The news media needs to stop using the word "reunify" to refer to the PRC's threatened imperial conquest of an island they've never controlled.
of an island they've never controlled.
Oh boy this might get me downvoted. Saying the Communist Party never controlled it is a tautology. That's what happens when there's a civil war that turns into a stalemate: one side does not control the land of the other side. So of course the Communist side never controlled it. This is ducking the nuance of what the actual situation is, that there was a civil war that never ended.
Even before that Taiwan did not belong to the rest of China.
There were some settlers from the main land, but the indigenous population always controlled most of the island and the Chinese settlers were careful not to antagonize them.
This lasted for hundreds of years, pretty much until a brief period at the end of the 19th century when the Chinese government decided to send troops to brutally subjugate the indigenous population, only to shortly after lose control of Taiwan to the Japanese.
It's a historical fact but how is it a tautology? Territory can change hands during a civil war as evidenced by the RoC no longer controlling China. Unless I'm misunderstanding something. Either way I don't think that changes the point, if that's a tautology then claiming that it can be reunified is a contradiction.
If they invade, won't all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? Pretty sure TSMC said that was the plan.
Doesn't seem like they'll be able to capture a whole lot aside from land and that will come at a pretty steep cost I'd imagine.
I heard about that too. The technology produced there is too valuable to be left to invaders.
The chip thing is definitely an issue. However, even if they didn't get any chip tech or factories, they still get the island. Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security. Additionally, it will grant them control over the shipping lanes in the surroundings waters, which are heavily used for international trade.
The US needs it for trade/their economy. China needs it to protect itself and gain more economic power. For these reasons, it makes sense for both China and the US to be heavily interested in controlling Taiwan. Personally, I really don't see a likely solution to avoiding military conflict unless the powers of the two sides figure out how to resolve their antagonism, which I think is unlikely without a change in Chinese leadership.
Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security.
I don't really know if that makes a whole bunch of sense..... The only country with the capabilities of attacking China is the US. The only real provocation that may spark that military conflict is an attack on Taiwan or South Korea.
Taiwan isn't even that advantageous of a location for an invasion either way, the strait of Formosa would be a death trap for any amphibious landing. The most militarily important region for China is and always has been the Korean peninsula.
I think Chinas main motivation is that Taiwan disrupts their plans to completely control trade routes in the South China sea. Once the 9 dash line is under control and expanded to include the territorial waters of Taiwan, China will have a defacto monopoly on trade for most of eastern Asia.
The land is most of what they want. Taiwan is militarily strategic land, it essentially blocks all access to the Pacific.
Thing is, that would only bring them to parity for the current gen, which they would instantly fall behind on having to start everything up again and train or force people into running the modern nodes.
These fabs (and pretty much ALL fabs) depend on tech to run their processes and make their chips, which isn't made in Taiwan.
If they do it for the silicon, they'll also need to take a good chunk of West Europe.
Would it set the West back a bit? Yes, but not all that much. There are non Eastern fabs up to date and the people in Taiwan trained to operate bulk fabs are probably on a shortlist for extraction targets too.
Even just destroying the competition makes their stuff much more valuable.
TSMC just finished building a factory in the US mainland.
They moved TSMC production facilities to Phoenix, Arizona. It's slated to open in 2025.
They didn't move them, they're just building new fabrication plants here so we don't have to depend on threatened foreign land for the production. https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Also SMIC (China's chip manufacturer) is now also producing 7nm chips, even though they were sanctioned in 2020. That means they either had a breakthrough in the process or they obtained and were able to repair and operate/reverse engineer the incredibly complex TSMC fabs.
7nm doesn't need EUV, as things get smaller it doesn't suddenly become impossible to do things with traditional lithography it just becomes harder and at some point incredibly uneconomical. They certainly ripped off the node from TSMC in some way (whether spionage or reverse-engineering), that is, the shape of the transistors and stuff but that doesn't mean that they're producing them in the same way.
Thank God they're finally building some chip plants here. The fact that our whole economy depends on some foreign island next to a huge country that has always hustorically threatened to take it back is insane to me. Although I think we should have more manufacturing in the homeland in general. Thanks capitalism, for off shoring manufacturing for the last many decades -_-
TSMC is just the end of a long supply chain of one-of-a-kind suppliers, all conveniently aligned with the West. TSMC does not make the lithography machines, the Dutch ASML is the only company that does (though they have some plants in the US now I think). Even so, ASML would be dead in the water without Swiss Zeiss optics.
The US' strength was never autarky, but global trade. The reason the US economy is so resilient is because most US dollars are not in the US, but in reserves across the world. That means even the US currency is intertwined with global trade. If the US attempted autarky, it would collapse both the US and the world economy. That's why Trump's policies were beyond stupid by the way.
Zeiss is German. The Semiconductor supply plant is in Oberkochen.
It’s a pretty interesting story where Taiwan decided to invest enormously into chip production so they could use the economic benefits to shield themselves from China. Worked pretty well eh
It was a gamble to focus on fabrication only and not include design. It payed off but it was a gamble.
Except they have problems finding workers. 3rd world Americans aren't cut out for the jobs it seems like.
I think it's mostly because it's in Arizona... Not exactly the tech capital of the U.S..
They wanted somewhere where land and labor was cheap and neglected to consider educated engineers and water are vital for a semiconductor fab to operate.
