China wants to de-Americanize its supply chain? What a coincidence! We in America want to de-Chinafy OUR supply chain. Gosh, this sounds better when I say it aloud!
The equipment manufacturers who have the IP are in the main US ( Silicon Valley ) based. Applied Materials, LAM, ASM, KLA. In addition there is ASML ( Netherlands HQ) and Tokyo Electron. These companies drive the technology, while the likes of Samsung, TSMC, Intel , Micron are the consumers, integrating the various possible solutions into their manufacturing process.
There are five plants being built all around the US as we speak, and Congress just passed legislation giving them billions to make sure they finish. We’re moving the factories back to the US, including the advanced versions that China lost years ago.
polidori redux
1 year ago
I presume that Pelosi’s visit was for domestic consumption. Along with the killing of that terrorist chap whose name escapes me. We live in an age of infantile politics practiced, ironically, by the ancient and just plain senile.
Pelosi has made a number of virtually unreported ‘visits’ to Northern Ireland to threaten the UK over the Good Friday Agreement and so forth.
In short she is an octogenarian menace and no friend of the UK.
When they are not drinking — that’s most mornings these days — Nancy and here husband are quite presentable people. It’s lunch you want to worry about. And dinner? Nope, forget about it.
Pelosi’s polititics are repugnant to me. But I must admit I admire her grit in visiting Taiwan and publicly sticking a finger in China’s eye. That the ChiComs could get so worked up about an old, old lady’s vacation plans show China for what it is – an incompetent paranoid clownshow.
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Things aren’t rosy at home so the leadership is unlikely to embark on a foreign invasion … which will enable it to shift blame to the pesky foreigners and squash all dissent in the name of patriotism.
And the West still doesn’t get it.
Just because western culture (or at least the vocal, controlling part of it, the academia, media and bureaucrats) has replaced nationalism, religion and family values with more “modern” concepts.
Doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is the same.
Patriotism and pride in one’s own people and culture is still a thing.
That’s why Russia stood up to the rest of the world , sanctions and everything – not because Putin forced them to, but because ordinary Russians would rather bear the pain of war to loss of self respect and suffering injustice.
Similarly, Pelosi’s antics have almost certainly firmed up the Chinese people’s resolve for war. The people, not the scumbags controlling China. It’s not just the leadership using this as an excuse or squashing dissent, though that’s a factor. But ask any ordinary Chinese what they think about Taiwan, and you will get the same attitude Russians had towards Donbass and American meddling in Ukraine.
Sadly, I must concur. Any Western criticism of Putin is perceived by many Russians as an infringement of their own human dignity. Likewise, Chinese patriotic culture – carefully nurtured by the Communist Party – predisposes many to regard the Taiwanese quest for independence and Western interventions as an insult to their pride and dignity.
Again, you dint get it. What the Russians perceive as an infringement of their human dignity, isn’t criticism of Putin – that’s what you like to believe.
What they do feel outraged about is when the US block keeps extending NATO to their borders, insult their intelligence by pretending it’s defensive (what were they defending against when expanding in 1999-2001?), support attacks against Russian minorities and organise a coup next door, and then bellitle Russian concerns.
These aren’t make-believe concerns dreamt up by Putin, these are existential questions and insults ordinary Russians would never tolerate.
By what rationale does Russia have the right to dictate the policies of a dozen or more countries that happen to border it? They don’t like it. Oh well. It’s not *their* country to make the decisions about. Either they are sovereign nations or they’re not. You can’t have it both ways any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.
That independence referendum was in 1992.
And the Russians (men like Putin) honoured it.
I am pretty sure being bombed to bits, having their regional political parties banned and Russian language suppressed night have changed a few minds in the Donbass over the past decade or so.
And what of all those “Russian” speakers that Russia is supposedly protecting by killing them and destroying their homes and cities and towns? This is supposed to make them like the Russians?
You forgot to mention that Russia and China do not allow other voices to be heard. The people in both countries only hear propaganda.
The other point is, in 1932 in Nazi Germany, something like 100,000 people were imprisoned who had been against the Nazis. From 1933 onwards there were very few voices against Hitler. We’ll never know what most Germans really thought about Hitler after that as there were no polls taken and you had to be very brave to dissent.
Let me guess..
You are between 15 and 25 years old and you read all that online or a friend who ‘knows a lot about these things’ told you so?
Sorry, but you are quite wrong here. Find out why – it’s easy!
