No doubt indeed, but sooner or later the US will no longer be able to make up the rules of this game as goes along and sooner or later a bluff will be called that it will have to respond to......
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Very good point, but have you consider that China may not be in as much of a hurry to retake Taiwan as the western MSM and governments seem to believe?
The western consensus is that China will take Taiwan by force as soon as it is able to do so with high degree of confidence of success. Ergo the only reason it has not move already is because it is ‘deterred’. But I think that is bonk. China has achieved that minimum threshold long ago.
I personally think that’s condescending and small thinking, and that Beijing actually has very good reasons of its own to keep the Taiwan issue live for the time being.
Aside from the direct military and economic costs of taking Taiwan by force (western sanctions, boycotts and reconstruction of Taiwan infrastructure etc), retaking Taiwan would have an massive political cost for China - removing the primary reason for its military modernisation.
Right now, there are effectively no voices in opposition to ever increasing military spending for the PLA, because Taiwan, and American support for Taiwan is such a clear and present danger than no one could seriously question the need for China to develop a military on par and even surpassing that of the US. That works both domestically and internationally.
If China has successfully achieved reunification with Taiwan, then its continued and expanding military modernisation will be far harder to justify both domestically and internationally without being overtly aimed at America.
I think that so long as Taiwan doesn’t cross the line, China will be happy to let the current state of affairs remain unchanged for maybe another decade or two. That time will allow China to massively grow both economically as well as militarily (both conventional and nuclear) to become so much more powerful than America such that not even America will be able to suspend belief enough to think they even have a military option anymore.
Once that writing is on the wall, I think you may be surprised at how quickly public opinion changes in Taiwan, and suddenly peaceful reunification is firmly back on the table, with maybe even Taiwan being the more keen party to hammer out a deal before they loose what little bargaining chips they have left and Beijing just walks in and take all their marbles without a shot being fired.
It's not even a question about China vs Taiwan, Taiwan is just one aspect of the whole China vs US struggle.
Imagine a situation where China takes Taiwan trivially without causing any material damage to US forces (and US hegemony in Asia some how not collapsing), the next battlefield they will pick is SCS. Here if PLA were to fight the US it would be a lot harder right? It's a battlefield that is still favourable to China, but less so. Imagine again somehow we shift the terrain again and it's now a fight in the Indian Ocean, PLA would be fighting with a disadvantage.
The idea is to either bait the US into committing fully into Taiwan and then trigger reunification and fight the US on terrain most favourable to you, if you deal mortal damage to the US navy then it's back to Monroe Doctrine for them. Alternatively if the US does not commit then it's a case of waiting for minimum price to be paid for getting Taiwan and ruling it afterwards, at this time we are still approaching the minimum, it's still a few years away. As @plawolf says once you are at the local minimum ROC might decide peaceful reunification is a good idea after all.
Meanwhile on their news:
"We are deeply worried by the Chinese recovery"
"Evergrande could collapse China"
"How can the US handle a declining China"
"China might have already lost"
"The Chinese economy is the sick man of Asia"
"China is becoming more dangerous, as it gets weaker"
"10 things to watch for the incoming China collapse"
"Can China last another 1 year? We doubt it"
"Here how China is spying the world and your data"
It's basically projection, which they have been doing forever lol.
Well the issue is Xi cannot afford to risk antagonize Putin or the Russian national security establishment before unification with Taiwan. The last thing Xi needs is Russia being pulled out of China's orbit, which is exactly what Tokyo and Washington have been doing.
Oh, what they have been doing, lol? Please enlighten me. The US is still antagonizing Russia in Eastern Europe and Biden even explicitly said that they will help Ukraine against "Russian aggression" back in September while Tokyo has been recently bitching about Russians expanding on the Kurils.
Well, Biden relented on the Nord Stream-2 pipeline between Germany and Russia, so more focus could be put on China. During the April-May Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine, Biden relented by calling for a face-to-face meeting with Putin, pretty giving Moscow a tactical face-saving victory. Comparatively, Biden's team was much tougher on China, if not on the verge of provoking a war over Taiwan. In addition to Russia, despite all the missile tests North Korea conducted, Biden Administration called for dialogues instead of confronting Kim head-on. Such diplomatic olive branches were never offered to China. It just shows that Washington is sharply focused on confronting the strongest potential foe, while trying to alleviate tensions with lesser powers.