China stages 'strike drills' around Taiwan, citing provocation
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
This is myopic. Yes, the Manchurian Incident was kicked off the invasion of Manchuria and then the Second Sino-Japanese War was a rogue act by a few officers. But that was just the spark that started a bonfire; who piled all the wood up? Who was responsible for the decades of military buildup that preceded it? Were the acquisition of all those battleships and carriers a series of rogue acts as well? Before WW2, the Japanese government spent decades trying to maneuver Japan into being an imperialist world power that could rival America or the UK. The 'ruling clique' of Japan didn't strike the first spark, but they did labor to engineer the circumstance in which such a spark would inevitably find ample fuel to burn.
There was a huge earthquake and subsequent fire that destroyed Tokyo on September 1st, 1923.
Here I quote a 1928 atlas from its article about Japan, after it mentions the then recent earthquake:
"The old saying which everyone is familiar with: "It's an ill wind which blows no one good," seems to be the case so far as the Japanese disaster is concerned. The United States seems to have been selected by a divine providence as the beneficiary of the Almighty in reducing Japan through the recent disaster to a state where she may, be considered as impotent to take up arms against the United States for at least ten years, it is estimated. It had been reported by military experts of the United States the Japan, prior to the earthquake, was preparing for a break with the United States and it was thought that they would strike during the years 1924 to 1927. With the rebuilding program ahead of Japan, thrift and saving, among both the government and people, alone will make it possible for Japan to revive."
The tone probably doesn't sit comfortably in modern ears, but remember this was written by an American over 90 years ago.
Even pessemsitic estimates of 3-5% growth is plenty to maintain visible QoL upgrades YoY. PRC isn't going to be west for the foreseeable future where decline in standards is much more pronounced. More PRC citizens in T3/4+ cities (where majority are) will be buying their first cars or whatever fancy domestic gadgets are and feel their life is getting better. There's still huge visible improvements happening.
Or that perhaps the directionality of "eating own creators" prediction is wrong, sometimes war is strategically desirable, and if so, it's prudent to prepare population by cultivating nationalism. Which really there hasn't been much despite western reporting, it's more natural generational awakening among younger cohorts who grew up in richer regions of PRC that west isn't all that, especially when they are now trying to contain PRC prospects. By my estimate, right now state of PRC nationalism is more like 6/10 vs most Anglo countries are 8/10s. Fervent nationalism voices are still largely repressed from PRC mainstream narrative while the other "indicator" of PRC nationalism in western rags are some cosmopolitan kids starting to renfaire hanfu costumes and preferring domestic brands. It's nothing. Just like these exercises in response to new US TW policy act.
Yep
Not like some country where switching a figure head every 4 years can keep the peons happy
TSMC in talks with suppliers over first European plant: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-talks-with-suppliers...
TSMC ups its Arizona chipmaking investment to $40 billion: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/business/tsmc-arizona-investm...
Best way to deal with this without risking US troops or risking WWIII is to just drain the island of all its talent and ambition.
Same goes for Russia. We should be offering open immigration to anyone fleeing Russia who passes a security check. Drain Putin's brains.
Brain drain from Nazi Germany and the USSR were arguably factors that propelled the US to superpower status in the 20th century.
What an extremely callous and deeply cold-hearted thing to say about an ally. Imagine someone said that about the US?
I don’t think you are going to convince the US leadership to go to war directly against a nuclear power for Taiwan. They won’t for Ukraine either. If Taiwan can resist like Ukraine they will supply Taiwan, but China is considerably stronger and more advanced than Russia. I don’t think that level of resistance is likely.
If I were Taiwanese I’d rather have the option of having a good place to go as an alternative to forceful subjugation by a totalitarian power.
Imagine what kind of message this sends to people of Japan, South Korea, or Poland.
>Imagine what kind of message this sends to people of Japan, South Korea, or Poland.
An honest one.
That's... not reassuring for allies.
TSMC is has been teasing both the US and the EU but they aren’t going to move anything substantial out of Taiwan.
This is done to both deter China and to push the west put their support behind Taiwan.
So there is zero analogy to ASML, Zeiss and a few other European players that are critical to the SC industry.
Look at Japanese Bonds, Look at Taiwanese resolve, look at Korean growth - Chinese citizens are starting to recognize that the only thing the CCP has left is fear and domination and they aren't going to support it anymore
So the CCP are going to freak out and start acting crazy, in a (hopefully) futile attempt to get people to react so they can mobilize domestically around national pride.
