At the recent UN Global South meeting, the UNSG gave an indirect hit on China, pointing to indebtness problems with unfair interest rates. He called for a more global funding structure to address problems.
China recently agreed to resume exchanges with Taiwan at municipal level.
Lots of happy pics of the Shanghai municipal team meeting with their counterparts in Taipei City.
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The concerns in the defence think tank community is something like this. Thereâs a whole series of factors that make China less potent after 2030. China is hitting an aging population wall, along with other economic headwinds. Their cost of labour has hit a point where production is moving elsewhere. The ships they have been pumping out are starting to reach the 10 year maintenance cycle, so expenses are about to drastically increase, which will reduce the pace of new builds.
That puts a ticking clock on any military action. Currently an invasion of Taiwan is predicted to be a Chinese loss, but at the cost of 100s of US aircraft, at least two US carriers and 25+ other ships. It isnât wise for China to act now, but they may believe this decade is their last chance.
The big fear is that Xi is getting more optimistic messaging in a similar way to Putinâs yes men convincing him Ukraine was a 3 day operation.
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about a third
none
silver lining, waxit might finally happen
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Chinaâs great victory will be to reunify Taiwan peacefully. They are not going to invade Taiwan if they believe it will lead to war with the USA, as that doesnât fit with their view of China as the worldâs great benevolent power.
China is worldâs best at the long game, which conflicts with Bennyâs observation of the narrowing window. My guess is that China will comfortably allocate more funds to military expansion despite an ageing economy and the Chinese people will accept the associated hardship convinced as always by the propaganda that it (it = anything bad) is of course the fault of the US.
I think China will wait for political change in the US and a relative loss of interest in Taiwan, build up their military so the prediction becomes full Chinese control of Taiwan (albeit at enormous cost). Then they will ratchet up the harassment, blockades and economic sanctions against Taiwan and see whether the Taiwanese people and the US have the appetite for war. That will be their attempt at peaceful reunification.
Taiwan will survive only if the democratic West stand with them against China and through the UN plot the path to Taiwanâs national identity being resolved.
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Concerns have been raised in Germany about the conditions China is placing on its students with scholarships from the China Scholarship Council ((CSC) studying at German Universities.
Sweden and Norway may also have concerns.
The conditions include restrictions on what they can do ( protests etc) requirements to regularly report to the Chinese Embassy, .
surveillance, interviews immediately when back in China , with families involved.
Seems there are concerns at academic freedom
A quick check shows that many Australian Universities have partnership arrangements with the CSC for PhD students, including in some cases joint funding ( with the University paying for some costs of living for the students).
The Australian Government could also be involved,under a memorandum of understanding on education, involving two way scholarships for studying in China. Certainly there would be involvement in visa arrangements.
ICYMI, there is an analysis in Al Jazeera of 7 March of the potential to resort to other currencies ( yuan and others) prompted by the US financial sanctions on Russia, in particular SWIFT.
In part concerns that the US has weaponised the dollar and that it could be used against them.
It takes a longer view than your earlier post about the move to the yuan and of changes needed in China for that to happen.
I can remember the trade dispute on bananas, when there were dollar bananas, sterling bananas and French franc bananas and, before the Euro, the Eurodollar, the ECU for converting those currencies to a single unit.
The world didnât fall apart when the US moved from the dollar based on the value of 32 ounces of gold
Al Jazeera article
- Will Russia sanctions dethrone âKing Dollarâ ?
I donât expect China to collapse overnight, but theyâve got headwinds that are going to increase year by year going forward. To maintain the same rate of military expansion might take 1.5-2x the spend in a time where the economy is flat. China scrapped its old gear to save on maintenance and operational costs, so that they can build lots of stuff. That stuff now needs crews, supplies and soon major deep cycle maintenance.
Up against that, the alliance of Pacific nations in the area are building up their deterrence capabilities. Not as impressive as Chinaâs expansion, but in total it does balance out down the line.
