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- cross-posted to:
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Summary
China’s military is intensifying its campaign to pressure Taiwan through record airspace incursions, joint military drills, cyber warfare, and blockades, as it aims to exhaust Taiwan’s resources and deter independence.
Analysts say Beijing employs an “anaconda strategy” to squeeze Taiwan without full-scale invasion, though U.S. intelligence suggests China may achieve invasion capability by 2027.
Despite escalating PLA activities, Taiwan resists capitulation, maintaining strong defense responses.
Experts predict continued PLA provocations in 2025 as Beijing practices for its long-term goal of reunification under Communist Party control.
The danger, from Beijing’s perspective, is that the US can cut off or constrict maritime trade in the event of conflict or high tensions. China is a major importer of both, fossil fuels and food, as well as dependent on exports for its economy, as we all know. So controll over Taiwan and the South China Sea is seen as absolutely crucial, obviously to China, but naturally to the US too.
Yes but those transports are all doing fine, and even if China takes control of the China Sea, it’s worth diddly in the event of war.
China is usually good with the patience game, with patience I’m sure these issues could be resolved. USA is clearly less interested in playing global police. And new political arrangements and agreements between China and USA together with the so called west, would have been just around the corner by now, if China had quit it’s conflict prone 1 China policy.
China used to be good on the patience game up to Hu Jintao
China’s patience isn’t based just on personal virtues. Their at-the-moment economic standing and population trend plays into them being able to tell themselves that a conflict is better played out at a later time. However, signs are now showing that the waiting time is almost over. Their economy has slowed down for various reasons (both external and at home), domestic economy has been stagnant at low levels without signs of growth despite government intervention, and their population growth is showing signs of decline, if not already declining.
I’ve not seen other more practical reasons for wanting to take Taiwan other than to show off their potential for imperialism. The TSMC may be valuable to the world, which, if taken, would further enrich the Chinese elites, but both the Taiwanese government and TSMC have signalled that they will willingly destroy their fabs to render the Chinese takeover meaningless economically and financially.
If the Chinese government has no intention to play as an imperial force, or to just show off their ability to be a superpower, more peaceful options definitely seem like the wiser choices: build those relationships and it’ll be stable, if not stabler than you taking full control of that supply chain, and will possibly outlive the lives whatever power there can be controlling it. But that is not the option they chose. The short-term benefits for a few people wins over the long term ones for literally everyone here.
Apart from Xi beginning this shit before Covid and the economic slowdown, I agree completely.
You don’t believe Xi’s been sharpening his claws even before Covid? I find that misinformed or under-informed. The Taiwan Problem has been ongoing for decades at this point, and the drills didn’t just start recently. There were drills from at least 2016 from a preliminary search, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find more earlier than that.
China has been known to have invested heavily in their military capabilities over many years at this point, growing at near linear pace from 2005 and only slowing down last year or so (likely due to economic pressures), at least according to World Bank, which is likely taken from official figures, and many countries have estimates that the actual spending is far higher than reported (though take those with consideration of their relationship with China). You can certainly chalk it up to their somewhat unfriendly relationship with many of their neighbours: they have territorial disputes with Japan, India, Russia, and almost all of the South East Asian countries, but a figure triple that of Russia against Russia and India (who’s also increased spending to currently at around 80Bn) just for territorial disputes is too much of an overkill.
That was exactly my point, you wrote it was because their economy was slowing. But that happened because of Covid. and Xi has very obviously been more aggressive than his predecessor way before that.
I believe I’m confused by where your understanding is.
This replied led me to believe that you don’t think the CCP has been ramping up their military pre-COVID, and hence my reply.
But you’re now telling me that what I said was exactly your point? I’m confused.
My point about the economy slowing down was that it has led to Xi / CCP being unable to further stomach the current situation, and thus they’ve gotten much more aggressive post-COVID. That, of course, I should preface, is just one plausible reason. Others may include general weakness in alliances across the globe, especially amongst NATO members, especially with Trump going back into the WH, and for the years where Trump will be in office, China is expected by many to reach peak population growth and start seeing a collapse at the level of that of Japan.
To clarify, the economic slowdown is not dissuading the CCP from becoming more aggressive; it’s doing the opposite.
And my response was that Xi was already more aggressive than his predecessor before the economic slowdown/Covid. It’s been steadily getting worse, so yes it’s worse now, possibly but not necessarily accelerated by the economic slow down.
I wasn’t saying that my reasonings are exactly it, and hence the “plausible”. But fair.
Sorry, I just didn’t really understand what your point was, at least not from reading your reply.
Well, agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on if you can’t enforce them when push comes to shove. I agree that the US is less interested in meddling in every affair all over the world, but it’s a mistake to think that they’re not interested in maintaining hegemony and their status as the pre-eminent superpower. That’s the whole reason for the pivot to Asia, and both the Dems and Republicans are in agreement there: The goal is to contain China.
Absolutely, but USA cannot expect to be the ONLY superpower. Because there is no doubt China will surpass USA at some point in the very near future.
That’s a naive goal, because they simply can’t. If they act to contain China, they should expect similar treatment when China is on top.
I think it’s naive to expect that China wouldn’t attempt to contain the US regardless of what the US does right now.
There certainly is doubt. The population is already declining and the economy has been growing far slower, as of late, than it should. The US also has more powerful allies, we’ll see how much damage Trump will afflict on that front. China’s ascent seemed certain a decade ago, now it is doubtful.
Well Xi absolutely hasn’t helped as far as I can tell. But despite declining population, it’s still multiple times bigger than USA. And even if the progress slows down, I’m pretty sure there is still way better room for growth in China than in the USA.