[Herring]

China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.

[jeeeb]

If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.

Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.

Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.

Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.

A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.

[JumpCrisscross]

> China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them

Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.

[alephnerd]

Don't forget Vietnam. There's a reason the PLAVN has been buikding artificial islands on Truong Sa in order to build airstrips and deploying missile systems.

[mrweasel]

I don't understand what China want with Taiwan, they should just throw the biggest Uno reverse card in modern history and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation and win Xi the Nobel peace price next year.

[robinwhg]

Have you ever heard of Tibet?

[randomNumber7]

This is more than 40 years ago and they likely didn't need many bombs for it.

[LunaSea]

Have you heard of Hong Kong?

[insane_dreamer]

be it far from me to defend China, but it didn't take over HK -- the UK's treaty expired and it had to return it; it was always going to be the case

China has a highly authoritarian government that affords its citizens no political freedom (economic freedom, yes, so long as it aligns with the CCP), and is very dangerous (much more so than Russia even); but when it comes to _foreign policy_ despite the sabre-rattling over the 9 dash line, it has so far performed much better (or smarter, one might say) than the US

[LunaSea]

Read the dates again, the date for integration of Hong Kong into China wasn't 2020.

[testdelacc1]

In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.

This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.

> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good

That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.

This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.

And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.

Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.

[RobertoG]

You make it to look like if, out of the blue, they attacked they neighbor. Not mention of what the reason of China (right or wrong) could be. Then you complain of uncritically spreading propaganda.

From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War

[testdelacc1]

It literally was out of the blue. There were minimal troops stationed there. India had streets named after the friendship agreement with China, there were slogans that went “Indians and Chinese are brothers”. Brothers can have minor disagreements, but we have their back and they have hours.

The border was guarded about as well as the US-Canada border on the Indian side.

The surprise war caught India completely off guard. The surprise was so effective that China captured all the territory they wanted, killed thousands of Indian troops and declared a unilateral ceasefire before India could marshal a response.

Prime Minister Nehru was badly shocked by this betrayal. He never recovered from it. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died a little over a year later.

Consider that maybe a 2 minute skim of Wikipedia teaches you very little. Certainly not as much as reading many books on this subject, which I have.

[mamonster]

>This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.

This is the Chinese way since at least Zheng He and treasure ship voyages.

[testdelacc1]

I guess China was entitled to a reset in expectations after 1949. But what’s surprising is how little their world view changed before after the Communists came to power.

[JumpCrisscross]

I’ve still never seen a good analysis for why Mao did that in ‘62 other than stupidity.

Like, the centre of the world would be Asia today if Mao hadn’t needlessly (and profitlessly) trashed that goodwill.

[testdelacc1]

It sort of made sense.

The 1962 war secured the road route between Tibet and Xinjiang. Very strategically valuable.

It also had the effect of uniting India, killing some budding separatist movements. It also made the Indian government prioritise strengthening the army for the first time, which meant the army was ready to fight Pakistan to a draw in 1965 and a victory in 1971.

So the war strengthened both China and India, and poisoned relations between them. Which was fine with Mao, he didn’t really care about good foreign relations.