So the ticking clock isnât about collapse, itâs about peak power. China will still be incredibly strong, they just wonât be as dominant as the next 5 years.
Edit - they are in charge of their own destiny and can make choices that are different to this forecast. It will result in substantial sacrifices from a population that has been exchanging lack of freedom for consistent economic growth.
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Iâm just not convinced by this idea that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is inevitable.
The current situation works pretty well for everyone - even the majority of Taiwanese support it. In the absence of Taiwan declaring independence and seeking to cut ties with China, Iâm not sure that China will ever make a military move the likes of which is currently being assumed in the media.
Why would they? They know it would result in a large scale war, and there is no ambiguity about that. If there was a large scale war they would be likely to win it in the end but in the meantime it would cost trillions and trillions and decimate their economy. I just donât see them choosing to do that except for in the unlikely scenario that Taiwan moves to declare independence. Even if they did I donât know if the Chinese would necessarily respond militarily, even if they make noises that they will.
Besides all this - I think in three years (the length of time contemplated in the article) the entire world, including China, will be so preoccupied with trying to address the impacts of climate change that wars will be the last thing on any governmentâs mind.
Iâm not an expert on any of this, but this is my view. What am I missing?
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I agree with your conclusions. I think the quoted sentence might be exaggerated. The US donât legally need to go to war, and given the projected losses they may (at some point in the future under a different administration) choose not to, but rather just deliver weapons.
The stalemate and ambiguous Taiwan identity works very well for now, but itâs not a forever solution. The momentum within Taiwan, especially amongst young Taiwanese who donât see themselves as Chinese is of course towards independence. I think that momentum is more behind Chinaâs renewed focus on solving the problem of Taiwan, rather than their own medium-term economic challenges.
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An invasion of Taiwan is unlikely to succeed and would result in massive economic and diplomatic consequences over the long term. The fear is that Xi does a Putin and does the illogical thing for whatever reason. Thereâs domestic politics and personal aspirations to consider beyond straight logic.
Because the Chinese threat is being taken seriously, the level of deterrence is being increased to match the threat. That hopefully prevents a conflict from occurring. Defence planners need to have a pessimistic outlook as their job is to respond to a worst case scenario. Most donât expect it to happen because it would be so costly to China, but theyâre very concerned.
Biden Sunak and Albanese projected to do an ANNOUNCE on Aukus subs, as they walk together on a sub at San Diego.
Hope no-one trips.
Concur, it is a massively, horrendously, stupendously difficult operation to conduct an open-water amphibious operation against an island whose military is solely focused on stopping you from crossing that stretch of water. On top of that, they are best friends with a nuclear superpower with an enormous navy and several regional bases from which they can project forces.
The other factor is the cost to China. There whole economy is based on selling stuff to the rest of the world. They import massive amounts of raw materials and high-end tech. An invasion of Taiwan would put the brakes on that really quickly. Sure, they can deal with Russia for oil and raw materials, but does anyone think Russia is going to come out of their current war as an increased power? One that support Chinaâs whole economy?
They are getting a lot of success out of their grey-zone operations and political/economic diplomacy/coercion, why risk all-out war?
I also reckon a whole generation of the One-Child Policy families would be pretty reluctant to send their spoiled only child off to die for the glory of the party.
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I reckon the military scale up allows them to get away with more aggressive grey zone stuff. Theyâll keep pushing the line with more and more intrusive actions without actually directly invading. Allies and Taiwan will be less likely to aggressively respond to the grey zone attacks as they fear escalation.
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Thanks.
I suppose it would be a high tech war to begin, but that China would need to station troops on Taiwan forever if it were to secure victory in a high tech war.
Foxconn and some others are reportedly investing in India to diversify production from China.
So many businesses are scaling down in China.
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There are reports ( with China not mentioned by name) that the Netherlands is to extend export controls on microchip manufacturing machines to the DUV equipment , beyond those on EUV machines.
Reportedly the Dutch manufacturer ASML has not been granted export licences for its EUV machines to China since 2019