This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Let’s talk about East vs West, the narrative of the “inevitable rise of China,” and some of the historical reasons why the West is currently ascendant. Pasting a post from SQS by @RandomRanger:
———————
Rigid and inflexible governance practices, worsened by a lack of competition. Consider the Seaban where the Ming relocated whole villages away from the sea to combat piracy. That's a bizarre thing to do, rulers usually like having trade. But the Ming were so strong they didn't care, they had no peer competitors and so little need to search for revenue. The consequences for this stupid crap didn't hit them immediately. The Qing didn't raise taxes for about a century or two because they wanted to be benevolent, so the footprint of the state was very light compared to Europe. The population ballooned and they had the same number of officials, it was a mess. Proto-industrialization was accelerated by the military-industrial complex, China wasn't usually under threat... They could afford to do all this suboptimal governance that would get them annexed if they were in Europe. In Europe, states had to search for qualitative military advantages in metallurgy and shipbuilding, they had to squeeze out as much tax revenue as they could from people. Europeans weren't interested in ritualized trade missions where they gave out more than they received to 'tributary states', they wanted profits. The Chinese state didn't care so much about profit, they assumed they were the richest and the best from the start.
China built a huge fleet and explored all around the Indian Ocean, terrifying all the natives. But they felt like there was no use for it, they had plenty of money already. And the steppe nomads were acting up again, so they scrapped it and refocused. They thought they were on top of the world, so resisted catch-up industrialization for some time in the 19th century on the basis that they already had everything they needed.
Many megadeaths later, the lesson sank in. Today they push out official party doctrine books about how important scientific and industrial development is, overcorrecting if anything: https://www.strategictranslation.org/articles/general-laws-of-the-rise-of-great-powers
————————
Do we see China reversing these tendencies? How will a Trump presidency change things?
What does the future of Taiwan and AI, chips, etc look like at the moment? Is Deepseek really as good as they say?
Taiwan has 2% of China's population and 5% of their GDP. They are not able to defend themselves alone in any protracted conflict, either an invasion or blockade. It is unknown if and to what extent the US will support them, especially with Trump soon to be in office. If the Chinese decide to blockade and bomb Taiwan I don't know if even direct US support could stop them. The US Navy has not been able to stop the Houthis from shutting down Red Sea shipping, and the Houthis do not have 1% of the resources the Chinese have.
The only way I see an independent Taiwan in 2040 is if they develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The GDP and manpower gap simply do not matter if Taiwan has them, this is the only way they can defend themselves. Whether or not they have the collective will to do this, I don't know. But its either that or get annexed, so my guess is that they will.
I suspect this is more a question of will than capability.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
China's One Child Policy is the worst, most destructive government (social) policy in history and clearly shows the danger of Malthusian thought put into practice. The effects of the One Child Policy have been ruinous for China, not just for economic reasons (including dependency ratio), but for so may other reasons, including indirectly causing China's gender imbalance, decline of relationships and family, and the social malaise and stagnation that occurs when the elderly outnumber the youth, a highly unnatural and disordered state of affairs.
I strongly believe that despite all the both morally and economically awful things the CCP has done, it is the One Child Policy and the One Child Policy essentially alone that stopped the 'rise of China'. If it were not for the One Child Policy, China would be the clear number one superpower now, rather that floundering behind (despite all its own faults) the surprisingly resilient US. Or at the very least, China would still be ascendant rather than the rapid descent that is waiting for China around the corner.
While it's true that China would be experiencing some effects of the demographic transition today regardless of the One Child Policy, and that these problems are not unique to China, as in both the West and China's developed Asian neighbours, the One Child Policy accelerated China's demographic transition to such a degree that China's demographics are comparable to RoK, Japan and Taiwan, despite those countries having a 20-40 year head start on the demographic transition caused by economic development, depending on how you count it. China's current fertility rate (approx. 1.1) is worse than Japan's (approx. 1.2), similar to Taiwan, and slightly better than RoK (approx. 0.75). And this is without considering the reliability of China's numbers, given that the CCP has a tendency to "mistakenly" inflate their population numbers, the situation may well be much worse than is reported.
