Thoughts?
Is this imperialism by China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing? Leftists are normally anti-imperialism. Wouldn’t it be better to let Taiwan democratically decide whether they want to be part of China or not?
Yes, it is imperialism. Also, China has an authoritarian state controlled by a privileged ruling class and is therefore far-right.
What do you mean? 99.99% of the chinese people are charing 0.000001% of their countrie’s wealth like true communists.
/s
West Taiwan: baby let’s get back together!
Taiwan: no! you were an asshole to me!
West Taiwan: I wasn’t asking.
Taiwan: this is what I’m fucking talking about!
The break-up was a little different… Chiang Kai Shek was just as much of a monster as Mao. He was just a capitalist monster so the west supported him.
He was just as much of a monster after he was driven off of the mainland.
He and Reverend Moon directly funded literal Nazi death squads in South America.
But that fucker is dead, and Taiwan is a functional democracy, unlike the mainland.
They don’t want to “unify”, they can see what happens to places China “unifies” with.
I don’t really see how this is any different than 50 or 20 years ago, they’re just stating their geopolitical stance.
More to the point, as others have mentioned, it would be exceedingly difficult to invade Taiwan and capture their fabs intact.
Actually it wouldn’t even matter if they captured them intact because the US could just eliminate the supply line, making it unideal for production to continue for several years.
And unlike Ukraine, the US actually has a lot of interest and dependency on Taiwan, meaning they would get militarily invovled immediately.
China’s only benefit would be the elimination of the world’s primary chip manufacturing, and unrestricted access to the Pacific ocean.
I only see them doing it after they’ve achieved complete independence from Taiwan’s fabs in their own supply chain.
Alternative headline:
China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping reiterates intent to subjugate neighboring country Taiwan in New Year’s Eve speech.
It’s not a neighbouring country, it’s the same country. Ask Taiwan.
Lol calling China Leftist isn’t quite the thing. They are technically “communist” but no more so than the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was socialist.
China isn’t technically communist. The Communist Party of China is technically communist in ideology. They have implemented a type of a mixed state that has both socialist and capitalist parts, decently described by the term - socialist market economy. Or socialism with Chinese characteristics as it’s been called in the past. Why socialism? Because the socialist part controls the capitalist part of the economy. Why socialist? Because it’s controlled by the CPC/CCP which has over 100M members and growing, which means the wider society is decently represented within the party that controls the state.
socialism with Chinese characteristics
It’s literally the same functional mechanics as free market capitalization EXCEPT that the state owns a part of every company. The people don’t. The state does. And only uses it for authoritarian control, which is the Chinese characteristic. China is functionally a capitalist market with state owned companies.
If China controlled the 3rd party companies in the country then maybe it could be construed as socialist but they own nothing about Apple or NVidia yet billions of dollars flow through them. China is an open market that uses subsidies to offset poor management in those companies. Basically the same thing America did to failing companies in 2008 (looking at you GM).
China has a large fully state-owned sector which tends to operate key industries. They also have outsized control over private firms because the banks doling out capital are state-owned. It’s how they can effectively direct the private sector to build EVs, chips or whatever other strategic commodity is desired, in addition to having partial ownership in large private firms. Yes Apple and NVIDIA aren’t state-owned. You can read about the state owned sector and how it affects the economy. The structure is very differrnt than the US today. It resembles somewhat the 1940s US but with even more state control and direction.
A horse can call itself a duck, but that doesn’t make it a duck; it’s still a horse.
Likewise, a country that calls itself communist while practicing capitalism under a hierarchical ruling party isn’t communist. Even if every member of the CCP had equal say in the country’s policies and direction, 8% of the total population is far from representing the working class, let alone being led by them.
They’re not communist, correct. They’re capitalist.
8% of the total population is far from representing the working class, let alone being led by them.
Yup, it can and it should be much larger. I saw a chart showing membership growth of 2-3% per year. That said even at the present numbers it means every third family or so has a party member.
Again, China isn’t calling itself communist. And I don’t think they’re. That said capital is subordinate to state control, which is subordinate to an org that most people can participate in, so I personally grant them the socialist (market economy) label that they tend to use. But I do understand why not everyone does.
