1) Why didn't he open it in my hometown? This location isn't convenient for me.
2) Wouldn't it be better for someone else to open a taqueria instead? My cousin is looking for work. Shouldn't we be putting resources into helping him open a restaurant instead?
It's like people hear "X in Asian country" and all they can think about is their own geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department. Obviously Japan is going to want to develop lucrative manufacturing... within Japan.
Anyways, just seems like a great place for Japanese workers to relocate and start a family. I guess the only thing missing were the jobs so hopefully these chip fabs fix that.
I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.
As you say, if you can work remotely, it may be fine but it's a different situation from working in a hub of whatever your specialty is.
The question is: is that actually a problem with Japanese work culture? That would be a large problem in US work culture because there's no loyalty from your employer, so you have to be prepared to find a new job at any moment. But it certainly used to be the case that if you worked for BigCorp, you could reasonably expect to work there for the rest of your life if you wanted. And under those conditions, it doesn't matter if the area is a hub for your job specialty.
I know Japan at least used to have a work culture where companies would be loyal to their employees, based on patio11's excellent blog post on how Japanese business culture differs from that of the US. But that was many years ago now, so I don't know if the culture in Japan is still like that or if it has changed.
Japan has been more stable in that regard. More stability but probably also fewer real opportunities.
I taught English in Tokachi (Obihiro, Makubetsu-cho, Satsunai, Ikeda) a few decades ago and it was absolutely a dream.
It's pristine farmland and country filled with crystal clear rivers and surrounded on all sides by snowcapped mountains. Fields that stretch forever. Hot springs. The freshest food. Fishing. Low cost of living.
You could look up at night and not only see all the stars, but watch dozens of meteors by the minute during showers.
Just Google for photos of Tokachi. It's gorgeous.
Everything is so relaxed, it's almost the complete opposite of Tokyo. It's very easy to meet friends. People work hard, but they take time to enjoy life and nature.
There are matsuri (festivals) almost twice a month. There are carts with whistles that beckon you to buy hot yellow sweet potatoes. There are fireworks and bonfires and sports and hiking and climbing. You can make an hour long trip to the ocean and see black pebble beaches that look like an alien world.
There are more parks than you can imagine. A park on every block. And some of them are huge and feature giant art installations you can climb on. 500-ft working clocks, rolling hills of recycled rubber you can bounce on, tall dinosaurs you can climb. And don't let that lead you to believe there aren't an incredible amount of plants and flora. It's an ecological paradise and was without question the inspiration for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
Everyone is so friendly. The store owners know you by name and call to you. The children all want to get their photo taken with a white guy. They're adorable and they want to talk English to you. The old ladies will smile and wave.
One time I was at a lake nestled in the mountains, and a guy in his late 40's or early 50's overheard that I lamented not having a camera (pre-smartphone era). He not only spent an hour taking pictures, portraits, etc. for me with his Nikon, but he printed them and sent them to me with a postcard.
The teachers at Kohryo High School (which was sadly shut down) even gave me lucky money.
Hokkaido is a magical place.
>geopolitical narrative fed to them by the US state department
Just this week Japan and China have been getting into a fight over the current PM's comments over Taiwan. China has canceled some flights to Japan and complained to the UN, announcing it will defend itself from Japan.[0][1] I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying major disputes between China and Japan don't exist and are invented by the US state department? Or that thinking about it in this context is the result of the commenters being fed by the US state department?
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3333992/china-blasts...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-takes-spat-with-ja...
The most the PRC could do is potentially sabotage production in Hokkaido, but if they can sabotage production in Hokkaido, they can sabotage it in Arizona.
To be clear I think the comments about "geopolitical stability" or whatever term we use are not as interesting as new chip plants itself. Or at least they are a bit tired by now. I also wish Japan the best and I think they are fully capable of building such a factory and I hope they do so. But to claim that the geopolitical considerations are invented is wrong. And in fact one of the reasons the Japanese government is investing in local fabs to begin with is due to national security, as mentioned in the article:
>Securing control over chip manufacturing is being seen as a national security priority, both in Japan and elsewhere, as recent trade frictions and geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns around the risks of relying on foreign suppliers.
So yes, viewing the entire story through a geopolitical lens is understandable.
In general, I think the US is looking for alternatives outside of Taiwan to build and operate fabs. Yes, there is a push to get them in the US as well.
I'm unsure of why people in the EU seem disconcerted about this. No one is asking them not to create the programs to setup fabs. In fact the US may be thrilled that more allies are putting effort towards creating a supply chain not dependent on China (and Taiwan).
Japan also already supplies a lot of critical materials for semiconductor fabrication, and has a lot of experience in the sector. They also have a well-developed domestic mechatronics supply chain. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing.
There are plenty of people in Tokyo/Osaka who can come to Hokkaido. If the jobs pay well, they will. Japan owes it to an entire generation who were left out in the "employment ice age." Japanese are very smart, can be trained, and should get first shot at the jobs.
