I understand the historical significance since the nationalists retreated to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War.
Back then, and for perhaps the middle part of the 20th century, there was a threat of a government in exile claiming mainland China. Historically, then, there was your impetus for invasion.
However, China has since grown significantly, and Taiwan no longer claims to be the government of mainland China, so that reason goes away.
Another reason people give: control the supply of chips. Yet, wouldn’t the Fabs, given their sensitive nature, be likely to be significantly destroyed in the process of an invasion?
Even still, China now has its own academia and engineering, and is larger than Taiwan. Hence, even without the corporate espionage mainland China is known for, wouldn’t investing in their burgeoning semiconductor industry make more sense, rather than spending that money on war?
People mention that taking Taiwan would be a breakout from the “containment” imposed by the ring of U.S. allies in the region.
Yet while taking Taiwan would mean access to deep-water ports, it’s not as though Taiwan would ever pose a threat to Chinese power projection—their stance is wholly defensive. If China decided to pull an “America” and send a carrier to the Middle East or something, no one would stop them and risk a war.
So what is it then? Is it just for national pride and glory? Is it to create a legacy for their leadership? The gamble just doesn’t really seem worth it.
Anyway, appreciate your opinions thanks!
Money, power, influence, prestige
That’s a pretty good article explaining it. The funny thing is that the US media is always framing China as the aggressor. But one look at that map, like with your real eyes, not the crazy eyes, should show you the US is way out there on someone else’s doorstep and who the aggressor is. That’s just geography.
Personally I don’t think China is going to invade Taiwan unless things escalate further. For example, the Russian perspective on the Ukraine is that the US supported the regime change through the NED, helped far right elements overthrow the democratically elected regime and then supported their stance to ban Russian language, oppress Russian speaking populations in Ukraine and supplied them with massive amounts of arms and intelligence. All of this is true historical fact. And in that situation even the chief of NATO Stoltenberg publicly said that Russia launched a “preemptive war” in response to this quasi-NATO membership right on their doorstep. If the US does the same with Taiwan, China might invade. That particular gabit is rather unlikely to succeed in Taiwan though, and Taiwan is far less dangerous to China than a hostile well supplied Ukraine is to Russia (only like 500 miles from Moskow). The smart play for China if that happens is to play rope-a-dope until the US gets tired. Kinda what Iran is doing about the numerous provocations and acts of war against them.
Classic .ml!
One argument against democracy in China is that it is incompatible with Chinese culture.
Looking at Taiwan having a very successful democracy with Chinese culture is problematic for the Chinese Communist Party for that reason.
What are you talking about? They have elections all the time, and the workers exercise a tremendous amount of power.
Taiwan is a single point of failure for chip manufacturing in the world I don’t think annexation would destroy all the chip fabs I think they would still exist and they would be Chinese
Many chip fabrication machines in Taiwan are set up for sabotage in the event China invaded. Taiwan does not want to be a repeat of what the world saw happen to Hong Kong.
lemmitors: They hate Taiwan for their freedom!
Extreme disdain for democracy. Some psychopaths want to bring us back before the age of enlightement, while using enlightement or (especially in case of China) post-enlightement ideas to do so, because we citizens are all like badly behaving 12 year olds, who need 24 hour supervision on every day on the week, every month of the year, or we might “go insane” from doing something a psychopathic madman does not want us.
It’s a staging area for the US that’s very close to China, so there’s that reason strategically. But really, there’s not a lot of reason to which is why they haven’t done so already. China is, as far as I’m aware, perfectly happy with the traditional US approach towards Taiwan, a policy of “strategic ambiguity” that doesn’t officially recognize Taiwan as independent (while informally supporting them) and which has kept the peace for many decades. China does not gain much from provoking a military confrontation with the US, as things stand, China is winning the peace through economic development while the US is going all in on the military. By maintaining the status quo, China can leave the issue open and kick the can down the road, maintaining the possibility that someday in the future they may be in a strong enough position to press the issue.
