Taiwan urges China to stop ‘destructive’ military activities as fighter jets cross median line

World News@lemmy.world – 201 points – 10 months ago

Taiwan urges China to stop ‘destructive’ military activities as fighter jets cross median line

Taiwan’s defence ministry has urged China to stop “destructive, unilateral action” after reporting a sharp rise in Chinese military activities near the island, warning such behaviour could lead to an increase in tensions.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has in recent years regularly carried out military drills around the island as it seeks to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said that since Sunday it had spotted 103 Chinese military aircraft over the sea, a number it called a “recent high”. The planes were detected between 6am on Sunday and 6am on Monday, the ministry said. As is customary, they turned back before reaching Taiwan.

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Two years ago I would've said that this is probably nothing. But the ukraine war started just like this, with military exercises coming closer.

It still is nothing.

China does not have the ability to launch an amphibious invasion.

This is purely for domestic rhetoric.

China does not have the ability to launch an amphibious invasion.

It's closer than you think:

CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most[!!!] scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. China also lost heavily, and failure to occupy Taiwan might destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule. Victory is therefore not enough. The United States needs to strengthen deterrence immediately.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan

However, it inevitably raises the question: if China tries to take Taiwan, are the United States and its allies able to stop it? And the alarming answer is: Quite possibly not. Analysts say China has more troops, more missiles and more ships than Taiwan or its possible supporters, like the US or Japan, could bring to a fight. That means that if China is absolutely determined to take the island it probably can. But there’s a caveat; while China could likely prevail, any victory would come at an extremely bloody price for both Beijing and its adversaries.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/31/asia/china-taiwan-invasion-scenarios-analysis-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

TLDR:

China has mass. 1.4billion people means you can keep throwing meat in the grinder.
If the CCP/Xi commits to an invasion, it'd be an existential risk to fail, so they'd be more likely to make that sacrifice.

Also: risk of nuclear war.

Extremely unlikely they would get TSMC either, which is one of the big reasons they want it.

Oh, yeah.

Even if the invasion was succesful, it would be a textbook pyrrhic victory. IRC there are already plans to ship everything important out ASAP and destroy what can't be shipped. Obviously they don't want the Chinese to get their hands on it. What isn't destroyed on purpose, would like be destroyed by the war itself. Taiwan's lovely, but the whole reason it has strategic value is because of its high tech industries.

It makes no sense to invade. But hey, never underestimate the stupidity, megalomania and vanity of an ageing autocrat.

China has 1.4b people, it does not have the boats or resources to land even a fraction of them on the island.

Russia does not have the ability to take Ukraine, but still tries.

There are significant differences, some of which have already been mentioned. In terms of Ukraine, the difference last time they had their exercise before the invasion was that they had transported things not necessarily having to do with the flexy shit they did the previous exercises with. Autumn 21 rus*ia was transporting blood, field hospitals and some hq equipment, things we normally don't see them doing, proving that to be the first steps for the invasion. West knows very well the difference between setting up an invasion and setting up a flex to scare and coerce.

Ch*na has absolutely nothing to indicate these are but provocations. They lack the equipment, logistics and education to invade Taiwan. If this actually brews up to something, its mainlanders doing a quite literal suicide

From what I read and I'm not sure how accurate this is or not, but the two aren't really comparable. The logistical challenge of invading Taiwan is great enough that it would be impossible to hide preparations.