[aseerdbnarng]

While the Chinese threat to Taiwan is not something to be dismissed completely, the article doesn’t mention just how incredibly vulnerable China is to possible sanctions targeting their food supply. China imports most of its food and as their farmland is quite poor, its hugely dependent on fertiliser to feed itself. Sanctions targeting these basics would be devastating so I really struggle to see a convincing case for the CCP risking national suicide and its own existence over Taiwan

[DennisP]

Also they import about 90% of their oil.

They probably assumed that sanctions would not be all that severe, given their pivotal position in the world economy. Perhaps they'll reconsider after seeing the level of sanctions against Russia.

[tablespoon]

>>> ...the article doesn’t mention just how incredibly vulnerable China is to possible sanctions targeting their food supply. China imports most of its food and as their farmland is quite poor, its hugely dependent on fertiliser to feed itself. Sanctions targeting these basics would be devastating...

>> Also they import about 90% of their oil.

> They probably assumed that sanctions would not be all that severe, given their pivotal position in the world economy. Perhaps they'll reconsider after seeing the level of sanctions against Russia.

Why? Russia has successfully bypassed most of those sanctions. There have been many articles about that.

Sanctions like that will only work if the entire rest of the world lines up behind what leading western nations want, and the Ukraine war show that probably won't happen.

Russia's big exports also happen to be food and oil...

[DennisP]

Exactly. Russia is able to withstand the sanctions because they are major exporters of food and oil. China is in the opposite position.

[tablespoon]

> Exactly. Russia is able to withstand the sanctions because they are major exporters of food and oil. China is in the opposite position.

I think you missed my point: there's synergy between the West's two pariahs. Russia can provide the food and oil China needs, and China can supply manufactured goods to Russia (and Africa and all kinds of other places that won't fall in line behind whatever the West wants them to do).

[DennisP]

Ah, I did miss that point. There are some practical difficulties for oil at least. Russia doesn't have pipelines that connect all their oil facilities to China; the facilities that do connect to China are pretty high-tech, have depended on western companies for maintenance, and don't have a lot of spare capacity. To get the oil from other regions, they'd have to rely on ships, either from China and Russia or any other countries willing to flout sanctions. (This is according to Peter Zeihan.)

[tablespoon]

> Russia doesn't have pipelines that connect all their oil facilities to China; the facilities that do connect to China are pretty high-tech, have depended on western companies for maintenance, and don't have a lot of spare capacity.

I believe Russia is already working on building new pipelines to fix that. The Chinese also know how to build things fast, so that doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem.

> To get the oil from other regions, they'd have to rely on ships...

Is that a problem or just a small inefficiency? Because it doesn't look like a problem to me, short of an all-out war where you've got submarines attacking commercial shipping.

[HDThoreaun]

The US would blockade the strait of malacca and the rest of the chinese coast to enforce sanctions. China does not currently have the pipelines to russia they would need to import enough fossil fuels over land.

[epolanski]

I find it funny how much we in the west demonize China while we have attacked them, colonized them, consistently tampered with them, didn't recognize the PRC till the late 70s.

China has never laid a finger on the west, we did, yet we keep demonizing them, meddling in their own business (HK, e.g.) all while we fight wars all around the globe, spy everyone and overthrow governments left and right.

[bmitc]

The west has its own problems, but today's China is not yesteryear's China. China is doing and has done plenty of things in other countries. They are installing mass surveillance systems in Africa, building out African infrastructure as a sort of diplomatic capture by dept, literally stealing land from Nepal and others by building Chinese centers for villages on the edge but making sure they annex bits of land each time, literally stealing land (in the most literal sense possible) by digging up sand in Taiwanese islands, harassing Japanese islands, stealing other countries' fish such as in South American waters, stealing the worlds' intellectual property, literally cutting Vietnam's internet off, etc. They are not the "ah shucks, we stick to our borders" country they say they are.

[epolanski]

There's so much to debate in your list, it's just not worth it.

Do you know where Italian fisheries are all of the time? North African and turkish coasts. African debt? We're kings of it as of stealing every african resource and abusing those people. Spying, really? You even barely aware how far we go with that?

The problem with modern geopolitics is that very few lead by the example.

[bmitc]

> The problem with modern geopolitics is that very few lead by the example.

That is effectively the point.

[phist_mcgee]

Whataboutism at its finest always seems to appear in china vs west discussions.

[Manuel_D]

The PRC did send troops to Korea during the Korean war, the result of which is the north Korean dictatorship that abuses it's citizens and threatens nuclear war. It also drove out the KMT, which was part of "the west" in the sense that they were the principle Chinese Allied faction combating the empire of Japan during WWII. That and continued violation of territorial waters of surrounding countries. "China hasn't laid a finger" is quite the understatement.

[epolanski]

So for the US troops it was fine to go there, but for chinese not?

[dragon-hn]

Who said that?

Also, the US were there under UNSC resolution. Not so much for the PRC.