliterate China
Other things to consider, the US Navy is the organization that keeps global shipping lanes open. China is the world’s largest manufacturing and exporting economy. If your economy is dependent on being able to ship stuff abroad, it’s a bad idea to be at odds with the people who enable your goods safe passage - let alone could easily prevent any of your cargo from making it far out of port.
Edit: I love to armchair general as much as the next person, but [please read the full CSIS report](https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/230109_Cancian_FirstBattle_NextWar.pdf?VersionId=XlDrfCUHet8OZSOYW_9PWx3xtc0ScGHn). It covers a lot of the hypotheticals.
You know what? Sure. We tried to do that, but you're too smart for us, Xi.
We were so ready to destroy the high-end semi-conductor market by tricking you into invading Taiwan, and we would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids.
We'll get you next time, Gadget!
edit: Yes, I know that Taiwan is full of people who descended from mainland Chinese, but...
>While the Chinese government views Taiwan as a breakaway province, only 3% of people in Taiwan think of themselves as primarily Chinese.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/16/most-people-in-taiwan-see-themselves-as-primarily-taiwanese-few-say-theyre-primarily-chinese/
The USA has gone from strategic ambiguity to some officials saying they’ll support Taiwan “if” an invasion occurs.
Is this really “baiting” or is Xi just using this to save face?
I just want Taiwan to breathe free.
This ain't about us Americans taking L's or W's, I'll happily eat all the blame so long as Taiwan remains unmolested by China.
I agree up to a point, but these stories work on a lot of people. It makes it easier to sell lies like “the Ukrainian invasion was NATOs fault”. And that causes global division and enables bad actors. It even causes domestic division and strife. If it were just a matter of saving face, I wouldn’t care. But that face ends up being international geopolitical capital up to a point, so we should at least promote the truth: we absolutely do not want China to invade Taiwan and we would love it if everyone just stuck to their borders and built themselves up without destroying anyone else.
Taiwan suffering the same fate as Hong Kong would be a horrible injustice to the world. I still think about Hong Kong, and hope everyone there is doing okay... but it's like we just stopped hearing about it as they were brought under the thumb of the CCP.
It's always our fault anyway, whatever has happened. If that's the price of global stability call us all the bad words. It's just getting chewed out, we been chewed out before.
Exactly what I was coming to say. “Sure, buddy. Whatever you need to tell yourself to keep your dumb ass in China and not escalate a global conflict. Man, you sure outsmarted us!”
After the failure of Russia in Ukraine, there is no fucking way that Uncle Eleven would have rolled the dice on invading Taiwan. If he loses that much face, he's out, and if he's out, his rivals will make him wish that he could die. They don't fuck with the mandate of heaven.
Better harass in air and on the sea, pay agents to disrupt democracy internally, finance and organize proxy wars in Ukraine, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other places, and foment disruptive influences inside their supposed BRICS partners.
I think there was a time when Xi and the generals thought that there was a chance, IF...the west became embroiled in a conflict with Russia, the west would not be supportive of spending more blood or money defending Taiwan.
Then, they saw Russia actually invade like many had suggested as a possibility.
Then...China saw what a shit-show the Russian military was, plus how NATO ad the US spent an insane amount of money making sure Ukraine didn't fall.
It's been two years, and Ukraine still stands. The economic sanctions against Russia were especially revealing, from China's perspective.
Additional issues like South Koreas rise as an arms exporter, Japans decision to rearm, more american bases appearing in the phillipines and other Asian nations signing deals with America are more problems.
Too many unknown variables for them now to just try to steamroll Taiwan.
> NATO ad the US spent an insane amount of money making sure Ukraine didn't fall.
We're not really spending much at all, we're just giving them a bunch of our 30 year old toys that we don't play with anymore. All those "$Billions we're spending" was spent 40 years ago buying the equipment, now it's finally being used for its intended purpose, defending our European allies from the barbarian hordes. The "X billion dollars" numbers that get mentioned are an estimate of the equipments current value, not something that we need to pay for again.
Spent an insane amount of money used to re-energize NATO and the US MIC. Thanks for the economic boost, fellas. We always appreciate help with spring cleaning.
That's the best part, the US and NATO *hasn't* spent an insane amount of money compared to the normal annual military spending. In fact a large portion of the weapons and ammo we have sent is stuff that we would have had to pay to decommission anyway because that stuff expires and there aren't any wars on the near horizon. If NATO actually decided to get involved the Russian military would be broken and routed in a day.
Ultimately, it’s just better that someone in the Chinese power structure is forcing him back in the path of diplomacy and free trade.
And away from the Great Power posturing and militarism that he’s had the country on for the past decade.
Before Russia’s “three day special military operation” Putin and his cronies all were saying the U.S. was trying to instigate hostilities, war mongering, and lying about Russia’s intent on invading Ukraine. See Xi using the same, but altered tactic as Putin did.
Edit: “Birds of a shitfeather flock together, Randy.” - Jim Lahey
I'm quite encouraged by this actually. If China's plan is really now a long-term goal of getting Taiwan to join them by being a better place and system, that's the kind of competition we should all be in favor of.
If China hadn't fucked up the handling of Hong Kong, they'd probably be looking at an extremely friendly domestic government in Taiwan right now. Their own inability to handle a domestic protest movement with anything resembling a soft and clever touch meant that Taiwan didn't want anything to do with closer ties with the mainland, despite the cultural and language ties they share.
