Will China Invade Taiwan?

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In the past few days, the tone of China's diplomats, and the official media, have suddenly become more friendly to the west. Also, pro-Russian trolls on Chinese social media have been cracked down upon, a sign that the authorities are nervous.

Also, if the Ukraine war ends with Putin committing suicide by falling from a window with three bullets in the head, then we can definitely answer that question in the negative.

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2, Since 1992, each paramount leader of CCP has two terms of 10 years in total. A heir apparent was usually installed in the Politburo Standing Committee to warm up. But in 2017 CCP's "election", Xi did not install the heir apparent. And in 2018, they amended the constitution to abolish the term limit of the President. This was an extremely unusual move that breaks all political norms, and requires enormous political capitals. All senior party bosses had to sign on to it, since this was against their interests. The only plausible reason was Xi promised to unite Taiwan during his tenure. This is almost the consensus of Chinese politics analysts.

My interpretation is that Xi had alienated so much of the CCP elite between 2012 and 2017, that he couldn't guarantee his personal safety if he were to step aside after this year's CCP congress. Hence, he was "compelled" to stay on. That's a much more pragmatic reason to break conventions than an abstract promise that the CCP had been making since the PRC's foundation.

3, Xi desires to be recorded in history as "Xi the Great". His propaganda team already boast him as comparable to Mao, despite he has no comparable achievements at all. He has hinted that he will achieve national unification in numerous speeches.

Similar to my previous point, I think this propaganda campaign serves to strengthen his power against the CCP elites he had alienated. Xi has become famous for his laundry list of grandiose plans: eliminate poverty by 2020, Made in China 2025, Socialist Modernization 2035, Belt And Road, etc etc. He clearly thinks about Taiwan as part of his vision, but that doesn't mean it's a be-all-and-end-all for his own power.

4, The Chinese propaganda has been trying to persuade citizens to support invasion of Taiwan in recent years, and is quite successful. Their military moves like flying across Taiwan AIDZ become more and more aggressive.

The propaganda has been so successful, that during last autumn's spate of military maneuvers, Chinese citizens reacted by panic buying food, which forced the CCP to tone down its propaganda. This proves that the Chinese people, just like the Russian people, simply aren't ready for war.

The maneuvers also reveal the limitations of the PLA, since each wave of maneuvers is followed by a lull in activity, indicating that its aircraft engines have low reliability. Xi's military threats to Taiwan serve primarily to boost his own political power, but they (as well as Russia's invasion in Ukraine) have served to galvanize western support for Taiwan.

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I wonder how hard it would be to simply bribe the Taiwanese people into reunifying?  Taiwan's population is about 25 million, and China's GDP is 15 trillion.  China could spend 1/6 of it's GDP over a single year promising each Taiwanese the equivalent of $100,000 to reunify.  That would most likely be far less costly than an invasion and the associated sanctions, plus no risk of conflict with the United States.  Add in some promises of grand public works projects -- maybe an Eastern Chunnel linking Taiwan to the mainland -- and hold a referendum overseen by the UN.

I mean, you're rich, and there's this small territory you want, but it's not geopolitically feasible for you to invade it.  Just do what empires have done throughout history and buy it.

Such an offer will more likely cause mass deaths in Taiwan through laughter.

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2, Since 1992, each paramount leader of CCP has two terms of 10 years in total. A heir apparent was usually installed in the Politburo Standing Committee to warm up. But in 2017 CCP's "election", Xi did not install the heir apparent. And in 2018, they amended the constitution to abolish the term limit of the President. This was an extremely unusual move that breaks all political norms, and requires enormous political capitals. All senior party bosses had to sign on to it, since this was against their interests. The only plausible reason was Xi promised to unite Taiwan during his tenure. This is almost the consensus of Chinese politics analysts.

My interpretation is that Xi had alienated so much of the CCP elite between 2012 and 2017, that he couldn't guarantee his personal safety if he were to step aside after this year's CCP congress. Hence, he was "compelled" to stay on. That's a much more pragmatic reason to break conventions than an abstract promise that the CCP had been making since the PRC's foundation.

Do you understand the power structure and decision making process of CCP? He did alienated many CCP elites. But to for such a huge change of the political power structure, he had to get permissions from other high level bosses. And he must provide a valid reason.

He did stack the CCP hierarchy and the military with his loyalists between 2012 and 2017, and methodically smashed the clique that tried to bring him down. He also sidelined Jiang's faction, and Hu and Wen have all but vanished into thin air. To what extent the CCP has reverted from collective rule to personalist regime is debatable, but not deniable.

As for valid reasons, as mentioned, Xi had been pumping out a whole slew of grandiose slogans and trying to re-Maoify the CCP for that precise reason. Out of his laundry list of grand plans, it was inevitable that Taiwan would become one of them. But that's not the same as claiming that Xi is staying on because of Taiwan. A lot of Xi's previous grand plans have been quietly cut back, and it's entirely plausible - even likely- that Xi would tell his insiders that "Taiwan is on my to-do list, but now is not the best time".