It was a fucking stupid decision, and TSMC has been flying in Taiwanese engineers and workers in general to make up for the short comings.
That's probably not a good plan, however. What you gonna do after the blowing up the plant? Emigrate, maybe, but for those who'll stay: Congratulations, you have just blown up your job, your life and any bargaining chip you ever had.
"Reunify". Just like Putin tries to reunify Ukraine with Russland... Strange how one is called Invasion and the other Reunifying
This is xi calling it reunification. It's just your average land grab invasion based off "but 300 years ago we successfully conquered if and had it for almost a century so we have the right to conquer it again!"
But if you're israel and say GOD gave you that land thousands of years ago, then here's $100+ billion in addition to the billions already given annually to you to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.
A. Xi said they would prefer to do it peacefully.
B. Autocratic regimes routinely define "peacefully" as a coup or overnight invasion.
C. Xi specifically set an atmosphere of strategic uncertainty by saying a time "hadn't been decided".
That tells me they've given up on winning elections in Taiwan. If they're scheduling it then it's not on Taiwan's election schedule. Ergo, definitely not peacefully in democratic terms.
Well it will be interesting at least.
Well it will be interesting at least.
As in "May you live in interesting times?"
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Your prize options are nuclear incineration during Friday rush hour or cake.
I suspect this will happen during USAs election.... you know when the world stops existing for a few days.
Well the Russians largely succeeded with the Olympics. So that's a possibility too.
Few days. Months!!!
"Re-unify" is dipshit-speak for invade, pillage and crush.. for anyone wondering.
Reunification of Germany was entirely nonviolent.
Yeah but they actually both wanted it.
Taiwan, judging from the enormous amounts of military material it has invested in, doesn't really want to be friends with china, let alone be conquered by it
The Kuomintang party supports one China
There is currently one China. It just goes by the name Taiwan. The CCP is as Chinese as my local takeout.
You must be one of those people that can't accept when civil wars are lost. I'm assuming you're also waiting for the South to rise again.
Yes Lost Causers are famously aware of world history. That must be it.
If you're aware of history, then how exactly is China not China? I must've missed a century somewhere
Read up on the resolution of the Chinese Civil War and the (nominal) government-in-exile that is Taiwan
At what point has enough time gone on before Taiwan is no longer a government in exile? Maybe 5-10 years, but that war ended in 1949. If you really think China and Taiwan should fight to death to determine who's the true ruler than I think that's pretty fucked up. Maybe you think the US should be a British colony again? Or maybe Ukraine should be part of Russia again? At this point the CCP has controlled China longer than the Kuomintang did, so I think that means they win.
If you really think China and Taiwan should fight to death to determine who’s the true ruler than I think that’s pretty fucked up.
I think Taiwan should wait out authoritarian communism's inevitable collapse and then come to the rescue with real solutions.
Were the people saying they were going to reunify dipshits in that case?
And Russia is trying reunification with Ukraine. What's your point?
No, that's annexation, ya dingus
Right, you're saying that in hindsight.
When a tyrannous dictator preaches reunification as a descriptor when outlining their future plans the context changes a bit. Hope that helps :)
That's pure speculation on your part. Xi specifically stated the goal is peaceful reunification.
speculation
Well when all the direct quotes I read don't match the history I have to speculate on what XI really means.
He said he wants to reunify Taiwan, he didn't send me a PDF of his specific strategy.
You're speculating that it will be peaceful with the same logic.
I still remember what was happening in Taiwan just a few days before COVID hit. Do you?
The entire idea of reunification is that it is supported by the will of the people. I'm not speculating that it will be peaceful, I'm just pointing out what Xi said. You claiming that he's lying is speculation.
You claiming I'm speculating is also speculation. Take your semantic garbage and share it with someone who can respect your thoughts.
Your speculating that I'm speculating is also speculation! You are the one whomst engages in frantic semantic antics!
Don't be mad cuz you're wrong. Xi Jinping stated that he has plans to peacefully reunify Taiwan and China. How you want to interpret that is up to you, but the media wants you to interpret "peaceful reunification" as "violent invasion." If you want to believe that, that's on you.
I think China is more than capable of reunification of Taiwan peacefully and invading would be a real dumb idea. Also, according to their own news, only 48.9% of the Taiwanese people support national Independence. So there's definitely a possibility of China winning the people over.
Someone said after Russia's military was shown to be a farce, that if they were China they'd be shitting their pants and immediately launch an investigation into how good their military actually is.
China has the advantage of actually having enough people to do the meat for the grinder approach though.
True but that doesn't work too well to invade an island.
eventually the bodies will pile-up enough that the next batch can just walk over.
That strategy would need quite a lot of bodies given there is an ocean in the middle there.
the strait isn't that deep, and it's only about 100 miles across.
It would take around 400 million bodies to fill in a one metre wide corridor across the strait based on some napkin math. So yeah I guess it's actually possible technically
I feel like this would be a hilariously morbid engineering thought exercise…
China's big problem is what they offer internationally is cheap labor and they're going through a population collapse now, like other countries that ascend economically, people have fewer kids and younger workers want better salaries and conditions, (understandably so!) This combined with the US's trade war with them has caused international companies to move a lot of production to other impoverished nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Mexico, among others instead of to China. China's economic miracle was because of this large pool of population that is vanishing. Sacrificing soldiers of reproductive age would accelerate this problem.
