When do you think China is going to invade and take Taiwan ?

[Axxe55]

I'll break out the Tarot cards tomorrow and give everyone an answer to their questions!

 

[benenglish]

The US Navy capability and size is irrelevant when the pres lacks the guts to use it.

That has been my point all along and I've ended most every post with that observation. Basically, we're in agreement.

However...

You say they won't be fighting pirates, then you say they will be fighting pirates.

...is a fair observation. Both are true at the same time, depending on how we define terms. I should be more clear, so let me give it a shot.

Militarily, the Chinese will not fight any pirates between the Middle East and Malaysia. Their navy doesn't have the range. If the U.S. allows it to happen, their tankers will be attacked by the Middle Eastern countries that didn't sell the oil, longer-range Somali operations, various revolutionary groups in south Asia who need money to fight, etc. In all locations, opportunists will pop up here and there. All those groups will simply hold up traffic until China pays them off. So while not fighting militarily, the Chinese will fight economically.

Once the Malay peninsula is reached, there will be terrorists or pirates at every choke point. They'll be sponsored (from enough distance to claim innocence to the wider world) by every nation on the first island chain with the exception of Japan. Where nations are reluctant to directly sponsor piracy, they'll just be bribed to look the other way. China will generally not fight them militarily until they reach, approximately, Taiwan because they wouldn't be willing to provoke their close neighbors. On a case-by-case basis, though, they certainly could escort and militarily protect tankers as they get closer to China. Mostly, though, they're going to wind up paying through the nose to the nations in that area in order to secure safe passage.

Once tankers are beyond Taiwan, the threat to shipping is greatly reduced and the Chinese would happily use their navy. That far north, even the Japanese would be willing to help them on general principle. However, I expect few problems would arise once tankers got that far.

Overall, the biggest pirates they'll have to fight will be those smaller nations along the sea lanes that will either directly sponsor piracy or take kickbacks to look the other way.

So, bottom line, the Chinese will have to fight with bullets or not fight but pay ransom to get their oil. Paying ransom may be considered "fighting" in a general sense, even though no one is shooting. Or maybe not, depending on how one prefers to define the word "fighting." I've been pretty loose with making the distinction and for that, I apologize. I'll try to be more clear in the future.

(As a side note, one detail that could completely cut off the supply via that route is the question of insurance. Once Malaysian or Vietnamese proxies take a few tankers out of the stream headed for China, the folks who insure shipping won't write anything for future shipments over that route. That could put a complete stop to all tanker traffic long before any other scenario could take hold.)

None of this will happen as long as the U.S. Navy continues to keep the sea lanes mostly safe. But if China attacks Taiwan and we want to punish China, all we really have to do is back away and let the greedy, immoral people and nations with a few boats start to prey on their sea-borne oil supply. The UK and France could (and probably would) pick up a lot of the security slack close to the Middle East but that wouldn't come close to securing the entire trade route. By the time the tankers get to the middle of the Indian Ocean, they'd be on their own. Some percentage of tankers wouldn't get through and the rest would have to pay protection money to move unmolested.

...what in the heck makes anyone think the US would use naval force to stop their tankers??

I've never suggested that. We don't have to attack; we just have to stop helping.

Universal, global trade only works as long as the U.S. Navy keeps the seas safe for traveling merchant ships. We've shouldered the overwhelming percentage of the responsibility for that work since not long after WW2. The U.S. secures all the long-haul, ocean-based supply lines in the world. That's the whole reason we have such a ludicrously oversized, overpowered Navy.

If we withdraw our protection of China's supply lines, they'll implode in short order.

If we have the will to do it. I'm not confident that our current leadership has that will.

 

[Glenn B]

I think the Chinese are working up to a Taiwan invasion because they know Biden is a wimp and won't do a thing...

Xi making some pretty tough statements about bashing bloody heads if anyone gets in China's way.

Anyone else think they will take Taiwan over like they did Hong Kong ?

I think China has been gearing up for WWIII ever since the end of WWII. They are doing much the same of what Germany and Japan did before WWII, plus so much more. Some of those things are hugely building up their navy and air forces especially over the past 20 years, coralling people in camps whom they believe to be undesirables, building infrastructure within their own country such as high speed rail lines and highways, building infrastructure on the high seas (creating their own islands and establishing military airfields on them), working on and spreading bio-weapons around the world (such as the pandemic of Covid-19), spreading propaganda within and outside of their country showing themselves as superior and so on. Taiwan will only be the start and they have billions of people to draft into the military. If they ally with Russia - we are fucked and will be in for the toughest fight ever in our nation's history. Then again, they do not need Russia to cause hell on earth but they certainly do not want Russia to be their enemy and ally with us (which I believe is unlikely).

