A friend forwarded this to me. I think this is in the news due to Nancy Polocy planned travel and visit plans . PRC media report that China's armed forces demonstrated their ability to operate jointly and support a civilian-led disaster response during a recent exercise. According to a China Military Online report, on May 11, over 5,000 PRC civilian and military personnel came together for EMERGENCY MISSION 2022, and yet they have tanks in the streets by banks to tell people that they can not get to their money.
Speaker Pelosi has backed Biden and Xi into corners with her planned visit to Taiwan. I wish she hadn't but she did and now who can afford to back down? Biden says that he doesn’t control Pelosi's movements. True but disingenuous. He could probably pursuade her to stay home if he really wanted to and Xi knows this. Xi can't back down because he has long complained and threatened about U.S. interference in China's "internal affairs ". If he does nothing he will lose face at a bad time. So we have a confrontation that as far as I know neither side wanted. The consequences may be grim. Xi has been preparing for years to invade Taiwan but he really, really doesn't want to do that. He would much rather increase pressure on Taipei until they agree to some form of "one country two systems ". Pelosi's visit might force his hand. If he does nothing he will appear to be a paper tiger. Not good.
Does he? If so, he shouldn't have cracked down on Hong Kong, because there's no doubt whatsoever now that freedom in Taiwan completely depends on maintaining its de facto independence.
YES exactly! My wife is Taiwanese. The political parties in Taiwan that were backing an eventual one China policy are no longer nearly as popular since the Hong Kong crack down. The one China policy will likely never take place now without a war. I assume that Xi Jinping is very aware of that.
I think we can allow for the possibility that Xi blundered in HK. Doesn’t mean he wants to risk invading Taiwan.
Fair. It's not like we should expect political decision-making to be any more efficient and far seeing there than here.
My wife and I visited Taiwan 6 years ago during the presidential campaign. I was surprised to learn at the time that a fair amount of the population considered becoming part of mainland China a reasonably good thing. The candidate with that as part of their platform didn't end up winning. The People First party has that as part of their platform and got about 13% of the vote in 2016.
Consider for a moment what Xi must accomplish to conquer Taiwan. First, he must gain control of the airspace over the island and its approaches. He might manage that at horrific cost but he cannot fail to notice how badly Putin's air arm is failing in Ukraine. Surface to air missiles work terrifyingly well. Assuming Xi manages to gain at least local air superiority, his next task is to land a great many troops in the face of sophisticated hostile fire. Only once in modern history to my knowledge has such a landing succeeded, D-Day in France. There have been many other such assaults of course but nothing else on the scale of an invasion of Taiwan. To subdue Taiwan would be a long, bitter, expensive and quite possibly unsuccessful slog even if Xi is able to sieze the island's population centers. Taiwan is mountainous and has a significant forest canopy. Finally, consider that the Chinese military lacks any experience whatever in amphibious warfare. The U.S. and our traditional allies got fairly good at it but the atomic bomb made landings on this scale unnecessary. Had the Bomb not been dropped I'd likely not be here today.
I was referring to landings on the Japanese home islands. Obviously D-Day was necessary and did take place.
Apparently, China imposed devastating snacktions on Taiwan. https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/china-halts-taiwanese-snack-imports-pelosi-arrival
According to Global Times, the CCP's English language mouthpiece, the PLA will conduct live fire drills in nine sea sectors surrounding Taiwan. In other words, Xi has decided to stand idly by while doing his level best to appear to take action. Wise choice.
The former Navy officer in me would like to know where our attack submarines are right now. I have no access to such information but I could make a pretty fair guess I think.
The PLA made no effort to intercept Speaker Pelosi's plane as G. Times hinted they might. Apparently somebody over there doesn't approve of singeing the Eagle's tail feathers either.
So, good. Posturing but no actual fighting. Xi sent his two "aircraft carriers". Nice looking ships, too. Shame if something "happened" to them. I put in the scare quotes because however capable the Chinese carriers might be (and we don't know at this point) they aren't aircraft carriers in the USN sense of the term.
While I suspect that China’s military is better trained, disciplined, and operational than Russia’s… have to wonder if Russia’s military collapse and embarrassment is also giving Xi further pause…
