China will boost its defence spending by 7.2% this year, fuelling a military budget that has more than doubled under President Xi Jinping’s 11 years in office as Beijing hardens its stance on Taiwan, according to official reports on Tuesday.
China also officially adopted tougher language against Taiwan as it released the budget figures, dropping the mention of “peaceful reunification” in a government report delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, on Tuesday.
West Taiwan is so annoying, I wish they would mind their own business
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Maybe we should really think about a unification. But one originating from Taiwan that brings democracy and liberty to enslaved mainland China.
Wow I’m surprised this comment doesn’t have 20 tankies under it defending the CCP. Lemmy has changed.
Maybe we should really think about Taiwan as an independent nation and cultural identity like the younger generation identify themselves as now?
And also separately think about China having a better government.
We can’t have nice things though. Especially two state solutions.
Remember, there will be MONTHS of advanced warning before we need to worry about am invasion of Taiwan, assuming negotiating attempts aren’t able to stall them well past when weather will even permit such an act
Why would this be the case? They can prepare in secret.
The largest sea based invasion force in all of human history? In secret?
Pearl Harbour 2: Commie Boogaloo
Against the Taiwanese? They aren’t the ones bringing a big stonking navy in, and attacking the US directly is…well it’s about as smart as attacking the US directly was when Japan did Pearl Harbor.
D-Day was a surprise largest sea based invasion force in all of human history.
It wasn’t a surprise, it was a misdirection
China can’t pretend they’re actually planning to attack Calais and Norway
Also, the Germans didn’t even know radar was a thing at that point I’m pretty sure Taiwan has Radar scoping out the entire chinese coastline at this point
Surprise to whom?
Hitler
The Germans were aware of the invasion, you can’t hide an invasion force that large. It’s physically impossible the only thing hidden was the landing sites. Which like, yeah, that’s just hiding plans. Not buildup
D-day was a surprise location, not a surprise attack.
They never talk about how the allies evaded detection by the German’s satellite network, comprehensive radar imaging, and observers with access to a global information network that can send messages any ware in the world in fractions of a second.
China would need to secure air superiority or any invasion is bound to fail.
Ukraine basically shut down Russian air attacks with two Patriot batteries (increased to three in the past few months). Taiwan has at least seven, and they cover less land area. They’re also fully outfitted with F-16s, and will probably be getting the F-35.
I’m no Chinese war strategist but that’s a full-war problem, presumably they have a plan for that and I don’t see any reason why it would need to be a plan that takes months of visible effort to prep for.
China has to spread their planes around to secure their large border. Especially around India, Japan, and Korea. Vietnam is also looking more and more like a US ally (as strange as that sounds historically).
To invade Taiwan, they have to dedicate more planes to that region, and that’s not something they can do secretly. It’s not just moving the planes themselves, either. Fuel has to be supplied. So do spare parts. Those runway hangers are going to get filled. More mechanics have to be brought in and housed. Logistics is boring, but it’s really, really important. This is all going to show up very clearly to anyone with spy satellites.
Even so, we had Russian forces gathering on the border with Ukraine as Zelensky himself said the US was being paranoid for saying they were going to invade. Some level of movement may be seen but dismissed as posturing. China regularly masses ships in the South China Sea and does war exercises.
And, they have years to plan. If they open a new air base close to Taiwan next year and fill it with planes and parts, they don’t have to move them into place 5 years later when they actually use them against Taiwan.
Again, I don’t know anything. But months of warning seems like a lot.
After Ukraine, I don’t think Taiwan is going to make that same mistake.
Uh well that can’t be good
Imagine a world where a second Trump presidency allows Russia to further undermine NATO’s article 5, emboldening other aggressors worldwide, and it becomes all too clear why countries like Iran, North Korea, and China are helping Russia in Ukraine. Their collective ambitions amount to promulgating a third world war, if you ask me
Absolutely
By the time the lines are drawn the war is already in the early game. Ukraine is the front. Gaza may become a shadow front soon if the US pulls aid and Israel switches to Russian weapons systems. There’s oil at play in both.
Neoconservatism and fascism sitting in a tree reproducing
They don’t have to be in league. Russia wants lebensraum because their borders are not geopolitically secure, and they were all part of the USSR. China wants Taiwan because they’re historically the same country. North Korea is in tension with South Korea because they’re historically the same country. Iran isn’t directly expansionist they just want nukes for power projection.
They are similar ambitions, that doesn’t mean they would happen on the same time scale they are all discrete circumstances.
How are Russia’s borders not secure? Have they been suffering from incursions from a neighbor? Or did the lebensraum come first and the new border is not secure?
It’s sort of a famous issue in Russian geopolitics, Moscow is on the North European Plain which leaves it vulnerable to attack. Back to the Russian Empire they were trying to expand to get buffer space. The USSR expanded to the Carpathian mountains which really narrows down the border that has to be defended but, ya know, the USSR included a bunch of sovereign countries that don’t want to be Russia.
I’ve heard that before, but it doesn’t make sense to me. They had those mountains for napoleon, ww1 and ww2. They lost ww1, and napoleon and hitler blew right past the mountains. They had to be stopped pretty deep into russia. It sounds like an excuse to me. Their borders clearly have been protected by nuclear weapons. Unless they are whipping up fear of illegal immigration from Ukraine, I don’t understand why those concerns exist. No one really talked about going after them in the territory they controlled 3 years ago.
I get the sense these are old excuses for aggression that haven’t been updated for so long they’ve become a tradition
It’s been omitted from previous statements before. Sure, the Taiwan issue is important, but there’s no need for hysteria over this kind of minutiae.
No way any country is going to go to war to save Taiwan. Depressing as that is to write.
Depends on how reliant they are on Taiwanese chips.
Agreed. Keep in mind this is all speculation on public forums and @afraid_of_zombies has made questionable predictions in the past.
There is strong chance of some countries going to war to save Taiwan, I am afraid. Most definitely an alliance this time and for sure Australia will be in it. Not exactly because they they want to save Taiwan, but because they want to maintain their hegemonic status quo on the region. They can’t afford to lose their influence there, as East Asian region is too important in securing their domestic (economic) and national interest.
China is buying time. China knows they will lose their gound if they get in now as they are not ready militarily. But, one day they will strike.
Mate we’re literally losing our influence day-by-day. China is buying out nations we’ve had positive relations with and propping up lil’ dictators all over Oceania.
The only saving grace we have in all this is Chinas such a dick to many of its neighbours that they don’t want a bar of them.
