Summary

Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.

China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.

Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.

  • @[email protected]
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    215 months ago

    I wouldn’t want to be getting into a shooting war after seeing what Russia has got itself into. Fuck, Russia lost its fleet to a country without a navy.

    Does Xi think he can keep a land army supplied in the era of drones taking out surface combatants?

    • @[email protected]
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      335 months ago

      It is not the same though.

      Firstly, Russians are inefficient and inept as fuck, Chinese are not.

      Secondly, Ukraine had a strong support of both EU and the US. Now Trump is going to be in power and this cunt will happily let China take over Taiwan.

      Thirdly, Ukraine is 600k km2. Taiwan is 36k.

      • @[email protected]
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        135 months ago

        It’s worth noting that there are limited spots you can land on the Taiwan coast for an assault, and they are heavily guarded.

        It’s a very different war up until they can get and maintain a foothold.

      • @[email protected]
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        355 months ago

        Everyone in the lead up to the Russian invasion thought Russia had a world class army (besides some analysts like Philips O’Brien). Three day invasion is how many western analysts were spinning it (Michael Koffman is the one I remember talking about this). I think it is a stretch to believe that the Chinese military is any better, especially since their last fight was, what, in the 70s against Vietnam?

        Ukraine doesn’t have a giant moat around it. Taiwan does. Amphibious warfare is much much much harder than land based war. Probably by like 2 orders of magnitude at least. Keeping an army supplied in that environment is very very hard and that was before drones made defense warfare extremely effective. The US stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine for a few months last year and they held the line quite well just with their drones.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 months ago

          I am not going to claim I am a military expert because certainly I am not. I think your arguments don’t hold water though:

          1. It is irrelevant what everyone thought, unless you are asserting Chinese army is as bad as Russian. If so, I would say unlikely on the basis of the entire technological development of both countries. There is also cultural aspect: I worked with number of Russians and Chinese. Russians were sloppy as fuck, nearly all of them. Chinese on the other hand were the most hard working people I have ever seen in my life, again almost all of them. Population size also matters.

          2. Amphibious warfare is only harder until you land and secure even temporary harbour.

          3. You are underestimating importance of western support. “just a few months” is not important - ask yourself where Ukraine would have been now if the US were to not supply anything to them from the very start - and this is the situation Trump is likely to put Taiwan in.

          • @[email protected]
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            5 months ago

            On point two you are correct only if the attacking force has air/sea supremacy like the us did in WWII. With drones I have a very hard time believing that will be the case. That is what makes it hard. Sure landings are brutal, but logistics is a nightmare when you have to supply your troops with vulnerable ships. That is why the Russian navy getting smacked about by Ukraine is so relevant.

        • @[email protected]
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          74 months ago

          China hasn’t fought an interstate war in decades. The last well known example was korea. All the other fights they had were with the soviets from 1950 to present. And they lost every one of those border wars

          China is very very inexperienced when push comes to shove.

      • @[email protected]
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        34 months ago

        Firstly, Russians are inefficient and inept as fuck, Chinese are not.

        Citation needed. The Chinese largely based their armed forces on the Russian model in a somewhat combined effort, so I suspect they’d be just as shit. It will be interesting to see how much of a fight Taiwan gives them.

        On the second point I have no doubt Trump won’t intervene, however I do find it odd that Musk just finished fucking over the budget bill (whatever its name is) that would have helped fund chip manufacturing in the US just for them to simultaneously hand all Taiwanese chip manufacturing to China. It’s almost like they have no game plan…

      • NoneOfUrBusiness
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        75 months ago

        Now Trump is going to be in power and this cunt will happily let China take over Taiwan.

        Will he? Trump is soft on Russia but wasn’t he pretty hard on China?

        • @[email protected]
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          75 months ago

          Until he benefits personally, then he’s soft. All China would need to do is promise to sell Trump goods or let him build a gaudy hotel.

        • @[email protected]
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          85 months ago

          Trump is soft on Russia but wasn’t he pretty hard on China?