And just as Europe couldn’t afford a great war – Norman Angell. The usual complacent nonsense. In fact, it is precisely when aggressive countries are faced with the ruinous prospect of a long war that they lurch into a “short” one. Then, they “make sacrifices”.
Precisely.
After doing extensive exercise, against all expectations, Russia invaded Ukraine. Now China is flexing its muscle ( its ego is hurt) trying to intimidate Taiwan. It has two choices, It can back down, loose face, get even more frustrated or it can invade without too much delay & not worry too much about the consequences, blame the US for its actions. They might just invade while the world is still coming to grips with the Russian invasion!
And China has learned from that. They both expected (as did much of the rest of the world) that it would be over in a matter of days, weeks at most. Not what happened. And that’s in a country with long land borders and flat, wide open plains. Taiwan is not any more of a pushover than Ukraine has turned out to be. Less even.
Taiwan is behind a moat. Huge losses just in trying to move people and equipment across the water. It’s mountainous, filled with peaks and valleys for partisans to hide in and continue to strike back. Ukraine spent 8 years preparing for this war. Taiwan has been preparing for 70 years.
There’s a line of thinking that China will circumnavigate Taiwan, leaving it for absorption after completion of its grand strategy – expulsion of US forces from the western Pacific. The extraordinary build up of the Chinese military in all domains is rapidly giving China a notional supremacy over US forces in the Indo-Pacific. It’s a very serious development, brilliantly analysed by a former Australian general, Senator Jim Molan in his book ‘The Danger on our Doorstep”.
China has a lot of boats. Small boats. Ones that can’t operate far from their home ports. Their first aircraft carrier was sold to them, from all places, by Ukraine. It was sold as scrap since it was an old, only partially completed Russian carrier. But the Chinese finished it off instead. Then they built a second one based on the first.
One US supercarrier group could easily take out the entire Chinese Navy. Two supercarrier groups could pretty well take on the combined fleet of every other country in the world. There are only 15 countries that have a bigger air force than is on one supercarrier group. And we have a dozen of them. Not all out to sea at the same time, but plenty of backup if ever needed.
One smallish naval group in the Indian Ocean could destroy China in one year without firing a shot, simply by interdicting the flow of oil to China from the Middle East. India itself could do it.
France has one supercarrier, but it’s been plagued with problems and has never really been functional. England has one working now, but I think it’s still in sea trials on its way over to our side of the pond to replace the first one that’s having some pretty serious problems. That’s it. The rest are all American with more, even larger ones, under construction. One supercarrier is a match to about seven jump carriers, which is all any other country has.
Japan expected to have free rein in the Pacific for a year when they attacked Pearl Harbor. One small piece of bad luck, the fact that the carriers weren’t in port that day, doomed them from that day forward. Midway drove the final nail into the coffin. Millions died before it was all over, but the finale was already written.
Even if China was able to take out the carrier group always in that area, plus Okinawa, CINCPAC would have two more there within weeks. Not to mention having to deal with the Japanese Navy which is not much smaller operationally than the Chinese one. And Korea. And the Phillippines. And Australia. And New Zealand. And a half dozen other smaller navies in the area, all of whom would be threatened by such a move as an invasion of Taiwan. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered the end of the long term neutrality of Finland and Sweden, with them joining NATO, the South Pacific countries would be energized to work together as a group.
James Hankins
1 year ago
Both the Biden administration and the CCP need foreign policy crises now to distract their populations from multiple domestic failures. Not a good outlook.
David Zetland
1 year ago
A couple of destroyers in the Indian Ocean would quickly stop the supply of oil and gas to China from the Middle East. 85% of China’s oil and gas is imported from the Middle East. China is in fact in a very weak position. Then there is China’s huge reliance on imported animal feed, grains and fertilisers.
As for comparing the Ukraine with Taiwan. The Ukraine is very easy to invade; it has almost no barriers to invasion and is flat. Taiwan has a huge moat. The island itself is mountainous and difficult to move across even if the Chinese were able to land.
China is the paper tiger it’s so often accuses other countries of being.
The real reason why China is being so aggressive is that leader for life and true believer in communism, Xi Jinping, is even more isolated than Vladimir Putin. Everyone around him is too scared to tell him the truth because they know what happens to people who do.
IIRC within about 4 weeks of Russia’s invasion (3 day war!) the Chinese anounced that they were putting any idea of invading Taiwan on the back burner for 4 years.