Unfortunately, despite all evidence pointing to Malthusian thought being completely and utterly wrong (as well as deeply immoral, in my judgement), it is still heavily influential in both academic and popular though, if bolstered by a pervasive anti-natalist, anti-humanist Zeitgeist. I know I might be preaching to the converted here, but the fertility/demographic crisis is the most significant civilisational crisis, and the mainstream political class and intelligentsia are only just beginning to grasp the enormous problem that we are facing. But I doubt they will face much success in addressing it, as any solution to the problem will necessarily require a repudiation of the modernist individualism which the global political class and intelligentsia currently exist in.
While I agree with you about China and the dangers of a lopsided population pyramid, it's also true that we really don't want 8 billion people on a planet with limited temperate zones. I don't think it's fair to look at the problems that have resulted from trying to manage a delayed, sticky system that's tied deep into social and mental structures and where both surges and declines cause undesirable affects, then say 'see, this proves that having more children is never a bad thing'. The fact that pessimism has caused problems does not mean that blind optimism is desirable.
Why not? Even now Earth has plenty of habitable land. We’re nowhere near the carrying capacity of the planet. So what’s wrong with 8 billion people?
As an intuition pump, imagine someone from the government comes round to your house and starts measuring its square footage, then tells you it's nowhere near carrying capacity and that you will be required to take in 10 people to use the valuable property more efficiently. (Yes, you can pick holes in the metaphor, but you see what I mean, right?)
I don't want to reach carrying capacity. I want to have a decent-sized place somewhere nice and leafy, not live in an anthill for my whole life. Not only is the supply of many nice things on this world (say, nice beaches) far below the carrying capacity of the planet as a whole, but I don't think that humans actually benefit from density. Cities as IQ shredders are memes for a reason, and I suspect that like pigs in cages, a lot of the modern behaviour people worry about on the Motte is downstream from our modern urban living conditions.
Who is the government in this case? Because the policy under discussion was the Chinese government going into peoples homes and essentially saying “We’re at capacity, so you can only have one kid.”
When population rises the government doesn’t quarter them with you (if they did then I would be opposed to that). Instead they work and make money and use it to buy a place to live. If you don’t want to sell part of your decent sized place then don’t do that.
Just so we don’t get lost, I am not asserting that the Chinese policy was good. I am asserting that I do not agree with the reverse policy of ‘earth is big, we can have loads more people with no problems’.
In the specific metaphor I used, the ‘house’ is the Earth, or at least the nation. America is very big but lots of other countries aren’t, and the nice bits where people want to live are often much smaller. You can deal with that by having more density or fewer people, and really, why choose to create Coruscant when you can create Naboo? A lot of the Shire is based on Tolkein’s wandering in the countryside around Oxford, but that area is now entirely suburbs that stretch across the whole plain as far as the eye can see. This was a choice.
I’m not talking about the government literally putting people in my house, I’m saying that one way or another I have to share space and resources with your 8 billion plus and under those circumstances saying ‘we’re nowhere near carrying capacity so what’s the worry?’ seems irresponsible.
The optimal density / number of people != the maximum possible number of people. So I have no problem with the goal of controlling population numbers, only with the targets and methods. A two-child policy would have worked much better for China.
"Nice bits" are much more defined by neighbors than anything else. I mean, there's not a lot of people living in, say, Montana (compared to the area). Maybe it's because it's cold in winter? But how people live in Alberta, Canada then which would have even harsher winter? I think given enough infrastructure (which is downstream from people paying for establishing it) a lot of places would be fine for people to live in. Maybe not everybody gets to live in places with 100% optimal climate - even then people live both in Florida and in Alaska, so obviously not everybody has the same understanding of the optimal climate - but there are a lot of places with perfectly livable climate (given modern infrastructure) and a lot of them right now is completely empty. Like, not "rural" but just nothing at all for miles and miles. I personally enjoy having some empty spaces and don't really want to convert 100% of Earth surface to human habitat, but I can't help noticing there's a real lot of capacity out there, much more than needed to accommodate another billion. How to do it properly is a tough question, but livable space doesn't seem to be a major issue here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My theory is that Taiwan needs a miracle to survive if the Chinese go in.