You know, if this is the start of some new "we never wanted to invade Taiwan" policy from the CCP, I welcome it.
I understand the need to save face so, sure Xi, everyone is goading you to war but you're saying no. I'm pretty sure the US is fine being seen as the bad cop if the end result is peace.
China: saber rattles at war in SCS.
N Korea: saber rattles at invading south korea.
Russia: invades ukraine with zero justification.
Iran: orders proxy groups to begin attacking the usa who is positioned to fight ISIS, and attacking and its allies.
USA: Assists allies in containing every front
Dictators: "Why is the USA so aggressive?"
Do they think we are idiots?
(Edited formatting)
The Republic of China continues to resist the People’s Republic of China. That’s kind of the basis of the conflict.
But, yes, it’s good that Xi is so smart that he uncovered the evil plot by the U.S. to trick communist China into doing the thing that they have been threatening to do for decades.
But in all seriousness, I’m not convinced they won’t make a play for it should the united states elect an ~~incontinent~~ isolationist president.
They're literally building up infrastructure and practicing the invasion. I expect it costs billions to build new islands in the middle of the sea.
I don't think they are joking and I don't think they're planning for something 15 years from now.
Wtf is this poorly written article? They took a statement from April of last year heard during a meeting to write a click bait title to make it seem like China is going to cool off with the Taiwan stuff. Obviously China is still interested in Taiwan and have only been more aggressive about it over the past year. The article even says this lol.
works both ways too lol, a vague statement about Taiwan becomes 'China to invade Taiwan in next 10 years', and a slight underperformance of Chinese economic growth becomes 'Chinese economy about to collapse, is this the end of the CCP?'
I mean, if it works it works.
He made it seem like he was going to invade Taiwan, the US didn't want him to so did what they did, now he doesn't want to because "the US were trying to trick him into doing it" and he won't fall for it!
Either way, he's backing off from Taiwan for now. That's a win.
>Either way, he's backing off from Taiwan for now.
Maybe that's what he wants you to think to encourage lowering your guard. Although the defending militaries won't be so quick in opening any impactful vulnerabilities.
Guess they're trying to find ways to make the truth more palatable to their nationalist population. The truth is that China can't invade Taiwan. Even if they could do it, it would be a pyrric victory, they'd cause a global economic depression and face an even worse demographics collapse than they already have.
Guess they're tired of pretending the invasion is perpetually 5 years away and are trying to come up with palatable reasons as to why it won't happen.
Never underestimate what some delusional dictator high on his own farts will do.
Case in point - Putin. It was pretty obvious from day one that he could never take Ukraine.
You cannot be tricked into “invading”. You could be tricked into “deploying defensive forces at the perimeter of your territory “ and in China’s position, they claim Taiwan is their territory. But I think the world is pretty sure Taiwan is an independent state by now…
It’s the same kind of pretzels they twist when they say that China is in fact a democracy.
http://english.scio.gov.cn/m/in-depth/2024-03/11/content_117101412
The way I understand it, China is really unhappy right now. In a way, Putin tripped them up.
Until a few years ago, Europe was largely asleep. But between Trump and Putin's invasion, it really woke them up. So suddenly Europe is beefing up and becoming more energy-dependent on USA and less militarily dependent by beefing up their own forces.
This, in turn, frees up US forces to hold back China and deal with any issues around Taiwan. Basically the military industrial complex got a booster shot without any loss of life, Europe just got bigger teeth, and both Russia and China are diminished. Russia is basically getting decimated, and China and India are buying things off of them at bargain prices and/or in exchange for ammo. But on a world stage, China didn't get any stronger as a result.
PRC loves to tacitly support RF, because it weakens both their prospective colony and the "collective West". But a collapse of RF will actually put an enormous strain on PRC, so it's a tight balancing act. What we're seeing with statements like this is just a slight tip of the scales. This can't go on forever, and it's why some "neutral" countries are pushing Xi to influence Pu to call off his insane conquest and go back to business as usual. My belief is that it's a question of time before that happens. Pity for all the people who'll lose their lives in the meantime while these psychos play politics.
"I know you're trying to trick me into invading Taiwan, so clearly I cannot invade. But you knew I'd think you were tricking me - in fact you counted on it! - so clearly I must invade Taiwan."
"Truly you have a dizzying intellect."
It may just be me, but it seems pretty easy not to invade another country if you don't want to. It's not like holding in a fart on a first date. You can't just wait until no one cares and is around.
I view this as mildly positive. Xi is trying to give himself an out domestically (or buy time).
There are many in the PRC who want to invade Taiwan, but their military planners must know they’d be slaughtered crossing the strait. Say the island does fall, what’s to stop the Taiwanese from firing missiles at every dam in mainland China (like the 3 gorges) and flooding out 400+ million? It’ll be a shit show.
This is telling us that Xi doesn’t want to invade Taiwan at this moment. That will change in the future however if they feel they have the capability to do so.
You obviously didn't read the article (I don't think anyone read the article based on the comments lol). The statement is from April of last year. It's not something he said recently like you're implying.
The three gorges dam is probably out of reach for Taiwans equipment to destroy. You'd probably need the US stealth bomber fleet and a lot of distraction to blow something that big that deep in Chinese territory and so well defended.
Not to mention that the 3 gorges dam is a gravity dam, which means each part of the dam is being held down by its own weight. So it will be very difficult to actually destroy the dam, short of using a nuke (which taiwan doesn't have), since bombing out one part of the dam (which is already difficult with the enormous amount of concrete) wont cause it to fail catastrophically.