Not for long. China is on path to have the same demographics crisis as Russia.
They do have a surplus of men, though.
Chinese central command wouldn't have the power to push such an approach, their army has a very decentralised structure due to its partisan roots.
China gaining Taiwan would end global trade. That is the reason no one will let them forcibly take it.
It's wild how they're still obsessed with Taiwan, despite CCP being recognized as China for many decades now. I wonder how much of this is elderly people who still consider the civil war unfinished and how much is strategic. It seems like invading would not be in China's interest. Perhaps they want to do it before their demographic population collapse occurs.
It’s a Chinese thing. PRC and ROC (officially) both see “China” as including the “province” of Taiwan.
Part of it is brainwashing on the PRC side - they are taught from elementary school that Taiwan is a part of China. Part of it is ROC stubborness. It’s even a political issue within Taiwan. While the younger generation generally sees Taiwan as an independent country, the KMT and the older generation refuses to let go of mainland China.
Chinese culture also has the famous line that translates roughly to “after having been united for a while, it must split. After having been split for a while, it must unite” that refers to China in general. Taiwan, HK, and “China” have been split for a bit and the PRC wants to see it reunited.
The problem is that any such reunification would presumably be on the PRC's terms, and that didn't turn out so well for Hong Kong.
simple extortion from the boss of a criminal mafia
I thought they were holding hands at first glance. 🥰
It could happen. In China, among many other places, same-sex hand holding isn't uncommon among friends and doesn't indicate a romantic attachment. I dont imagine Biden and Xi have that kind of relationship, though.
I thought I read like 3 weeks ago they had no interest anytime soon
If trying to invade Taiwan weakens china like it did with Russia invading Ukraine then I’m all for it. Fuck china
Throwing other people's bodies into the meat grinder to spite our global enemies, heck yes!!!!
China could just fuck off, leaving them alone and then no one has to die. But people supporting sovereign self defense are the baddies?
Alas, world powers think it's their business to fuck around with other countries.
Laughs in CIA
I'd wager China is on a different level than Russia. But I hope I am at least partially wrong.
They aren't. They're trying to reform their military, and they're in a better position to do so. But if they invaded today it would be really bad for them.
It would be bad for everyone. Not just in military casualties - from my shit analysis it would bring the world to a halt with chip manufacturing, all the good in the western world are made in China and Asia. Just thinking about what I know makes my head hurt
Eh, manufacturing is moving more into SE Asia and India now. And chip production in the US is coming back online. There would be shortages but not anything unmanageable.
You are not taking into account china can lock down shipping from it's neighborhood of SE Asia and India, and last I looked into it, Taiwan produced a staggering number of chips compared to every other chip producer combined - last I checked TSMC was still producing over 90% of the worlds chips (and I checked a few weeks ago)
TSMC has factories online in the US.
Also, if China starts going after global shipping then they're going to very quickly find out what it's like to fight the entire world.
This is like Kevin Heart warning Mike Tyson. LOL, just funny and stupid.
China actually can challenge US in the Pacific theatre.
Besides, it's a matter of how far each side is ready to go. Taiwan is important for the US, but vital for China. US will back down and avoid escalation sooner.
Also, when you have nuclear states on each side, situation always gets very precarious.
So do not underestimate the leg China has here.
How is Taiwan crucial for China? Locality? There's nothing there of value aside from subjugation and a raw land grab.
The terrain makes it fairly defensible on the west coast. The economy would tank. Businesses of real value would implode.
The people don't want to be "reunified" and will not tow the line so easily. China has never had to endure longterm modern asymmetrical warfare.
I just don't see how it would benefit them vs the cost in the short and near term. If they could pull it off over 50 years then maybe but I don't think it would play out that way.
Taiwan has a big political significance for China; taking it over would mean putting an end to Kuomintang and concluding the war, emerging victorious. No more little neighbor undermining credibility of the Party.
Aside from that, Taiwan is home to the most advanced chipmaking factory in the world, and US has made sure mainland China is cut off from advanced computing technologies, forcing it to lag behind in some of the most important modern industries, as well as military. By capturing Taiwan, China could greatly change the balance of power - either by successfully overtaking TSMC, or by destroying it. Both will work, really.
Yeah but TSMC isn't gonna just walk away and let China have it.. They're gonna sabotage all of it and leave them with nothing.. and if they don't do it themselves, the US will make it so..
That's some dangerous speculation for a country that spent 20 years fighting terrorists in the Middle East whose main demand was, "Yankees go home."
Sure, but the enemy wasn't China but rather some militarily weak Middle Eastern countries.
It wasn't that big of an effort to project power in there.
It was far more of an effort actually. We could only resupply Afghanistan by air and through Pakistan. In comparison we have direct access to many ports in the SE Asia region.
They would almost certainly lose today, though it'd be costly to everyone involved. Provided the Philippines doesn't elect another Duterte-type government, their nearby position will likely be enough to keep Taiwan supplied with air cover, if nothing else.
They don't have a lot of carriers, or the long experience of the US Navy with them, and they're still ramping up production of fifth generation fighters (the J-20). Hypersonic missiles give them an edge, but they're not the wonder weapons they're sometimes made out to be.