I trust that the Taiwanese people have the resolve, and the US has the resolve to support them in their resistance to these tantrums without overreacting.
Japan: Japanese bonds is taking a breather but a continued strengthening of USD will put serious risk of currency devaluation and its stock market is largely owned by the Japanese central banks.
Taiwan: Not good. DPP made a major election mistake by ignoring that many Taiwanese want to keep the status quo as the reality of their security situation hits-If the US and coalition wanted to defend Taiwan it would start building military bases, so far all they've done is the same approach to Ukraine-talk them over the edge and when conflict breaks out supply them with severely limited weaponry to not escalate risk by being directly involved.
Korea: Major 3ish sigma event coming to its household debt, pension pyramid scheme blowing up, municipal and government bonds tied to a rapidly deflating real estate bubble, the loss of China, its biggest trading partner, responsible for a huge chunk of its GDP. With increased competition from Taiwan's TSMC and its status as a sort of canary in the mine for global trade activity, all of this is creating a perfect storm. But the biggest punch will be its birth rate and it will be forced to turn to uptaking massive number of migrant workers, possible north korean collapse. I would grade Korea to be the first piece of the domino to trigger another Asian Financial Crisis. This time with much reduced bargaining chip as globalization is being phased out and you see all the investments being made outside their respective countries.
China: Major policy errors have put CCP in an impossible place. It's increasingly looking like Russia prior to invading Ukraine. Rapidly declining economy and aging population with accelerating low birth rate. They will not wait until Japan has finished building up its military. There's an angle to this lockdown system in that its a major way to mobilize and isolate large chunks of the population and unfortunately combined with the surveillance apparatus (the largest internal security on earth) and low morale amongst its people contribute to even more urgency to begin conflict.
I can't comment on the other items, but there's a fairly benign reason for the surge in japanese bonds as of late. It's not because the economy suddenly got better. It's because the BoJ relaxed their yield control policy, presumably because inflation was running rampant and they needed to do something.
The govt just passed a stunningly aggressive military budget
This is high level strategic and intentional diplomacy my friend. Plenty of FP articles discussing precisely this.
The PRC's aggressive disregard for the exclusive economic zones of it's neighbors, paired with backing Russia's travesties in the Ukraine have has erased any goodwill that their refusal to participate in the Iraq War may have generated over ten years ago. It is now utterly transparent that their goal is to greedily gobble up the foundries of those who invent their own technology rather than steal it and invest those R&D savings in weapons they can then leverage to further coerce the smaller and more vulnerable.
* Russia has spent years financially divorcing itself from the West. China has no economy without the West. Being an energy exporter makes you much more independent than being a manufacturer.
* Taiwan is an island. Invading an island is a much harder task. Also very questionable if they actually have the ship capacity to transfer enough troops. You can't just trickle them in.
* The way Ukraine/Russia conflict is going is likely giving them pause.
OTOH China believes that their balance of military power is increasing relative to Taiwan and the west so an invasion will be easier in the future. Better to wait than invade in 2023.
Loosing West as a trade partner will really hurt China but it will not be the end. There is the rest of the world to trade with. China is building trade with Africa, South America, Asia etc. etc.
Besides I do not think a real decoupling will happen bar some major catastrophe. It will be as much economic disaster for the West at its current stage as it will be for China.
As energy importer China can rely on Russia, SA and other oil rich countries whom the US does not love very much. So I'd say they're safe in this regard.
>"The way Ukraine/Russia conflict is going is likely giving them pause."
I do not think China even needs this example. They can just simply wait.
Being an export economy losing your market is much more devastating.
How? Oh please remove the blockade, we'll be a good girl from here on? Yeah sure. You think they would even let it get to the stage when harbors are mined?
The only realistic and safe course of actions is for the West to get their shit together and start very gradual decoupling. This will of course be reciprocal and the end result will be multi-polar world with ever changing alliances.
And after a while the trade between "enemies" will resume again and the circle will continue.
The US will not attack China's ships (assuming China did not start the war). Doing this is straight WWIII scenario. All bets are off in this case. You think the US is suicidal?
Pretending to.
True, but by the same token the West (and the rest of the East, and the world) has no economy without China. It makes everything higher stakes for everyone involved.
> * Taiwan is an island. Invading an island is a much harder task.
