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  1. Bear, you make good points about the terrible cost that China would pay for going to war with Taiwan. But throughout history dictators have subjected their people to terrible costs in order to acquire more territory for thier country, and/or to enhance their own power, and obtain glory and honor if they are successful. Napoleon and Hitler are obvious examples. They claimed to be patriots, but subjected their people to terrible suffering in pursuit of their own power and glory. Xi Jin-ping strikes me as this kind of dictator, even though he doesn’t physically resemble either Hitler or Napoleon.

    But there is another, more pragmatic reason why he may want war. China is suffering from an economic crisis because of high unemployment, massive indebtedness and many corporate failures. This resembles the dilemmas of Weimar Germany. Hitler sought to solve Germany’s economic problems with a mixture of large public works projects, a massive increase in war production and drafting large numbers of men into the army. China has been trying to solve its economic problems with massive public works projects for years, but these efforts have not been especially successful. So now Xi may try war production and a massive draft to reduce unemployment and create profits for Chinese manufacturing companies with direct government contracts.

    He may also hope that if he conquers Taiwan, he may succeed in capturing some of the Taiwanese engineers who know how to make and market the best, most competitive semiconductors–which the Chinese have so far failed to do on their own. Also, perhaps capturing the plants where the Taiwanese manufacture semiconductors undamaged.

    Trade between China and Taiwan could continue even if Taiwan is annexed.

    All this would be possible only if the conquest of Taiwan is accomplished in a short time. If there is a long war, it would probably make Xi very unpopular and force the CCP to replace him with a more pragmatic and realistic leader. But Xi’s behavior suggests he is willing to gamble for high stakes. Probably he has been in power too long for his own good. Rulers who remain in power for a long time sometimes lose their grip on reality.

  2. @Bear

    China is caught in a social/economic trap. It is of their own making, but their citizens need to be maintained in an upward economic posture to forestall tendencies towards revolt. Unfortunately for the CCP, they have placed their financial chips into producing infrastructure projects that provided no meaningful financial benefit to their nation or their public.

    Hence their ability to spend their way out of this situation is not possible. They have over-leveraged their currency, while needing to provide a booming economic future for their public, while factories are moved to Vietnam and elsewhere. In the past year they have had many banks collapse and others loom towards this fate as well.

    This situation is complicated by the 1-child barbaric social program that will cause their population to contract over the next 20-30yrs and further limit their financial future given their debt referenced above. The US public have completely come to a point of disgust with the Chinese, even if their politicos haven’t.

    Hence, China realizes the US economy is likely to be lost to them eventually, as it is only a matter of timing when. Their economy is quite dependent upon the US economy, as they are good at stealing great ideas, but less successful at developing them on their own. The Maoist move would place them upon a path that would at least recognize these rational realities, even as they are likely to have a civil war within the CCP if not China while pursuing this end.

    They have filthy factories, water issues, failing infrastructures, and no way to distract their public’s attention from any of this without the use of military adventurism. The CCP might, however, use war or a very near move towards war to unify their nationalistic public behind them while they find another source of revenue, ie Taiwan, for instance, to pilfer and provide for their debt service and their public’s economic future.

    If the US will sacrifice Taiwan as this administration seems poised to supplement China on many points, it maybe a successful strategy for the CCP. Hence, they are very compromised on a number of planes and a quick successive war would solve or at least delay many unpleasantries for them. Should the war not be quick, or worse, should they lose, well, history is ripe with examples of such things as Adam suggested. Also, as Adam noted, this is far from a sure thing, but, as I say, their choices are limited given everything they have brought upon themselves.

  3. Taiwan companies have invested $180 billion in China. Together they do about $150 billion dollars of business per year.

    If China was to attack it would cost a fortune and unleash currents against China that is difficult to predict. Certainly Biden has shown his lack of resolve and courage in Afghanistan. This actually makes him harder to predict on China in the event of a Taiwan attack by China. As he is being attacked by many people across the board.

