Is war between China and the US inevitable? The Thucydides Trap.

[Stavros]

I doubt it. It's really an agreement to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia and there was already a de facto strategic alliance. After Iraq and Afghanistan would anyone be in any doubt that the UK and Australia are auxiliaries of the US military? I know the objective is deterrence, but it's striking that barely 2 weeks after the end of one US-led military debacle our governments are eagerly signing up for another adventure.
The real story from the Australian perspective is the debacle of the previous project to replace our aging submarine fleet, on which we've wasted many years and many billions of dollars only to start again. It's like something out of Yes Minister. "What should we do about this disastrous project that is running way behind schedule and over budget?" "Why don't we announce a new project that will be more complex, take much longer and cost even more?"

A rather bland response -you are right to argue that the US and Australia have had some form of strategic relationship for years, it goes back to the Second World War and Japan's ambitions for the Pacific region, not so different from what China's are today. I don't know if there is an anti-nuclear movement there which is opposed to the creation of a nuclear-powered fleet, given that your Prime Minister appears to have reneged on a deal Australia made with France to supply diesel-powered subs, though the hostility to fossil fuels in the 'Green' movement is probably as intense as it would be with nuclear power. And this also raises other concerns, such as the potential for a nuclear accident at sea, or even in port.

As Russia and China form or seek to form a strategic alliance, with India and now Iran getting involved, the worry for some is that the Pacific become the focus of a new 'cold war' with ships and subs monitoring each other, foreign ministries complaining about violations of soveregnty, Taiwan stuck in the middle of competing interests, and so on. It might not be of critical importance, but I think it merits concern.

[Stavros]

What would be the financial threat to China if it tried to annex Taiwan? China is committed to its economic growth. How catastrophic would it be for China to be cut off from world markets? How catastrophic would it be for countries to be cut off from China as a market?

If you read the assessments in the Foreign Affairs journal I cited some posts ago, you may appreciate that Xi's ambitions calculate that China can absorb external shocks as long as its domestic market is robust, much as it has not suffered so much from Covid in this regard, or so we are led to believe.

Xi is to some extent like Mao, and has so narrow a political a view that economics is interesting but not crucial to his ambitions. One of the key slogans in the 'Great People's Cultural Revolution' was 'Politics in Command'. Mao told Nixon or maybe it was Kissinger they didn't need to annexe Taiwan right now -'we can wait 100 years' was his view. I am not sure Xi wants to wait that long, more like 10 in his case. He has shown complete disregard for the legal treaty China signed with the UK over Hong Kong in 1999, and is evidently not bothered by any economic decline in HK. As far as he concerned, it is just another province in China nd the people must learn to obey the Party.

From this perspective, Taiwan is fair game, and any economic loss can be written off, as what Xi wants is glory. Sadly, the hubris that attends the lack of any signficant opposition to China's policies, domestically and internationally, could pave the way for the annexation, and let's be brutal about it -does Taiwan matter to the US, Europe or Australia and New Zealand? What would a war if there was one look like? Xi has thought about it, and it may be either a matter of time, or caution on the part of his Generals, who must deliver if the decision is made. For all the bragadoccio he has, there is not a lot of evidence that China's military is any good at war, indeed, though it was now a long time ago, the last time it went into the battlefied, China's army was defeated by the more battle-hardened Vietnamese.

As Brecht once put it, 'So many reports. So many questions'.

[filghy2]

What would be the financial threat to China if it tried to annex Taiwan? China is committed to its economic growth. How catastrophic would it be for China to be cut off from world markets? How catastrophic would it be for countries to be cut off from China as a market?

The recent behaviour of the Chinese leadership suggests they are willing to subordinate economic growth to other considerations. People used to argue that they could not risk any economic disruption because this would lead to social unrest. With the massive development of their surveillance technology, however, the regime might now be confident that they can suppress any unrest.

The threat of economic penalties seems to work as a deterrent only with smaller countries that need the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs them. Australia is more economically inter-dependent with China than just about any other country. We could probably cripple the Chinese economy by cutting off coal and iron ore exports, but that would also cripple our own economy.

[filghy2]

I don't know if there is an anti-nuclear movement there which is opposed to the creation of a nuclear-powered fleet, given that your Prime Minister appears to have reneged on a deal Australia made with France to supply diesel-powered subs, though the hostility to fossil fuels in the 'Green' movement is probably as intense as it would be with nuclear power.

Ironically, the technical problems with the French project seem to have arisen mainly from trying to adapt a design intended for nuclear-powered submarines for use with a conventional power source.

There are clearly military advantages in using nuclear power. They can operate away from base and stay under water for much longer periods. Conventionally-powered subs must surface periodically, which makes them more vulnerable.

[Stavros]

Last night on Channel 4 News in the UK, Victor Gao insisted that Taiwan is a matter of domestic Chinese poitics, and thus of no concern to other countries. He also argued that neither the US nor any other state is going to send its sons and daughters to die in a place that has no relevance to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Gao

[Paladin]

Taiwan, is certainly fearful right now. But if we didn't have a corrupt, brain-dead, feckless, foppish, dolt in the WH right now then Taiwan wouldn't be in so much trouble.