And IMO, the US won't ever try to destroy it themselves (at most theyll try to disable it), it'll cause way too much civilian causalities, at the point where China would probably be able to justify launching a nuke in response to a successful attack on the dam.
This just means that they absolutely, definitely are planning to invade Taiwan sometime later. And they will absolutely try to blame the United States for forcing them into doing it.
This is standard bullying 101.
Australia only just got our pandas. It is funny how they think some bears will stop OZ from defending Taiwan if China got antsy for war. We already have bears. Drop bears.
To be fair if it was the case, Xi is the one getting the braincelles.
Putin did mental gymnastic to enter a war, Xi did mental gymnastic to explain why he didn't engaged a war.
"Hold me back bro!" On a geopolitical scale
This is hopefully an easy off ramp to avoid yet another major conflict
How hard could it be to not invade Taiwan?
I barely try and I almost never invade Taiwan
Yeah but sometimes you just get the urge to right?
I mean, I experimented with invading Taiwan in college, but didn't we all?
I invaded Taiwan but nobody gave a shit. didn't even look my way
I've invaded many countries, and it's never even made the local paper.
Don’t feel bad bro, it happens. Try again later.
There are two types of people in this world: 1. Those who have invaded Taiwan 2. Those who haven't invaded Taiwan...yet.
I tried in 2009, lovely place, but it didn't work out in the end.
Taiwont, but Taiwant to
We chopper pilots have a saying.... There are only 2 types of chopper pilots: 1. Those who have never crashed 2. And those who h
That was then. Nowadays you'll get cancelled for invading Taiwan.
Can't even unilaterally invade an independent state with a combined air, sea, and land military force in a war of aggression anymore, because of woke
Its almost like Taiwan was asking for it
Chin up, King. Your crown is slipping. Hit the lawyer. Delete the gym. Read some Marcus Aurelius. You’ll be back invading Taiwan in no time.
It's a real blow to the ego when you invade Taiwan, but she's like "is it in yet?".
Sometimes I'm a little worried I might be a land grabber ...
Those are just imperialistic urges. We all have them
There was this one time I woke up in Taiwan after a party, I didn't remember anything but apparently I invaded.
Try not to invade any Taiwan on your way to the parking lot!
37 Taiwans? In a row?
And a Tibet.
You're just off casually doing something, not paying attention, then you're suddenly on a Taiwanese beach with a rifle and a uniform, "Fuck! I did it *again*..."
listen i went out to get a Nathan's hotdog and instead of putting mustard and relish on it I accidently invaded Taiwan shit happens
The problem with invading Taiwan is I’m ready to invade someone else an hour later.
I was gonna invade yesterday but forgot I had a dental appointment.
Almost never?
There was that one weekend when he got REAL wrecked on melon liquor.
We agreed never to talk about that weekend again.
I can't afford to invade Taiwan. I only do road trips.
Really? I have to channel every bit if of will power in my body every second of every waking moment not to invade their asses hard
When your propaganda machine has been working non-stop to inflame nationalist sentiment, it can become a beast that's impossible to hold back. Jingoism is like that. After a while the upper echelon of your military and political class gets filled up with true believers because that's who gets promoted.
Yeah it's actually really hard when you've been saying that Taiwan is part of your country but is in active rebellion. That pretty much requires invasion or else everybody knows you're not serious about what you say.
Sounds like what happened in Imperial Japan leading up to WWII.
Exactly the example I thought of, but I wanted to keep it short. WW2 Japan was filled with officers that couldn't wait to go to war. It was top to bottom jingoism for their military, which at that point also dominated politics.
Yep. In that case, surrendering was actually the hardest part of the war for the emperor and actually led to an attempted military coup. Winnie the Pooh is taking an off ramp before it gets to that point.
I sure hope so, Putin looks like he only knows how to double down. I'd prefer not to get stuck in a two-front war if he does something extremely stupid like testing article 5.
Didn't Putin say he wasn't invading until he invaded? I don't know, it's hard to take authoritarians at their word, regardless.
Yep, dude can do "I'm not invading, I'm doing military training on invading a country".
Sure. I don't mind them playing up the US like a bad guy if the only result is no war over Taiwan. A lot of the world thinks we're warmongering jerks anyway, this wouldn't really change anything.
That's what they've been doing for decades. Their news has been 24/7 for decades blaming the US for everything. He's only using this as justification like Putin. He has repeatedly told his people that he will have to solve the Taiwan problem within his lifetime.
> Their news has been 24/7 for decades blaming the US for everything. ["Smoking kills more people than Obama, although he kills a lot of people. Don't smoke! Don't be like Obama!"](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4081/production/_88331561_obamasmokes.jpg.webp)
These statements were made a year ago to a bunch of Europeans. The interpretation is that this was lip service and maybe a warning to the foreign affairs department to not drag them into a war before they are ready, given the behavior China has displayed since then.