To be clear, if you’re not communist, it doesn’t mean you’re capitalist. There’s a lot in between and it’s often a matter of degree of one thing or another. Feudalism didn’t turn into capitalism the moment the fist capitalist firm formed. It transitioned to capitalism as more and more production became capitalist, at some point becoming the dominant mode of production.
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Invading Taiwan without damaging the things that make it valuable seems tough.
They don’t care about damaging things now.
Almost all of TSMC’s output is now powering US’ Stargate AI project. They also have their own fabs, they have equivalent to TSMC fabs (from stolen TSMC research) in larger numbers - the only reason we don’t see it flooding the market here in the west is that TSMC got injunctions against all the Chinese fabs selling 7nm and smaller chips.
If TSMC is gone and Intel+Samsung can’t keep up, then those injunctions are going to disappear pretty quickly to keep the economy rolling.
TSMC is no longer a card Taiwan holds, largely due to corporate greed.
The latest info we have says they don’t have the equivalent high end chip prod yet but they’re closing in. What you’re describing would likely be the reality within several years. That said I think it’s not in China’s interest to take Taiwan by force since they’d have to live with it. It’ll also do enormous damage to their soft power.
Source
Famously what happened during German unification
Except that was a peaceful process, not an invasion/annexation. Because part of Taiwan’s strategic defense policy is “we will melt our chip fabs to slag if the PRC invades”. Thus, they hold a gun to the head of pretty much all of the most advanced chip fabrication in the world, which most of the rest of the world has a vested interest in keeping working.
Except that was a peaceful process, not an invasion/annexation
The only invasion I’m seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.
they hold a gun to the head of pretty much all of the most advanced chip fabrication in the world
That’s been the American line for going on ten years. But the real gun has always been the Pacific Fleet, threatening to repeat the crimes of Vietnam on Chinese civilians, much like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Venezuela and Nigeria.
The only invasion I’m seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.
Saying this on the same day that Chinese warships encircled Taiwan.
Guy who has never seen a world map
Well, if the US gets tied up in Venezuela + a fickle leader + internal issues, the EU in Ukraine, Asian allies like Japan and Korea still figuring things out, then 2027-2030 does seem like the opportune time to invade.
Perhaps Kim Jong Un, Iran, and/or Israel will take the opportunity to try something, too.
Taiwan is too strategically important to the United States and Taiwan two difficult an invasion target for this to happen.
It’s just political posturing.
Is the US really a dependable ally?
In this case, yes. The fabs there are far too important to let them slip control. Now, if we could just build some fabs in Ukraine.
two difficult an invasion target for this to happen.
From what I’ve read, generally-speaking, the US expectation is that the US would win a conflict with China over Taiwan, but that the US would take serious naval losses in doing so.
I suppose that China could have a different view of the matter, though.
I think that a more-compelling argument is that if you, in fact, intend to invade Taiwan at any point in the remotely near future, you’re probably better off just invading it, not loudly announcing that you will do so at some unspecified point in the future and then sitting around while the potential invadee fortifies itself.
I think that a more-compelling argument is that if you, in fact, intend to invade Taiwan at any point in the remotely near future, you’re probably better off just invading it, not loudly announcing that you will do so at some unspecified point in the future and then sitting around while the potential invadee fortifies itself.
💯
I can see these announcements as placating domestic audiences and the military drills as discouraging the US from a potential intervention by signalling higher difficulty and losses.
West Taiwan sabre rattling.
Posturing plus demonstrating they can blockade Taiwan in case the US decides to send the cavalry stationed close by.
E: BTW the US and TSMC are continually working to diminish Taiwan’s stratrgic importance to the US by building fab capacity in the US.
The long game of Beijing politics is to just be nice to Taiwan while Americans grow increasingly unhinged.
Yup. The trends of rising standard of living in China plus the stagnation and self-destruction of the US are both pointing to closer ties between Taiwan and China over the long term - over the coming decades. Even today the majority in Taiwan prefers status quo and not independence. There’s pro-idependence and pro-unification minorities. Besides, I don’t think the Chinese want to deal with a separatist population and all the instability that causes, which would imevitaby follow if they annex by force.
Weird way to announce your surrender but ok
I’m rooting for China. Taiwanese are cucked.
day old outrage account
You can hate US imperialism AND hate Chinese imperialism.
It’s actually quite easy if you just fucking hate imperialism.
I thought I blocked all of .ml???
Cucked? What weird use of language