Ukraine has had two Patriot missile batteries for most of the past year--they just got a third--and they practically shut down Russian missile attacks. Taiwan has seven, and they need to cover a much smaller amount of land.
It's more a question of where the Chinese military will be in 4 years. However, after 8 years, demographics in the country--long term effects of the One Child policy--are likely to strangle their ability to have a military on equal footing. Too many old people and not enough young people to take care of them. It's possible this window of opportunity is already closed.
There's a lot of classic US sandbagging going on. "We're falling behind, we need a 1,000 ship navy to keep up with China". Truth is, we only need to lay out the right pieces and the invasion will never happen. We don't need to fund an even bigger navy and feed all that more money into the military-industrial complex.
The pieces are already there, all around China.
On one thing you're right - any war in the region will be super costly and will end an awful lot of human lives. There is a reason, thereby, for US holding strategic ambiguity in the matter.
Can they outperform China militarily? Potentially yes, though at that point we'll get to the nuclear danger. Anyways, even the traditional warfare directly held between two countries will be a disaster - for China, for US, and for the world.
And while US has the option to back down, China - barely so. If they begin, they will put it to end or be destroyed. US has an option to not get involved or retreat - and they will likely use it in order to not have their entire military destroyed over one island.
This is not Vietnam. This is not Korea. This is not yet another proxy war. This is like if Kamchatka separated from USSR during the Cold war and tried to get US protections. It would turn out very, very bad, regardless of who emerges victorious.
If US wanted to go this far to solve Taiwan question to its benefit, they'd simply station nukes in there. But the consequences of provoking severe backlash from China are big enough so that they'll never do that. US doesn't need this war, and it will likely back down should severe escalation happen.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At last year’s Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi stated publicly that China would attack Taiwan militarily if it declares independence with foreign support.
Xi, who has set a goal of doubling the size of the Chinese economy by 2035, also said that "we must continue to pursue economic development as our central task."
Some experts believe it is doubtful that China would attack Taiwan if it does not declare independence because a military conflict would likely prevent Beijing from reaching its economic goals.
During the summit in San Francisco, Xi expressed concerns about the candidates running for president of Taiwan in next month’s election, according to U.S. officials.
Biden’s meeting with Xi, their first in a year, took American officials months to secure after relations between Washington and Beijing reached a low point in February after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon.
CIA Director William Burns said earlier this year that U.S. intelligence shows that Xi has directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
The original article contains 770 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
bla bla... but everyone still buys shit from china... you use iphones, chrome and everything as long as it is convenient for you... and then do the butthurt cry here. hows that supposed to change anything?
Yeah, voting with your dollar definitely will make the change, just buy something else and struggle a bit harder, that change is right around the corner /s
China wants to maintain the status quo and believes (perhaps wrongly) that Taiwan will eventually normalize relations with China due to economic opportunities.
The US wants Taiwan to declare independence to contain the China threat, which is why the US funnels so many resources from government-funded entities like the National Endowment for Democracy to Taiwan's DPP.
The fact that the US is taking more overt action in Taiwan today is a sign that there's a perception in Washington that China's status quo strategy is working.
Horseshit. That status quo has always been a Taiwan free of CCP rule. The PRC has never controlled Taiwan and their stated goal is to make it part of their country by any means necessary; that's disrupting that status quo. The US, on the other hand, supports the status quo of the ROC existing and the people of Taiwan being allowed to decide what they want for themselves.
Even the most shameless CCP propagandist should realize that trying to convince people of the ridiculous lie that the country promising imperial conquest of land that's never been theirs "wants to maintain the status quo" is foolish nonsense.
yeah thats like saying hong kong normalized into china
The status quo is Taiwan having de facto independence without seeking de jure independence.
It's not that complicated.
So, again, your original assertions are horseshit. The PRC is very explicitly trying to change the status quo of Taiwan having de facto independence. We know this from repeated, unequivocal official and unofficial statements about "reunification". This article is, in fact, about exactly that.
Your assertion that the US is trying to change the status quo by supporting the DPP might make sense in a world where the PRC wasn't supporting the KMT to an ever greater extent; either they're both equally trying to disrupt the status quo through political support or they're both maintaining the status quo by supporting opposing parties. You can't paint a "US guilty, PRC innocent" picture out of that no matter how hard you try.
But then, of course, suggesting either major political party in Taiwan actually supports or is proposing a change to the status quo isn't really true either, is it?
The KMT supports the status quo, the DPP wants to flip it on its head.
Are you even Taiwanese?
Edit: classic Westerners trying to put words in the mouths of the people who actually have to deal with the actions driven by their words
The ROC was independent and sovereign before the PRC was even a thing. If anything it's the autonomous mainland provinces which need to seek de jure independence from the ROC. The PRC should be thankful that the ROC by now is, by and large, willing to grant such a request (There's some Kuomintang who'd bitch and moan but they'd get over it).
The news media needs to stop using the word "reunify" to refer to the PRC's threatened imperial conquest of an island they've never controlled.
Oh boy this might get me downvoted. Saying the Communist Party never controlled it is a tautology. That's what happens when there's a civil war that turns into a stalemate: one side does not control the land of the other side. So of course the Communist side never controlled it. This is ducking the nuance of what the actual situation is, that there was a civil war that never ended.
Even before that Taiwan did not belong to the rest of China.
