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If the US-China trade war continues and results in a severing of trade across the Pacific, it seems like China loses a major business case for peace. How much does this change the Chinese calculus for an invasion of Taiwan, and should we be worried?
Asking here because I have seen very little serious discussion of this aspect of the trade war from major outlets.
High levels of bilateral trade didn't prevent WW1, whilst fairly meagre trade between Eastern and Western blocs (US-Soviet trade peaked at around $4 billion a year) didn't prevent peace.
Deciding to go to war is mostly about balance of power, political objectives and security fears, not trade. Xi is not a bean counter. He does not care about 'green line go up' economics, quite the opposite given the crackdowns on finance and various companies. Xi has taken considerable efforts to securitize the Chinese economy, advance autarky in materials, food and energy. These programs are expensive (and still incomplete), building a big fleet is expensive, getting into a confrontation with the US is expensive. Chinese Communist Party elites are most interested in power, not profitmaxxing.
Also, the global balance of power is shifting toward China. They've made big strides in many fields of technologies, their industrial output is huge. China dominates the drone industry for instance, they dominate shipbuilding. Meanwhile the US navy is still shrinking and political dysfunction is worse than before.
I think the Chinese plan is something like 'build up a huge qualitative and quantitative military superiority, then wage utterly unfair wars against fundamentally weaker foes or just pressure them to accept our hegemony peacefully'. Only if the US started to get stronger faster than China (superintelligence) would they consider going in early.
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I am not a qualified expert on the topic of "trade as a force for peace," but I will say that it sure has seemed like China has always wanted to take Taiwan by hook or by crook, completely orthogonally to their entanglement in global trade. If anything, global trade has seemingly helped China conclude that taking Taiwan is in the possibility space thanks to the benefits they have reaped from it, and now that they are in a position of strength, they can happily abandon the power of trade in the name of taking Taiwan if they need to.
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