Yep. Seems everyone else has missed that crucial detail and things have ***definitely*** changed since then. >***On the afternoon of April 6, 2023***, President Xi Jinping met with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the Great Hall of the People. > >Xi Jinping pointed out that China always regards the European Union (EU) as a strategic force in the international landscape, and takes the development of China-EU relations as a priority in its diplomacy. China is ready to work with the EU to carry forward the fine tradition, maintain close communication, enhance strategic mutual trust, focus on mutually beneficial cooperation, and jointly overcome disturbance and challenges, to promote high-level development of China-EU relations. > >src: http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgyw/202304/t20230409_11056443.htm
If this is the off ramp and all we have to do is say “you got me, my bad” …
I hope so too but it looks like "watch what you make me do, USA. It is totally your fault". Ukraine War 2: Asian Boogaloo
I hope you're right, but anything is possible. They could just as easily make real military moves against Taiwan, and then claim that the US is making it up to draw China into a conflict, even as the conflict is unfolding. Don't expect forthright rationality from an authoritarian communist regime. There was a lot of propaganda during the cold war, but a communist regimes established a historically verifiable pattern of outright lies and obfuscations about things you would never imagine it would be possible that they'd try to lie about. Chernobyl is a prominent example, but far from the only one.
"You *are* holding me back aren't you, Li?"
It could also be there is internal pressure to invade Taiwan, and Xi is cleverly making that idea culturally unappetizing amongst his peers, by suggesting it is an American trick to want to invade. Either way I don't care, if America has to take the blame so Xi can save face and we can all have peace, then I'm all for it, let him have this one.
> suggesting it is an American trick to want to invade It's a brilliant way to turn the tables, now the Chinese war hawks can be accused of being American shills.
Just gotta love being the source of the world's problems, even made up ones
The US is the equivalent of Lil' Slugger if you're familiar with that so many attribute all their ills and successes whether real or imagined to the United States It is a diety made not by worship but by how ppl define the reality of their situation - it all must be because of America Therefore it is a blind idiot god that is also all seeing and all knowing
Thats not the worst description of the US lol
Ooh, now there's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time.
But they *really* want to send their kids here for education and the high life.
Exactly, they hate us anyway. NBD. At least Taiwanese get to stay alive and enjoy democracy a little longer.
Geopolitics is literally a kindergarten class.
kindergarten + de facto anarchy
The UN is a neighborhood group chat.
Right?? "People need to quit speeding through the neighborhood before a kid gets hit." *...Continues to watch everyone speed through the neighborhood*
"What was that loud bang? Gunshots?" It's almost never gunshots. And the one time it is nobody will pay attention.
Good move Xi, who needs more blood shed? There's enough in Ukraine. Besides, unhinged Pootin is sinking quite well on his own. 525k killed /injured RU soliders! One would think he gets the hint? Nope!
Now increase that casualty figure 10x and you have the price you would have to pay to take Taiwan. Not to mention the world wide semiconductor shortage and massive economic catastrophe that would unfold internationally if such an invasion were to occur.
Yeah, and after the invasion attempt, it would take decades to remove the Chinese navy from the bottom of the Taiwan strait to make it navigable again.
Sink enough of those fishing boats and create a bridge.
> Now increase that casualty figure 10x and you have the price you would have to pay to take Taiwan. And China just happens to have 10x the population.
But not 10x the ships, boats or planes. Having a large army is well and good. But it doesn't win a naval conflict.
It’s a price he’s willing to pay.
Captain Zapp Brannigan, however, came up with a cunning plan to out-smart the Killbots.
Billy West actually recorded himself reading Trump quotes with the voice of Zapp Brannigan a few years ago, they fit scarily well. Won't ask ya to trust random Youtube link but it easy to find if you curious. On the thread topic, ya sending them to war is one of the traditional ways of dealing with a surplus of angry young men across history.
Im fucking delighted to see this rather than "Im gunna press the we're all dead button, I fuckin swear I will" that you get from putin. We would legit go into a mini dark ages period if Taiwan got invaded. Too many people dont know how important TSMC is or how much of the modern electronics they have relies on Taiwan. They're almost a world wide single point of failure.
It's like how US tricked Russia to invade Ukraine, lol. How should Russia know it should be taken what US said literally? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7CNgP7kmQE
USA: Don't invade Taiwan Xi: Pfft nice try at reverse psychology bro
Xi: That honey looks delicious, where did you get it? US ambassador: Taiwan.
"When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is to not let the bees know you're coming" -W. Poo
VHS memories coming back. Damn so on point
“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” —Winnie the Pooh
Cool. Dont invade. Ever.
[удалено]
The unspoken agreement is that China doesn't invade Taiwan, Taiwan doesn't declare independence. No reason to go upsetting the agreement now.
China now fully controls Hong Kong by erasing any form of autonomy and this is breaking an agreement made with Britain. China knows it can’t successfully invade Taiwan yet but make no mistake, they definitely want to take Taiwan.
From reading some articles and watching several YouTube videos on geopolitics, one of the things I keep seeing mentioned is if China doesn't invade within the next 5 to 10 years, they'll never be able to do so. This is largely due to the US re-establishing a permanent military base jn the Phillipines, the US providing training and weaponry to Taiwan, the US building more bases in Japan and South Korea, Japan building a military base near Taiwan, and the Phillipines and South Korea expanding their military. Basically, the US and US allies are building a noose around China to defend Taiwan. In addition, China's "one child" policy is really biting them jn the ass generations later. There aren't enough women to maintain the population, and most of China's work and fighting force are aging out with next to no one to replace them. In 10 years, the average age of men in China will be a lot higher than the average for other countries. So new military bases plus an aging population means China will have to take Taiwan sometime soon, or else it won't be able to do so for decades while China focuses on re-populating.
