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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28510 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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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:

in practice. I see three main plausible scenarios:

Pearl Harbor. China combines an invasion of Taiwan with an attack on U.S. installations, at least in Guam, and possibly on Japanese territory as well. The United States, and possibly Japan, are immediately at war with China, with high likelihood of rapid escalation to general war.
Korea 1950. China attacks Taiwan, probably associated with preparations for invasion. Though, as in South Korea in 1950, the U.S. defense commitment is ambiguous, the brazen character of the attack raises the odds of at least U.S. and Japanese intervention, and all prepare for the possibility of escalation to general war.
Indirect control. China implements air and sea border controls to make Taiwan a self-governing administrative region of China. There is no need for a direct attack on Taiwan or any blockade of usual commerce. Without initiating violent action, the Chinese can assert sovereign control over the air and sea borders to Taiwan, establishing customs and immigration controls. This is not the same thing as a blockade. A blockade would instead become one of the possible consequences if the other side violently challenged China’s assertion of indirect control.

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:

  1. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are straining US defense production almost to breaking point already, however, waiting a few years could see China confronted with an America and EU that brought a ton more military production capacity online.
  2. The election will inevitably (particularly now that Trump is a felon) lead to an enormous amount of chaos between October 2024 and February 2025.
  3. China's relative advantages must be reaching their zenith, given demographics and the resurgence of neo-industrial policy.
  4. A demoralized military-class that is increasingly apathetic to foreign policy/wars that don't directly impact Americans.

The bear case:

  1. Significant domestic malaise following the mess of zero-COVID, the housing crash and relative slowdown of the economy (or does this make it more likely to boost support for the regime?)
  2. Fear of economic/military retaliation from US, Japan, Australia, Korea?
  3. Taiwan is a convenient way to whip up nationalism, but would be inconvenient to actually invade and potentially bungle.
  4. ?? Honestly, I'm having difficulty articulating reasons why China wouldn't make a move soon.

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 semiconductor factories can be seen as a point against invasion. They are very easy to destroy, either purposefully or accidentally.

It'd make sense for Taiwan to blow them up itself. Would China have the stomach for an extended occupation and suppression if they weren't getting any value out of it?

I think this could go either way depending on how worried China is about AGI. I'm sure it'd rather have the foundries for it's own use, but Taiwan is something like 60-70? percent of advanced chip manufacturing. If China ends up destroying them it could allow them to catch up in production as it'd just be their own domestic production vs US + korea, japan, bit in Germany. And Korea would be vulnerable similar to Taiwan + China might feel it would have less red tape and corruption to deal with in revving up it's own domestic production compared to the US in the potential AGI arms race.

It'd make sense for Taiwan to blow them up itself.

Indeed, TSMC has a kill-switch.

Would China have the stomach for an extended occupation and suppression if they weren't getting any value out of it?

Um, yes? Remember, this is a totalitarian state that's been putting irredentist messages about Taiwan in all the media and textbooks for literally a lifetime, and a decent chunk of whose current territory is very much an "extended occupation" (Xinjiang and Tibet; literally over 10% of the male population is interned in Xinjiang). They wanted Taiwan before the semiconductor factories were there, and they would get quite a legitimacy bump from holding Taiwan (the primary clause of the devil's bargain the CPC's made with the Chinese population is "we will get back everything that was lost in the Century of Humiliation", and Taiwan was one of those things).

(Also, do remember that occupations are significantly easier when you don't actually care about things like "human rights" and "rule of law". I have zero doubt that if it came down to "exterminate all 24 million Taiwanese and import mainlanders to replace them" or "abandon the occupation of Taiwan" the CPC would do the former, although I suspect their current plan is more along the lines of "kill everyone who was ever part of the DPP, stick the rest in re-education camps".)

I suspect their current plan is more along the lines of "kill everyone who was ever part of the DPP, stick the rest in re-education camps"

Retroactive citation here.

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