I agree about India, but you seem to overestimate Russia.
The populations and economies are just too different.
If PRC decides it needs the Russian Far East and wants it militarily, it's going to take it. Maybe only the southern parts, they don't need all the empty frozen land. Maybe in 20 years, maybe in 40, maybe in 80 years.
And in the very long term, if China subdues Central Asia in any way, then it can get a piece of southern Siberia too, but that's like trying to predict WWII from Wallenstein's times.
The place is a jewel. Have you learned anything about it? You don’t just randomly become the world’s leading high tech manufacturer. They have great land, great resources, a great trading location, great people, great natural defenses… Any country on Earth would flip to have Taiwan.
I suspect China believes it can outpace the economic growth of Taiwan in the long run. If Taiwan’s business elites start to think they’re missing out on that growth by opposing reunification, then you’ll see a political shift in Taiwan.
The PRC has always maintained that Taiwan is part of China and will be eventually incorporated back into PRC. (The ROC had the same position, but with respect to the mainland until 1991.) Taiwan was in fact part of China from 1683 until the Japanese started their imperial colonization of China and Korea, taking Taiwan in 1895. It would be news and a really big deal if the PRC stopped making that claim.
Yeah. This is a dance that the USA and China have been doing for half a century. The agreed upon resolution has been that the USA doesn't declare that Taiwan is a sovereign nation and China doesn't invade in the near term.
My pet theory is that this was said specifically to destabilize the US. As others have said, this is not new. China has been saying this for a long time. But 100% the GOP is going to call Biden weak for not shutting Xi down and instead saying the US supports a "One China Policy " without any critical thought as to what the dynamics are.
At this point Taiwan has been independent for a good long time so it’s probably time to recognize that. This comes down to what the people in Taiwan want. I’m guessing they are good with the current situation as it keeps tensions down but sooner or later they are going to have to make a hard choice and the US needs to back them on it. Either they vote for reunification (unlikely but you never know) or they unequivocally identify as not-China and completely independent. In the second case the US and world should be prepared to back Taiwan. What will actually happen? Well, if I were Taiwan, I wouldn’t want to piss of a neighbor like that who is likely to go psycho when you officially breakup. It’s like ripping off a bandaid. I would be terrified of what China will do no matter who is baking me up. Taiwan will have to make a choice sooner or later but I completely understand their hesitation.
No you don't get it people wanting to be free is just imperialist propaganda which can only be overcome by even bigger imperialism. They don't actually want to be free, they're just brainwashed.
The only way the current strategy of both sides changes is if a major factor changes, otherwise this cold standoff is the most stable place for both sides on the matter.
It could be that an election in Taiwan is won by a very pro-China party - a similar thing led to rapid changes in Hong Kong. Or an American leader changes tactics dramatically because theres no longer an incentive to support Taiwan.
Taiwan needs to be careful to guard against either situation happening.
Differing from many superpowers that came before the US, the US has a reputation of following through on what it says it will do long term, and the vast geopolitical diplomatic reach of the Americans means that for now, China would experience too high an economic cost to try and change this balance unilaterally.
Differing from many superpowers that came before the US, the US has a reputation of following through on what it says it will do long term
Not sure about that one chief.
Also not sure about saying that Taiwan needs to "be careful to guard against" a party being democratically elected with positions that the USA doesn't like.
Especially when you consider that Biden and the powerful forces who actually get to decide how "the USA" responds to this are not for humanitarian reasons. "The USA" just wants nuclear launch sites as close as possible to China.
It could be that an election in Taiwan is won by a very pro-China party
For some reason, I don't see this ever happening. Even if it does happen, I can easily see Western propaganda painting it as a sham-election or something.
They're just that brazen with their bullshit to protect their interests.
While no party in Taiwan is openly in favor of reunification, there are major parties like the KMT and the TPP that are in favor of building a closer relationship with mainland China. Combined they are currently polling higher than the DPP which is considered to be the “pro independence” party.
So while I would agree that peaceful reunification is not possible in the near term, i think changes in the geopolitical dynamics between the US and China could make it more likely.
I’d say Taiwan serves US geopolitical interests beyond just chip manufacturing. It exists as a separate political entity thanks to the US who intervened in the Chinese civil war to protect Chiang Kai-shek’s military dictatorship. The PRC wants to remedy what they perceive as the consequences of foreign interference in China’s political affairs. That enables the US to use their support for Taiwanese independence as leverage in their attempts to suppress China’s economic rise.
That is gonna take ages and the whole rest of the supply chain is in Asia too. Also all the personnel lives in Taiwan. There's more to chip manufacturing than just buying the ASML machines.
Should China have this ideological adherence to reclaiming Taiwan, and be ramping up for a deadly and horrible invasion for it? No.
Should the biggest industries on the planet and ultimately all technology users depend on the independence of a tiny island nation that has an unresolved civil war with an authoritarian superpower? Hell no.
But those aren't the questions we have to answer. We have to answer insane questions like "what will happen if China tries to seize Taiwan?" When the questions are insane, the answers are never good.
Its what is left available to Taiwan if all else fails. They don't have nukes, but they do have (probably) enough missiles to breach the shitty construction of the dam. This is no different than the MAD doctrine.
What a little loser that you made a whole username for making fun of a politician because he ruffles your feefees. Grow a personality and go outside. Fuck sake.
Like Hong Kong, Taiwan will rejoin the rest of China. We want to believe that Taiwan is some bastion of freedom, but it’s literally just a holdout for the losers of China’s civil war. For a while the US tried to pretend that Taiwan was the real China, but eventually changed tact and has been trying to drive a wedge and use Taiwan as a military outpost. This has been US policy since the 1950s! (Most people in the US weren’t even born yet, and Joe Biden was only 7 years old when the Chinese civil war ended.)
This would be the equivalent of the Confederacy setting up shop in Puerto Rico and Russia supporting them as the “real” United States, then back-peddling while planning to use Puerto Rico as a military outpost. In the 1960s a similar situation happened when the Soviets tried to station nukes in Cuba and the US threatened to end the world.
Just like the US couldn’t be threatened, China can’t be threatened. You can’t hold a country of 1.5 billion people at gunpoint. You can’t destroy the 3 Gorges Dam without China nuking the US. The US needs to pull back on this position they’ve had since the 1950s and stop trying to bully China.
Both China and Taiwan have claimed that they are the rulers of China and only one of them is right. For Taiwan to be a neighbor it would have to cease being Chinese, which it has never done. Taiwan is still officially “The Republic of China.”