If anything, the war in Ukraine will put off any plans he may have for Taiwan for another few years yet.

https://twitter.com/wstrobel/status/1501959540048371712

Given the man-crush Xi has on Putin, he's definitely in shock at the extent to which Putin's people had lied to him about...virtually everything. That implies that Xi is preparing to purge his own inner circle, lest he suffer the same fate as Putin. And that suggests that Xi will never be able to trust that the people around him are both honest and loyal with him, at least enough that a war for Taiwan could be won at an acceptable price.

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Not true. He did stack some of his loyalists, but that's after the 2017 "election". Jiang had a majority in the CCP Politburo Standing Committee in 2017. And in the 25-member Politburo, Xi had only one loyalist. Besides, there were around 15 retired party bosses who also had a say in such huge issue.

Yes, point made, as I'm not a professional China-politics watcher, and only an amateur one. I've been able to hear some salacious gossip through the grapevine for years, but much less so for the past two years.

There was simply no way Xi could have single-handedly decide to give himself another term. He must obtain the permission from the party.

My educated guess is that his sales pitch was on the lines of:

• Given the depth to which corruption had taken hold of the party, we need to continue the job of cleansing it.
• We (actually I) have been unveiling lots of grand plans to launch our party/state into the future. We need a steady hand to implement them.
• We need a strong leader to provide the ideological foundation for us to do the above.

Taiwan would fit as part of that sales pitch, but any prospective strongman would *have* to include it anyway. If his sales pitch was *solely* or even *chiefly* about Taiwan, that would not have been enough to convince the hierarchy to go along with abolishing the term limit. Hence, Taiwan is *part* of his grand plans, but not the be-all-and-end-all.

I do fully agree with you on one point: that the more that Xi isn't able to deliver on his other grand plans, the more he faces pressure to deliver on Taiwan. But that also begs the question: if he isn't capable of delivering any other of his grand plans - ones with more achievable deliverables, then why would he be capable of delivering this one? Especially, since that plan is the only one that has an objective definition of success that can't be spun: red flag over Taipei = Yes, else No.

If you asked me three weeks ago, I would have been inclined to believe that Xi treated Taiwan chiefly as a domestic propaganda tool, and that while he's serious about taking Taiwan, he would only actually do so as a "hail Mary" stunt if things went wrong at home; since, his personality is one of a calculated gambler, and he was aware of the enormous costs such a war would bring.

If you asked me exactly two weeks ago, I would have believed that he either didn't know or didn't care about the costs of such a war.

Of course, now, Taiwan has an additional few more years to make itself impregnable. The good news is that Taiwan has ample opportunity to learn from Ukraine. The bad news is that so does China.

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Xi's campaign against corruption was strict on low level officials, but at higher level it was very selective, basically a power grab. This was more of a populist appeal. Among CCP, it was extremely unpopular. He could not use this to persuade party bosses to give him another term.

Of course, everything was a power grab. His anti-corruption campaign morphed into a personal loyalty test. But, there was genuine worry that the CCP was on the verge of collapse in the late 2000s/early 2010s, so there was some residual goodwill in that aspect. Xi has been excellent in identifying a genuine problem and exploiting it to maximize his political power.

In any case, "give me another term because I want Taiwan" would not have been a sufficient sales pitch.

Over the next 20 years, PRC's total victory is inevitable.  It is merely what form will such a victory take place (military, political, or some combination).  If PRC gives up on the goal of reunification it will be overthrown.  If PRC falls apart due to a failed attack on ROC or for other reasons then the Mainland will reorganize under new leadership and will try again decades from now.  If the PRC falls apart and the Mainland splinters into many parts then after one hundred years Mainland will reunify and then it will try again.  It is like the terminator.  It will always be back.

Yes, and Vladimir Putin thought that Ukraine's return to the Russian motherland was also "inevitable", whether it be by funding pro-Russian politicians, or by arming pro-Russian militia, or now by outright invasion.

Of course, if you ask the average Zhang on the street, "is Taiwan rightfully ours?", he will immediately say "yes", and honestly. But, if you ask him, "are you willing to make a tremendous personal sacrifice to make that happen?", he will not give a straight answer. The Chinese people like the *idea* of taking Taiwan, but not the nitty-gritty reality of it. That's why CCP propaganda had been claiming that Taiwan can be taken in several days and with minimal cost - which begs the question, why not just do it? Answer: because the CCP know that the Chinese people don't have the stamina for a prolonged war. It's possible that the CCP leadership went high on their own supply, in the same way that Putin believed that Kyiv would fall in 48 hours, and that the west would respond with lip service and token sanctions. But they've just been given a rude wake-up call. It's just possible that the Ukraine war will permanently discredit the idea of the "great Russian nation" in Russia itself. To claim that there's zero chance of a similar development in China is just naive.