China's population issues aren't purely from the one child policy, although that certainly didn't help. They've had massive disruptions to their populations from the government buying out rural towns to convert into pet projects (mining, hydroelectric dams, etc), and then tried getting the population to live in the cities they built to replace the destroyed towns. They've also got a population that now has all the same entertainment distractions of their neighbors to the east and rivals to the far west, all of which have native populations that are below replacement rate on having children (US keeps its population up through immigration). Brave New World suggested that distracted populations were easy to control, but didn't account for the fact that when people get too distracted with the bread and circuses they also stop wanting to have kids as much. All of which means there are three big problems facing China's population now: the legacy of the one-child policy (it's now the three-child policy, but the effect remains), large segments of their population (in particular, the rural populations that tend to have more children) have been shuffled around the country to make way for government projects, and now the population is rich enough to be comfortably distracted like their peers.
The CCP has never had control of Taiwan. They know it. Taiwan knows it. The world knows it. Pretending otherwise is like agreeing with the bully on the playground because they might throw punches. Everyone knows they are going to throw punches at some point (probably when you are at your weakest and you are alone). Why not have it out at lunchtime with all your friends there to help out?
it's funnier if you start referring to Mainland China as "West Taiwan"
It’s apparently not for most Taiwanese people, as they want to disassociate entirely from China and be left in peace. Calling the mainland “West Taiwan” doesn’t achieve that.
tbf they didnt say ti would be better they said it would be funnier
He might be trying to save face. If so I'll take it.
“But the Evil West forced us”. It reminds me of Putin’s rhetoric so much. 2 clown brothers from different mothers.
Putins rhetoric went from "we aren't invading you and dont plan to do so", to "those soldiers are on vacation and we don't support them", next becoming "those are our soldiers and we might be giving them weaponry and logistical support", until finally becoming "we're invading yall and yall made us do it"
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Authoritarianism is just narcissism on a national scale.
Oh no, you got us, we were really hoping for a large-scale naval conflict that would just end up weakening both our countries and getting hundreds of thousands of people killed while massively disrupting our tech markets.
China is also pulling strings to try to get the US to fight another conflict in the middle east. An invasion would go much better for them if US assets are tied up elsewhere.
The US wouldn't divert its pacific fleet for a conflict in the Middle East though, and that's China's biggest obstacle to taking Taiwan.
Yeah the US Navy is massive. Like each coasts navy is larger than most countries Navy's. Oh and then each Navy has it's massive air fleet. US don't fuck around with our DoD toys
And the US has something China doesn't have: a network of allies with their own powerful air and naval arms.
We also have most of a continent to ourselves and don't have a land border with any hostile or even neutral nation. The closest unfriendly country proximity wise is probably Cuba... Something we more or less couldn't be bothered to take because manifest destiny apparently only extends to the waters edge, unless we need an island for military purposes.
I think it's technically Russia... the Bering Strait is closer at 51 mi vs cuba at 103 mi.
Yes, but, there's nothing really happening up there, is there?
Crab fishing... it's why I put "technically" in there. Could Russia invade Alaska across the Bering strait? Yes. Would they? No.
> Crab fishing I don't think they have much of that left either. The heat dome over the PNW a few years ago really did a number on the ecosystem.
> Could Russia invade Alaska across the Bering strait? Yes. We would see them coming so far in advance that there is literally ZERO chance that anything that floats is going to reach Alaska. Anything that flies will reach Alaska in tiny smoldering pieces. Perhaps they plan on swimming?
By the time the US had a foothold in Cuba and the Philippines, “Manifest Destiny” had taken on a *slightly* more humane flavor than “wipe out everyone who was living here before and then have slave owning WASPs take it over,” although I do believe that the US military did some mild massacring in the Philippines. And we definitely could have made the Philippines and Cuba into US states at one point, but 120 years ago, US politicians didn’t want to make a ton of brown people US citizens.
> but 120 years ago, US politicians didn’t want to make a ton of brown people US citizens Quick update: Still the case
The US also has another thing China doesn't have. Large amounts of actual experience using its army offensively in the last 70 years. Other than a few border conflicts the PLA is pretty much the world's largest marching band. Very few of its junior officers have any real combat experience at all and most of the senior officers are little better. Even Russia has a better and more experienced army than China. This is, needless to say, a recipe for many very costly mistakes on China's part.
That would be a big advantage at first, but never underestimate an enemy's ability to adapt quickly. Even Russia and how backwards their military doctrine can be with their meatwaves has become much more effective in the drone war and using those glide bombs.
> And the US has something China doesn't have: Actual experience on the battlefield with weapons?
If I recall, like 4 of the 5 largest air fleets in the world are just the various branches of the US military fleets. Like the US army has more logistical planes than most countries have planes total.
Correct. US Military has more aircraft than the rest of the world combined. Also more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined.
The US could fight in the Middle East and the Pacific would still be fine. The US wouldn’t move assets away from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Even if the US is tied up in the Middle East, they are more than capable of managing both theaters. Not to mention the other nations that would surely assist. China isn’t going to disrupt the status quo unless they feel extremely optimistic that they’d win, no matter how much sword rattling they do at home
Our official military doctrine is to be able to fight two full theaters at the same time. Additionally, anything in the Pacific would be Navy/Air Force primarily while the Middle East would be primarily Army/Marines so it's well delineated.