[Stavros]

Maybe Taiwan wouldn't be such an issue had the Guomindang and its leader Chang Chung-Cheng not fled to Taiwan to create their own terrorist government, inflicting their 'White Terror' on the population not so different from the staggering murderous violence they had been visiting on the Chinese people since 1928. Biden was seven years old when that Terror began, so I don't know how he can be held responsible for a confict that old.

A little reading can help.

See, for example, for the perod pre-1949

Jonathan Fenby, Generalissimo: Chang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost (2015) -for the career of one of history's great mass murderers.

Immanuel C. Y, Hsu: The Rise of Modern China (5th Edition, 2000, Chapters 31 and 39 on the schism in 1949 and the economic success of Taiwan).

[BostonBad]

Before this war breaks out I'd like to orally pleasure all the beautiful and half decent looking Chinese TS women and swallow all their loads. It could take me 50 years but if that's the price for peace my stomach is ready for it.

FYI, if China attacks Taiwan the USA won't respond with the military. We're faking it.

[sukumvit boy]

Maybe Taiwan wouldn't be such an issue had the Guomindang and its leader Chang Chung-Cheng not fled to Taiwan to create their own terrorist government, inflicting their 'White Terror' on the population not so different from the staggering murderous violence they had been visiting on the Chinese people since 1928. Biden was seven years old when that Terror began, so I don't know how he can be held responsible for a confict that old.

A little reading can help.

See, for example, for the perod pre-1949

Jonathan Fenby, Generalissimo: Chang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost (2015) -for the career of one of history's great mass murderers.

Immanuel C. Y, Hsu: The Rise of Modern China (5th Edition, 2000, Chapters 31 and 39 on the schism in 1949 and the economic success of Taiwan).

The political history of Taiwan in the modern era is hellishly complex . I'm reading John Keay's excellent ,"China, a History" which focuses on the more ancient history of China's great dynasties up to and including the last ,Qing dynasty, which spanned the period from about the 1640's through 1912 and he decided to leave the rest ,which would probably require another volume , to other historians. These books you mentioned look like they would admirably fill some of that void.
Through ancient times and right through much of the Qing ,Taiwan was viewed mostly as a malarial wilderness inhabited by 'head hunting' aboriginal savages . At various times and in various geographical regions it could have equally been considered to be claimed by the Philippines, Japan ,mainland China and even the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Just as an interesting aside , the new science of ancient DNA analysis has reveled that the people who went on to settle Micronesia, Melanesia and the far flung islands of Polynesia came from the Philippines and Taiwan. This is discussed in more detail in the "Searching For a Stone Age Odysseus " thread.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3896708-china
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/a...-of-polynesia/

[Stavros]

The political history of Taiwan in the modern era is hellishly complex . I'm reading John Keay's excellent ,"China, a History" which focuses on the more ancient history of China's great dynasties up to and including the last ,Qing dynasty, which spanned the period from about the 1640's through 1912 and he decided to leave the rest ,which would probably require another volume , to other historians. These books you mentioned look like they would admirably fill some of that void.
Through ancient times and right through much of the Qing ,Taiwan was viewed mostly as a malarial wilderness inhabited by 'head hunting' aboriginal savages . At various times and in various geographical regions it could have equally been considered to be claimed by the Philippines, Japan ,mainland China and even the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Just as an interesting aside , the new science of ancient DNA analysis has reveled that the people who went on to settle Micronesia, Melanesia and the far flung islands of Polynesia came from the Philippines and Taiwan. This is discussed in more detail in the "Searching For a Stone Age Odysseus " thread.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3896708-china
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/a...-of-polynesia/

Thanks for these references, I am aware of the Keay's book through its glowing reviews, but in my own studies and work focused on modern China -amongst other places and regions. The movement or migration of people is so common throughout history I am not surprised at the genetic history you refer to. One should also consider how island people are more likely to have a maritime culture that looks across the seas rather than 'staying at home' -I am sure I read somewhere that traders from what is now Indonesia had links to what is now Angola in the late Middle Ages or thereabouts. There is a chapter on 'The World in 1400' in Eric Wolf's superb Europe and the Peoples Without History which traces all sorts of links you might have though improbable, and on the other level you are probably familiar with Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism which argues the Imperial bureaucracy in China was developed and maintained through the dominance of China's mighty river systems, a form of 'hydraulic imperialism' that used water resources to build irrigation systems that boosted production in fertile areas and create it in less well-watered ones.

The issue of Taiwan though, is now seen as a domestic one in Beijing, and I don't doubt most Chinese thinks its none of our business what happens there. As to whether or not the US would go to war to defend the island, I don't doubt that miitary minds in China and the US have gamed the scenarios, and as the Foreign Affairs artice cited before suggested, a lot may now depend on just how ambitious Xi is, and the exent to which he thinks his risks will reap rewards.

Is Taiwan worth fighting for? Not in itself, but if the US has made a defence commitment to Taiwan, then as with NATO in the Cold War, the US and Israel, and of course the various treaties and agreements that did not survive Hitler's ambitions until 1939, not abiding by the agreement threatens more than just one place. If the perception is that the Biden Administration is too focused on the domestic politics of the US -which is currently in a crisis of legtimacy- to honour its agreement with Taiwan, this could lead Xi to 'do something' -and if Beijing does't care what the people of Hong Kong want, why should it be bothered with public opinion in Taiwan?

We live in dangerous times.