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Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

bbc.co.uk

331–340 of 538 posts

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wargames are designed to be lost. It's not as useful to say "welp we stomped all over them" as it is to push the forces being tested further and further until they break, then fixing or compensating where it broke and pushing even further. Wargames aren't constrained by reality, and the game's opposing force may be more powerful than in reality. Just hearing that the US lost a wargame doesn't mean anything without kn…

Similar words were said right before the invasion of Afghanistan... Now we see the folly of foreign invasion.

We won Afghanistan fairly easily (a few months), and held it fairly easily for 19 years. And not to trivialize 4000 dead, but if it had mattered, that would have been a pretty small sacrifice.

Where we failed miserably was at turning the result into a stable country, but Taiwan is already a country.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#332
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there were actually even a small US confrontation and say a couple of US frigates were sunk ... don't underestimate how Americans will rally under the wrath of that offence. I suspect you are drastically overestimating the US public's appetite for another war. In the last few years the US has been run out of Iraq by Iran, Syria by Russia and Afghanistan by the Taliban. I don't see much appetite for going back to…

Those essentially local attempts at occupation and state building are completely different to a potential hypothetical symmetrical war with China that implicates the whole global order.

> US public support for a war over Taiwan is modest: one recent poll found significant majorities of foreign policy elites supporting US intervention, but only about 40 per cent of the American public backing it. (Even that figure likely reflects soft and reflexive backing; the country has not fought a major war against a peer adversary for two generations, and in the event of catastrophic US losses amidst perceptions that the war was unnecessary, public support could collapse very quickly.)[1]

And if the last 10 years of US politics has taught us anything it is how vulnerable the US is to arguments that cause division. China has plenty of money, and plenty of people who will be economically hurt by a war. It's pretty easy to make an argument against defending China.

[1] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/countering-china-...

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think they'd go for it. If there were sizable numbers of US troops on Taiwan, I don't think they'd attack. They don't want a major confrontation, at least not yet.

> If there were sizable numbers of US troops on Taiwan, I don't think they'd attack. They don't want a major confrontation, at least not yet. There's a decent chance at this point that all those troops would do is hold the airport for a rushed evacuation mission.

Taiwan has TSMC so the US needs to protect Taiwan for its strategic needs.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#334
post #9

The Chinese Government is speeding up their efforts to swallow Hong Kong and Macau into the Mainland. Closing the media outlets, museums, websites that speak against them. And a few key people get abducted here and there to scare more people and force them to accept the Beijing Regime. But... The people from Hong Kong still demonstrates and tries to fight for their lost rights.

its sad. when Sun Yat-sen the father of modern China take on the Qing dynasty. Hong Kong was the base. It wasn't part of China and a lot of Chinese who is educated under the British rule understand what Sun try to achieve. a modern and free country. Hong Kong have been a base for a lot of progressive Chinese. Now that Hong Kong is fully back into China and the 50 years of no changes (for Hong Kong) promised by Deng X…

There's still Singapore, and it is not in the line of fire of China.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#335
post #9

The Chinese Government is speeding up their efforts to swallow Hong Kong and Macau into the Mainland. Closing the media outlets, museums, websites that speak against them. And a few key people get abducted here and there to scare more people and force them to accept the Beijing Regime. But... The people from Hong Kong still demonstrates and tries to fight for their lost rights.

its sad. when Sun Yat-sen the father of modern China take on the Qing dynasty. Hong Kong was the base. It wasn't part of China and a lot of Chinese who is educated under the British rule understand what Sun try to achieve. a modern and free country. Hong Kong have been a base for a lot of progressive Chinese. Now that Hong Kong is fully back into China and the 50 years of no changes (for Hong Kong) promised by Deng X…

> There is no hope for China to turn into a democratic country.

With enough ammunition, any country can be made a democracy

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its sad. when Sun Yat-sen the father of modern China take on the Qing dynasty. Hong Kong was the base. It wasn't part of China and a lot of Chinese who is educated under the British rule understand what Sun try to achieve. a modern and free country. Hong Kong have been a base for a lot of progressive Chinese. Now that Hong Kong is fully back into China and the 50 years of no changes (for Hong Kong) promised by Deng X…

There's still Singapore, and it is not in the line of fire of China.

> Singapore, and it is not in the line of fire of China.

...

Please keep watch of news. They already started "tickling" Singapore since a few years ago.

Not to mention, Mao been sending his subvertionists to Malaysia, and Singapore through sixties, and seventies

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its sad. when Sun Yat-sen the father of modern China take on the Qing dynasty. Hong Kong was the base. It wasn't part of China and a lot of Chinese who is educated under the British rule understand what Sun try to achieve. a modern and free country. Hong Kong have been a base for a lot of progressive Chinese. Now that Hong Kong is fully back into China and the 50 years of no changes (for Hong Kong) promised by Deng X…

> There is no hope for China to turn into a democratic country. With enough ammunition, any country can be made a democracy

In name only perhaps.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#338
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2) A giant smokescreen? Creeping (missile) barrage of the beach? There are plenty of ways to make it hard to target anything on a beach. Air cover and missile defense will be a big deal. 3) You mean the civilian population will fight to the death? Absolutely no way that's true. Russia showed the way in Crimea: offer incentives to those who support the "liberation"; it both erodes defender support and gives the attack…

> I'd also wager that there'll be much less domestic support for sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to die over Taiwan than there was as a response to Pearl Harbor. The US was interfering in Japan's affairs (particularly hampering access to oil) in the lead up to late 1941, even though support for either war was in the low 60%s prior to Pearl Harbor (amazingly as low as 7% when the Netherlands, Belgium, and F…

Not sure US baiting Japan for Pearl harbor, but nowadays US is not the country 80 years ago. Politicians, military leaders are not as capable, more critically the industrial base is crippled. The king almost naked.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#339
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If China invaded Taiwan, Europe would stand together with the US on any retaliation. It would be the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait all over again, geopolitically. China would be cut off dead from the global economy, no matter the cost. I don’t think it would be practical to liberate Taiwan, but China would be ruined.

China is not Iraq. It's insane to compare the two. Europe was okay with the first invasion of Iraq because they frankly had very little to lose and a lot to gain. Meanwhile suiciding the EU economy by cutting off Chinese exports would hurt the EU a lot more than it would hurt China and certainly much more than the invasion of Kuwait. In any case I'd recommend reading what Chinese generals write on the subject. For th…

"China is the only country in the world that produces everything it needs for daily operations, without a single exception, in one way or another."

...produces finished goods. China cannot do this without massive imports of raw materials copper, iron ore, coal, etc. China has effectively colonized Africa for access to said raw materials.

Belt and Road is a way to set up overland routes to avoid any naval blockades.

Re: Hong Kong: Police Raid Tiananmen Square Museum

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar words were said right before the invasion of Afghanistan... Now we see the folly of foreign invasion.

We won Afghanistan fairly easily (a few months), and held it fairly easily for 19 years. And not to trivialize 4000 dead, but if it had mattered, that would have been a pretty small sacrifice. Where we failed miserably was at turning the result into a stable country, but Taiwan is already a country.

Once upon a time Afghanistan was also a country.
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