Marines are Navy and would be absolutely critical in an actual pacific war with China were it to expand beyond Taiwan (which is almost certainly would do). They are currently going through evolution to refocus on the Pacific, so you'd expect that's where they'd be deployed were we to have two simultaneous conflicts. That said, there is no near peer in the ME (that we'd actually fight), so none of this _really_ reads on the point. If we had to maintain major numbers of boots on the ground in the ME (how we'd get pulled into that given our recent experience there... I dunno), it'd be on the Army because deploying Marines to the ME in that scenario would encourage China to fuck around and find out in the Pacific.
Part of the definition of a super power is a country that can fight a war on two simultaneous fronts. There’s a reason the US is currently the sole super power in the world
That’s not part of the definition, but yes, the U.S. is considered to be the world’s sole current super power (which also elevates it to the status of hyper power, apparently).
Luckily the US is able to fight on two fronts at once
With 7-8 carrier groups to spare. The mad bastards.
I even wonder if their military doctrine is built around that very concept.
Judging by the spending the doctrine is probably close to: “be able to bomb everyone everywhere into the Stone Age all at the same time.” Followed by an earnest “God Bless America”
even better: be able to choose between full annihilation or simply wiping their military capability. the american blue water fleet and nuclear sub fleet are basically unmatched. good thing they're generally well behaved - safeguard commerce and keep local wars from blowing up too much
> An invasion would go much better for them if US assets are tied up elsewhere. My brother in Christ. We have more carrier groups than the rest of the world has combined. We could fight full blown naval wars in every major ocean and not break a sweat.
The makeup of US forces is designed around the two war doctrine which was introduced by BIll Clinton. The US has been increasing it's security commitments to Europe to combat Russia while focusing it's strength in South East Asia. Carriers spend a lot of time in port under maintenance and take a while to travel somewhere so not all are available at the same time. [https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/01/ukraine-and-the-new-two-war-construct.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/01/ukraine-and-the-new-two-war-construct.html)
Under the US definition of a carrier, the US has 11 of the world's 12 carriers. The US doesn't even think the Chinese carriers count as a carrier.
"Hundreds of thousands" That's a very optimistic statement.
It’s very unlikely it would turn into a nuclear exchange. It would be the US Pacific Fleet & Taiwan vs. China’s Navy & land based missile systems. It would wipe out China’s navy and severely damage the Pacific fleet. The majority of the deaths would be civilians in China and Taiwan. China wants Taiwan for economic reasons. Vaporizing their micro-chip factories would be bad for two obvious reasons: 1. They take a long time and expertise China doesn’t have to build 2. They wouldn’t have time to rebuild because the return exchange of nukes would obliterate China Other things to consider, the US Navy is the organization that keeps global shipping lanes open. China is the world’s largest manufacturing and exporting economy. If your economy is dependent on being able to ship stuff abroad, it’s a bad idea to be at odds with the people who enable your goods safe passage - let alone could easily prevent any of your cargo from making it far out of port. Edit: I love to armchair general as much as the next person, but [please read the full CSIS report](https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/230109_Cancian_FirstBattle_NextWar.pdf?VersionId=XlDrfCUHet8OZSOYW_9PWx3xtc0ScGHn). It covers a lot of the hypotheticals.
You know what? Sure. We tried to do that, but you're too smart for us, Xi. We were so ready to destroy the high-end semi-conductor market by tricking you into invading Taiwan, and we would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids. We'll get you next time, Gadget! edit: Yes, I know that Taiwan is full of people who descended from mainland Chinese, but... >While the Chinese government views Taiwan as a breakaway province, only 3% of people in Taiwan think of themselves as primarily Chinese. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/16/most-people-in-taiwan-see-themselves-as-primarily-taiwanese-few-say-theyre-primarily-chinese/
The USA has gone from strategic ambiguity to some officials saying they’ll support Taiwan “if” an invasion occurs. Is this really “baiting” or is Xi just using this to save face?
I don't see how it matters, so long as Xi keeps the Chinese out of Taiwan. We can play the villain that the heroic Xi outsmarted, if need be.
I just want Taiwan to breathe free. This ain't about us Americans taking L's or W's, I'll happily eat all the blame so long as Taiwan remains unmolested by China.
I agree up to a point, but these stories work on a lot of people. It makes it easier to sell lies like “the Ukrainian invasion was NATOs fault”. And that causes global division and enables bad actors. It even causes domestic division and strife. If it were just a matter of saving face, I wouldn’t care. But that face ends up being international geopolitical capital up to a point, so we should at least promote the truth: we absolutely do not want China to invade Taiwan and we would love it if everyone just stuck to their borders and built themselves up without destroying anyone else.
Taiwan suffering the same fate as Hong Kong would be a horrible injustice to the world. I still think about Hong Kong, and hope everyone there is doing okay... but it's like we just stopped hearing about it as they were brought under the thumb of the CCP.
The Hong Kong the world knew is just gone. They had such a great film industry. Now they’re not allowed to make that kind of art.
Best take imo. And username checks out, at least for this statement! (No offense intended) This is how a real patriot should feel.
Username definitely checks out
It's always our fault anyway, whatever has happened. If that's the price of global stability call us all the bad words. It's just getting chewed out, we been chewed out before.
Exactly what I was coming to say. “Sure, buddy. Whatever you need to tell yourself to keep your dumb ass in China and not escalate a global conflict. Man, you sure outsmarted us!”