Even still, China now has its own academia and engineering, and is larger than Taiwan. Hence, even without the corporate espionage mainland China is known for, wouldn’t investing in their burgeoning semiconductor industry make more sense, rather than spending that money on war?
That’s exactly what they’ve been doing. That article mentions that they’ve actually recruited 3000 engineers from Taiwan’s chip industry to help develop their own chips.
Yet while taking Taiwan would mean access to deep-water ports, it’s not as though Taiwan would ever pose a threat to Chinese power projection—their stance is wholly defensive. If China decided to pull an “America” and send a carrier to the Middle East or something, no one would stop them and risk a war.
Taiwan’s stance is defensive, but the same isn’t necessarily true of the US, which operates in Taiwan. The US has recently started throwing around rhetoric and shifting spending focuses towards treating a hot war with China as a serious possibility, insane as it may be. This is (hopefully) just bluster to justify defense spending, but I’m not at all convinced that if China sent a carrier to the Middle East, the US would not retaliate. If anything, they’re looking for a reason.
China considers taiwan a part of its country. If china is able to capture and integrate taiwan into it then it will show that china has become a superpower. If china can capture taiwan then it will show USA and west that china is not a paper tiger.
The lithography machines could easily be reverse engineered… Mechanically… Only to find out just how complex the rest of the system is just to get it to even work making crap level chips much less anything respectable near the 3nm level. That would be hilarious. Like when the US left a bunch of helicopters and one of the revel factions got a hold of them…yey! We got the helicopters! Only to find out the helicopters aren’t the thing that holds power. Barking up the wrong tree.
china is a bit like Yugoslavia before the end: lots of different ethnicities being forced to be together. letting a country made up of Chinese people exist in parallel to china keeps a flame of hope alight for those 51 non-Han Chinese ethnicities that were forced to be part of continental china. and China has struggled immensely with multitudes of local kingdoms and warlords throughout its history so it is afraid as its people are very aware of this past through historical dramas
Oh boy! i can imagine what are your opinions on “lots of ethnicities forced to be together”
Well not in the melting pot way— but the you’re Han Chinese now way
I mean, the melting pot never meant a blend of races or cultures. It meant immigrants were melted down and out came an Americanized person who fit in with the existing culture. So the application in China is almost exactly spot on, only you’re assimilating into Han Chinese culture in this case. Same shit, different continent.
Land and the sea surrounding Taiwan, which comes with resource that they can exploit, and controling people that they claim is theirs. It’s the same reason why europe sail across the sea to colonize others land, and why US doesn’t let Puerto Rico become independent. China never acknowledged that Taiwan is an independent country, they always believe that Taiwan is their territory. It’s imperialism.
Puerto Rico doesn’t want to be independent. They regularly have polls on this. About half want to be a state. About half want to keep the status quo. A small fraction favor independence. And it is obvious why - despite all the economic restrictions and lack of representation, the average Puerto Rican is far better off economically with a US passport. Just look at comparable Caribbean island nations - an independent Puerto Rico would have little going for it other than as a stopover for shipping boats and cruise ships. As part of the US, they draw an outsized portion of the Caribbean tourism market, can easily trade with US companies without the impediments of international borders, and can dream that their kids can go to the mainland and study in some of the best universities in the world.
That’s true, my bad. I meant to draw comparison on why US still have Puerto Rico as a territory but without any political representation
Doesn’t both Taiwan and China both officially recognize all of China and Taiwan as their own territory?
Maybe, but when is the last time you heard taiwan claiming china is their territory rather than talking about taiwan independent (台独)?
Yes and according to the CCP if Taiwan ever changes that it will trigger military action.
Huh I guess I might have been weong— Taiwan technically does claim the mainland? But also not its governance?
