When America keeps harping about China invading Taiwan by a certain date, what’s really going on is that it’s going to try and make Taiwan do something to trigger an invasion by this date. First, some historical primer.
Taiwan’s original population was aboriginals who now live up in the mountains. The Chinese who settled were often involved in things that didn’t prosper under government authority, such as piracy and smuggling. The Qing Dynasty really only controlled some fortified settlements.
When it was ceded to Japan, that was the first time anybody established a government over the whole island. The Japanese treated the locals like they were Japanese and developed the place, so they’ve always been well-liked. By the time it was handed over to the Republic of China, the locals used Japanese for business and Taiwanese at home.
The new government gave them a year to adopt the full use of Chinese, which was not intelligible by the Taiwanese. Their language was repressed, with even the parents of school children hit with fines for every word their child spoke. It was also corrupt and viewed the Taiwanese contemptuously as Japanese collaborators to plunder. The killing of a local led to an uprising which was put down by massacring over 20,000 people. General Chiang Kai-shek is viewed by many as a villain.
The island received an enormous influx of mainlanders in a chaotic retreat after he was defeated by Mao. Many of them were soldiers who settled down with local women, meaning that at this point, most Taiwanese have backgrounds that include the original settlers. The pro-unification crowd were mainlanders and their children. That’s not true with the locals and the younger generations who are often incensed at the notion.
Former President Ma Ying-jeou recently visited the mainland. He’d moved the island into closer economic cooperation with it during his eight years in office, leading to students occupying the legislature (had some color revolution hallmarks). He was born in Hong Kong during the retreat, so many Taiwanese view him as an interloper who is trying to give away their country.
They see themselves as a distinct entity from the mainland with which they’ve had a very fraught history. The alternative media has good coverage, but it often paints the situation as two sides who both acknowledge themselves as China. That’s not the case, and this context is very important.
The only reason the name hasn’t been changed from the Republic of China is because the CCP made it a red line that would trigger military action. There’s not some pan-Chinese political sentiment in Taiwan or Hong Kong. That’s why the U.S. was able to convulse Hong Kong with violence and an 800,000 strong protest march after getting youths organized and trained in antifa black block tactics. Color revolutions are based on real grievances.
Just like in Ukraine, the United States moved in to weaponize sentiments produced by real historical experiences to create a situation it can exploit. It’s got a lot less to work with in Taiwan, however. The Ukrainian situation was ripe for a civil war to pull Russia in, but there’s no way to set off a conflict inside Taiwan. Most young people don’t want to join China. The U.S. is stuck trying to get them to keep embarrassing China with stunts until it takes action. Hopefully, this isn’t a good enough reason for the CCP to start World War 3.
Millions of the Taiwanese also work in mainland China, where a large percentage of the island’s net worth has been invested. Overnight, it would be a failed state if China took any meaningful economic or financial action against it. Ultimately, it’s like the situation in the Melian Dialogue. If China wants something from Taiwan, nothing is going to stop it. Power decides, not principle.
The simulated blockades have been face-saving demonstrations. All China would need to do in order to bring the island to its knees would be to do something like cutting off cross-strait transactions. This would also cause lots of havoc in China, but it would be better than opening the Pandora’s Box of military action.
That situation is one with which I’ve got some familiarity, and it’s quite insane to consider. During the island-hopping campaign to Japan, the American military opted to bypass Taiwan. Much of the island’s geography consists of high, steep mountains. The east coast is pretty narrow, with steep rocky coastline on the rough, open Pacific. The west coast, along the strait, is where the population is situated. It’s separated from the east by mountain ranges, with some elevations over two miles high.
It seems like there are two feasible western spots if the weather is good. There’s a massive port in the southern city of Kaohsiung with a large airport nearby. On the far side of the harbor there’s a beach, which could be the first step in seizing the port. Up north, outside of Taipei, there are beaches adjacent to Taoyuan International Airport. They’d probably go for both.
It would be pretty buck wild, because these are huge population centers and there’s not a lot of beach to play around on. If the locals decided to resist and pound with artillery from the much better elevations and cities nearby, it would be very unpleasant because everything would be going into tiny kill boxes. The Chinese would end up killing more civilians than we’ve seen since World War 2 trying to take out assets parked among the population to fire at them.
I’d rate the state of the Taiwanese military as highly questionable. I’m sure the neocons are salivating at having battles of Bakhmut all over the island but that’s an iffy proposition. For instance, the military relies on conscripts who now serve for a matter of months and aren’t really trained up to the standards of what Russia went up against last year.
