Miscellaneous News

Overbom said:

Its called salami-slicing

Click to expand...

I've been thinking a while ago, what are they exactly achieving here? The two major examples I could recall two examples of salami-slicing mentioned in this forum, which is India with the land borders and NATO with providing aid to Ukraine, both have material consequences when not deterred like land territory being taken and opposing party being armed with weapons that can better kill your troops. For this instance, it will just be symbolic gestures, maybe it rile up the pro-Independence forces but if they don't back this visit up with military aid or something concrete, then its nearly pointless.

Sending officials there seems to be the weakest redline, which doesn't really need to warrant a heavy response, just that China needs to show their serious about it, which military exercises and sanctions should suffice enough. There's no actual way to deterring the US, when their strategy is supposed to try to goad China into making mistake or a heavy response, It would be better to wait till the situation reaches a point of no return or the cost/benefit outweigh the benefit/cost then execute a heavy response like military reunification or cutting trade completely with US. The more time to prepare, the better the heavy response can be executed with little cost.

Coalescence said:

I've been thinking a while ago, what are they exactly achieving here? The two major examples I could recall two examples of salami-slicing mentioned in this forum, which is India with the land borders and NATO with providing aid to Ukraine, both have material consequences when not deterred like land territory being taken and opposing party being armed with weapons that can better kill your troops. For this instance, it will just be a symbolic gestures, maybe it rile up the pro-Independence forces but if they don't back this visit up with military aid or something concrete, then its nearly pointless.

Sending officials there seems to be the weakest redline, which doesn't really need to warrant a heavy response, just that China needs to show their serious about it, which military exercises and sanctions should suffice enough. There's no actual way to deterring the US, when their strategy is supposed to try to goad China into making mistake or a heavy response, It would be better to wait till the situation reaches a point of no return or the cost/benefit outweigh the benefit/cost then execute a heavy response.

Click to expand...

That's the thing about salami slicing, it may not be redline material yet but it will get closer and closer to it. Looking at Ukraine I'm wondering maybe they want to try the same with China, force China to act before she is ready.

By the time China is 100% ready in terms of military/technology independence/economic might... etc it would be too late for the US

enroger said:

That's the thing about salami slicing, it may not be redline material yet but it will get closer and closer to it. Looking at Ukraine I'm wondering maybe they want to try the same with China, force China to act before she is ready.

By the time China is 100% ready in terms of military/technology independence/economic might... etc it would be too late for the US

Click to expand...

If they wanted to force China to act before she is ready, they would already done so, like openly declaring Taiwan as its own country or giving them nukes. This is to me, makes them look like cowards, and the actual goal might be just to gain leverage to pressure China on negotiations or for assessing China's strength and risk calculus.

I think China should just do the same actions taken before, but prepare more types of punishment to stack on top of the previous ones as time goes, and I think they may need to decouple more from US to be able to access more of those punishments.

Coalescence said:

If they wanted to force China to act before she is ready, they would already done so, like openly declaring Taiwan as its own country or giving them nukes.

Click to expand...

This would give China perfect casus bellis, much less international pressure for China this way.

Coalescence said:

I think China should just do the same actions taken before, but prepare more types of punishment to stack on top of the previous ones as time goes, and I think they may need to decouple more from US to be able to access more of those punishments.

Click to expand...

Indeed, just proportional response for now will suffice

Coalescence said:

If they wanted to force China to act before she is ready, they would already done so, like openly declaring Taiwan as its own country or giving them nukes. This is to me, makes them look like cowards, and the actual goal might be just to gain leverage to pressure China on negotiations or for assessing China's strength and risk calculus.

I think China should just do the same actions taken before, but prepare more types of punishment to stack on top of the previous ones as time goes, and I think they may need to decouple more from US to be able to access more of those punishments.

Click to expand...

If this was USSR, ie, minimal trade flowing between Washington and Beijing, they would have done so already. This time there is no iron curtain. China's roots in manufacturing are irreversibly sunk into every facet of the international supply chain. Any serious escalation would hurt both nations as well as the entire world. This level of economic integration means US cannot act against China as it did against USSR. Chinese leaders were smart in letting Musk, Cook, etc open their Tesla gigafactories and Apple stores on mainland soil. US senators are a warmongering, bloodthirsty class of imperialists being kept on a tight leash by Wall Street and America's billionaire class.

enroger said:

This would give China perfect casus bellis, much less international pressure for China this way.

Click to expand...

They will still run with the same playbook with Russia, like demonization and propaganda. Like hell, they already prepared their population to hate China and think Taiwan as a country. When the action is taken, the sanctions and actions will come from the usual "international community", what's funny is outside of that bloc, only a few countries did any concrete action against Russia.

Everyone knows Ukraine legally and internationally recognized as sovereign, and Russia is invading under perceived dubious pretenses, while Taiwan is not even recognized as a country legally and internationally. If all those countries didn't follow their sanctions under this scenario, how apathetic would they be if its China, with every legal justification backed by international treaties, reclaiming or "cracking down on rebel government"?

Its a dead end in my opinion, it would be better if they just use China's strategy in gaining friends and allies through BRI, which is perplexing why they can't, with their dollar being the world reserve currency and all.

You see, when you are with China, you have lots of 正能量


Europeans gonna starve while Chinese get drunk on Chinese caviar, unagi n red wine

Crang said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1514899547041980417

Click to expand...

Young Singaporeans definitely need this treatment. Try living in Australia for 2-3 years with that singlish accent and see how things go.

dengyeye said:

If this was USSR, ie, minimal trade flowing between Washington and Beijing, they would have done so already. This time there is no iron curtain. China's roots in manufacturing are irreversibly sunk into every facet of the international supply chain. Any serious escalation would hurt both nations as well as the entire world. This level of economic integration means US cannot act against China as it did against USSR. Chinese leaders were smart in letting Musk, Cook, etc open their Tesla gigafactories and Apple stores on mainland soil. US senators are a warmongering, bloodthirsty class of imperialists being kept on a tight leash by Wall Street and America's billionaire class.

Click to expand...

Correct, in the semiconductor thread, Tokenanalyst posted about there being a "national security" group which is gaining influence within US. This may explain why we're seeing these moves right now. These group are using the tension and the result from those actions, to gain more power/influence and profit off from it. The usual culprits are the think-tanks funded by military industries and foreign companies, and politicians with investment hedges or ties to them.

The strategy China is running right now is to open up their economy for foreign business to invest and earn more, increasing economic ties to prevent an iron curtain from happening. Indirectly as well, they will be increasing the influence of the opposing party to this group, the business group, which would lobby and influence the government to be more neutral.