“The 1991 constitutional amendments and the 1992 Cross-Strait Relations Act marked a pivotal shift, as the ROC ceased actively claiming governance over the mainland, stopped treating the PRC as a rebellious group, and started treating it in practise, as an equal political entity effectively governing mainland China from ROC’s perspective, though the ROC constitution still technically includes the mainland as ROC territory.”
Yeah it’s one of those technically true things that gets trotted out a lot to paint a “both sides” type picture. Not sure if that was the other commenters intent or not, but when stated without context it often seems like that’s the intent.
I think the key word is “practical”. Both the mainland and Taiwanese governments are not stupid, they know they have to acknowledge the status quo for day to day business like customs and immigration.
stopped treating the PRC as a rebellious group
That was to lift martial law.
The same Russia gained from invading Ukraine, I guess: securing themselves from future, final NATO aggression by proxy.
Yeah, Taiwan is going to be in NATO. 🙄
I don’t think you understand what I meant or you’re not arguing in good will. Or you and everyone frantically downvoting are just having a gut reaction because of your propagandised brains. Check what MacArthur said about Taiwan: the overall idea hasn’t changed, just the resources allocated to it and its organization…
You’re seriously using the guy who was removed for refusing to follow orders (orders to stand down and NOT escalate) half a century ago, to argue NATO’s current position on the defense of Taiwan?
There is no NATO aggression. You’re spreading Kremlin propaganda
I mean, the Americans + European vassals literally couped, bombed and invaded several countries in the past few decades and only those with the military capacity to stand against them haven’t lost their sovereignty but okay. Nvm the shitton of American bases surprisingly placed in very geopolitically relevant spots, lol, they’re just for decoration I’m sure. Or how up until not that long ago there was a ‘United States Taiwan Defense Command’ 🤷🙄.
C’mon man, unless you’re aware and just getting paid for this (I doubt it), your ignorance is dangerous. And you better shake off that imperialist propaganda cause trust me it’s not gonna help when the empire runs out of easy foreign targets and comes home knocking…
Seems like you’re just talking about the USA and not NATO.
Hi, Eastern European here. We begged to join NATO. We kicked and screamed, wheeled and dealed, anything we could to get that coveted NATO membership.
You know why? Because we’ve been dealing with expansionist Russian imperialism for our entire histories. Different coats of paint in different time periods, but it’s all the same shit. The US is an empire, but at least here it’s preferable to Russia’s imperial ambitions.
Imperialism is good if the other team does it? Come on.
Besides, nobody was going to attack Russia. 1. they have nukes, 2. everyone who tried in the past has lost due to geographic and military realities, 3. they were supplying (and still are!) lots of fossil fuels to Europe, and 4. they have nukes.
All other recent conflicts near european Russia like Georgia, Moldova (both Russian imperialist aggressions) and Yugoslavia (it’s complicated) were limited, minor skirmishes on more or less neutral territory. Hardly a threat to Russia as a nation or even its role in Europe.
Same thing they gained from invading Hong Kong, they think it belongs to them.
Or as one of my old friends told me while playing Final Fantasy 12; the only legitimate reason to wage war against another country - land.
Hong Kong is already part of the Chinese mainland and was already kinda part of China, but Taiwan is a geographically strategic location that puts both Koreas, the Philippines, & Japan in a tougher position. Even without war it would make trade and travel in the Pacific much harder.
They didn’t invade Hong Kong, it was given back to China from the British after the 99 year lease expired. The violence in Hong Kong was to destroy the concept of democracy among the citizens there.
Street cred.
Imo I think the biggest thing is it would be completing the revolution in the sense that the KMT fled to Taiwan and is a holdout, that would be a huge win for national pride and legitimacy for the government. The second biggest thing would be nothaving another country with an army so close to them that is “hostile” to their interests. And then after that there would be a lot of other benefits like absorbing their industry, economic zones, military bases, etc. They would much rather have the modern KMT party win an election and vote to become a part of China, than invade, which while very unlikely is not impossible by any means in the span of decades.
