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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   1068 thread views

Transnational Thursday for April 10, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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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.

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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