New US Speaker McCarthy (May) Visit Taiwan!

Politics Taiwan Politics
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Can you imagine a US carrier group sailing around Taiwan during the visit?

That would be something.

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It certainly would be provocative. Taiwan wouldn’t be all in for that, I think.

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How do you say “adding insult to injury” in Chinese?

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War.

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火上加油

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To a slight extent, sure. But only slightly. Discussions of Japan rearming have gone on for years, as have been movements between Allie’s regarding the indo-pacific. Everyone expected the Pelosi visit to get a reaction and I can’t imagine there were many shocks.

It’s a real real stretch to say that the missiles galvanized any collective resistance. Unless there is evidence to say otherwise. If anything, the catalyst has been Ukraine

Yes the Pelosi trip was also a gift to Xi and hawks in Beijing at a time when he was facing a lot of pressure in regards to Covid and the economy.

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In the end Taiwan loses out from these vanity trips. Foreign investment was an upward trend, but businesses hate uncertainty. I know of one international company that backed out of a Taiwanese acquisition because of the Pelosi trip

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I think this is an interesting point. This is a recent shift with time not being in Chinas favor.

Sure China can continue to increase their military capabilities but they have bigger problems right now.

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Good thing I didn’t say that

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Oh was talking about @afterspivak but might have misrepresented their views

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In the medium term, yes. Looking to 2050 and beyond, much harder to say where the advantage is

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China has unavoidable problems such as the demographics, decoupling, end of real estate bubble, local governments becoming insolvent, shadow banking crashing, losing the chip war, sanctions against Chinese companies. A slowdown is definitely coming, we just need to see to what extent

The X factor (or Xi factor) is that the leader keeps engineering news crises like with zero Covid. I imagine there will be more of these in the next decade.

A war will be unimaginably expensive. even if China was to manage a shock victory in a few months, they would set their economy back 30-40 years. My hunch is that in a decade they won’t be able to maintain millitary spending at the present rates and the gulf between the US and allies will get bigger.

I wouldn’t have said that two years ago, but as Desmond Shum said, ‘Xi is a gift to those who are anti-CCP’

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64

I think China is watching Russia and Ukraine.

Looking back historically. Russia and China although technically KMT/ROC at the time along with some PLA losses were the most in WW2.

Russia throws bodies at their enemies and people died from famines. Similar to China.

A war right now even if the international community didn’t directly engage and just added harsh sanctions would in my opinion destroy the country’s economy and a famine is not out of the question being that isolated. China has 0 friends in the international community and made enemies of everyone around them.

Xi is looking very incompetent right now.

I will even add there is a very real scenario where the CCP collapses in the next decade if they don’t get things under control. Chinas problem has always been its vastness the quest to unify China and then breaking down again. If the central government doesn’t get things under control, I don’t see why there wouldn’t be a shift to more local control.

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Yeah, I’ve wondered about this. And buying allies and other expenses, and the aging population, have wondered how long they can keep dumping money into new military hardware (and how good that hardware really is)

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I still disagree about the Pelosi visit.

It put taiwan on the map for the entire world. People who never knew or thought about it now knows what’s happening and it became very real with Russia and Ukraine. I see this as a win for Taiwan. It was shocking and front page news in Italy for China to threaten the speaker of the house of the US.

I also think another visit to normalize relations is the right move. The US leading the way will allow other countries to do the same seeing China is all bark. Especially right now China being in one of the weakest position since the switch of recognition.

The more countries normalize relations with Taiwan not just economically, the more challenges it throws at Beijing trying a war in the future.

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I don’t think these are vanity trips. I said the same with the Pelosi visit, Western nations are already behaving deferentially by not sending Presidents, Vice Presidents and Secretary of States/ foreign ministers.

But a line has to be drawn somewhere between showing deference to China and allowing China to run roughshod over anyone and everyone they might be offended over because that will never stop and it makes for a very volatile situation where no one is sure just what the next thing will be that sends China into a tizzy and threatens war. So speaker of the House, from the most powerful nation in the world sets the bar.

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I’d be very interested in seeing polls (I know it will never be possible) to see if the young generation in China would want to go to war over Taiwan.

I’m guessing they’re not. Why die fighting for a country when they are currently facing so much of their own problems.

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A mate of mine supports the CCP. Not just weird KMT shit. The man’s a full blown commy. He’s in his 20s.

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If someone expressed views like that to me, as a resident of Taiwan, he would not be my “mate.”

Guy

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From my visit to Vietnam I got our a few things and corrected my understanding of Vietnam China relations.

I’ve always thought they would be really friendly being communists governments after all. But a few things are happening.

  1. Vietnam and their people are not happy about china claiming so much of their territories. It’s not really on friendly terms.

  2. Chinas manufacturing costs have gone up so much they have been opening factories in Vietnam but with Chinese inputs and raw materials. China has not shown an ability to get out of their manufacturing boom with other industries. It’s on a lifeline using cheaper countries right now.

  3. Vietnam knows point 2 and are concerned over wars and have been pushing hard for foreign investments from other nations. They’re making it very friendly right now as they fear a dependence on Chinese investments like they have.

China really put themselves into a bad position.

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