J Bryant
1 year ago
The author envisages a spirited resistance by the Taiwanese if China invades, but in a recent edition of Will Lloyd’s “Hindsight” here on Unherd, there is a link to an article by Tanner Greer that suggests the Taiwanese, especially the young Taiwanese, are far from being tough, would-be resistance fighters. https://scholars-stage.org/why-i-fear-for-taiwan/?mc_cid=1511e2a979&mc_eid=904576f59e
So who’s right? I don’t know, and I’m guessing the CCP doesn’t know either, which, I suppose, is the most compelling reason for why China might think twice before invading Taiwan.
The chinese, being ethno-centrists, probably look down on taiwanese as something lesser than them. This will lead to the same atrocities we are witnessing the russians commiting in Ukraine. Initially the reaction will be to flee, as did some of the ukranians. But since that is not an option on an island, second best is to fight to the death. Which is what will probably happen when you see what awaits you if you don’t.
Is that right? I don’t think PRC views ROC as lesser kinds of humans, that’s the point of their whole One China schtick, right? It’s all about reunification, not wiping out “problem populations”. That’s part of why the article argues that the Taiwanese might not fight that hard. It’s not clear that much bad would happen to them except, you know, being ruled by another dictatorship. But a new holocaust, probably not.
Taiwan has been preparing for this war for 70 years, and could have nuclear weapons in a year if they choose to go that route. They have some of the finest engineers in the world. That’s what the CCP wants to control.
Taiwan is no dictatorship. They certainly used to be, but they have elections that actually mean something, and have for quiet awhile.
A year is too long. If they see forces gathering, I’d say not much more than a month or so for a crude nuclear weapon, but one that will work nonetheless. The basic science and engineering is at a high school level these days. And they have the basic materials from their reactors. They just have to process it, which is what takes most of the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a facility that could be re-purposed for that already. Same for Japan and South Korea.
Patriotism goes up by an order of magnitude when a country is invaded.
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
A major war with China is inevitable. ‘They’ think it is their turn but are wrong, and ‘we’ will have to be disabuse them of that idea, sooner rather than later.
Let them cross the Rubicon and see what happens. “God is on the side of the US Navy”.
He must have pinched it off Voltaire who said something very similar: “God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best”.
China has been doomed to fall off the demographic cliff for decades. Their population has probably already peaked and could be half of what it is now as soon as 2050. They are one of the fastest aging populations in the world and they won’t be able to do what Japan has done in order to survive.
Xi is out of touch with reality. No one wants to tell him anything. It’s too dangerous. He’s locked up or killed too many of his former “advisors.” The lockdowns from COVID have only sped that process up. Since their “vaccine” has never worked worth beans, even against the original version, and no one has developed natural immunity and Omicron is the most infectious variant yet, well, it won’t take much to go over the edge on that too. I doubt if he really even knows about the droughts and heat and rivers drying up and power generators going down, much less the resurgence of African Swine Fever in their hog farms. China may be buying oil from Russia, but how is it going to get there? There’s only one pipeline. The rest has to come by ship and Russia is having a teeny bit of trouble with shipping oil for some reason.
Alan Hawkes
1 year ago
Perhaps more might be made of the fact that for most of its history Taiwan was not a part of China, and was not considered to be a part of China by the Chinese, until the Qing dynasty invaded in the 17th century, holding it, or at least the lowland areas, until it was ceded to Japan, after losing the Sino-Japanese war in the 1890s.
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Who needs independence to be recognised and embassies in foreign countries when you make the best semiconductors in the world?
A really brilliant strategy from the Taiwanese, as the Chinese strategy moves impatiently from ‘slowly slowly catchee monkey’ to angrily chasing after the monkey, shouting pointlessly.
We are in the process of building, or in the planning stages, of chip manufacturing plants that are as good as, if not better than, TSMC’s. But they aren’t coming on line any time soon, and will still need to ramp up to commercial level production after that, so Taiwan is still the only place to go for mass production of top quality chips for at least another ten years or so.
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago
Sooner or later they will invade. Just a matter of time.
Madison Addam
1 year ago
frwerw4trf
Frank O'Connor
1 year ago
Hard to believe George Magnus, he is probably a propagandist for Us and UK
China wants to de-Americanize its supply chain? What a coincidence! We in America want to de-Chinafy OUR supply chain. Gosh, this sounds better when I say it aloud!
The U.S. still has companies making semiconductors? Who? Where?
The equipment manufacturers who have the IP are in the main US ( Silicon Valley ) based. Applied Materials, LAM, ASM, KLA. In addition there is ASML ( Netherlands HQ) and Tokyo Electron. These companies drive the technology, while the likes of Samsung, TSMC, Intel , Micron are the consumers, integrating the various possible solutions into their manufacturing process.
