Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis

Barefoot said:

When was the USA scheduled to sail warships down the Taiwan Straight?

Or were they vague about the timing so no one really knows?

All i have in mind is a phrase such as "in the coming days" or "in a few days".

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AUG9 USS Ronald Reagan:

Sardaukar20 said:

Let's educate what you and probably many Taiwanese like you may not realize:

HK riots:
1) HK police used primarily tear gas and baton.
2) 0 fatal gunshots from police
3) 0 protester deaths from police brutality.
4) Multiple cases of attempted murder by HK rioters on HK policemen.
5) Multiple cases of attempted murder by HK rioters on opposition figures, and civilians who don't agree with them.
6) 1 confirmed murder case by a HK rioter.
7) Multiple acts of terrorism by rioters including explosives, and MTR derailment.
8) PLA HK garrison came out and cleaned the streets. They never engaged in any riot suppression activity.

HK police force did everything humanly possible to quell violent rioting without killing the rioters. Take points 4-6, many such rioters would have been shot dead by police in the US and other democracies. 1 year of rioting and no PLA forces turned up. But 1 week of the BLM rioting, and the National Guard shows up. You really don't know what kind of restraint China had shown to the HK rioters who were displaying xenophobic violent behaviors. In any other democracies, use of lethal force would have been justified.

So no, I do not accept your thinking about the apparent Chinese brutality during the HK riots. The brutality was one sided. The HK roaches who did everything possible in the context of HK to do harm and murder. If they had AR-15s and rifles supplied to them (which was attempted by the CIA), they would have become legitimate terrorists.

Xi didn't hand over Tsai the elections. It's the Taiwanese voters who were brainwashed by Western MSM and DPP media to vote Tsai back in. The DPP is using the ideas of 'Taiwanese identity' and defiance to the mainland to get her support. These things lead to fascism.

This is historically very dangerous. If the Taiwanese economy collapses because of DPP political stunts. Many Taiwanese will get poorer and very angry. Then when the DPP redirects that public anger again onto Mainland China again. This could transition into actual fascism. Fascism is an ugly thing. Once Taiwan crosses into that, it is almost impossible to stop AR from happening.

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Temstar said:

Anyway I'm back, decided to set depth to 900m and rig for silent running shortly after Pelosi's plane landed because I thought in that highly emotional state I might say something online that I'll regret later. Having gone through the past 200 pages of this thread I can see some of the members here in this thread might have benefited from the same. That said though I've been keeping tab on Chinese social media and I say our members here generally have a much cooler head than say the folks on weibo, oh boy it's been a roller coaster on there for the last week. In the last few days I see increasingly Chinese people writing "I like to apologies for my behavior in the last few days, I let the nation and the party down with my defeatism" and things like that. So certainly CPC seems to have passed the test internally.

I don't think it's that big of a surprise for long time PLA watchers here that PLA could arrange for exercise of that size and at that speed. It certainly left an impression on the world though. Even on joints like LessCredibleDefence I saw someone doing the usual "China is a paper tiger and the exercises amount to nothing", and someone else random immediately replied "tell that to the armada currently blockading Taiwan".

On PR front while I agree that as it stands it's a big win for China, I also disagree that the whole thing was planned out this way by CPC and Xi. I don't believe all that initial "don't play with fire unless you want to get burnt" type talk coming out of Chinese media and MFA were mistake. They were very deliberate ploy to apply pressure, bluff if you prefer to get Pelosi to not make the trip. I think CPC judged that a similar tactics seems to have worked back in April when she possibly had her tactical positive, so just replay that move and it will work again in August. This was a major mistake and very nearly ended in disaster for China's soft power when the bluff didn't work.

To CPC's credit they had Plan B ready for when she did land and carried it out pretty much flawlessly. That said even in the case of Plan B, things went as well only partly because of what China did, the rest was own goal by Taiwanese and western media. Taiwan's ROCMND engaged in epic coping over the last few days with their:

• no, no missile overflew the main island, on wait Japanese MOD said they did? Well they don't count because they were above 100km Karman Line and so are technically in space and not in our airspace
• we will intercept any missiles that overfly our island, on wait actually PAC-3 interceptors cost three times as much as DF-15B and we need at least two interceptors to have chance of successful interception, so now we need to save up the missiles for the actual war and aren't going to do anything this time
• no, all PLAAF aircraft briefly cross the mid line and turned back. Oh there's a photo of Su-30MKK with Taiwan central mountain in the background? That's photoshop
• no, no PLAN vessel approached Taiwan close enough to take photos of the landmass, that one of Heping power plant is photoshop. Oh there's actually a video of it too, well that's fake news

With all that coping it's then very difficult to spin the exercise as nothingburger from a paper tiger.

Similarly with the western media, they could have just used their normal tactics and ignored the exercise and pretend nothing is happening - something that they've successfully employed for other things like the current construction of Tiangong space station. But instead we got talking heads going all "Shit we got rused! Xi masterminded the whole thing and lured Pelosi into a trap so that he could use it as excuse to change the status quo". One of the big attack used against little pinks and wumaos like me is we're 大棋党 and like to mentally masturbate that CPC is only showing weakness now as part of some elaborate plan to win the future. The media narrative in the west shut that right down and in fact made it seem like Xi indeed was playing 5D chess when in reality I don't think it was that complicated.

Nice that the own goals were, I think the lesson here for CPC is they should not have been in this position to start with. Had they not luck out it could have been a disaster. Going forward I hope they don't attempt bluffs like that again.

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NeutralWarrior said:

China: Due to Pelosi, we will conduct major military operation & exercises.

Taiwan: We will also do some right after yours.

China: Ok, let's do it together (AUG9), but MOOOREE from us!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1556951894643593216

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NeutralWarrior said:

Military Exercises: China VS Taiwan (Taiwan from AUG7-11, AUG8-12)


View attachment 95187

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Biscuits said:

When you're freezing but also want to starve at the same time.

A loss of 10-20% gdp is completely acceptable if the West loses the same or even more.

If US tries and then fails at invading Taiwan, that will be the end of the dollar as a reserve currency right then and there. Their credibility in a China led Eurasia and west Pacific will be zero. And these regions make up the majority of world resources and wealth.

America could give up their claims on Taiwan and still be some level of world power, but if they commit to conflict and Chinese defenses stonewall them, it'll end up with them being downgraded to a regional power at best, a larger Mexico at worst.

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reservior dogs said:

Yes, I think if you remove the spectators and look at the reactions from leadership amongst nation states, China won and won big this time. Even going by how the Biden administration is reacting to this, you get a sense that behind the scenes, no one is given anybody high fives. It speaks volumes about the huge advantage in the structure of the government for the Chinese compared to the U.S. We are just bumbling along each doing his/her own thing. When you look at the comparative power calculus, this should be a big factor to consider.

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tonyget said:

Why I don't see PLA planes or ships show up in those red areas on MND R.O.C. twitter ？

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