Before WW2, Japan had been planning for war with America for many years. The plan was to lure the US fleet out into Japanese waters, slowly eating away at them with submarines and land-based bomber attacks before a decisive battle where Japan would hold the upper hand. Then the US started building an absolutely gigantic fleet set for 1942, blocked Japanese oil imports and the Japanese realized they were doomed unless they got in a huge first strike, so they switched to the Pearl Harbour strategy. The initial Japanese execution was excellent but the US eventually overwhelmed them with tonnage and weight of numbers (plus some qualitative superiority too by the end).
Japan fixated around the wrong things. Why would the American fleet deploy to quickly reinforce the Philippines and accept these risks? Why would the US give up after one decisive battle? 'Who has the better battleship' wasn't that important to the outcome, it was mostly about size.
Nearly all discussion of a Taiwan war revolves around the amphibious campaign, measured in days and weeks. But wars between serious powers usually last for years. Ukraine has lasted for years, it's a war of attrition. We should think about attrition and mass rather than a single decisive battle.
Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to attrition. It's an island with virtually no domestic energy production, no fertilizer production and maybe 20-30% food self-sufficiency. China may not be able to successfully invade. Amphibious campaigns are hard. But all they need to do is bomb Taiwanese ports to prevent resupply. Taiwan will be forced to capitulate. You can't run a country with no food and no power. China won't get the fabs (the US will blow them up if it looked likely) but they will get the island and the people. The island is an important base, it's important politically and the people are the real reason behind TSMC's success. And all China needs to do to win this slow victory is fire off enough missiles at Taiwan's ports to break through any defence, they need only to avoid complete US victory in Chinese home waters.
Considering China's gigantic industrial capacity, they should easily be capable of darkening the skies of East Asia with missiles and drones. They're the biggest shipbuilder in the world, the biggest producer of drones and test more missiles than anyone else. China has built up huge reserves of fuel and food, they start much closer to self-sufficiency and enjoy overland trade routes, they're far better prepared for blockade than Taiwan.
China would of course prefer a knockout victory where their marines raise the flag over Taipei, they would prefer not to need to impose rationing or conduct a large-scale industrial mobilization. But if a quick victory doesn't seem practical, like the US in 1941, they'll double down and rely on industrial mass to win. They'll do what Putin did but x20, due to their size. That's the scenario we need to avoid.
Palantir's recent ad where they show a bunch of drones blowing up a presumably Chinese fleet at the push of a button is the crux of the problem. The US and gang doesn't just need to do this, we need to do this and prevent it being done to a bunch of big, slow freighters: https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/1868633675190939839
Destroying an enemy's economy qpurely through air and missile strikes is much harder than it sounds at first. Most notably, in ww2 the battle for britain and later allied mass strategic bombing failed to cripple enemy war production. German production actually inncreased year over year despite daily strategic bombing raids.
Israel russia and ukraine have shown that modern air defense is effective against current threats. Short of a full scale desert storm style air war, air defenses will remain intact and the vast majority of long range missiles will be intercepted and destroyed.
Carrying out an actual blockade of Taiwan would likely require winning a head on engagement against US naval forces. This might be plausible, but if China chooses this it would be a direct act of war against the US.
China isn’t Russia though. China is probably the only other country in the world besides the United States that could do 2000+ PGM strikes per day for the first two weeks of the conflict. The most Russia has ever fired in a single day strike is around a tenth of that, and they can only do that about once a month at best.
Also, American naval war simulations have shown that in the event of a war, it would be extremely dangerous to move carrier groups any further west than Hawaii. The Chinese have spent a huge amount of effort and money developing long range area denial weapons like the Dongfeng-21 to keep US carrier groups far away from China or Taiwan. The Houthis only had a small fraction of that capability and they were able to drive US carriers out of the Red Sea.