There were some settlers from the main land, but the indigenous population always controlled most of the island and the Chinese settlers were careful not to antagonize them.
This lasted for hundreds of years, pretty much until a brief period at the end of the 19th century when the Chinese government decided to send troops to brutally subjugate the indigenous population, only to shortly after lose control of Taiwan to the Japanese.
It's a historical fact but how is it a tautology? Territory can change hands during a civil war as evidenced by the RoC no longer controlling China. Unless I'm misunderstanding something. Either way I don't think that changes the point, if that's a tautology then claiming that it can be reunified is a contradiction.
If they invade, won't all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? Pretty sure TSMC said that was the plan.
Doesn't seem like they'll be able to capture a whole lot aside from land and that will come at a pretty steep cost I'd imagine.
I heard about that too. The technology produced there is too valuable to be left to invaders.
The chip thing is definitely an issue. However, even if they didn't get any chip tech or factories, they still get the island. Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security. Additionally, it will grant them control over the shipping lanes in the surroundings waters, which are heavily used for international trade.
The US needs it for trade/their economy. China needs it to protect itself and gain more economic power. For these reasons, it makes sense for both China and the US to be heavily interested in controlling Taiwan. Personally, I really don't see a likely solution to avoiding military conflict unless the powers of the two sides figure out how to resolve their antagonism, which I think is unlikely without a change in Chinese leadership.
I don't really know if that makes a whole bunch of sense..... The only country with the capabilities of attacking China is the US. The only real provocation that may spark that military conflict is an attack on Taiwan or South Korea.
Taiwan isn't even that advantageous of a location for an invasion either way, the strait of Formosa would be a death trap for any amphibious landing. The most militarily important region for China is and always has been the Korean peninsula.
I think Chinas main motivation is that Taiwan disrupts their plans to completely control trade routes in the South China sea. Once the 9 dash line is under control and expanded to include the territorial waters of Taiwan, China will have a defacto monopoly on trade for most of eastern Asia.
The land is most of what they want. Taiwan is militarily strategic land, it essentially blocks all access to the Pacific.
Thing is, that would only bring them to parity for the current gen, which they would instantly fall behind on having to start everything up again and train or force people into running the modern nodes.
These fabs (and pretty much ALL fabs) depend on tech to run their processes and make their chips, which isn't made in Taiwan.
If they do it for the silicon, they'll also need to take a good chunk of West Europe.
Would it set the West back a bit? Yes, but not all that much. There are non Eastern fabs up to date and the people in Taiwan trained to operate bulk fabs are probably on a shortlist for extraction targets too.
Even just destroying the competition makes their stuff much more valuable.
TSMC just finished building a factory in the US mainland.
They moved TSMC production facilities to Phoenix, Arizona. It's slated to open in 2025.
They didn't move them, they're just building new fabrication plants here so we don't have to depend on threatened foreign land for the production. https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Also SMIC (China's chip manufacturer) is now also producing 7nm chips, even though they were sanctioned in 2020. That means they either had a breakthrough in the process or they obtained and were able to repair and operate/reverse engineer the incredibly complex TSMC fabs.
7nm doesn't need EUV, as things get smaller it doesn't suddenly become impossible to do things with traditional lithography it just becomes harder and at some point incredibly uneconomical. They certainly ripped off the node from TSMC in some way (whether spionage or reverse-engineering), that is, the shape of the transistors and stuff but that doesn't mean that they're producing them in the same way.
Thank God they're finally building some chip plants here. The fact that our whole economy depends on some foreign island next to a huge country that has always hustorically threatened to take it back is insane to me. Although I think we should have more manufacturing in the homeland in general. Thanks capitalism, for off shoring manufacturing for the last many decades -_-
TSMC is just the end of a long supply chain of one-of-a-kind suppliers, all conveniently aligned with the West. TSMC does not make the lithography machines, the Dutch ASML is the only company that does (though they have some plants in the US now I think). Even so, ASML would be dead in the water without Swiss Zeiss optics.
The US' strength was never autarky, but global trade. The reason the US economy is so resilient is because most US dollars are not in the US, but in reserves across the world. That means even the US currency is intertwined with global trade. If the US attempted autarky, it would collapse both the US and the world economy. That's why Trump's policies were beyond stupid by the way.
Zeiss is German. The Semiconductor supply plant is in Oberkochen.
It’s a pretty interesting story where Taiwan decided to invest enormously into chip production so they could use the economic benefits to shield themselves from China. Worked pretty well eh
It was a gamble to focus on fabrication only and not include design. It payed off but it was a gamble.
Except they have problems finding workers. 3rd world Americans aren't cut out for the jobs it seems like.
I think it's mostly because it's in Arizona... Not exactly the tech capital of the U.S..
They wanted somewhere where land and labor was cheap and neglected to consider educated engineers and water are vital for a semiconductor fab to operate.
It was a fucking stupid decision, and TSMC has been flying in Taiwanese engineers and workers in general to make up for the short comings.
More info on TSMC from an AI chip manufacturing perspective: https://youtu.be/AJGrdtKT3LM?si=M-3EWWOPcIXX8vgv
[Curb Your Enthusiasm closing credits song plays]
That's a good threat if plausible.
That's probably not a good plan, however. What you gonna do after the blowing up the plant? Emigrate, maybe, but for those who'll stay: Congratulations, you have just blown up your job, your life and any bargaining chip you ever had.
