211–220 of 321 posts
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What part of my comment is unclear to you?
The part where any of that matters. Which country has billions of dollars in defense spending with the US?
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>unconditional victory Doubt. UKR doing ok on battlefield but strategically it will be a dead country for generations. Vast unrecoverable levels of human capita loss, most of whom will never go back. UKR is going to be demographic deadend for the foreseeable future even if they manage to rebuild, which is far from certain as RU can drag conflict out for long time. That's going to be increasingly obvious as war contin…
I'm not going to go off on a tangent on a discussion on Taiwan, but I don't believe none of your assertions is grounded on reality. Ukraine is doing magnificently on the battlefield, specially given Russia planned their invasion to be a 3-day event with frontline soldiers packing parade uniforms and riot gear and Russian generals booking restaurants in Kiev in advance. To attest to Ukraine's prowess, Russia's ruling…
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US has no business interfering in Taiwan. Period.
The free people of the world have a right to protect themselves from authoritarians and to assist other free people in doing so. That seems like a pretty fundamental moral principle to follow.
US also supported dictators in South Korea and the Philippines, as well as in Latin America.
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As far as I'm aware this is still the official party line of the KMT. It's just that now the DPP (their opposition) is in power.
My parents are from Taiwan with my moms side hardline KMT govt officials, and Dad is Green Party/DPP - grew up listening about Taiwanese politics my entire life around friends and family. I’ve never heard of this stance. I’ve only heard of your stance on Reddit and Twitter within the past two years.
> 中共當局認為『一個中國』即為『中華人民共和國』...，我方則認為『一個中國』應指1912年成立迄今之中華民國
> The CCP authorities believe "One China" to be the "People's Republic of China"..., we believe "One China" should refer to the Republic of China, founded in 1912 and persisting to this day.
and its affirmation in 2012 by the then KMT administration:
> 兩岸確已達成「一中各表」的共識，這是客觀的事實，我們主張的「一中」當然是中華民國。
> The two coasts have already reached a mutual understanding on "One China, Said Differently," of course the "One China" we support is the Republic of China.
From the Taiwanese government MAC: https://www.mac.gov.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=B383123AEADAEE52&...
It's very much the idea that the ROC should control everything.
Now as other comments point out, public perception among KMT detractors is that this is a sham, and even among KMT supporters there's not a clear message on how this situation would ever come about (and the main criticism in Taiwan against the KMT is that the only way that the KMT could ever hope to make this happen and indeed is/was doing in effect is by essentially capitulating to the PRC), but this is what the KMT puts out on official channels on what "reunification" means for the ROC.
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> China needs a large amount of ships and cargo planes We're watching warfare change right now. There are many paths to success for China, given enough attention and focus. Just one: 100 million drones to deal with all the fixed defences, and then you arrive to negotiate once you've repeatedly overwhelmed the enemy for 6 months. We've spent the last few decades helping China build the biggest manufacturing engine in…
China simply does not have the amphibious capabilities for an invasion let alone sustainment of an invading force. All the estimates I've looked at says they won't have that capability for around another ten years or so. A blockade favors the west and neighborhing friendly powers like Japan, since that would give it time to bring its mass to bear. All that talk about drones ignores that there are easy hard counters t…
Blockade wouldn't favour west because PRC mass dramatically outweights what west can bring in theatre which itself is currently deemed unlikely to survive since it's contesting entire PRC land based hardware, i.e. everything PLA has. Like PRC doesn't even need mass drones as rocket force and glide munitions enough to hit every inch of TW from mainland positions.
What I don't get is that to invade Taiwan, China needs a large amount of ships and cargo planes, both of which seem very vulnerable to modern missiles (as the Russian army found out in Ukraine). Do the chinese have a solution for that?
Honestly Taiwan should go nuclear. It might be there only solution
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A naval blockade with sea mines and submarines. Taiwan imports 70% of its food and 100% of its fossil fuels. Taiwan has major political factions that already favor closer ties with China. Put under stress, Taiwan may be more inclined to reunify than most western spectators would like to assume.
Historically, public opinions tend to unite against adversity. If the aim is to gain the public opinions it would be counterproductive. I think the support for Russia in the Ukrainian public opinion is pretty much gone now.
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The Taiwanese concept of "unification" is not what you're thinking of. The Taiwanese faction supporting unification (usually the KMT) does not envision a world where Taiwan is/becomes a province of the PRC, they envision a world where the ROC governs all current PRC provinces, that is where they are in the seat of power in Beijing. I.e. this is something going in the opposite direction. The opposing faction rejects t…
> they envision a world where the ROC governs all current PRC provinces Is this really true? Sure, recapturing the mainland was the ideology of the KMT at the end of the Chinese Civil War, but KMT politicians would have to be extremely delusional to believe it's possible now. My understanding is that the modern KMT believes in increased economic integration with China and the maintenance of Chinese cultural idenity,…
It's quite difficult to separate out what the KMT really believes from what its detractors say it believes, real differences among its individual members, what it puts out in official statements, and what can be inferred from its actions.
What you're saying is valid, especially the part about not believing it's possible (one thing I didn't emphasize in my original reply is that no one in Taiwan believes that reunification was ever going to happen any time soon, and focused more on just what "reunification" means) but "favorable political circumstances" is doing a lot of work there. That can span the gamut from "the PRC turns into a clone of the ROC and is immediately replaced" to "the ROC disappears altogether."
There are also a lot of people who do view the KMT as toadies of the CCP.
But the official party line unless they've come out with something more recent that I'm missing is that reunification means the ROC controls everything.
My original point was that Taiwanese rhetoric on "reunification" has always been very very different than what reunification has meant for Hong Kong.
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You detonate one over open waters and tell China to back down. If they do, problem solved. If they don't, at that stage it probably didn't hurt.
> If they do, problem solved. Taiwan can also draw a giant jellyfish in the sand on a beach and tell China to back down. If they do, problem solved. If they don't, at that stage it probably didn't hurt. The trick is that once you demonstrated your capability (either nuke detonation or giant jellyfish drawing) you need to explain to your adversary how this capability is going to cause them pain they cannot bear. This…
So why even bother with defending Taiwan if the number of Chinese casualties doesn't matter to the chinese?
being a fairly calculated player I believe that there exists some threshold of pain that even china would think twice before shrugging it off.
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A naval blockade with sea mines and submarines. Taiwan imports 70% of its food and 100% of its fossil fuels. Taiwan has major political factions that already favor closer ties with China. Put under stress, Taiwan may be more inclined to reunify than most western spectators would like to assume.
A blockade is illegal. One targeting food could easily invite Japan or the US to run the blockade. It would be difficult for the PRC to blockade the wayward side of Taiwan from both air and sea provided direct US/Japanese intervention to maintain sea lanes.