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What are the odds China moves on Taiwan in the next 12 months?
The Ukraine war seems to be ushering in a major political realignment in the West. Previously staunch pacifists are penning pieces about how they went from left to center-left, as yesterday's liberals become today's neoliberals and tomorrow's neocons. The circle of life turns, I suppose? It certainly seems like wokeness has traveled far enough down the barber pole that my age cohort is starting to lurch rightwards. Noah Smith is writing hawkish piece after hawkish piece claiming we've entered a new cold war, with a new Axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea opposing America and NATO & Friends. He linked to this article making the case for a new cold war, and specifically China moving on Taiwan:
Most of the time, the arguments I see putting China's invasion 5-10 years in the future focus on the second scenario and claim China is still lacking amphibious materiel/experience to pull off a D-day tier invasion. I've only rarely seen the third possibility discussed, but it seems much more likely. The recent military exercises to point in this direction.
This is all wildly outside of my lane. What do people think the odds are that China instigates some kind of blockade or customs control over Taiwan in the next 12 months? The bull case:
The bear case:
I'm interested in whether people think this is largely driven by Gell-Mann amnesia and I'm being irrationally swayed by an increasingly hawkish media environment/overly focused on domestic US politics, or whether the odds of China invading are much higher than people seem to think (although I could only find a betting market for a hot-invasion).
Establishing "customs and immigration controls" on any territory outside your jurisdiction, such as the high seas is exactly what a blockade is. I think that the UN SC would be unlikely to okay a blockade of Taiwan, which would make it illegal. In the end, a blockade is dependent on your willingness to shoot at blockade runners. Shooting at blockade runners in the case of a blockade not sanctioned by the SC is an act of war.
Also, an important difference between go and the real world is that in the real world surrounding someone is not sufficient for capturing them. Cutting off Taiwan from the rest of the world will not cause them to raise the PRC flag. I think it is likely that the food situation (production-consumption-ratio) of Taiwan is better than that of Gaza. Besides, as I learned when discussing Gaza, International Law kinda says that you may not declare food contraband.
Better than Gaza, I'm sure, but Taiwan is still a net importer of food, with most of that food coming from the mainland. It's a common refrain by pro-mainland folks that Taiwan is dependent on them for food.
You know who else is a net importer of food? Mainland China. Which is one reason a war with the US would be disastrous. The US and Friends are quite capable of stopping sea trade to China in the case of a hot war, and if they do China starves.
No, they absolutely do not. The food China imports by sea is mostly soybeans to feed to pigs, they're secure on grains for about 90-95% overall self-sufficiency. At the start of major war you slaughter herds to reduce calorie needs in the short-term, that's standard practice. Maybe a little rationing takes place, China is fine.
Plus China can import overland from Russia. Their energy situation is more serious but they have non-trivial domestic oil production, some storage and enormous coal capacity. The Chinese government has put enormous effort into food and energy self-sufficiency, electric vehicles, massive subsidies and so on. If they're not exporting manufactured goods then their energy needs will fall significantly too.
Taiwan is the one that starves. Their food self-sufficiency is something like 20-30%, not 90%. Their energy self sufficiency is 0. Even South Korea and Japan are much worse off than China, they're effectively islands with less food security and no easy imports.
Slaughtering herds does not create calories, it destroys them. Pig herds in China are not competing with grain production, they’re adding to the food supply by turning imported feed into pork. It is not like you kill all the pigs and then you can turn those pig farms into rice farms: just about everywhere in China that can be farmed for rice is currently being farmed for rice. There is a shortage of undeveloped arable land in China right now. If you slaughter all the pigs you don’t reduce the caloric needs of the nation: the caloric need remains the same, and the supply of calories has gone down.
What’s more, China’s agriculture depends in part on foreign imports of fertilizer and farm equipment. With those cut off (by sea, the most efficient way to transport bulk goods) you can’t expect Chinese grain production to stay the same.
Pigs need calories, they're less efficient than grain for feeding people. By killing pigs you reduce overall calorie needs and create a temporary windfall, regardless of whether the feedstock is sourced from domestically or overseas. All forms of meat are innately less efficient than vegetables and grain in terms of land use, that's why meat is expensive!
Whatever problems China has in agriculture and domestic self-sufficiency, Taiwan is worse off. China is friends with Russia, the biggest fertilizer exporter on the planet. China is the biggest fertilizer producer in the world, 3rd biggest exporter. They export more fertilizer than they import.
https://www.worldstopexports.com/top-fertilizers-imports-by-country/
https://www.worldstopexports.com/top-fertilizers-exports-by-country/
I don't think fertilizer is going to be a problem for China, or agricultural machinery. How can the biggest car manufacturer in the world lack tractors?
Sure enough China exports more tractors than they import: https://www.worldstopexports.com/top-tractors-exports-by-country/
Killing the pigs does not free up the use of imported grain for human consumption when all the imports have been cut off! That’s my point. If the pigs were eating domestic grain you’d have a point, but the whole issue is that in a war food imports would be cut off, including the feed for pigs, which means fewer calories available for China to consume.
Note that China imports over 100 billion more dollars in agricultural goods than it exports, and that number has only grown over the last twenty years. That includes about $800 million in agricultural equipment imported from abroad. This isn’t just soybeans, it’s wheat, rice, and meat. And China is only 70% food self sufficient, not 90+..
You’ll want to Google more carefully next time: that page you linked to saying China exports more tractors than it imports is referring to semi truck tractors, not farm equipment: tariff code 8701.
That's including luxuries, meat, lobsters and so on. Not just grains, which is what I am focused on. You can not have so much meat and still be food secure. But if you don't have primary staple crops like grains, then you starve.
This is my point with the pigs. The current overall food security numbers include the pigs and imports to feed them. So if imports are cut off and they slaughter pigs, their food needs go down. They've lost calorie imports but also lowered calorie demand by switching to a less meat-rich diet. Food security should not mean '% of all peacetime food that can be produced domestically' but '% of minimum food necessary to avoid health problems'. The former includes unnecessary and expensive things that are fun to eat, the latter is like the WW2 ration cards you learn about at school.
And imports aren't totally cut off because they have land trade partners who they can buy from instead, at a higher price and with lower throughput. So as I said above, unlike Taiwan China has land imports and food security on grains.
Has Russia struggled with farm equipment? No, not really. Why would China struggle? In 'other agricultural machinery' China exports more than they import, same with machinery excluding tractors:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/other-agricultural-machinery/reporter/chn
https://oec.world/en/profile/sitc/agricultural-machinery-excluding-tractors-and-parts-thereof-nes
Including Tractors is paywalled but I expect it says the same thing, China is apparently a 'fast growing exporter': https://oec.world/en/profile/egw/agricultural-machinery-incl-tractors
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