More options
Context Copy link
That was 70 years ago, with dumb bombs and a partial blockade. Germany had overland trade with Europe, Britain had its empire and considerable domestic energy and agriculture. They were both much more self-sufficient than Taiwan is today. German war production only started mobilizing seriously in 1943 and 1944, that's what the Sportspalast speech was all about.
Smart missiles and modern sensors make it much much harder for big, slow freighters to reach ports. Satellites, radar and sonar systems are far more advanced, they'd be like sitting ducks. And ports are big, stationary targets. China can hit them with relatively simple land-based MLRS systems, let alone their huge ballistic missile arsenal. How can you offload food and fuel while being bombed and shelled?
Missile defence on the necessary scale is impractical right now. Firstly, the Russian (and Iranian) missile arsenal pales in comparison to the Chinese arsenal. The latter has immense industrial capacity and can surely churn out ludicrous numbers of missiles. There are rumours going around that they have single factories that can produce 1000 missiles a day at full capacity (though precisely what kind of missile they're talking about is unclear, China tends to be secretive about these things).
Regardless, Desert Storm will immediately be eclipsed.
Furthermore, Ukraine's power grid has been put under a great deal of pressure by the Russian missile barrage. They are heavily reliant upon European energy imports to stabilize what remains of their grid (which was overbuilt for Soviet industrial needs, so there was lots of surplus capacity). Ukraine also has a number of nuclear reactors that Russia understandably doesn't want to cause great damage to, so they have to take care in their targeting. Taiwan doesn't have these factors. Taiwan can't import power. They have no coal mines or gas fields. Nobody can send over a bunch of transformers and power equipment to make up for what's lost.
And finally my point is that China doesn't need to defeat the US navy, they only need to avoid defeat. I can envision a scenario where China loses its carriers and much of its surface fleet but still wins the war. As long as they can prevent the US getting sufficient control of the seas to resupply Taiwan, the latter will have to capitulate. It's easy to deny, harder to defeat. The US is moving towards a strategy of denial, the victory plan is 'sink the Chinese invasion fleet and win the war'. My point is that sinking the invasion fleet is necessary but not sufficient.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ukraine has lasted for years because Ukraine doesn't have nukes and doesn't have any way of getting rid of Russia's nukes, thus preventing false alarms leading to Russian launch (and because there is still significant deterrence against Russia using nukes proactively).
Direct war between the USA and PRC is completely different. You'll be lucky if it lasts six months without nuclear exchange.
Admittedly, this still means most Taiwanese die because Taipei/Tainan eat Chinese nukes, but you're assuming your way out of reality thinking that a Taiwan war would last for years.
Why would China nuke Taiwan? From their perspective it would be nuking their own people.
I don't pretend to be an expert on foreign policy in general or China-Taiwan relations in particular, so maybe I'm wrong, but that sounds unlikely to me.
It wouldn’t necessarily be China that throws the first one. It would be tempting for the US to use tactical weapons to even out local Chinese conventional superiority. There’s a ton of articles from American think tanks pondering such a possibility.
More options
Context Copy link
The CPC consider the DPP and probably a decent chunk of voters for it to be "their own people in open rebellion", and want to kill them.
Moreover, we're positing a scenario in which nukes are (apparently or actually) flying at China and the CPC is trying to punish everyone it deems responsible, which necessarily includes Taiwan because if they'd surrendered the war wouldn't have happened.
Sure, but they're talking about killing the leadership, not nuking the whole island.
If nukes are (apparently or actually) flying at China, they won't have the option of "occupy Taiwan and execute the DPP in an orderly fashion" anymore, and all deterrents are void.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What scenario are you thinking of? US bombers attack Chinese missile launchers (assuming they're conventional) but they're actually nuclear/dual-purpose and it's interpreted as a disarming strike? Incredibly brave US submarine somehow infiltrates the sea of Bohai and sinks a Chinese missile sub, prompting worries about the stability of their arsenal? China wouldn't start such a big war unless they think they have a secure nuclear arsenal. The US nuclear arsenal is very secure.
