[billychuck21st]

Those thinking China vs Taiwan is like Russia vs Ukraine is greatly mistaken. The Chinese army after decades of build up is way stronger than Russia's, the enire PLA navy and airforce are built for a war with Taiwan. Ukraine still has Europe, Taiwan only has Japan, and has no border to any other countries. If the US wants to intervene, it must throw in its full weight, like the entire pacific fleet and some more, otherwise they won't be able to beat the PLA at its doorstep. With the current US administration, I can't imagine how it would do that "trade". I think it's far more likely the US will "sell" Taiwan to China for some deal that benefits the US financially or politicially.

[audunw]

Russia has energy independence and food security. China has neither. USA could achieve a lot just by blockading China, something China is in no position to challenge since most of their navy is a brown water navy.

Yeah, they can probably fight fairly well for a year or two with their reserves (depending on how much of the reserves are actually there.. corruption is an issue). But after that they risk catastrophic destabilisation within China. People don’t realise that Chinas main ongoing challenge is to keep mainland China itself stable. They spend much more on internal security than on external security. Chinas sabre rattling with Taiwan can be considered part of trying to maintain internal stability. It helps keep people focused on external enemies.

Taiwan is also an order of magnitude more difficult to invade. The yearly window for invasion is fairly small. It’s easy to see it coming. There’s only a couple of beaches suitable to land an army on, and it will be blanketed with mines within an hour of seeing the first invasion ships crossing the strait.

Ukraine has also demonstrated that a smaller nation can take out the entire navy of a bigger one with sea drones. Taiwan is now building their own drones.

I think drones will favour the defender, even if China could make more of them. Especially when laser weapons can cheaply take out drone swarms trying to drop bombs on the defenders. The Taiwan strait will be impassable for any large ship, and you need to cross with a large ship and get boots on the ground to successfully invade.

[TulliusCicero]

It's true that right now China's navy is much weaker than the US'. However, there are a few factors in China's favor here:

* China is building new navy ships at a much faster pace than the US

* China has LUDICROUSLY more total shipbuilding capacity overall than the US, like more than 200x as much

* China has a semi-militarized militia fleet that they already make use of that they can call on to help ferry soldiers around

* In a war around Taiwan, China would be able to commit essentially its whole fleet, while the US would still have to be concerned around interests in other parts of the globe. Plus the obvious home field logistical advantage in maintenance/repair being close by.

The US will still be much stronger in terms of navy for other parts of the world for a long time yet, but if it's a fight close to China, I think China may surpass the US in effective power within the next decade.

[gpm]

> There’s only a couple of beaches suitable to land an army on

China's been building some new vessels designed to mitigate this (sorry for linking to a video but it's the best source I've seen for this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klkpk_hO4FQ

[therealdrag0]

I remember reading on Wikipedia that Taiwan imports large amounts of oil and NG for its electricity grid, and it only has 1 week of buffered capacity.

That seems like it was be very easy to exploit. Modern society especially dense cities doesn’t seem very resilient to lack of power.

[billychuck21st]

Some of your points were true 10 years ago but not any more. China has basic food secuirty, ie. there's enough rice and grain to feed the population. What it doesn't have enough is food for livestocks which means no steak at war time, but hardly a fatal blow. China gets most of its oil and gas from Russia, given what we know about Putin it's hard to see Russia cut off the pipeline to help US. Even if they do, I don't think it's enough to stop the war machine, 1/3 of China's electricity is generated by renewable energy, they also have a lot of coal, the reason they built the gas pipeline with Russia is to move away from coal. Chinese navy is no longer a brown water navy, the 3rd aircraft carrier will be battle ready in the next couple of years and the 4th one is being built.

The assumption of US and allies completely blockade China's coast is very unrealistic, it's more likely the allied fleet will try to stop a blockage of PLA on Taiwan, which won't last a few months without external supply. And in term of drones, China is also a big player in the field. I don't think Taiwan has advantage on that. Ukraine can wreck blacksea fleet because it was a very out of date navy, unfortunately you can't say that to the Chinese one.

Difficult to land might be the only defence Taiwan has.

[bloppe]

Far more likely the US will "sell" Taiwan to China for some deal that greatly harms the US.

[matthewdgreen]

Maybe we'll get a steakhouse.

[bloppe]

That's our best case scenario.

[1oooqooq]

it's not if i got the reference i think this was hinting at.

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

[bloppe]

Relatively speaking, that's still by far the best case scenario.

We now live in a world of "how bad will it get".

[PartiallyTyped]

Looks like yet another grift.

[rozap]

I mean, it probably won't greatly harm a few special people in the US. I imagine they'll do quite well.

[hmmm-i-wonder]

Putting on my tinfoil hat here.

One of the reasons Russia and China cooperate is because they also implicitly are supporting each others expansionist (reclaimationist? depending on point of view perhaps) stances, at least those not along shared borders.

The current US administration is suddenly moving towards an expansionist narrative, as well as being supportive of Russian interest in Europe and much less antagonistic to China than it has been previously.

Expecting this US administration to take ANY action opposing China or Russian interests that doesn't oppose its own going forward seems like betting no a dead horse.

[VWWHFSfQ]

> I think it's far more likely the US will "sell" Taiwan to China for some deal that benefits the US financially or politicially.

This will happen after USA extricates all the meaningful tech and re-homes the institutions and workforce required to maintain that tech to the USA mainland. Still probably a decade or two away, but likely.

[bloppe]

Why would China will wait for a decade? They've been very clear about wanting to invade by 2027

[mtrovo]

If they're sure they can invade whenever they want, does it make sense to do it right now? What would they gain by sending all the good tech and researchers straight to the US? The longer they wait, the more advanced the tech they eventually steal might be. It's the golden goose story, but with a strategic rationale of when to kill the goose.

[bloppe]

It's not all about TSMC. The CCP has been very vocal about wanting to conquer Taiwan since long before TSMC even existed.

Also, the longer they wait, the more tech gets transferred to the US, so even if it were all about TSMC, they would still be incentivized to act as soon as possible.

[xxpor]

They want to be ready to invade by 2027. Very different.

[bloppe]

I hope you're right, but I see no reason to be that optimistic.

[r00fus]

Who says they'll invade by 2027? Some Washington think tank?

[michpoch]

Russian army has plenty of combat experience. Russian weapons were export product and are battle tested.

China has none of that.

Russia brought soldiers from the far east to fight. How eager do you think Chinese will be to kill their fellow people in Taiwan? The communist government is not branding them as a enemy.

[golergka]

> Russian army has plenty of combat experience. Russian weapons were export product and are battle tested.

Both Russian personell with real combat experience and russian weapons that have been sold to outside customers have run out in the first half a year of the war. Since late 2022, Russia is fighting with freshly mobilized troops that go from being civilians to dying in a meat attack in less than a week with no bootcamp and 1960s tanks from Soviet stockpiles.

[michpoch]

> Since late 2022, Russia is fighting with freshly mobilized troops that go from being civilians to dying in a meat attack

The frontline troops - sure, but officers and up?

Now think if the Chinese will be willing to take part in a meat-grinder war?

> 1960s tanks from Soviet stockpiles.

You mean in a battle-tested equipment. China got some-quality modernised soviet equipment with operators that never took part in any operations.

China has certainly a weaker military than Russia before the war. And a society that might not be willing to die in millions to occupy a small island where their fellow people live, for no good reason other than political.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

> The communist government is not branding them as a enemy.

So decades of military theater from China regarding Taiwan is for no purpose?

[ge96]

entire fleet as in 7? that would be a lot of ships

edit: ahh pacific