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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28512 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).

I was wrong about Russia invading Ukraine so discount accordingly, but I think the odds of China invading Taiwan are very low in the short term.

First we have to ask whether China even wants Taiwan. Sabre-rattling about Taiwan serves as a reliable way to stir up nationalistic feelings in the people. This is useful when the dear leader starts to lose the favor of heaven. Taiwan as a rebellious province has more use to the regime than as a subdued enemy. In other words, would China capturing Taiwan be like the dog that catches the car?

But let's say that China does want Taiwan. I think in the near term, the logistics of an amphibious landing are impossible. China's military has essentially no actual combat experience (unless we count fighting Indian soldiers with melee weapons on remote Himalayan passes). While we are in the early stages of a revolution in military technology, I think the U.S. carriers groups and air superiority fighters would still win the day.

In the long term, I am much more bullish on China's chances. Demographics are a headwind, but China will still have 3 times the population of the U.S. in twenty years. Furthermore, the world's reliance on Chinese trade grows stronger every year. China is eating the world. They dominate most industries and are on a path to domination of the rest. China's spending on military equipment is remarkable, and their ability to create more grows while the abilities of the West fade. The West's existing stock of legacy material (F-35s and carrier groups) will matter less in the future.

So China can just sit back and let its advantages compound. When they have naval superiority and a more secure supply chain of natural resources they will strike. And when they do take Taiwan it may be without even firing a shot.

First we have to ask whether China even wants Taiwan.

The interesting thing about Taiwan are the state-of-the-art TSMC chip fabs, which are better than what the PRC has.

However, these are fragile things easily destroyed in the event of an invasion, and keeping them running without support from ASML would likely be hard to impossible.

And while Taiwan is important, it is not the only place in which the US could manufacture state of the art chips for military use, so taking Taiwan would hurt the US economically but not cripple it militarily.

Of course, Taiwan might also be a Schelling spot for anti-Communist Chinese, like Hong-Kong was before. But risking World War 3 to drive your ideological opponents from Taipei to San Francisco seems rather pointless -- especially if you can also just impose Honecker-style controls on your people so they can not defect.

It will be interesting to see who wins the next chip race: China or the United States. It's a critical priority for both countries. The U.S. effort is not going well, with Intel floundering and TSMC having trouble with its American workforce.

Nevertheless, China seems to be far behind the U.S. According to Wikipedia, they currently make nothing smaller than 16 nm.

Critically, the chip race isn't between China and the US. It is between China and the US-Netherlands (ASML)-Germany (Zeiss)-UK (ARM)-Taiwan coalition.

If the West allows China to defeat us in detail, China will probably succeed. But that would be a very stupid thing to do.

But that would be a very stupid thing to do.

Without the export bans China would have continued to buy instead of build the most advanced process chips for the foreseeable future. We've forced their hand to bet everything on build.

I don't disagree with you - I was just pointing out that we have to careful about who "we" is in this context.

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