- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
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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.
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.
The news media needs to report what is true and verifiable, without adding their own interpretation (except for labelled opinion pieces).
In this case, the true and verifiable fact to report is what Xi told Biden. And without checking primary sources, I’m sure he used a word meaning “reunify”.If they’re using a false term that someone else used they should use quotes:
Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will “reunify” Taiwan with China
Iit should always be apparent there is editorialization happening tho. Kinda like [sic] -> that is obviously the author clarifying they are not misquoting or misspelling
report what is true and verifiable
if they did that there wouldnt be much news, a lot fewer journalists, less jobs overall, and much less advertising revenue.
never gonna happen
But it’s a good yardstick to measure the news you’re reading. Always ask yourself:
“Are they reporting on something that happened? If yes, do they say who’s seen it happen?”Way too many “news stories” nowadays boil down to “some no-one posted something on X about something they haven’t themselves witnessed”.
Yep, this word is used intentionally by Xi and he knows he means “conquer the nation developed by the people that escaped his predecessors”.
The nation wasn’t developed by the people who escaped. That’s an ahistorical way of framing the issue
Taiwan was developed by the overthrown proto-fascist military junta who just lost the civil war. After taking the island, they didn’t tell the people of Taiwan that the war had been over and they were no longer China until 1991. The first labor laws outlawing slavery were introduced to the people of Taiwan in 2006. The people of Taiwan still consider themselves China (it is afterall the name they go by, not Taiwan) and full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island.
Just to be clear, I am a supporter of their independence, but this is a very messy situation in which the political party who comrade the country is the same fascist party who lost the war in the first place and still maintains to the UN that they are the legitimate government of the mainland. Full separation is convenient for the West, but neither side actually wants that, they just don’t want to be ruled by either fascists or communists, and I think that is incredibly fair for all people actually involved to want.
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.
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If they invade, won’t all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ROC is gonna take back the mainland?
You mean West Taiwan?
Glory to Taiwan and their West Taiwan acquisition project!
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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 is hostage state that nurtures Stockholm Syndrome in it’s population (similar to DPRK and others). You can only “leave” if it’s deemed useful and safe for China (i.e. you have Stockholm Syndrome strongly enough). And those that leave are still under control, i.e. their (edited) behavior can be coerced by using carrot and stick methods on their family and loved ones.
in its* population
Uhm, you can freely leave China? And unless you’re a secret FBI agent, your family is probably safe.
I’ve heard those stories of “secret Chinese police in the Netherlands”, but they are based on words of like one man without decent confirmation
“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!”
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.
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Honestly, I think it depends who’s in power at the time.
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.
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.
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 I read like 3 weeks ago they had no interest anytime soon
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.
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.
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