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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29474 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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The idea that Trump pushed back a Taiwan invasion only makes sense if there was, indeed, a plan for a Taiwan invasion. And I'm not sure of that, given the anemic support that China has been giving to Russia for the last 4 years. If China cares enough about its trade with the West to avoid providing significant support to a country that is actively engaged in a proxy war with the West, despite easily being able to provide such support, it seems weird to me that China would enter a possible open war with the West by attacking Taiwan.

I feel like in the last few years there has been a whole genre of "war between the US and China is inevitable" literature that has perhaps made it almost seem like such a war really is inevitable.

I'm not surprised by the popularity of the genre. It is entertaining, it has a certain "back in a Cold War" charm, it benefits China hawks and defense manufacturers.

But I believe that if such a war does happen it will represent not the outcome of inevitability, but rather a massive failure of diplomacy.

That said, I don't have a good track record of geopolitical predictions.

As far as I'm aware most of the narrative about inevitability is of the more 'timeless' Thucydides Trap flavor. However it's worth noting that I do sometimes read English-language Chinese propaganda: they are actually pushing this narrative! Their hope is that they can co-opt US intellectuals into thinking "we're too smart to fall into this silly trap". This is accompanied by (empty) blustering about how important "self-determinism" is and how they would never intervene in other countries' affairs (lol).

In parallel, they're trying to degrade American pride and nationalism more generally. No one is more happy than China (yes, even more than Russia IMO) at the flood of articles about homelessness in the US, racial violence, inequality, government dysfunction, etc). Interestingly, they seem to have tried to learn from the Communists of yesteryear: rather than explicitly promote left-wingers, they think that they can win on a pure negative-messaging platform. They will brag about how China can 'just do things' and is clean, orderly, family-friendly even, but they don't care if it catches on, they just want to provide a contrast. They don't care about promoting something like the IWW or Comintern or whatever. They view money as a more powerful ideological tool (internationally) than actual ideology. Of course, some of this is necessarily defensive: they don't want democracy to look attractive to Chinese people. But it's interesting to me nonetheless that this is the strategy that they've chosen to appeal to the Western intellectuals.

I do think China is less likely to intervene in other countries affairs then the US or Russia

Yeah China needs to maintain the capability to invade Taiwan in case they declare independence so they can make good on their threats. But the status quo is pretty comfy and China is only getting stronger so I don't know that they feel much egency.

As for Ukraine China is an inward looking place and despite being friendly to Russia still has decent relations with Ukraine and Europe. A war with Taiwan likely wouldn't involve Europe so I'm not sure they see the Ukraine war as useful to weakening their actual rivals in the Asia-Pacific especially since the US has reduced support and it's mainly Europe propping up Ukraine.

I mean, it seems obvious that China may be pro-Russia, but is unwilling to eat Russia's war bill because it's a big bill.

Also China bein friendly to Russia doesn't necessarily mean they are Anti-Ukraine

Sure, but China could help Russia much more than it currently is helping, without breaking its own bank in the process. For example, China could spin up a few military drone factories.

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