Also true, but supplying a small island is also much harder than supplying a country with a large contiguous land border with you/your allies. All but one of Taiwan's major ports lie on the strait. And since Taiwan is much smaller than Ukraine, it has less strategic depth than Ukraine; there's nowhere for Taiwanese troops to fall back to.
> Also very questionable if they actually have the ship capacity to transfer enough troops. You can't just trickle them in.
I'm increasingly convinced that China's first act of war won't be shipping troops to the beaches but a blockade. That then presents the US with an unenviable choice: escalate to a full on shooting war to break the blockade, or give control of Taiwan's imports/exports (which is to say, Taiwan) to China.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-senator-...
For better or worse, the US is easily the most powerful force projection entity in world history. This was true before Russia was revealed to be badly broken and is more true now.
And the US cares a lot more about Taiwan than Ukraine, but there's an equally large gap between how much China cares about Taiwan and how much the US does.
Will China be able to guarantee continued oil shipments safely reaching China? Food? Can China afford a slow economic burn while it blockades Taiwan for ambiguous gains?
But it would be able to wage its war. For food it's fine, although people would certainly be eating much less pork for a long time. Oil is the critical limiting resource; China consumes around 15 million barrels a day. But it domestically produces 4 million barrels a day (it once was doing around 5, but shut down some as they became uneconomic), can scale up to around a million barrels per day of imports from Russia and Central Asia, and has a stockpile of around a billion barrels. Most manufacturing except for militarily relevant industries would be shut down, and it would impose domestic rationing to decrease its baseline consumption by a couple million barrels. Depending on how you model things, China could maintain its wartime footing for at least a year and potentially indefinitely.
Painful for China, yes, but also economically horrendous for the rest of the world. As soon as the war starts, all of East Asia would be thrown into an immediate depression, as at a minimum 10% of economic activity is shut down overnight. Oil prices fall, putting severe pressure on oil producers whose economies themselves collapse. The EU and the USA themselves tumble into recession, as supply chains are destroyed. Domestic politics would react negatively to the new reality, and there'd be no Pearl Harbor event to motivate Western voters to prosecute a war for an island most can't even locate on a map.
Everyone would be in for a world of pain, and everyone would want a resolution of the crisis as quickly as possible. If China starts a war, it will be because it believes it can maintain itself in an economic calamity longer than the US and its allies can.
Every year this becomes increasingly the wrong question to ask.
Who is going to blockade PRC? US?
Entire Malacca dilemma / anxiety / blockade scenario from 10+ years ago was underpinned by US having full naval escalation dominance with CONUS impunity because adversaries had no technical means to meaningfully undermine US homefront.
That leverage has essentially eroded with PRC ICBMs being able to conventional strike against CONUS infra in the last few years. PRC can simply run blockade and dare US to enforce by threatening to hit 130 refineries that sustains US existential viability. Fortress America era that has worked in US favour for 200+ years is over (vis a vis increasing PRC peer capabilities), if both PRC and US critical infra gets reset to zero, neither country has energy mix options or ag production (which depends on inputs derived from oil) that can even marginally sustain current society. The same ability to CONUS strikes also threatens major military capital projection assets.
The geostrategic reality when big bois have increasingly precise conventional long range strikes is US becomes Saudi Arabia, all the domestic production doesn't matter if you can't protect it against motivated advesary that has capbility to strike your extraction infra. PRC will guarantee continued SLOC access by guaranteeing US won't have access to any energy or calories if it attempts to to deny like access to PRC.
The pertinent question now is:
Can US afford an existential war with PRC for ambiguous gains? Medium/long term PRC incentive is stacked towards gambling an existential fightng US (using TW as proxy) to kick US out of PRC back yard, vs US who can afford to retreat to CONUS and pull strings as offshore balancer with intact navy and society at much less relative cost. US, by virtue of being hegemon has much more to lose if she gambles to lose everything versus foregoing something. VS PRC has everything to gain in TW scenario while long term game theory for worst case scenario is converging towards pyrrhic victory for US that would deter substantial US intervention at all.
With respect to TW, old nuclear consensus was PRC was more willing to trade Beijing for TW than US willing to trade Los Angeles for TW. US response at height of conventional military primacy was, if PRC wants TW than US, but we will impose crippling conventional costs in lieu of going nuclear. New conventional dynamic PRC is setting is, PRC wants TW more than US and if US tries to intervene then there will be existential costs on both homelands.
