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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).
The thing about Pearl Harbor was that the move was made because Japanese leadership saw no possibility of better odds ahead. Japan was, in their view, in the best position vis a vis the USA et al that it would ever be. So it was time to gamble it all on one big stroke, and either secure the resources and defensive perimeter they needed to hold out, and they'd win at once or they'd lose. A month or two after Pearl Harbor many in the IJN knew they had lost.
I don't know the answer to whether China will attack or not, but the question to ask is does China's leadership believe that this is the best odds China will ever have, or do they believe that their odds will improve in the future? Sub questions:
How much has China lied about its population and economic statistics?
Pearl Harbor was launched when it was largely, to pinpoint one commodity, because of oil stocks. Japan needed to gain control of sufficient oil resources to fuel a modern war machine, or the war was unwinnable. Oil was the most important commodity, and Japan was running out. Today the limiting commodity for wars, especially in Asia, is people. Young Men. Without soldiers a war is unlaunchable, let alone unwinnable.
It's been whispered or assumed without comment for years, decades, that China fakes economic numbers. I've also seen persuasive and interesting conjecture that they've been faking population numbers for some times, with population peaking as early as 2004 and landing hundreds of millions lower than reported. No one has ever been able to prove anything, try collecting independent statistics on a population three times the size of the USA with no free press. It's assumed that provincial functionaries might fake the numbers to their superiors, to try to curry favor, so it might not even be clear within China what is true and what isn't. And if they've been faking growth numbers for decades, then the percentages will compound over time, who knows where they are now? Lying about a 2% increase one year is a 2% difference, lying about it every year for twenty years is closer to 50%.
If CCP leadership thinks that the population is actually much smaller, much older, and much deeper into demographic spiral than we think. So maybe they're shrinking rapidly, and need to do this before they lose their shot, maybe forever. But then, that depends on...
How does the CCP assess the future of the USA?
Does the CCP buy into HBD? Do they think that with the Passing of the Great Race, the USA is demographically doomed? If so, the CCP would be foolish to launch the war while there are still a significant number of whites on hand.
The belief is logically necessary for the CCP to launch the war now, regardless of the factual nature of the proposition. This isn't a debate on the truth value of HBD, it just matters whether the CCP believes it or not. Leaving aside China's demographics, the demographics of the USA will change. The USA would be shrinking at a pace just behind China without immigration, but the immigration is going to be different stock than the current citizenry. China will only launch the war now if they assess that the future America will have a military-age population as or more capable in the future.
At the same time, what of the million-and-one predictions of imminent American cultural, economic and governmental collapse? China must be bullish on the USA fixing its problems and reaching a new era of strength and unity if they think it's a good idea to launch the war today, and not wait another five years.
Right now China's Navy is growing faster than the American Navy, China will only launch war if they don't think that trend will continue. The USSR Navy was at one point a legitimate threat to the US Navy, today it's too far apart to even consider, it's beneath notice. China's leadership, if they believe in their project, and doubt America's, they will expect to outstrip the US Navy by more and more, not by less and less. We should expect those who dedicate their lives to rising to the top of the CCP project, to be true believers and to be confident in their project.
How Does the CCP Expect History to Turn Out?
Marxism is the science of history. It's immanentizing the Eschaton in the form of a really boring book. The CCP leadership has studied Marx, they have at least put a lot of effort into faking believing in it. Do they think Capitalism will collapse under its contradictions.
Everyone in the West sort of assumes that Chinese numbers are fake. There are Chinese companies trading on the NYSE where the net cash on the balance sheet is more than 2x the market cap of the company. If people believed the numbers, this would be almost impossible.
I think the numbers are mostly real. Go to Walmart. Everything is made in China. This is not so easy to fake. And if you look at international trade (also mostly impossible to fake) you will see China dominates the imports of nearly every other country.
https://www.trademap.org/Index.aspx
Not impossible. The price of shares is the expected value to the shareholder of holding the shares. The assumption is that the CCP won't let that cash be paid out to Western shareholders, not necessarily that they don't have the cash.
The CCP has no issues with Chinese companies paying dividends, even substantial ones, to Western shareholders. They’re more suspicious and much more reluctant around actual acquisitions of Chinese companies.
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Do you have a specific example you could point to?
Here's one, although the price went up a little so it has slightly less than 2x net cash/market cap right now.
https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/DQ/balance-sheet
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