China launches live-fire drills encircling Taiwan(www.theguardian.com)

29 pointsby pinewurst8 hours ago6 comments

ncr1008 hours ago
Practically, what kind of country does this?
Rhetorically, what kind of country does this?
Culturally, what kind of country does this?
- pfannkuchen6 hours ago
  Isn’t Taiwan legitimately a threat to the CCP, though? Not in the sense that Taiwan the country can do anything to China the country, but Taiwan’s government used to be China’s government, right? It’s like an exiled royal family. And since Taiwan has the government type that the west supports, if the Chinese people at some point become sufficiently unhappy with the CCP, the Taiwanese government could appear as an alternative and it has a historical claim to do so and the west could back them (with a morally coherent and therefore defensible to its own people story for doing so). If I was CCP leadership I probably wouldn’t feel good about Taiwan either. This is also probably the real reason why the USA supports them, by the way. It isn’t about defending democracy, or industry there or whatever. It’s like if Russia was protecting the Confederate government that had fled to Puerto Rico. America probably wouldn’t like that. It’s weird that we have such a hard time looking at things from other people’s perspective, and instead project some moral framework on top of everything and whoever violates it is “bad” or whatever.
  - monerozcash2 hours ago
    I think you're mistaken if you assume that many of the US people whose opinions matter, senators and the likes, are not supportive of defending Taiwan for boring ideological reasons along the lines of "it's a democracy". I don't doubt that there are some people who share the line of thinking you propose, but I would realistically expect them to be in the minority.
- __patchbit__5 hours ago
  Cowardly bully, they've removed seventy percent of seated military leadership in the latest purge. Communist Party zombies in China need a heart to heart check.
- sleepyguy7 hours ago
  Perhaps they're just copying the USA. You know, the action against Venezuela and the threatening of Denmark with the annexation of Greenland.
  - slimebot806 hours ago
    These types of actions from China pre-dates that, even if there are similarities.
yanhangyhy5 hours ago
I genuinely suspect that they might suddenly launch an attack during some future military exercise. Yesterday I was discussing investments with friends, and both China and the United States are competing for and stockpiling non-renewable resources. As long as a war does not actually break out, this kind of hoarding will not stop. So I bought some non-ferrous metals funds.
maxglute4 hours ago
Down to one day warning from three days. Next one is probably going to be few hours and then normalize into surprise exercises.
agentifysh6 hours ago
im not worried about Taiwan it has sufficient deterrence against any sort of land invasion. China might be able to launch a lot of air and missile strikes but if pushed to the brink Taiwan could use the ultimate trump card that is targeting the Three Gorges dam with its advanced cruise missiles.
secondly, JSDF and US Navy offer overwhelming reinforcement if it looks like Taiwan would fall and China's PLAN would not be able to face the two most powerful navy in the world.
ungreased06757 hours ago
Taiwan needs nukes. Just a few.
- Ekaros5 hours ago
  Everyone needs nukes. Iraq and Afganistan needed them. Koreas needed them. Vietnam needed them. Cuba needed them.
  We should make proliferation world wide goal. More nukes every nation has the better for world peace. It is only way to ensure peace.
  Now it looks like Venezuela would have great and extremely justified reasons to have lot of them.
  - nielsbot5 hours ago
    You can add Syria, Lebanon, and Ukraine to the list.
    And of all these countries, nobody screws w/ N Korea. (Nukes!)
  - tjpnz5 hours ago
    Nukes as a Service. See you at the YC Spring 2026 Batch!
- 4 hours ago
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- tjpnz7 hours ago
  I would bet that they already do.
  - sleepyguy7 hours ago
    Come on man, from where? It's not like they're Israel and the US gave them a few.
    mullingitover6 hours ago
    They’ve literally been caught developing nukes in the past and were talked down. They had their own domestic plutonium production.
    slimebot806 hours ago
    Don't see why not, Taiwan's silicon is a global security asset.
metalman3 hours ago
My thinking is that China does not want to cause a regional arms race and so will want a very short decisive action(hours), and then quickly dismantle the whole aparatus and then leave taiwan as a "semi indipendent" territory with integration of military, customs and courts to the mainland.
When mainland China resumes full control of taiwan it will be a , sudden, vast, utterly overwhelming , and almost bloodless take over. To put things in perspective, mainland China has an excess male population of military service age, larger than the total population of taiwan. So staffing is not a problem. China is working on building a fully modular shipping container based ultra high tech missle and surface warfare systems package, to instantly convert a container ship, into a full on bad ass navy ship, so will have full spectrum area dominance. China OWNS drone production, and will have military liasons embeded in the Russian forces fighting in the ukrain. It goes on and on, China is HUGE, and taiwan is smol, and taiwan made the mistake of claiming ALL of mainland china as there property,, and will soon have that claim, tested, all in acordance with international law, or whatever passes for that. And again, china's concern is to make this a blip in the media cycle that gets no real traction and is gone overnight. The current drills are a signal that if the US goes into Venezuela or other countrys, China may do it the messy(er), way, now, but would prefer another scenario.