Both EU and US would actually benefit from manufacturing moving back. EU needs to do something about its stupidly car-centric economy and for US it just might help bring about a cultural shift away from extreme consumerism towards something more sustainable.
> ... supplying a small island is also much harder than supplying a country with a large contiguous land border with you/your allies. All but one of Taiwan's major ports lie on the strait. And since Taiwan is much smaller than Ukraine, it has less strategic depth than Ukraine; there's nowhere for Taiwanese troops to fall back to.
They are armed with missiles to the teeth and they can hit some rather sensitive places in China. They will just claim that they are defending their independent country while China can't really domestically explain carpet or nuclear bombing "their own citizens". And there are unofficial communication lines open to work around censorship.
> I'm increasingly convinced that China's first act of war won't be shipping troops to the beaches but a blockade. That then presents the US with an unenviable choice: escalate to a full on shooting war to break the blockade, or give control of Taiwan's imports/exports (which is to say, Taiwan) to China.
I expect brain drain and leaving rest of the Taiwan to China while officially protesting it and banning Taiwanese products from US/EU markets for a couple of years to help local spin-offs stabilize. But Taiwanese might choose to fight, in which case US/EU will happily supply weapons.
How do you expect anyone to take the rest of your comment serious when you state something like this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/qu1ob8/european_c...
Not as car centric as US or Canada but compared to the rest of the world EU is very car centric. At least the US and Canada are vast and their cities are much more young.
Americans have this romantic view of Europe as old dense cities.
https://www.confused.com/car-insurance/average-cars-around-t...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle...
If the US's best defense against a China-initiated economic war is to give up consumerism, that doesn't give me a great deal of hope for Taiwan.
More generally, it would be great for manufacturing to move back to the EU and the US. But that can't happen on the scale of months or even years; in a war with China, we'd face huge supply chain disruptions for the duration.
> They are armed with missiles to the teeth and they can hit some rather sensitive places in China.
This isn't a realistic appraisal of Taiwan's military capabilities. China dominates Taiwan on all aspects of military power; fanciful ideas about blowing up the Three Gorges Dam aside, China doesn't worry too much about Taiwan's military.
> I expect brain drain and leaving rest of the Taiwan to China while officially protesting it and banning Taiwanese products from US/EU markets for a couple of years to help local spin-offs stabilize.
As bad and dumb as this outcome would be, China would consider it a total victory.
> Taiwanese might choose to fight, in which case US/EU will happily supply weapons.
You have to get those weapons to Taiwan somehow, and Taiwan would need to be able to launch them from somewhere. China has effective countermeasures to both if American engagement is limited to that.
Assuming the CCP is willing to throw the PLA(N) into a charnel house, there are certain scenarios where they can trickle them in after a fashion. The eastern seaboard of China has more than 500,000 fishing vessels that can be mustered across the Strait, even in inclement weather if safety of the boats, crews, and the fire team to squad level passengers and their gear was ignored.
QUAD and Taiwan together doesn’t have enough missiles and anti-ship weaponry to sink enough of these boats to avoid a beachhead being established. In inclement conditions target acquisition of the small boats is very difficult. Not all boats need to hold troops. Not all of them need to be manned at all. Plenty of convoying drones in self-organizing meshes can carry supplies and surviving hulls can run aground at the beachhead to offer supply depots plus cover and concealment for manned boats. The CCP could use the massacre of this missile-absorbing force as a pretext to go nuclear on US CBG’s. They could “throw away” these lives on an unimaginably cruel scale.
And still have more than enough troops left over to mount a legitimate invasion with “real” ships after pretty much all missiles are expended.
There are many ways it can go pear-shaped in a hurry for either side. The only winning move is not to play.
If China started amassing amphibious invasion forces near Taiwan, I’d expect the US to fill Taiwan with every javelin and stinger missile they can spare.
Are there any that many left?
Taiwan already has things like Patriot missiles and harpoons.
Taiwan is close to key US allies (Japan and Korea) and several other nations that aren't huge fans of China lately. It's also more protected than Ukraine by natural features, i.e. a strait the Chinese invasion force would have to cross in an amphibious assault.
The deterrent from Ukraine is that conflict's showing how effective large numbers of man-portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles can be on an invasion force.