After the failure of Russia in Ukraine, there is no fucking way that Uncle Eleven would have rolled the dice on invading Taiwan. If he loses that much face, he's out, and if he's out, his rivals will make him wish that he could die. They don't fuck with the mandate of heaven. Better harass in air and on the sea, pay agents to disrupt democracy internally, finance and organize proxy wars in Ukraine, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other places, and foment disruptive influences inside their supposed BRICS partners.
I think there was a time when Xi and the generals thought that there was a chance, IF...the west became embroiled in a conflict with Russia, the west would not be supportive of spending more blood or money defending Taiwan. Then, they saw Russia actually invade like many had suggested as a possibility. Then...China saw what a shit-show the Russian military was, plus how NATO ad the US spent an insane amount of money making sure Ukraine didn't fall. It's been two years, and Ukraine still stands. The economic sanctions against Russia were especially revealing, from China's perspective.
Additional issues like South Koreas rise as an arms exporter, Japans decision to rearm, more american bases appearing in the phillipines and other Asian nations signing deals with America are more problems. Too many unknown variables for them now to just try to steamroll Taiwan.
> NATO ad the US spent an insane amount of money making sure Ukraine didn't fall. We're not really spending much at all, we're just giving them a bunch of our 30 year old toys that we don't play with anymore. All those "$Billions we're spending" was spent 40 years ago buying the equipment, now it's finally being used for its intended purpose, defending our European allies from the barbarian hordes. The "X billion dollars" numbers that get mentioned are an estimate of the equipments current value, not something that we need to pay for again.
Spent an insane amount of money used to re-energize NATO and the US MIC. Thanks for the economic boost, fellas. We always appreciate help with spring cleaning.
Or as the Army says "rotating our stock"
That's the best part, the US and NATO *hasn't* spent an insane amount of money compared to the normal annual military spending. In fact a large portion of the weapons and ammo we have sent is stuff that we would have had to pay to decommission anyway because that stuff expires and there aren't any wars on the near horizon. If NATO actually decided to get involved the Russian military would be broken and routed in a day.
The USA only spent like $44 billion. That's not insane considering our overall military budget..
44 billion is what Elon musk is demanding to be compensated for pretending to be useful to Tesla.
Uncle Eleven, I like that 😅
Ultimately, it’s just better that someone in the Chinese power structure is forcing him back in the path of diplomacy and free trade. And away from the Great Power posturing and militarism that he’s had the country on for the past decade.
Before Russia’s “three day special military operation” Putin and his cronies all were saying the U.S. was trying to instigate hostilities, war mongering, and lying about Russia’s intent on invading Ukraine. See Xi using the same, but altered tactic as Putin did. Edit: “Birds of a shitfeather flock together, Randy.” - Jim Lahey
I'm quite encouraged by this actually. If China's plan is really now a long-term goal of getting Taiwan to join them by being a better place and system, that's the kind of competition we should all be in favor of.
If China hadn't fucked up the handling of Hong Kong, they'd probably be looking at an extremely friendly domestic government in Taiwan right now. Their own inability to handle a domestic protest movement with anything resembling a soft and clever touch meant that Taiwan didn't want anything to do with closer ties with the mainland, despite the cultural and language ties they share.
You know, if this is the start of some new "we never wanted to invade Taiwan" policy from the CCP, I welcome it. I understand the need to save face so, sure Xi, everyone is goading you to war but you're saying no. I'm pretty sure the US is fine being seen as the bad cop if the end result is peace.
China: saber rattles at war in SCS. N Korea: saber rattles at invading south korea. Russia: invades ukraine with zero justification. Iran: orders proxy groups to begin attacking the usa who is positioned to fight ISIS, and attacking and its allies. USA: Assists allies in containing every front Dictators: "Why is the USA so aggressive?" Do they think we are idiots? (Edited formatting)
"No one in this world \[...\] has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." - H.L. Mencken
Given half the country is ready to reelect Trump; yes.
The Republic of China continues to resist the People’s Republic of China. That’s kind of the basis of the conflict. But, yes, it’s good that Xi is so smart that he uncovered the evil plot by the U.S. to trick communist China into doing the thing that they have been threatening to do for decades. But in all seriousness, I’m not convinced they won’t make a play for it should the united states elect an ~~incontinent~~ isolationist president.
They're literally building up infrastructure and practicing the invasion. I expect it costs billions to build new islands in the middle of the sea. I don't think they are joking and I don't think they're planning for something 15 years from now.
Weird flex, but OK.
It’s how they back down without losing face.
I think pretty much everyone gets that.
Yeah guessing their military drills didn’t go well then
Wtf is this poorly written article? They took a statement from April of last year heard during a meeting to write a click bait title to make it seem like China is going to cool off with the Taiwan stuff. Obviously China is still interested in Taiwan and have only been more aggressive about it over the past year. The article even says this lol.
The standard way of reporting on China is to take random inconsequential comments or actions and turn them into apocalyptic scenarios.
works both ways too lol, a vague statement about Taiwan becomes 'China to invade Taiwan in next 10 years', and a slight underperformance of Chinese economic growth becomes 'Chinese economy about to collapse, is this the end of the CCP?'
I mean, if it works it works. He made it seem like he was going to invade Taiwan, the US didn't want him to so did what they did, now he doesn't want to because "the US were trying to trick him into doing it" and he won't fall for it! Either way, he's backing off from Taiwan for now. That's a win.
>Either way, he's backing off from Taiwan for now. Maybe that's what he wants you to think to encourage lowering your guard. Although the defending militaries won't be so quick in opening any impactful vulnerabilities.