"Reunify". Just like Putin tries to reunify Ukraine with Russland... Strange how one is called Invasion and the other Reunifying
This is xi calling it reunification. It's just your average land grab invasion based off "but 300 years ago we successfully conquered if and had it for almost a century so we have the right to conquer it again!"
But if you're israel and say GOD gave you that land thousands of years ago, then here's $100+ billion in addition to the billions already given annually to you to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.
A. Xi said they would prefer to do it peacefully.
B. Autocratic regimes routinely define "peacefully" as a coup or overnight invasion.
C. Xi specifically set an atmosphere of strategic uncertainty by saying a time "hadn't been decided".
That tells me they've given up on winning elections in Taiwan. If they're scheduling it then it's not on Taiwan's election schedule. Ergo, definitely not peacefully in democratic terms.
Well it will be interesting at least.
As in "May you live in interesting times?"
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Your prize options are nuclear incineration during Friday rush hour or cake.
I suspect this will happen during USAs election.... you know when the world stops existing for a few days.
Well the Russians largely succeeded with the Olympics. So that's a possibility too.
Few days. Months!!!
"Re-unify" is dipshit-speak for invade, pillage and crush.. for anyone wondering.
Reunification of Germany was entirely nonviolent.
Yeah but they actually both wanted it.
Taiwan, judging from the enormous amounts of military material it has invested in, doesn't really want to be friends with china, let alone be conquered by it
The Kuomintang party supports one China
There is currently one China. It just goes by the name Taiwan. The CCP is as Chinese as my local takeout.
You must be one of those people that can't accept when civil wars are lost. I'm assuming you're also waiting for the South to rise again.
Yes Lost Causers are famously aware of world history. That must be it.
If you're aware of history, then how exactly is China not China? I must've missed a century somewhere
Read up on the resolution of the Chinese Civil War and the (nominal) government-in-exile that is Taiwan
At what point has enough time gone on before Taiwan is no longer a government in exile? Maybe 5-10 years, but that war ended in 1949. If you really think China and Taiwan should fight to death to determine who's the true ruler than I think that's pretty fucked up. Maybe you think the US should be a British colony again? Or maybe Ukraine should be part of Russia again? At this point the CCP has controlled China longer than the Kuomintang did, so I think that means they win.
I think Taiwan should wait out authoritarian communism's inevitable collapse and then come to the rescue with real solutions.
You're gonna be waiting a long time
Were the people saying they were going to reunify dipshits in that case?
And Russia is trying reunification with Ukraine. What's your point?
No, that's annexation, ya dingus
Right, you're saying that in hindsight.
When a tyrannous dictator preaches reunification as a descriptor when outlining their future plans the context changes a bit. Hope that helps :)
That's pure speculation on your part. Xi specifically stated the goal is peaceful reunification.
Well when all the direct quotes I read don't match the history I have to speculate on what XI really means.
He said he wants to reunify Taiwan, he didn't send me a PDF of his specific strategy.
You're speculating that it will be peaceful with the same logic.
I still remember what was happening in Taiwan just a few days before COVID hit. Do you?
The entire idea of reunification is that it is supported by the will of the people. I'm not speculating that it will be peaceful, I'm just pointing out what Xi said. You claiming that he's lying is speculation.
You claiming I'm speculating is also speculation. Take your semantic garbage and share it with someone who can respect your thoughts.
Your speculating that I'm speculating is also speculation! You are the one whomst engages in frantic semantic antics!
Don't be mad cuz you're wrong. Xi Jinping stated that he has plans to peacefully reunify Taiwan and China. How you want to interpret that is up to you, but the media wants you to interpret "peaceful reunification" as "violent invasion." If you want to believe that, that's on you.
I think China is more than capable of reunification of Taiwan peacefully and invading would be a real dumb idea. Also, according to their own news, only 48.9% of the Taiwanese people support national Independence. So there's definitely a possibility of China winning the people over.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/09/02/2003805648
If you believe that then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. In fact it's 2 for 1, but only if you buy by midnight!
Uhm, isn't a bridge the means of producing safe travel across a span? You should get the wall for owning means of production.
Did they say how? Peace would be preferred, but the Taiwanese need to be willing to cooperate.
After what's happened in Hong Kong, why would Taiwan trust them?
Exactly my point
The Kuomintang party is willing to cooperate, while the Democratic party is not
ROC is gonna take back the mainland?
You mean West Taiwan?
Glory to Taiwan and their West Taiwan acquisition project!
Take the hint Xi, she's just not into you.
Someone said after Russia's military was shown to be a farce, that if they were China they'd be shitting their pants and immediately launch an investigation into how good their military actually is.
China has the advantage of actually having enough people to do the meat for the grinder approach though.
True but that doesn't work too well to invade an island.
eventually the bodies will pile-up enough that the next batch can just walk over.
That strategy would need quite a lot of bodies given there is an ocean in the middle there.
the strait isn't that deep, and it's only about 100 miles across.