There are five plants being built all around the US as we speak, and Congress just passed legislation giving them billions to make sure they finish. We’re moving the factories back to the US, including the advanced versions that China lost years ago.
I presume that Pelosi’s visit was for domestic consumption. Along with the killing of that terrorist chap whose name escapes me. We live in an age of infantile politics practiced, ironically, by the ancient and just plain senile.
Pelosi has made a number of virtually unreported ‘visits’ to Northern Ireland to threaten the UK over the Good Friday Agreement and so forth.
In short she is an octogenarian menace and no friend of the UK.
When they are not drinking — that’s most mornings these days — Nancy and here husband are quite presentable people. It’s lunch you want to worry about. And dinner? Nope, forget about it.
How interesting, thank you.
Pelosi’s polititics are repugnant to me. But I must admit I admire her grit in visiting Taiwan and publicly sticking a finger in China’s eye. That the ChiComs could get so worked up about an old, old lady’s vacation plans show China for what it is – an incompetent paranoid clownshow.
Things aren’t rosy at home so the leadership is unlikely to embark on a foreign invasion … which will enable it to shift blame to the pesky foreigners and squash all dissent in the name of patriotism.
Interesting analysis
Yes! Certainly would be a good time for a war (of distraction) – https://youtu.be/yKxBpkbHnpg
And the West still doesn’t get it.
Just because western culture (or at least the vocal, controlling part of it, the academia, media and bureaucrats) has replaced nationalism, religion and family values with more “modern” concepts.
Doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is the same.
Patriotism and pride in one’s own people and culture is still a thing.
That’s why Russia stood up to the rest of the world , sanctions and everything – not because Putin forced them to, but because ordinary Russians would rather bear the pain of war to loss of self respect and suffering injustice.
Similarly, Pelosi’s antics have almost certainly firmed up the Chinese people’s resolve for war. The people, not the scumbags controlling China. It’s not just the leadership using this as an excuse or squashing dissent, though that’s a factor. But ask any ordinary Chinese what they think about Taiwan, and you will get the same attitude Russians had towards Donbass and American meddling in Ukraine.
Da Tavarisch
Sadly, I must concur. Any Western criticism of Putin is perceived by many Russians as an infringement of their own human dignity. Likewise, Chinese patriotic culture – carefully nurtured by the Communist Party – predisposes many to regard the Taiwanese quest for independence and Western interventions as an insult to their pride and dignity.
Again, you dint get it. What the Russians perceive as an infringement of their human dignity, isn’t criticism of Putin – that’s what you like to believe.
What they do feel outraged about is when the US block keeps extending NATO to their borders, insult their intelligence by pretending it’s defensive (what were they defending against when expanding in 1999-2001?), support attacks against Russian minorities and organise a coup next door, and then bellitle Russian concerns.
These aren’t make-believe concerns dreamt up by Putin, these are existential questions and insults ordinary Russians would never tolerate.
By what rationale does Russia have the right to dictate the policies of a dozen or more countries that happen to border it? They don’t like it. Oh well. It’s not *their* country to make the decisions about. Either they are sovereign nations or they’re not. You can’t have it both ways any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.
But Russia attitude towards Donbass is based on lies of Russian propaganda you keep repeating.
There was Ukrainian independence referendum and country voted over 90% for it.
Even Donbass voted over 80% for independence and Crimea 54%.
Just because genocidal Russian Imperialism wants to invade and control sovereign countries does not mean that West should agree to it.
That independence referendum was in 1992.
And the Russians (men like Putin) honoured it.
I am pretty sure being bombed to bits, having their regional political parties banned and Russian language suppressed night have changed a few minds in the Donbass over the past decade or so.
What a scary, delusional attitude.
You are insulting the Russian (silenced) majority!
And what of all those “Russian” speakers that Russia is supposedly protecting by killing them and destroying their homes and cities and towns? This is supposed to make them like the Russians?
You forgot to mention that Russia and China do not allow other voices to be heard. The people in both countries only hear propaganda.
The other point is, in 1932 in Nazi Germany, something like 100,000 people were imprisoned who had been against the Nazis. From 1933 onwards there were very few voices against Hitler. We’ll never know what most Germans really thought about Hitler after that as there were no polls taken and you had to be very brave to dissent.
Let me guess..
You are between 15 and 25 years old and you read all that online or a friend who ‘knows a lot about these things’ told you so?
