Laos is already a socialist country on China's border. To even have to compete for their allegiance is like US having to compete with China for the allegiance of Canada. It should be a given that Laos aligns with China. Yes China can do much more for Laos, but African countries for instance would now be more likely to trust USD and play hardball with China.
Also the NEZ pretty much covers all major Taiwanese ports: Taipei, Keelung, Suao, Hualien, Kaohsiung, Taichung, etc. Personally this looks as much a naval blockade (or demonstration that such a blockade is doable and within consideration) as a military exercise. Taiwan will most likely take this much harder than the exercises in 1996
That is why I saying, I don't even know what people are celebrating here. This is way more dangerous than 1996.
if the earlier posts were correct, theyre sending APCs with earlier unrevealed APS on them, which would be a weird move for just "training". It's not like 99.9% of China's population would care about such a thing if the exercises were just a PR stunt. There is some deeper reason that causes fully combat ready vehicles to be sent in large number to Fujian.
Is there really a need to invade? Taiwan is so dependent on two way Trade with China, all China needs to do is enforce a stringent embargo on the island which would lead to her collapse over a few months.
There was never any room for respect to be had. With that crowd it was always either going to be China is a clown or China is a monster. What has *always* mattered in this episode, politically speaking, is what message China sends about the future of this cold conflict *after* the visit, not the incidence itself. So long as the intention isn’t to do something with a high risk for war for Beijing the central question shaping any reaction or demonstration is “how do we show that this decision is going to have negative costs for the US *in the future*”. Most of the twitterati and China policy “influencers” long decided to treat China as an irredeemable bad actor and potential nemesis. If you’re Beijing that’s really all you need to know about how they view you. The point after all isn’t to be liked by people who fundamentally oppose your identity. It’s to win the chess match of your political objectives.
Dangerous definitely, but if you take China’s (Chinese military to be exact) perspective, being able to exercise military presence so close to Taiwan does merit some celebration. To be able to put much more pressure on Taiwan and normalize military actions basically within arms reach of the island would be a big step.