It would take around 400 million bodies to fill in a one metre wide corridor across the strait based on some napkin math. So yeah I guess it's actually possible technically
I feel like this would be a hilariously morbid engineering thought exercise…
China's big problem is what they offer internationally is cheap labor and they're going through a population collapse now, like other countries that ascend economically, people have fewer kids and younger workers want better salaries and conditions, (understandably so!) This combined with the US's trade war with them has caused international companies to move a lot of production to other impoverished nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Mexico, among others instead of to China. China's economic miracle was because of this large pool of population that is vanishing. Sacrificing soldiers of reproductive age would accelerate this problem.
Not for long. China is on path to have the same demographics crisis as Russia.
They do have a surplus of men, though.
Chinese central command wouldn't have the power to push such an approach, their army has a very decentralised structure due to its partisan roots.
China gaining Taiwan would end global trade. That is the reason no one will let them forcibly take it.
It's wild how they're still obsessed with Taiwan, despite CCP being recognized as China for many decades now. I wonder how much of this is elderly people who still consider the civil war unfinished and how much is strategic. It seems like invading would not be in China's interest. Perhaps they want to do it before their demographic population collapse occurs.
It’s a Chinese thing. PRC and ROC (officially) both see “China” as including the “province” of Taiwan.
Part of it is brainwashing on the PRC side - they are taught from elementary school that Taiwan is a part of China. Part of it is ROC stubborness. It’s even a political issue within Taiwan. While the younger generation generally sees Taiwan as an independent country, the KMT and the older generation refuses to let go of mainland China.
Chinese culture also has the famous line that translates roughly to “after having been united for a while, it must split. After having been split for a while, it must unite” that refers to China in general. Taiwan, HK, and “China” have been split for a bit and the PRC wants to see it reunited.
The problem is that any such reunification would presumably be on the PRC's terms, and that didn't turn out so well for Hong Kong.
They want China to be the old Qing borders. Both Chinas still claim it.
It's that "saving face" stuff which makes you lose even more face by looking silly.
By having the CCP step down, right?
That would be a dream, but not feasible.
simple extortion from the boss of a criminal mafia
I thought they were holding hands at first glance. 🥰
It could happen. In China, among many other places, same-sex hand holding isn't uncommon among friends and doesn't indicate a romantic attachment. I dont imagine Biden and Xi have that kind of relationship, though.
I thought I read like 3 weeks ago they had no interest anytime soon
If trying to invade Taiwan weakens china like it did with Russia invading Ukraine then I’m all for it. Fuck china
Throwing other people's bodies into the meat grinder to spite our global enemies, heck yes!!!!
China could just fuck off, leaving them alone and then no one has to die. But people supporting sovereign self defense are the baddies?
Alas, world powers think it's their business to fuck around with other countries.
Laughs in CIA
I'd wager China is on a different level than Russia. But I hope I am at least partially wrong.
They aren't. They're trying to reform their military, and they're in a better position to do so. But if they invaded today it would be really bad for them.
It would be bad for everyone. Not just in military casualties - from my shit analysis it would bring the world to a halt with chip manufacturing, all the good in the western world are made in China and Asia. Just thinking about what I know makes my head hurt
Eh, manufacturing is moving more into SE Asia and India now. And chip production in the US is coming back online. There would be shortages but not anything unmanageable.
You are not taking into account china can lock down shipping from it's neighborhood of SE Asia and India, and last I looked into it, Taiwan produced a staggering number of chips compared to every other chip producer combined - last I checked TSMC was still producing over 90% of the worlds chips (and I checked a few weeks ago)
TSMC has factories online in the US.
Also, if China starts going after global shipping then they're going to very quickly find out what it's like to fight the entire world.
This is like Kevin Heart warning Mike Tyson. LOL, just funny and stupid.
China actually can challenge US in the Pacific theatre.
Besides, it's a matter of how far each side is ready to go. Taiwan is important for the US, but vital for China. US will back down and avoid escalation sooner.
Also, when you have nuclear states on each side, situation always gets very precarious.
So do not underestimate the leg China has here.
How is Taiwan crucial for China? Locality? There's nothing there of value aside from subjugation and a raw land grab.
The terrain makes it fairly defensible on the west coast. The economy would tank. Businesses of real value would implode.
The people don't want to be "reunified" and will not tow the line so easily. China has never had to endure longterm modern asymmetrical warfare.
I just don't see how it would benefit them vs the cost in the short and near term. If they could pull it off over 50 years then maybe but I don't think it would play out that way.
Taiwan has a big political significance for China; taking it over would mean putting an end to Kuomintang and concluding the war, emerging victorious. No more little neighbor undermining credibility of the Party.
Aside from that, Taiwan is home to the most advanced chipmaking factory in the world, and US has made sure mainland China is cut off from advanced computing technologies, forcing it to lag behind in some of the most important modern industries, as well as military. By capturing Taiwan, China could greatly change the balance of power - either by successfully overtaking TSMC, or by destroying it. Both will work, really.
Yeah but TSMC isn't gonna just walk away and let China have it.. They're gonna sabotage all of it and leave them with nothing.. and if they don't do it themselves, the US will make it so..
That's some dangerous speculation for a country that spent 20 years fighting terrorists in the Middle East whose main demand was, "Yankees go home."
Sure, but the enemy wasn't China but rather some militarily weak Middle Eastern countries.
It wasn't that big of an effort to project power in there.
It was far more of an effort actually. We could only resupply Afghanistan by air and through Pakistan. In comparison we have direct access to many ports in the SE Asia region.