          Has he ever been tough on China when the cost him anything? Being hard on China has economic consequences.

          • @[email protected]
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            4 months ago

            Trump represents overt corporate oligarchy taking over America. Those people don’t care as long as they live comfortably. The US is building chip factories in the southwest to replace TSMC for domestic use. Once thats completed. Corpos don’t care about Russians and Chinese carving out spheres of influence across the world and killing millions. They only care about their own hides and the last reason to care about overseas affairs would have become redundant.

            And this is the same scenario where millions of Americans are thrown into abject poverty by the deliberate crashing of the economy as technofascist corpos like Elon musk are allowed to shape the economy to their designs.

            Once again. Those corporate only care about their own kind. Everyone else is expendable assets. Whether it be lower and middle class american citizens. Or entire countries. Panama. Canada. Mexico. Ukraine. Taiwan. You can’t appeal to the morals and nature of corporate oligarchs because they’d rather kill you for wasting their time.

    • @[email protected]
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      655 months ago

      Very. But I still expect to see plenty of hypocritical leninists ignoring or defending this. Telling us that Daddy Xi is only killing them for their own good. And that if they just lay back and took it that they would learn to enjoy it.

      Not that it’s ever made sense that they defend certain capitalists. While denouncing capitalism and other capitalist governments.

  • @[email protected]
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    4 months ago

    Imagine being the type of loser that would downvote comments in support of a country refusing to be overthrown.

    You’d think we’d have learned by now, but here we are.

    Here’s for hoping these kids manage to become aware of their ignorance by the time they hit high school.

  • @[email protected]
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    214 months ago

    Reunification? Taiwan was never a part of communist China.

    Just because Taiwan was part of an empire that has common roots with communist China is no reason at all.

    • @[email protected]
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      134 months ago

      Let’s not use their propaganda and call them communist. Communist leadership wouldn’t have fascist allies around the world

  • @[email protected]
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    14 months ago

    That feel when people here do not realize their own government likely says Taiwan is part of China.

  • @[email protected]
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    124 months ago

    I worry for the future generations of Taiwan and Ukraine. Trump’s going to just shrug and let them die.

      • @[email protected]
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        34 months ago

        No one did shit to Russia other than some easily avoidable sanctions. China attacks the US daily in the form of cyberattacks and nothing happens.

        If they went and took Taiwan tomorrow the world would condemn it very hard on social media and that’s about it, hell, they even did it before with Hong Kong and no one cared.

        • @[email protected]
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          4 months ago

          I really don’t think the Crimea or the Hong Kong method is going to work this time.

          But if it actually did work, then yeah you might be right.

          If it comes to an all out military invasion, though, you can bet that shit is not going to go uncontested.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          So… you seriously perceive the lack of response to one event to mean it’s a green light for everything?

          Man, I hope you people don’t ever become in charge of anything important.

          • @[email protected]
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            14 months ago

            I hope too, I would never want to be in charge of anything, even in my house I prefer for my wife to be in charge.

            I also hope I’m very wrong, I don’t think I am but I hope.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 months ago

      You mean… “Reunified.” Think of it like Russia’s “special military operation” only with less genocide.

  • Doom
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    165 months ago

    Lol thought it was already a part of China poohpants

  • @[email protected]
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    385 months ago

    Oh is the PRC going to surrender to the ROC? Because Taiwan was never part of the PRC. For there to be reunification, the PRC would have to give mainland China back to the ROC.

    • @[email protected]
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      24 months ago

      It all hinges upon which government you consider “legitimate.”

      We can’t pretend violent rebellions aren’t eventually considered legitimate, good or bad. Look at the US.

  • AlexisFR
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    44 months ago

    That’s good, the US military is starting to get bored.

  • Jin
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    185 months ago

    He been saying stuff like this for many years… especially China’s red lines “don’t visit Taiwan or else…” and nothing happens.

    Gotta keep up moral and focus away from things like their economy that’s going down 👎