The "problem" is on your end, that Westerners have looked down on China and Chinese people ever since serious contact was made in the 1700's to this day, regarding us as a poor and inferior people and a nation not worthy of equal treatment, but instead a land to be subjugated for its vastness, resources, and potential.

It's the CCP elite who have been treating the Chinese people as colonial serfs or chives (韭菜), since they're the ones who impose a foreign ideology on the Chinese people, monopolize all the most profitable aspects of the Chinese economy, and funnel their gains into foreign mansions and bank accounts.

Nationalism is very strong in China since the people are not only very familiar with this history but also know that the West hates China because we, the Chinese people, are fulfilling and reaping the benefits of China's potential, and not them.

The CCP elite, above all, want to protect their political and economic power, and nationalism is just a tool to justify it. There would be no other justification for maintaining state-owned monopolies, without which the Chinese people would enjoy much higher living standards.

Speaking for the USA in particular, they were hardly involved in the historical part, so there should have been a chance for China and the USA to come to a truly amicable understanding, but apparently the Americans are now all in on the colonial mindset to keep China down so that chance is gone.

That begs the question as to why countries that never had any imperial history with China, and were in fact fellow victims of imperialism, are the most hostile to the PRC: India, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, etc etc.

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The last time the PRC attacked a country for no reason it was Vietnam and it went as well for them as invading Ukraine has been for Russia.  A lot of similarities there too.  Larger country invades smaller one, thinks it's going to be easy.  Smaller country has big friends that support it.  Larger country's military is a big embarrassment, fails to achieve easy goals early in war.  Military of larger country steals food and consumer goods from civilians because the larger country doesn't teach logistics at military academies (or much of anything really, how to be mean to conscripts I guess).

Deng started his war on Vietnam to consolidate his power within the Party, and to embarrass the Soviets. The war itself was a failure, but he at least recognized it as such and pulled back after four weeks. It succeeded in strengthening his domestic power, and demonstrating on which side of the Cold War he was on. So, it was a political success for him personally, even if it was a military failure.

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Taiwan’s own army, or at least the elite units affiliated with the KMT, are going to defect pretty quickly in the event of a Chinese invasion. They’re going to land and take the TMSC belt with it, basically ending globalization as we know it, but they can at least last several months on the island before a nuclear strike and being pushed off the island.

Yes, just like how the Ukrainian army was a corrupt mess that was sure to defect. Also, the KMT is undergoing an identity crisis that can't be papered over with its formerly grand war chest.

You're right that any war would lead to the destruction of the TSMC fabs and plunge the entire world into a depression worse than the 1930s. But I have serious doubts about the appetite of Chinese society for a prolonged war: after all, CCP propaganda have been claiming for years that Taiwan can be taken within days, which begs the question of why that hasn't been done yet. Also, the part of mainland China facing Taiwan (the southeastern coast) is also its wealthiest, most industrialized, and most populous region. A war over Taiwan would be far more damaging to China's economy than the Ukraine war has been to Russia's economy, based on that alone. I'm sure Putin would have been much more cautious if Russia's dominant city was Voronezh.

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They would be better off just to buy up countries like Sri Lanka. When they default in their loans, they move in further into their economic system.

How, though?

What's to stop the new Sri Lankan government from declaring "we're taking back our country and nationalizing the Chinese-owned port, and they should suck it"?

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They would be better off just to buy up countries like Sri Lanka. When they default in their loans, they move in further into their economic system.

How, though?

What's to stop the new Sri Lankan government from declaring "we're taking back our country and nationalizing the Chinese-owned port, and they should suck it"?

The Indian government would oppose any other alternative, because such a government now, at this very instant, is likely to be anti-India.

That's different from allowing Beijing to gain a foothold on its southern tip.

In any case, Beijing is not in the business of being a sugar daddy for the world's kleptocrats for its sake. It had its fingers burnt by loaning tens of billions to countries like Venezuela and Pakistan, only to find themselves empty handed once these countries inevitably went south.

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So if Xi is going down the Putin road, who is his Dugin?

There are a collection of public figures who espouse similar thoughts, but none of them seem to have formulated a similarly solid intellectual framework as Dugin. They're more interested in attracting clicks than creating theory, but that doesn't exclude that they sometimes have the ear of top officials. The most prominent ones are Sima Nan, Jin Canrong, and Li Yi. The one with the biggest soapbox is Hu Xijin, the recently retired editor of the Global Times.

Very interestingly, on the same day that Daria Dugina was killed, two of these prominent Chinese nationalist celebrities were censored. Methinks that their previous sh**t posting about Taiwan had embarrassed the CCP leadership, who need to assert their absolute authority lest it be eroded by itself.