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Placating the Chinese is a failed strategy. It only gives them time to build up a stronger military for the upcoming conflict. It is worth calling their bluff on Taiwan and recognizing it.
Hopefully, tensions don't escalate to anything other than skirmishes, but the longer the US waits, the more casualties it will incur from false hope this will get resolved diplomatically.
The US has already decided the opposite. The big push for chip manufacture in the US is about making it easier to cut ties with Taiwan down the road.
It's a smart strategic decision to not be caught without chips in the event of a war between Taiwan and China.
Yes, which amounts to the same thing. Such a war will only happen if the China believes the US won't defend Taiwan.
Agree that chip manufacturing is a component of the decision making and contingency planning. I disagree with drawing too much of a conclusion about US intent from it. If things work out, the US will happily continue importing chips even as our own capacity grows.
Part of the push for US Chip manufacturing is finally recognizing it as a national defense issue. The US isn't the only country doing this (setting up their own). Modern militaries are crippled without chips. So it's not necessarily a definitive line to the Taiwan policy.
While, I don't disagree that it's a factor, but I would debate the inference and weight of the factor.
It will work fine due to circumstances. China is facing a demographic cliff due to the effects of the One Child Policy. They have to start a war in the next few years or they won't be able to for at least another generation. Probably more like two or three. They have too many old people and not enough young people to take care of them.
With their recent economic downturn (relatively speaking; their GDP is still growing >5%/year) the window may already be closed.
They can continue to be the world's factory, or they can make a big military to take Taiwan and keep the US Navy out of their sphere of influence. They can't do both.
Chinese military is mostly defensive, they might take a few regional territories they consider to be a part of China, like Tibet and Taiwan, but they don't have much interest in using their military to invade a country like Japan. That said, no one is going to defeat the Chinese in a ground invasion of China, they are pretty fucking tough.
Princess Bride joke about a ground war in Asia stands. LOL
Seriously though, we want to deter China, not invade them. NOBODY wants to invade China. What a fuck hell that would be, and so pointless. Plus right now China is failing badly, with respect to their country’s internal issues. I suspect that’s a big part of why Xi is beating the war drum so hard, in order to distract from domestic catastrophes.
But their military is still in very bad shape, the military purge Xi just did recently is because of all the grafting and corruption and how screwed most of their systems are. They have the tech they’ve stolen from the US, but that doesn’t translate to the ability to manufacture it reliably, manage logistics of a military, etc. They are learning though, and that’s what I mean about giving them time.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-06/us-intelligence-shows-flawed-china-missiles-led-xi-jinping-to-purge-military
Right now their three air craft carriers are literally a bad joke. They’re dammed near useless, and they have scandals with their missile systems and the missiles, and so on across the board. BUT this will get better over the years. I’d rather skirmishes and standing fast on right of navigation, and dismantling of the military islands they’ve created, along with Taiwan independence now—instead of once they have REAL air craft, and missiles they can rely on, and refined equipment designs that fix the subtle flaws that have a huge impact when deployed for real.
I don’t think we’re in any serious disagreement here. Avoiding an invasion of China is a MUST. But pushing for what the world needs, freedom of navigation, Taiwan, and dismantling the illegal military islands… that’s best done now. Where worst case scenario has a far smaller impact on our forces. And if it weakens Xi, then that’d be great. He’s a terrible dictator and I wouldn’t cry if he was gone.