>Maybe they will find people to relocate to satisfy the labor needs? They're notoriously anti-immigration.
According to western media. I (a gaijin) marched in the "anti-immigrant" rally recently myself. I was welcomed to do so. Nobody here wants to see foreigners coming in that destroy vending machines and just start building shanty towns on other peoples' property. Good gaijin are welcomed, bad ones need to leave.
>So unless they have a growing labor pool that can sustain this it's going to be hard.
That's not going to be a problem simply based on the crazy property prices in Kita Hiroshima next door to Chitose. People are obviously coming.
This is a top-level issue within Europe as well.
When the Biden admin began the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS ACT, France, Germany, and the entire EU began a massive lobbying campaign that verged into a trade war [0][1][2].
I went to school with a number of people who became senior EU and EU member state civil servants and leaders, and my college always hosted European dignitaries on a daily basis (along with a yearly gala/bash where all the major EU and EU member state dignitaries would attend with students and professors [3]), and what I saw was the best and brightest remained in the US, and those who climbed the ladder the fastest in EU and EU member state governments tended to have some familial background or network they heavily leveraged. Or they lucked out and joined the right student union during the right election cycle. There is a chronic lack of vision, and more critically - a chronic disinterest to take hard decisions, because the incentive structures are completely misaligned, with MPs essentially overriding careerist technocrats all for the sake of electoral needs, and unlike Asia, businesses are kept at arms length aside from those that are quasi-state owned like Volkswagen, EDF, or Leonardo SPA.
It's almost as if the worst aspects of private sector capitalism morphed with the worst aspects of state capitalism into a legalistic quagmire.
[0] - https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/real-reason...
[1] - https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/en/schadet-der-us-inflation...
[2] - https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/how-europe-should-answe...
[3] - https://euroconf.eu/
I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show. Yes, there could be slightly looser labor laws. But when it comes down to it - money matters and Europe just doesn't pay. The same for Canada. Their universities plodded through AI all through the "AI Winter" and now all their best AI talent works for US companies. There is no single Canadian AI company that's at the level of what their US counterparts are doing.
Yes, but it is comparable to the pay received in Asia - especially peer developed countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
The issues that have lead to laggard innovation in the EU outside of niches like Biopharma are institutional in nature.
> I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show...
I disagree about this as someone who has first hand experience about this w/ regards to the American semiconductor industry. Having a single window to manage disputes, get answers within days instead of months, and tax subsidizes should decisions not be guaranteed in a timely manner help reduce risk for massive capex investments.
This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry, and a similar template could have been used for semiconductors. The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
It can be fixed, but egos need to be set aside and individual European states will have to adopt industrial policy strategies similar to those that developing countries adopted to build their own domestic industries.
Not really. If you're an engineer in Asia you're in the top 5% - 10% of local purchasing power. While if you're an engineer in UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc you're not that wealthy by local standards, you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
>This is what EU member states like Denmark provide for the biopharma industry
Not just Denmark, but bio/pharma is a protected and state sponsored industry in most EU countries, unlike software, electronics and electrical engineering which has been treated as a race to the bottom industry.
> The issue is, the talent density for large swathes of electronics and computer engineering just doesn't exist in the EU anymore.
"Oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions". This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future.
Munich is still a strong tech hub for electronics with Apple, Rhode & Schwarz and others developing RF and semiconductors there, but it can't hold a candle to the sci-fi work being done in SV or even Israel.
Nope. You legitimately are not. The top 5-10% of salaries in both SK/JP/TW and Western Europe are primarily the managerial class.
And CoL is the same in SK and Japan with much of Western Europe.
> you're just average like most other white collar workers, unless you work for a US FANG.
Same in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. There's a reason immigration to Western Europe still remains somewhat attractive to Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese nationals to this day - similar salaries, but a better work culture and a stronger social safety net than in much of Asia.
> This is what you get when for the past 20+ years you outsourced your entire industry to Asia for the sake of shareholder returns with no thought of the future
Europe hasn't been at the forefront of this industry since the 2000s.
Yes Infineon, ASML, IMEC, and STMicro are supposedly European domiciled, but they were heavily dependent on defense R&D due to semiconductor's dual use implications and all of them largely subsumed American subsidiaries whose leadership became their leadership. As such, these companies haven't been "European" for decades.
The Japanese professional class care fuckall about PFAS and environmental issues have always been low on the list of priorities. Sorry. I love the Hokkaido produce.
https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...
Is it wrong for people in Europe to wish for more cutting-edge/high-margin opportunities in their back yard, especially given the currently atrocious state of the job market?
Like you read news how TSMC's cutting edge chips are made in Taiwan and US fabs, then you looks at European fabs and the most cutting edge are 16/12nm.
People are seeing the lag with their own eyes and wish for some change.
Nothing stopped European nations like Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, etc from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
Just becuase Europe was historically the richest and most powerful continent doesn't mean it will be forever.