 

[mentalarson]

Why would anyone think China would stop at Taiwan look at what they are doing trying to make islands to support military bases in the South China sea and threaten both Japan and the Philippines.

Check out the investment China is making into the island of Kiribati 1,200 miles South of Hawaii. I think they are improving the port and air strip. The potential for things to heat up in the Pacific is one of the reasons we're relocating from Hawaii to NE Texas...but mainly because HI is run by a bunch of liberal fuqwits.

2/Chinese employment would drop a lot if the U.S. quit being their customer. (But neither country would do well without the other).

The principle of mutually assured economic destruction only works if both sides hold up their end of the deal. The US isn't and won't be able to pay its debts with the same real value. It's like a department store that keeps increasing the credit limit for a customer. The customer gets stuff that costs real money, but the store gets screwed in the end. China knows loaning us money to buy their stuff is foolish, and I'm betting they will trim that down asap. China's emerging middle class and other markets will help them endure the decline of the US market.

And that will hurt, quite badly, for quite a while. But there's nothing the Chinese make that we can't make here in North America.

You're correct in theory. However, establishing supply chains and production for a lot of stuff take a LOT of capital investment and some certainty for the investors to take the risk....and our money is not going to buy a pile of dog crap if they keep creating more.

If China monopolizes most of the sourcing for critical material, we'd be competing for their scraps. Spinning up production with willing workers who know how to do a thing can take several years.

===
I think if China wants Taiwan, the US will not be in a position to offer any real resistance.
They could liquidate our treasuries and crater the USD in a few weeks.

There something like $80 Trillion USD spread around the world.
If that money starts to flow back into the US as countries divest of USD and move to the Euro or anything else, we're FUBAR and looking at $10+ gas while prices on everything else start to rocket.

The next 10-20 years could be a very bumpy ride for the USA as our irresponsible economic chickens come home to roost.

 

[popper]

China just took over UK biggest chip factory. UK Gov. looked the other way.

 

[SA_Steve]

Commies or not, every thing runs on $money.

 

[mentalarson]

Commies or not, every thing runs on $money.

Agreed!

I apologize for nudging the scope of this discussion away from Taiwan, but unfortunately USD and China are tightly linked to our Taiwan response capabilities.

The USA has been weaponizing money since the 1970s. Sanctions are "better" than bullets for the most part, but the rest of the world isn't always impressed with our targeting choices. If we screw the dollar enough, the incentive to de-dollarize will become significant and we're hosed.

Humanity has woven together a very complex tapestry of just-in-time supply lines that seem to be fragile.

Few of us, myself included, are fully prepared to go full caveman if systems of support break down.

Even if we are mostly dialed in, most people are clueless and could stimulate a lot of irrational behavior especially if it gets tough to feed their kids due to inflation and supply chain disruptions.

And, the USA has been exporting what we need to feed our commercial livestock to China, and I think it will bite us in the butt in 2022-2023. Many of us already know people who are having trouble sourcing livestock feed.

 

[acidfly]

I've been following the story with China for awhile now, particularly with Taiwan and what's to come. Japan has said they will back Taiwan, as the US has the duty to protect and support Japan it's going to be interesting to see how former VP Biden handles the scenario. If yall don't know the US and Japan share bases throughout the country so having one side build up for way while the other sits idlily by I just don't see it happening. Logistically the bulk of APS 4 is in South Korea while we do maintain a considerable amount of materials here the movement and build up wouldn't in instantaneous.

"If a major problem took place in Taiwan, it would not be too much to say that it could relate to a survival-threatening situation (for Japan)," Japan's deputy prime minister Taro Aso

 

[pronstar]

.

And, the USA has been exporting what we need to feed our commercial livestock to China, and I think it will bite us in the butt in 2022-2023. Many of us already know people who are having trouble sourcing livestock feed.

We’ve also sold a ton of Arizona agricultural land to foreign interests, who are draining the groundwater of an already drought-stricken region thats battling for water rights.

The shit we do to undermine our own interests is staggering…

Why are Saudi Arabian cows still eating Arizona's water?

Out-of-state and foreign interests are draining Arizona's groundwater. It's a problem the government has known about for years.

www.azcentral.com

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[A1Oni]

the peoples republic of china is too busy making shoddy buildings and stealing african money for "infrastructure" projects to get into war with Taiwan

 

[Coyote9]

I think the Chinese are working up to a Taiwan invasion because they know Biden is a wimp and won't do a thing...