Sorry, but you are quite wrong here. Find out why – it’s easy!
Just as Russia would never invade Ukraine.
I would imagine there were those at the time who said Hannibal couldn’t afford to invade the Roman Empire.
And just as Europe couldn’t afford a great war – Norman Angell. The usual complacent nonsense. In fact, it is precisely when aggressive countries are faced with the ruinous prospect of a long war that they lurch into a “short” one. Then, they “make sacrifices”.
Precisely.
After doing extensive exercise, against all expectations, Russia invaded Ukraine. Now China is flexing its muscle ( its ego is hurt) trying to intimidate Taiwan. It has two choices, It can back down, loose face, get even more frustrated or it can invade without too much delay & not worry too much about the consequences, blame the US for its actions. They might just invade while the world is still coming to grips with the Russian invasion!
And destroyed Russia in the process. Even Xi must be learning from that playbook.
And China has learned from that. They both expected (as did much of the rest of the world) that it would be over in a matter of days, weeks at most. Not what happened. And that’s in a country with long land borders and flat, wide open plains. Taiwan is not any more of a pushover than Ukraine has turned out to be. Less even.
Taiwan is behind a moat. Huge losses just in trying to move people and equipment across the water. It’s mountainous, filled with peaks and valleys for partisans to hide in and continue to strike back. Ukraine spent 8 years preparing for this war. Taiwan has been preparing for 70 years.
There’s a line of thinking that China will circumnavigate Taiwan, leaving it for absorption after completion of its grand strategy – expulsion of US forces from the western Pacific. The extraordinary build up of the Chinese military in all domains is rapidly giving China a notional supremacy over US forces in the Indo-Pacific. It’s a very serious development, brilliantly analysed by a former Australian general, Senator Jim Molan in his book ‘The Danger on our Doorstep”.
China has a lot of boats. Small boats. Ones that can’t operate far from their home ports. Their first aircraft carrier was sold to them, from all places, by Ukraine. It was sold as scrap since it was an old, only partially completed Russian carrier. But the Chinese finished it off instead. Then they built a second one based on the first.
One US supercarrier group could easily take out the entire Chinese Navy. Two supercarrier groups could pretty well take on the combined fleet of every other country in the world. There are only 15 countries that have a bigger air force than is on one supercarrier group. And we have a dozen of them. Not all out to sea at the same time, but plenty of backup if ever needed.
One smallish naval group in the Indian Ocean could destroy China in one year without firing a shot, simply by interdicting the flow of oil to China from the Middle East. India itself could do it.
France has one supercarrier, but it’s been plagued with problems and has never really been functional. England has one working now, but I think it’s still in sea trials on its way over to our side of the pond to replace the first one that’s having some pretty serious problems. That’s it. The rest are all American with more, even larger ones, under construction. One supercarrier is a match to about seven jump carriers, which is all any other country has.
Japan expected to have free rein in the Pacific for a year when they attacked Pearl Harbor. One small piece of bad luck, the fact that the carriers weren’t in port that day, doomed them from that day forward. Midway drove the final nail into the coffin. Millions died before it was all over, but the finale was already written.
Even if China was able to take out the carrier group always in that area, plus Okinawa, CINCPAC would have two more there within weeks. Not to mention having to deal with the Japanese Navy which is not much smaller operationally than the Chinese one. And Korea. And the Phillippines. And Australia. And New Zealand. And a half dozen other smaller navies in the area, all of whom would be threatened by such a move as an invasion of Taiwan. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered the end of the long term neutrality of Finland and Sweden, with them joining NATO, the South Pacific countries would be energized to work together as a group.
Both the Biden administration and the CCP need foreign policy crises now to distract their populations from multiple domestic failures. Not a good outlook.
A couple of destroyers in the Indian Ocean would quickly stop the supply of oil and gas to China from the Middle East. 85% of China’s oil and gas is imported from the Middle East. China is in fact in a very weak position. Then there is China’s huge reliance on imported animal feed, grains and fertilisers.
As for comparing the Ukraine with Taiwan. The Ukraine is very easy to invade; it has almost no barriers to invasion and is flat. Taiwan has a huge moat. The island itself is mountainous and difficult to move across even if the Chinese were able to land.
China is the paper tiger it’s so often accuses other countries of being.
The real reason why China is being so aggressive is that leader for life and true believer in communism, Xi Jinping, is even more isolated than Vladimir Putin. Everyone around him is too scared to tell him the truth because they know what happens to people who do.