    If the US were to get involved in a war with China over Taiwan the price to both parties would be extreme.

    Whether the USA gets involved in a war with China over Taiwan or not it would cost the Chinese a fortune financially as many countries would cease doing business with it.

    The Chinese are posturing war in the hopes that the Taiwanese will give in to their demands out of fear of the consequences. They are flying bombers over Taiwan.

    Do the Chinese want to see their standard of living reversed as a nation? Do they really want to go to war now or just try to keep infiltrating Taiwan and hopes it agrees to some status as subjugate territory to China?

    The Taiwanese would lose a war to China but I believe they would fight and the cost to China in arms and men would also not be light. Taiwan would be destroyed and China would be gaining what??

  5. It sounds to me like Xi is preparing his people for the invasion and conquest of Taiwan. Also, perhaps, consolidating China’s hold on a variety of Pacific islands, and perhaps for a long war of attrition with India.

    He has been harrassing Chinese companies and even wealthy Chinese actors and actresses who have large investments in the U.S., and have attempted to launch “IPO’s” on the New York stock exchange. I think he is probably trying to separate the Chinese economy from the U.S. to some extent in order to prevent Chinese companies from being hard-hit by U.S. economic sanctions, when and if he launches an invasion of Taiwan.

    The emphasis on masculinity, and the attacks on the United States, all sound like attempts to prepare the Chinese people psychologically for war.

    I think he is gambling that the U.S. under Biden will not intervene militarily if China invades Taiwan, except perhaps for providing the Taiwanese a limited amount of armaments. This is probably a correct estimate of the Biden administration’s response. The Biden-Harris administration is dominated by “anti-Imperialists” who believe that “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” “whiteness,” and Republicans are the enemy, not China.

    However, I doubt if all Chinese people are on board with this. If Xi does launch an all-out war, he may not have the people or even most of the party behind him , and may fall from power. That is especially likely of course, if the war in long-drawn-out and victory over the Taiwanese doesn’t come quickly. Xi may be making the same mistake as Germany, Austria and Russia made when they decided to go to war over Serbia. IN that war, all three emperors lost their thrones, and there was massive “regime change” in all three empires.

    The Xi regime has been harrassing the Chinese people hard over CV-2 for eighteen months. Placing all sorts of restrictions on businesses, popular entertainment and young people probably won’t go down well. Many young Chinese men will not be enthusiastic about being drafted into the army in wartime. I think Xi is playing with fire, and may bring about his own downfall with his jingoist policy, which doesn’t serve China’s real interests. It is even possible he may provoke a revolution in which the CCP regime as a whole will fall. After all, that happened in Russia in 1991.

  6. I have to admit that I was very dismissive of this being true when I first heard about it. It seems further and further supported by Xi’s actions and by most global experts on China, but I continue to be skeptical of this maneuver, as i am clueless as to how Xi intends to satisfy the Chinese public who will not take to the consequences of this with ease. There are other things that raise questions in my mind as well, but none of them are as significant of the self-forced error of igniting the fury of the Chinese public with this move which will greatly impact their lifestyle. The common motto of the Communists is to feed the masses with someone else’s money, but I don’t see that there are enough billionaires in China to long hold the Chinese public in their current economic state.

    Xi has always moved to maintain the Chinese masses, with enough support as to avoid just this sort of crisis. His Communist Party members form a very tiny portion of his nation’s population, and many of those will strongly oppose this move. It is true, of course, that he has limited choices about which he can choose given the socioeconomic trap the CCP has placed themselves in, due to policies of both Xi and his predecessors, and none of the resulting choices provide a successful edge, but this current move towards a Maoist transformation has me confounded as to how he finds an advantage in it. It will result in revolution, I think, and the numbers are easily against the CCP, regardless of the repressive measures they care to employ. The Chinese have a strong history of suffering great hardships under some very difficult rulers, but once a tipping point has been reached, well, the rest is history.

    It will be interesting to see how this unfold.