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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:
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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
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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.
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