Taiwan definitely got the Ukraine message, incidentally: https://twitter.com/MPWangTingyu/status/1607702645296492545
Both countries prefer a defensive posture in military deployment. If it isnt a threat to South Korea and Japan's territory, they will be reluctant to engage.
I don't expect either to risk escalating kenetic engagement with China for a 3rd party like Taiwan. This reunification glacier is moving in one direction and nobody in the neighborhood (except Taiwan) will be willing to stand in its path.
If Russia falls apart, and as the last grand colonial empire, it bloody well should, China should have a lot of influence over the regional pieces.
It's hard to imagine something this ingrained ending, but nothing is forever.
- Complete shutdown of all businesses not related to pharmacy or hospital, probably until April 2023. This includes factories. Check out on the ground videos by https://www.youtube.com/@xiaorenwu/videos, you will see completely empty malls, subways, and streets. Not only that, you will note all the anger from normal citizens, which is only really publicly visible this year. EDIT: the shutdown is either mandated by city, or voluntarily by the merchant, since nobody is traveling out to shop in fear of contracting covid.
- Few hundred thousand small and mid size business closures/bankruptcies. China does not provide small business relief like US did, so these closures are permanent.
- 37 million covid infections per day https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-est..., millions of death per day that overwhelms the morgue. Keep in mind their vaccine is ineffective, and re-infection likely to last throughout 2023
- Market laggards like Apple finally moving out of China, and the rest of manufacturing laggards to follow
- Multinational consumer product companies moving out of China or reducing footprint
- Real estate collapse still unresolved
- Demographics collapse still unresolved
- Total debt still unresolved
- Closer alliance with Russia, and alienation from democratic countries. QUAD, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Europe all are aligning against China and Russia now.
So China's only card it can play is, being as sick as it is for at least a year more, is to be a paper tiger. and threatens with empty promise.
Everything you wrote before this, and in particular "you will note all the anger from normal citizens" is reason enough to worry that this time it might be more than an empty promise. China may end up needing more than sabre rattling to distract its citizens this time.
I know people in Korla that got together and protested at the police station, and that city is no longer under lock down.
China also just lifted the travel quarantine requirement...
China still would lose far more than it'd gain from invading Taiwan. This [1] does a good analysis of the geopolitical consequences of such an action. That said, the same was true about Russia invading Ukraine, but it happened anyway. The right path is to do rigorous analysis but be honest about the uncertainty.
1. https://www.csis.org/analysis/reunification-taiwan-through-f...
* Angry populace? Give them a fresh target for the anger and a fresh rationalization for their suffering.
* Small business apocalypse? Re-tooling for war creates an abundance of new opportunity.
* Loads of debt? Use war as an excuse to default. It is uniquely positioned to rationalize default while minimally impacting credit worthiness going forward.
* Trust issues in savings and real estate? War bonds are totally different!
* Spare men? Send them to die in war. It's the historical solution to the problem.
My inability to assign likelihoods to these bags of problems really demonstrates how little I know about national policy. Then again, wars have historically caught many experts flat-footed, so perhaps nobody else knows very much either.
On the ground in Beijing. I don't know what happened last week / the week before, was sick enough. However restaurants were all f-ing full on Christmas Eve.
It seems like that China just played the herd immunity card and get a really sharp wave due to Omicron and ineffective vaccines.
China is building up, they’re the real historical successor the “it’s Hitler all over again” rather than Russia (maybe they get to be Italy?)
Not only that, but “tough” animals will signal greatly their desire to fight before engaging in the actual fight to intimidate their opposition. The actual fight will come at great cost regardless of power.
Hard times coming our way…
Yeah, you have to start building experience from somewhere. The Chinese Navy is both building many ships [0] (of which many would argue are among the most advanced in the world) and building operational experience [1] [2] [3]. While the Chinese Navy lacks actual combat experience, training if done properly can be very effective in its own right. It's only reasonable that the second largest economy in the world could sustain this level of development. China has the means and the will to build a very formidable navy.
Information coming from China can be suspect and I understand why some think their navy is a paper tiger. However, their ships are very real and their training exercises are also real, all sighted and confirmed by other navies. It's probably best to not underestimate their capability.
[0] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/RL33153.pdf go to page 12
[1] https://news.usni.org/2022/05/23/chinese-carrier-strike-grou...
[2] https://news.usni.org/2022/12/19/chinese-liaoning-carrier-st...
[3] https://news.usni.org/2022/12/23/russian-chinese-warships-ho...