They would almost certainly lose today, though it'd be costly to everyone involved. Provided the Philippines doesn't elect another Duterte-type government, their nearby position will likely be enough to keep Taiwan supplied with air cover, if nothing else.
They don't have a lot of carriers, or the long experience of the US Navy with them, and they're still ramping up production of fifth generation fighters (the J-20). Hypersonic missiles give them an edge, but they're not the wonder weapons they're sometimes made out to be.
Ukraine has had two Patriot missile batteries for most of the past year--they just got a third--and they practically shut down Russian missile attacks. Taiwan has seven, and they need to cover a much smaller amount of land.
It's more a question of where the Chinese military will be in 4 years. However, after 8 years, demographics in the country--long term effects of the One Child policy--are likely to strangle their ability to have a military on equal footing. Too many old people and not enough young people to take care of them. It's possible this window of opportunity is already closed.
There's a lot of classic US sandbagging going on. "We're falling behind, we need a 1,000 ship navy to keep up with China". Truth is, we only need to lay out the right pieces and the invasion will never happen. We don't need to fund an even bigger navy and feed all that more money into the military-industrial complex.
The pieces are already there, all around China.
On one thing you're right - any war in the region will be super costly and will end an awful lot of human lives. There is a reason, thereby, for US holding strategic ambiguity in the matter.
Can they outperform China militarily? Potentially yes, though at that point we'll get to the nuclear danger. Anyways, even the traditional warfare directly held between two countries will be a disaster - for China, for US, and for the world.
And while US has the option to back down, China - barely so. If they begin, they will put it to end or be destroyed. US has an option to not get involved or retreat - and they will likely use it in order to not have their entire military destroyed over one island.
This is not Vietnam. This is not Korea. This is not yet another proxy war. This is like if Kamchatka separated from USSR during the Cold war and tried to get US protections. It would turn out very, very bad, regardless of who emerges victorious.
If US wanted to go this far to solve Taiwan question to its benefit, they'd simply station nukes in there. But the consequences of provoking severe backlash from China are big enough so that they'll never do that. US doesn't need this war, and it will likely back down should severe escalation happen.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At last year’s Chinese Communist Party Congress, Xi stated publicly that China would attack Taiwan militarily if it declares independence with foreign support.
Xi, who has set a goal of doubling the size of the Chinese economy by 2035, also said that "we must continue to pursue economic development as our central task."
Some experts believe it is doubtful that China would attack Taiwan if it does not declare independence because a military conflict would likely prevent Beijing from reaching its economic goals.
During the summit in San Francisco, Xi expressed concerns about the candidates running for president of Taiwan in next month’s election, according to U.S. officials.
Biden’s meeting with Xi, their first in a year, took American officials months to secure after relations between Washington and Beijing reached a low point in February after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon.
CIA Director William Burns said earlier this year that U.S. intelligence shows that Xi has directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
The original article contains 770 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
bla bla... but everyone still buys shit from china... you use iphones, chrome and everything as long as it is convenient for you... and then do the butthurt cry here. hows that supposed to change anything?
Yeah, voting with your dollar definitely will make the change, just buy something else and struggle a bit harder, that change is right around the corner /s
China wants to maintain the status quo and believes (perhaps wrongly) that Taiwan will eventually normalize relations with China due to economic opportunities.
The US wants Taiwan to declare independence to contain the China threat, which is why the US funnels so many resources from government-funded entities like the National Endowment for Democracy to Taiwan's DPP.
The fact that the US is taking more overt action in Taiwan today is a sign that there's a perception in Washington that China's status quo strategy is working.
Horseshit. That status quo has always been a Taiwan free of CCP rule. The PRC has never controlled Taiwan and their stated goal is to make it part of their country by any means necessary; that's disrupting that status quo. The US, on the other hand, supports the status quo of the ROC existing and the people of Taiwan being allowed to decide what they want for themselves.
Even the most shameless CCP propagandist should realize that trying to convince people of the ridiculous lie that the country promising imperial conquest of land that's never been theirs "wants to maintain the status quo" is foolish nonsense.
yeah thats like saying hong kong normalized into china
The status quo is Taiwan having de facto independence without seeking de jure independence.
It's not that complicated.
So, again, your original assertions are horseshit. The PRC is very explicitly trying to change the status quo of Taiwan having de facto independence. We know this from repeated, unequivocal official and unofficial statements about "reunification". This article is, in fact, about exactly that.
Your assertion that the US is trying to change the status quo by supporting the DPP might make sense in a world where the PRC wasn't supporting the KMT to an ever greater extent; either they're both equally trying to disrupt the status quo through political support or they're both maintaining the status quo by supporting opposing parties. You can't paint a "US guilty, PRC innocent" picture out of that no matter how hard you try.
But then, of course, suggesting either major political party in Taiwan actually supports or is proposing a change to the status quo isn't really true either, is it?
The KMT supports the status quo, the DPP wants to flip it on its head.
Are you even Taiwanese?
Edit: classic Westerners trying to put words in the mouths of the people who actually have to deal with the actions driven by their words
The ROC was independent and sovereign before the PRC was even a thing. If anything it's the autonomous mainland provinces which need to seek de jure independence from the ROC. The PRC should be thankful that the ROC by now is, by and large, willing to grant such a request (There's some Kuomintang who'd bitch and moan but they'd get over it).