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by PureParadigm 1914 days ago
Due to the one child policy, China is going to experience a demographic collapse this decade as more people retire than are available to replace them in the workforce. So the 2020s is the pivotal decade as China nears the height of its power. The CCP is aware of this and knows that if they are ever going to take Taiwan, it would ideally be this decade. Politically, it will also need a victory as the Chinese economy inevitably slows down due to the demographic collapse.

I fear that if the CCP manages to take Kinmen island without a devastating US response then it will be the Austria moment of our century. Obviously, a strong US response would be damaging to both countries, but the only way to deter an attack on Taiwan is to make the cost of attacking so high for the CCP that it is not worth it. While it will be difficult to justify in the short term, the US must push back strongly when China is "testing the waters" or else it will only escalate from there. If there is only a weak US response, it will embolden the CCP to continue pushing the boundaries until they do something that requires either full scale war or surrender (such as invasion of Taiwan main island).

2 comments

They probably will have demographic problems, but a collapse this decade seems a bit of an aggressive schedule.

Pulling up some numbers here (don't know much about the subject):

"In 2050, the proportion of Chinese over retirement age will become 39 percent of the total population. At that time, its dependency ratio will rise to 69.7%" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_China

Assuming this is referring to the total dependency ratio, China in 2050 is expected to be exactly where Japan is today (69%), and Japan hasn't collapsed yet.

Relative to where it was in the 80s, Japan has collapsed. It has gone from over half of the United States' GDP to under a quarter. It's still doing well because when you start out in that strong of a position there's a lot of room to fall and still be healthy. If China follows the same arc as Japan did, China of 2050 will have significantly less influence on the world than China has today.
> Austria moment

Meaning the Anschluss:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss