PLA discovers that there is no way to drive tanks to Taiwan.

[Doc]

[SteveFoerster]

Yes, but the tank drivers can stare angrily across the strait.

More importantly, China is imposing devastating sanctions on Taiwan as a reprisal:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/chin ... si-arrival

[Doc]

Yes, but the tank drivers can stare angrily across the strait.

More importantly, China is imposing devastating sanctions on Taiwan as a reprisal:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/chin ... si-arrival

Maybe Taiwan should put an export tax on chips going to China and use the funds to support Ukraine

[cassowary]

Yes, but the tank drivers can stare angrily across the strait.

More importantly, China is imposing devastating sanctions on Taiwan as a reprisal:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/chin ... si-arrival

Maybe Taiwan should put an export tax on chips going to China and use the funds to support Ukraine

That’s telling her that Taiwan may become like another Taiwan. So they expect the US to help the same way as they helped Ukraine.

[Doc]

Yes, but the tank drivers can stare angrily across the strait.

More importantly, China is imposing devastating sanctions on Taiwan as a reprisal:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/chin ... si-arrival

Maybe Taiwan should put an export tax on chips going to China and use the funds to support Ukraine

That’s telling her that Taiwan may become like another Taiwan. So they expect the US to help the same way as they helped Ukraine.

I saw that the CCP foreign minister released a statement that included the words. "Taiwan, China." Seems to me it should have been "China, Taiwan"

[lzzrdgrrl]

Sleepwalking Into War With China

There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan between China and the United States. China is not a nation-state but a polyglot empire. Only 1 in 10 Chinese converses in Mandarin, the state dialect, according to a 2014 government study. Most speak one of 200 dialects. China is held together as it has been for thousands of years by a common tax collector in Beijing and the Mandarin bureaucracy, recast as the Chinese Communist Party. One rebel province—as Beijing views Taiwan—sets a precedent for many. Countless times in its long history, China has fragmented into warring provinces, encouraged during the 19th and 20th centuries by foreign powers.

https://compactmag.com/article/sleepwal ... with-china

[neverfail]

Sleepwalking Into War With China

There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan between China and the United States. China is not a nation-state but a polyglot empire. Only 1 in 10 Chinese converses in Mandarin, the state dialect, according to a 2014 government study. Most speak one of 200 dialects. China is held together as it has been for thousands of years by a common tax collector in Beijing and the Mandarin bureaucracy, recast as the Chinese Communist Party. One rebel province—as Beijing views Taiwan—sets a precedent for many. Countless times in its long history, China has fragmented into warring provinces, encouraged during the 19th and 20th centuries by foreign powers.

https://compactmag.com/article/sleepwal ... with-china

Thanks lzzrdgrrl for inserting that quote and link into this discussion. The latter deserves to be read in full.

We in the West tend to view the Taiwan question through a narrow, blinkered set of parameters. I have myself often wondered why the regime in Beijing cannot simply tolerate having Taiwan as a nation of seperate soverignty on its rim and consider it unreasonable for not opting to do this. After all, German speaking Germany has German speaking Austria on its border and that seems to work. We fail to see things as the Chinese might see them. Their long and often tragic history informs them that having more than one Chinese state coexisting is catastropic.

Looked at in this way, China is really only trying to defend itself by insisting on Taiwan's incorporation.

[Sertorio]

Sleepwalking Into War With China

There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan between China and the United States. China is not a nation-state but a polyglot empire. Only 1 in 10 Chinese converses in Mandarin, the state dialect, according to a 2014 government study. Most speak one of 200 dialects. China is held together as it has been for thousands of years by a common tax collector in Beijing and the Mandarin bureaucracy, recast as the Chinese Communist Party. One rebel province—as Beijing views Taiwan—sets a precedent for many. Countless times in its long history, China has fragmented into warring provinces, encouraged during the 19th and 20th centuries by foreign powers.

https://compactmag.com/article/sleepwal ... with-china

Thanks lzzrdgrrl for inserting that quote and link into this discussion. The latter deserves to be read in full.

We in the West tend to view the Taiwan question through a narrow, blinkered set of parameters. I have myself often wondered why the regime in Beijing cannot simply tolerate having Taiwan as a nation of seperate soverignty on its rim and consider it unreasonable for not opting to do this. After all, German speaking Germany has German speaking Austria on its border and that seems to work. We fail to see things as the Chinese might see them. Their long and often tragic history informs them that having more than one Chinese state coexisting is catastropic.

Looked at in this way, China is really only trying to defend itself by insisting on Taiwan's incorporation.

I wish you could be that objective in respect of Russia...

[neverfail]

Their long and often tragic history informs them that having more than one Chinese state coexisting is catastropic.

Looked at in this way, China is really only trying to defend itself by insisting on Taiwan's incorporation.

(In answer to Sertorio)

Yes, but is the PRC right on this?

Could it be that the rulers of the PRC have permitted themselves to be misled by their country's history and today it might be possible to maintain two states of Chinese heritage alongside one another in peaceful harmony.

[neverfail]

Doc, who inagurated this discussion was right to point out that you cannot drive tanks across the surface of the Formosa Strait. What this opening gambit did not go on to acknowledge is that you can fire medium range missiles with explosive warheads even to the sea beyond the island: where I believe that US Navy aircraft carriers are currently on patrol "just in case".

That is the point. There now seems to be a concensus of opinion in military circles that if the US were to engage the PRC in a conventional war over Taiwan; or anywhere similarly close to the China coast (and correspondingly far from the US home turf) the USA would lose.

Rather than entice Taiwan to maintain a defacto seperate national soverignty from the PRC perhaps it is time that the USA became a good friend of Taiwan by owning up that it cannot guarantee to have either the means or even the future political willpowwer to defend Taiwan and that Taiwan should therefore make haste to strike up the best deal it can with Taiwan.

The risk of such a conflict breaking out is that the US administration of the day, upon finding itself losing the conventional war may, in order to save face, resort to making a nuclear first strike on the PRC - which the latter would surely respond to in kind.