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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24173 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Right, you can’t intervene in an invasion from outside missile range, but you can entirely choke all seaborne commerce.

Hence it puts the timeline pressure on the invasion. Even the largest oil reserve won’t last that long.

China is a continental power with a direct land connection through Central Asia to some of the largest energy producers in the world and Taiwan is an island, every indication is that the timeline for the latter would be much shorter than the timeline for the former.

First, the land connection doesn't and can't carry even a tiny fraction of China's foreign trade, and certainly not enough food and fuel to get through a cold Beijing winter.

Taiwan would have benefit of replenishment via their eastern ports by the largest blue water Navy in the world.

If China absolutely needed to they could drastically increase their rail and pipe infrastructure and could endure a significant decrease in living standards whereas Taiwan could not survive a total blockade in the most literal sense. Even the backwards and isolated China of the Mao era was able to survive isolation and a direct war against the US, why would you think they couldn't survive a naval blockade today?

and no, they wouldn't have "the benefit of replenishment", if the US Navy sailed into China's AShM umbrella (which reaches well beyond Taiwan) it would quickly go from the largest blue water Navy to the largest underwater Navy. Hence why the original post was about how they'd stay out of range and impose a blockade instead.

Increasing infrastructure takes significant time.

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