When I was there several years ago, they even conscripted officers. If you have good grades, you could be a lieutenant for a year. I watched a sergeant cuss one out in front of his platoon for not getting his role in formation right. The sergeant wasn’t a conscript, so he had a different status. The conscripts are poorly paid and motivated. The video game addiction and masculinity crisis is even worse in Asia than it is here, so there’s not a big pool suitable for protracted urban combat.
It’s an extremely dense population, living mostly in high rise concrete buildings. There’s also no room to maneuver or conduct warfare away from population centers. If they wanted to evacuate them like Ukraine, there’s nowhere to go because the island is so crowded. Ukraine is over 40x the size of Taiwan, which again is mostly mountains.
The other thing here is that Russia can launch massive wave attacks with missiles and not take down the entire Ukrainian power grid. One strike like that could cripple every major piece of infrastructure in Taiwan because there isn’t much of it. A humanitarian crisis of dense cities without power or water would ensue rapidly. The fact that this infrastructure is also used by the military has been used as a justification for hitting it repeatedly by the U.S. So, there’s a precedent.
I can say quite confidently that there’s absolutely no way for Taiwan to hold out if China decided it had to be physically subdued (regardless of the human cost). However, the only scenario by which this could realistically happen is probably if it was decided that there was a major risk of the American Empire cooking something up so there had to be an immediate fait accompli. It would make the CCP look very bad to kill who they assert are Chinese people by the hundreds of thousands.
If they wagered that time was on their side, there are much better options available. The first is Kinmen Island. I got to tour its defenses while tagging along with American officers in civilian clothes about 15 years ago. It’s so close to the mainland you can look out of a gun emplacement and see it. The emplacements are linked by a rabbit’s warren of tunnels in the granite. They even carved a movie theater out of it.
All the way back then, the idea of this place holding out was laughable. The Taiwanese told us about all the reinforcements they’d be able to deliver within 48 hours. An American colonel joked at lunch that it would be over in less than five minutes. After that, there would be Penghu, which is out in the middle of the strait. Flattening these places would be pretty easy given their proximity.
If the main island was the target, they’d be getting taken down either way, but they’d also serve as a pretty compelling warning if the goal was forcing the Taiwanese government to come to terms. I’ve heard from drunken Taiwanese about how the government would pass out guns and they’d fight in the streets. If it becomes clear that the U.S. isn’t going to enter the conflict, the majority of the public would probably resign themselves to the inevitable rather than getting the place destroyed in the process.
The outcome of the Ukrainian conflict will change some critical elements of public perception. Primarily, it will demonstrate that the U.S. can be intimidated into not entering a conflict on behalf of a proxy. That’s what the Ukrainians hope but it’s not going to happen. China knows when the truth comes out the world will be a new place.
My suspicion is that all this bluster from the Empire is to provoke military action against Jinmen. In this harebrained scheme, China will be intimidated by American power from going any further while the U.S. will be able to use this as a justification for strangling China.
This would align with the neocon stupidity which is destroying Ukraine. In that plan, Russia would be too intimidated to enter the conflict directly. The Ukrainians would wipe out the Russian separatists, while the U.S. would impose the current sanctions by using Russian support for their militias as a justification. You can’t take the stupidity of what they come up with as a reason why they won’t go through with it.
My assumption is that the United States wouldn’t interfere with an operation against Taiwan. Our assets, like carriers, are too vulnerable and this propaganda about how we could go in and wipe out a modern military has been exposed as a nonsensical bluff by Putin. That’s not my worry.
What alarms me is that we’re still faced with a collapse scenario if just the semiconductor output from Taiwan stops. China deciding to cut us off would plunge this nation into chaos. The U.S. uses the dollar to import its prosperity, so in many ways we’re more vulnerable than any other nation. Sure, China is quite reliant on imports as well, particularly food. Ultimately, it’s the glass house thing. Neocons and their tribe are notoriously bad at remembering what they live in.
I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.
The Kuomintang handily won the last round of mayoral elections, forcing Tsai to give up her party leadership role, and while Tsai was in DC, the head of the Kuomintang was in Beijing. A peaceful reunification is more likely than not.
Paragraphs #5, 6, and 7 are very different than the picture Andrew Anglin from the Daily Stormer paints.
Identity Dixie is a more trustworthy news outlet, so I’ll go with you guys on this one
No more chips, no more smart phones? I’m all for it.
1. Leave China & Taiwan alone. Clean up our own mess here, but stop doing business with ANY nation that kills their people and takes their organs!!!
2. Start chip making in multiple places in the south – not on the coast or in flood zones.
3. Get the “Balkanization by vote” conversation going everywhere.