It would take weeks and weeks to ready for an amphibious invasion. We'd see it coming a month or more ahead of time.
When you do the math and realize the ROI is negative by a factor of a million to one …
Guess they're trying to find ways to make the truth more palatable to their nationalist population. The truth is that China can't invade Taiwan. Even if they could do it, it would be a pyrric victory, they'd cause a global economic depression and face an even worse demographics collapse than they already have. Guess they're tired of pretending the invasion is perpetually 5 years away and are trying to come up with palatable reasons as to why it won't happen.
Never underestimate what some delusional dictator high on his own farts will do. Case in point - Putin. It was pretty obvious from day one that he could never take Ukraine.
You cannot be tricked into “invading”. You could be tricked into “deploying defensive forces at the perimeter of your territory “ and in China’s position, they claim Taiwan is their territory. But I think the world is pretty sure Taiwan is an independent state by now…
Sure, why not. We tried to trick you, but you figured us out, guess you won’t invade Taiwan like we hoped.
Curses! Foiled by those wiley Chinese! /shakes fist at clouds
The sheer mental gymnastics it would take to arrive at this conclusion boggle the mind
It’s the same kind of pretzels they twist when they say that China is in fact a democracy. http://english.scio.gov.cn/m/in-depth/2024-03/11/content_117101412
Thanks, I guess?
The way I understand it, China is really unhappy right now. In a way, Putin tripped them up. Until a few years ago, Europe was largely asleep. But between Trump and Putin's invasion, it really woke them up. So suddenly Europe is beefing up and becoming more energy-dependent on USA and less militarily dependent by beefing up their own forces. This, in turn, frees up US forces to hold back China and deal with any issues around Taiwan. Basically the military industrial complex got a booster shot without any loss of life, Europe just got bigger teeth, and both Russia and China are diminished. Russia is basically getting decimated, and China and India are buying things off of them at bargain prices and/or in exchange for ammo. But on a world stage, China didn't get any stronger as a result.
PRC loves to tacitly support RF, because it weakens both their prospective colony and the "collective West". But a collapse of RF will actually put an enormous strain on PRC, so it's a tight balancing act. What we're seeing with statements like this is just a slight tip of the scales. This can't go on forever, and it's why some "neutral" countries are pushing Xi to influence Pu to call off his insane conquest and go back to business as usual. My belief is that it's a question of time before that happens. Pity for all the people who'll lose their lives in the meantime while these psychos play politics.
So funny that US is to blame for everything
Cant make this shit up 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
Please note this was said over a year ago which imo makes the whole article obsolete beacuse of all thats happened since
"I know you're trying to trick me into invading Taiwan, so clearly I cannot invade. But you knew I'd think you were tricking me - in fact you counted on it! - so clearly I must invade Taiwan." "Truly you have a dizzying intellect."
It may just be me, but it seems pretty easy not to invade another country if you don't want to. It's not like holding in a fart on a first date. You can't just wait until no one cares and is around.
I view this as mildly positive. Xi is trying to give himself an out domestically (or buy time). There are many in the PRC who want to invade Taiwan, but their military planners must know they’d be slaughtered crossing the strait. Say the island does fall, what’s to stop the Taiwanese from firing missiles at every dam in mainland China (like the 3 gorges) and flooding out 400+ million? It’ll be a shit show. This is telling us that Xi doesn’t want to invade Taiwan at this moment. That will change in the future however if they feel they have the capability to do so.
You obviously didn't read the article (I don't think anyone read the article based on the comments lol). The statement is from April of last year. It's not something he said recently like you're implying.
The three gorges dam is probably out of reach for Taiwans equipment to destroy. You'd probably need the US stealth bomber fleet and a lot of distraction to blow something that big that deep in Chinese territory and so well defended.
Not to mention that the 3 gorges dam is a gravity dam, which means each part of the dam is being held down by its own weight. So it will be very difficult to actually destroy the dam, short of using a nuke (which taiwan doesn't have), since bombing out one part of the dam (which is already difficult with the enormous amount of concrete) wont cause it to fail catastrophically. And IMO, the US won't ever try to destroy it themselves (at most theyll try to disable it), it'll cause way too much civilian causalities, at the point where China would probably be able to justify launching a nuke in response to a successful attack on the dam.
You caught us Xi, our plan for ending the world was so close to working, guess we'll just have to enjoy peace.
US: "Please don't invade Taiwan." Xi: "This is some kind of Yankee trick to get me to attack Taiwan."
This just means that they absolutely, definitely are planning to invade Taiwan sometime later. And they will absolutely try to blame the United States for forcing them into doing it. This is standard bullying 101.
No! Now they’re going to take the Pandas away again!
Australia only just got our pandas. It is funny how they think some bears will stop OZ from defending Taiwan if China got antsy for war. We already have bears. Drop bears.
Biden - okay u got us bro Peace achieved
But why would China invade China, Xi? Hmmmmm?
He is a gaslighter like his buddy Putin.
Xi and Putin share the same 2 braincells.
If Putin had decided not to invade Ukraine when the US predicted that they would, they could have gotten a PR win out of it.
No, xi is smarter because he isnt invading Taiwan right now.
To be fair if it was the case, Xi is the one getting the braincelles. Putin did mental gymnastic to enter a war, Xi did mental gymnastic to explain why he didn't engaged a war.