And neither side has deployed many tactical nukes, unlike in the Cold War. Modern smart weapons are very potent and forces tend to be dispersed, the value of tactical nukes is not as high as it used to be.
And it doesn't seem wise for either party to escalate consciously, why would they? If they suffer a reverse, wait and try again. If China is losing, they'll probably try to extend/expand the war and their mobilization rather than go nuclear. They don't particularly want to irradiate and incinerate their own rogue province.
Does the US care that much about Taiwan? They won't even make an explicit security guarantee for Taiwan, let alone extend their nuclear umbrella so far.
Apologies for the late reply; last night I had to put cream on one of my hands.
Yes.
Or unless they're overconfident in the USA not coming in.
The first one you mention is somewhat plausible, but I'm assuming a lot more "fog of war" than what you seem to be doing. I'm thinking things like "Chinese radar falsely detects SLBM launches, not sorted out within the minutes available and PLARF launches-on-warning" or "US sends bombers at targets in mainland China, they're nuclear-capable so PRC figures they might be intending to nuke the Chinese deterrent" or "US radar falsely detects Chinese ICBM launches, counterforce alpha-strike is attempted to reduce casualties".
Note that launch-detection satellites are probably toast in a WWIII scenario because of the long-standing Chinese war plan to open up WWIII with massive ASAT use, that the PRC probably will be launching a bunch of ballistic missiles at Taiwan as part of any attack, and that the PRC's land radars may be taking a beating as part of conventional warfare.
Good, persuasive points, especially re radar. One would imagine there'd be redundancy, I guess that's one of the secrets of the universe that we never really know with surety. Still, I can't help but think both sides plan to make extensive use of high-speed missiles, traditional launch on warning postures might be obsolete. The Chinese have their carrier killer ICBMs, the US has been working on hypersonic anti-ship missiles and prompt global strike. Either could presumably carry nuclear warheads. This will have to be taken into account, they wouldn't make these things if they invite nuclear war on use, launch on warning will have to be more flexible.
China at least has historically had a pretty dismissive attitude to nuclear war, with their minimum credible deterrent. They don't seem like the type to panic and launch on an unreliable warning signal. It's a long way to reach their siloes out in the desert, US bombers would probably be plinking away at coastal bases with air-launched missiles rather than getting that far into Chinese airspace. They might hit a few dual use nuclear TELs on the coast I guess but it seems unreasonable to go nuclear over things like that.
And I can't imagine a US president risking megadeaths unless he was totally sure of what he was doing.
I mean, I'm sure most of these things would get sorted out without mushroom clouds. My guess based on the close calls in the Cuban Missile Crisis is like 1% per day or so that it all goes south. It's just, well, that adds up; 99%^182 = 16% of our luck holding out for six months (I didn't say "extremely lucky").
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
US doesn't go nuclear over taiwan which means china doesn't go nuclear over taiwan. They're not treaty allies.
The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted what, two weeks? We had one accidental launch of nuclear bombers (the Duluth bear fiasco) and had a 2/3 majority onboard a Soviet submarine for "launch nuclear torpedo" (needed unanimous). Procedures have improved somewhat, but also that wasn't even a shooting war.
Sooner or later, there'll be a false alarm that gets treated as real. The chance per day is low, but it adds up.
Having missiles off our shores is pretty different to having them pointed at another country that isn't a treaty ally.
And the Chinese will "have missiles off their shores" in any likely WWIII scenario. Aircraft carriers carry nukes and a lot of the Western SSBNs would likely be deployed to the Sea of Japan/Philippine Sea/Bay of Bengal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Turn off your autocorrect!
lol, rip me. Fixing it now.
In order to get a horizontal line (HTML element
<hr/>), you need to type three hyphens ("---"), not a bunch of em dashes ("———").Yeah I know but my phone autocorrected and I’m too lazy to change it atm
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link