Spot on. And keeping Xi in power will only continue the rapid decline of China. It looks pretty rosy for the west to me.
I would hope that the experience of Russia in Ukraine might cool Xi ardour for invasion.
IIRC within about 4 weeks of Russia’s invasion (3 day war!) the Chinese anounced that they were putting any idea of invading Taiwan on the back burner for 4 years.
The author envisages a spirited resistance by the Taiwanese if China invades, but in a recent edition of Will Lloyd’s “Hindsight” here on Unherd, there is a link to an article by Tanner Greer that suggests the Taiwanese, especially the young Taiwanese, are far from being tough, would-be resistance fighters.
https://scholars-stage.org/why-i-fear-for-taiwan/?mc_cid=1511e2a979&mc_eid=904576f59e
So who’s right? I don’t know, and I’m guessing the CCP doesn’t know either, which, I suppose, is the most compelling reason for why China might think twice before invading Taiwan.
The chinese, being ethno-centrists, probably look down on taiwanese as something lesser than them. This will lead to the same atrocities we are witnessing the russians commiting in Ukraine. Initially the reaction will be to flee, as did some of the ukranians. But since that is not an option on an island, second best is to fight to the death. Which is what will probably happen when you see what awaits you if you don’t.
Is that right? I don’t think PRC views ROC as lesser kinds of humans, that’s the point of their whole One China schtick, right? It’s all about reunification, not wiping out “problem populations”. That’s part of why the article argues that the Taiwanese might not fight that hard. It’s not clear that much bad would happen to them except, you know, being ruled by another dictatorship. But a new holocaust, probably not.
Taiwan has been preparing for this war for 70 years, and could have nuclear weapons in a year if they choose to go that route. They have some of the finest engineers in the world. That’s what the CCP wants to control.
Taiwan is no dictatorship. They certainly used to be, but they have elections that actually mean something, and have for quiet awhile.
A year is too long. If they see forces gathering, I’d say not much more than a month or so for a crude nuclear weapon, but one that will work nonetheless. The basic science and engineering is at a high school level these days. And they have the basic materials from their reactors. They just have to process it, which is what takes most of the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a facility that could be re-purposed for that already. Same for Japan and South Korea.
Have you been watching what they did to Hong Kong democrats?
Patriotism goes up by an order of magnitude when a country is invaded.
A major war with China is inevitable. ‘They’ think it is their turn but are wrong, and ‘we’ will have to be disabuse them of that idea, sooner rather than later.
Let them cross the Rubicon and see what happens. “God is on the side of the US Navy”.
God is on the side of the strongest battalions. (according to Frederick the Great, in 1760)
He must have pinched it off Voltaire who said something very similar: “God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best”.
China has been doomed to fall off the demographic cliff for decades. Their population has probably already peaked and could be half of what it is now as soon as 2050. They are one of the fastest aging populations in the world and they won’t be able to do what Japan has done in order to survive.
Xi is out of touch with reality. No one wants to tell him anything. It’s too dangerous. He’s locked up or killed too many of his former “advisors.” The lockdowns from COVID have only sped that process up. Since their “vaccine” has never worked worth beans, even against the original version, and no one has developed natural immunity and Omicron is the most infectious variant yet, well, it won’t take much to go over the edge on that too. I doubt if he really even knows about the droughts and heat and rivers drying up and power generators going down, much less the resurgence of African Swine Fever in their hog farms. China may be buying oil from Russia, but how is it going to get there? There’s only one pipeline. The rest has to come by ship and Russia is having a teeny bit of trouble with shipping oil for some reason.
Perhaps more might be made of the fact that for most of its history Taiwan was not a part of China, and was not considered to be a part of China by the Chinese, until the Qing dynasty invaded in the 17th century, holding it, or at least the lowland areas, until it was ceded to Japan, after losing the Sino-Japanese war in the 1890s.
Who needs independence to be recognised and embassies in foreign countries when you make the best semiconductors in the world?
A really brilliant strategy from the Taiwanese, as the Chinese strategy moves impatiently from ‘slowly slowly catchee monkey’ to angrily chasing after the monkey, shouting pointlessly.
We are in the process of building, or in the planning stages, of chip manufacturing plants that are as good as, if not better than, TSMC’s. But they aren’t coming on line any time soon, and will still need to ramp up to commercial level production after that, so Taiwan is still the only place to go for mass production of top quality chips for at least another ten years or so.
Sooner or later they will invade. Just a matter of time.
frwerw4trf
Hard to believe George Magnus, he is probably a propagandist for Us and UK