Xi making some pretty tough statements about bashing bloody heads if anyone gets in China's way.

Anyone else think they will take Taiwan over like they did Hong Kong ?

I think that a likely scenario would be a wide front economic assault complete with a naval and air embargo enforced by blockade, initial objective could be a forced alliance which would morph into political control in 5-10 years. I doubt if allies would attack Chinese naval forces which would have land based air and missile support and vastly shorter supply lines.
The Chinese wrote The Art of War so they know the best battle is one not fought but won by maneuver.

 

[seeker_two]

The Chinese wrote The Art of War so they know the best battle is one not fought but won by maneuver.

But when was the last successful war that China won?

When China does hit go time, it will be more internal sabotage and created insurrection than outright military invasion. The USA isn't their only trade partner, and China can't afford bad PR that might shift business away from them. If places like India, Mexico, and Vietnam are paying attention; they may steal business from China in the fallout.


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[V-Tach]

Japan is one of China's bigger trade partners but are very concerned about China invading Taiwan......

Still bad blood between them...............

 

[benenglish]

If places like India, Mexico, and Vietnam are paying attention; they may steal business from China in the fallout.

Those places are going to draw business away from China even if China does absolutely nothing provocative.

Look at the demographics. China's one-child policy has come home to roost. As a nation, their average age is already older than the U.S. and is getting much older, much more quickly than most nations. That's what happens when you spend more than a couple of decades having children at a rate that doesn't even reach half the replacement rate.

China is idiotically over-leveraged, financially. They're about to be way too old to have anything close to a physically productive workforce commensurate with their population size. They're completely dependent on foreign trade, something the U.S. could turn off with a snap of the fingers. They're laughably short of the basic natural resources they would need to support themselves if they did anything that seriously pissed off the world.

In other words, China is staring into the abyss. They know it and they're scared shitless of what the next few decades will bring.

China is more than likely to fall apart (i.e., return to the loosely federated, often warring regions that they were pre-WW2) in my lifetime. I'm just worried that while they're running scared, they may do something stupid that goes hot.

 

[toddnjoyce]

Those places are going to draw business away from China even if China does absolutely nothing provocative.

Look at the demographics. …

Don’t forget that for several more decades, there’s a huge male:female imbalance. It’s going to be interesting how that plays out over time.

 

[benenglish]

Don’t forget that for several more decades, there’s a huge male:female imbalance. It’s going to be interesting how that plays out over time.

It will play out in crime and violence and other forms of unrest we haven't yet predicted. They've seriously screwed up the natural order of things, the sort of societal profile that humans have evolved to live in. When you do that, very bad things happen.

 

[G O B]

I think the Chinese are working up to a Taiwan invasion because they know Biden is a wimp and won't do a thing...

Xi making some pretty tough statements about bashing bloody heads if anyone gets in China's way.

Anyone else think they will take Tn over like they did Hong Kong ?

Started under Obama when China Joe halted "show the flag" transits of the straights. Joe is BOUGHT by the CCP, they have his blessing.

 

[V-Tach]

Okinawa (chain of islands) is very close to Taiwan......

Easy to understand the Japanese unease......if China takes Taiwan without any pushback from the West (USA), can Japan trust/depend our word to defend them after turning our back and breaking our word with Taiwan?

Australia is watching uneasily too...........

 

[LaborLawPaul]

Mark Steyn's, America Alone was quite a wakeup call for me regarding population density. China and Russia are both in major trouble population-wise. But so is much of Europe, and the Japanese are disappearing right in front of us. Entire Japanese villages are now ghost towns. "One in seven homes in Japan is uninhabited." (Not allowing immigration and not having kids has a predictable result.) Many Muslims have been smarter about having children and will be the majority in nearly the entirety of Europe by 2050. Americans have just barely kept pace, and the truth is, that is because of South Americans flooding our borders. And it appears, that the decline in new births in America is only increasing.

 

[benenglish]

Americans have just barely kept pace, and the truth is, that is because of South Americans flooding our borders.

Not really. It's a contributing factor, sure, but American Millennials are a thing. Most of the rest of the world didn't have a miniature GenY/Millennial birth boom. It's their existence that makes American so much younger and stronger, demographically, than our global peers.

Now we just need to convince every adult under 40 to pair off and have 3 kids because...

And it appears, that the decline in new births in America is only increasing.

...yeah, overall that's true.

We're in better shape than any other rich, developed country in the Western world. We're poised to have nothing but pity for the Chinese and the Russians in 20 years.

But none of this will last forever.

Demographic determinism may not be absolute but it'll sure bite you in the butt if you ignore it.