Maybe there's a misunderstanding here, as there was no disrespecting anyone there with my comment, and I basically agree with your point.
That doesn't change that people here want those cutting edge manufacturing and job opportunities the US has. They don't want to be stuck competition with China in commodity widgets like cars or low margin 16nm-65nm microcontrollers.
There's a limited market for ASML machines, Siemens gas turbines, and Airbus planes which can't support economic growth of the entire block.
>Nothing stopped European nations like from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.
They're developed outside of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, etc since private businesses care most about prioritizing shareholder returns, not national sovereignty. And with Western EUs high labor costs, high taxes, high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc. Everyone with basic business know-how could have seen this coming but people still thought they could have their cake and eat it too in the globally cutthroat "free market" economy.
Case in point, Nokia just announced it is closing Infinera's Munich office and moving all operations to the US.
You can't build an ecosystem for bleeding edge work without an even larger pipeline of non-bleeding edge and even legacy workflow. For example, it's 14nm that pays the bills for TSMC - not 5nm/7nm.
And much of the entire Taiwanese electronics industry is largely coalesced around legacy nodes and low value work as well.
> There's a limited market for ASML machines
Made in American using American IP by a US DoE JV.
> high bureaucracy, strong unions, private companies slowly moved jobs elsewhere where it's cheaper to do business, no unions, less environmentalism, less labor protections, etc
Yet European Biopharma and chemicals engineering remains competitive despite having similar issues as a similar capex heavy industry with a significant IP component. It's really just an institutional issue.
Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition. It's a crazy patent minefield, massive regulatory moat, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus sometimes backroom deals between pharma and politicians. Nothing remotely similar to commodities like consumer software and hardware.
First, what I should have done earlier in this conversation because I keep forgetting how broad and complex of an industry this is:
What do you mean by the semiconductor industry? No country other than the US has an end-to-end domestic pipeline from design to fabrication to packaging to developing EDAs.
For this thread, I have limited my conversation to fabrication and package. These industries have largely coalesed around the US and Korea/Japan/Taiwan/China/ASEAN for decades because of industrial policies and educational programs.
For chip design, this industry is largely limited to the US, Israel, India, China, and Taiwan for decades due to a number of key hires at Intel back in the 1990s.
The strategy needed to develop a domestic chip design ecosystem is completely distinct from that for developing a domestic fabrication or packaging ecosystem.
> Pharma is not a commodity nor resembling anything like "free market" competition
It very much is depending on the type of compound, just like it is depending on the type of semiconductor (or downstream components).
> It's all about patents, massive regulatory moats, massive state subsidies and government protectionism plus backroom deals between pharma and politicians
Hate to break your cherry, but that's all industries. I remember our lawyers spending months working with the trade promotion ministry of a certain CEE state along with KPMG in order to get a sweet heart deal to open a dev hub in an IT park that was associated with a politically connected oligarch. The economics of biopharma really aren't that different from semiconductors:
1. You have an entirely separate design phase that is completely independent of synthesis/fabrication
2. You have entire sub-segments of the industry devoted just to synthesis/fabrication along with testing
3. Both are high capex/low margins industries, as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics market while higher margin IP tends to be owned by the American subsidiaries of European Biopharma companies
4. It doesn't necessarily make sense to synthesize low margins APIs when you will inevitably be undercut by American, Chinese, or Indian players so the best solution is to specialize in design because that at least allows you to own IP.
------
This is a question for each individual European nation, because this is something that the European Union cannot solve - do EU nations actually care about developing industrial policies intended to develop domestic capacity or not in specific industries.
If so, does each European nation actually have the state-level capacity and the human capital capacity to start making a case for investment.
Additionally, can any European state give the 50%-150% capital subsidy grants or 0-1% interest rate loans that countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, the US, and India along with their state-level components?
After chatting with my friends who work on these types of questions in Bruxelles as well as a couple larger European capitals, the answer was no, simply because the fiscal leeway just doesn't exist and the demand really doesn't exist either. If Volkswagen AG or Groupe Renault is pushed into a corner, they will just shift manufacturing out of Europe and towards China or India respectively.
It's not binary where it either it is or it isn't but there's various levels to it and Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives.
> as Asian players in both China and India have largely disrupted the generics
Then why did I never took an Indian or Chinese made paracetamol, but all generics in my EU country I ever took from the pharmacy ware locally made? Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods.
Because it was synthesized using Chinese and Indian sourced "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (APIs) [0], both of whom synthesize around 80% of all APIs required by European pharma manufacturers.
The EU is trying to rectify this, especially after COVID when India decided to stop all exports of APIs and pharmaceuticals to Europe in order to prioritize domestic production [1], but it still takes time (they started in 2021, and it'll probably take another 5-7 years to build the critical mass needed to rebuild a domestic ecosystem).
> Meanwhile I can't buy a locally made laptop, smartphone, GPU, it's all Asian made goods
Becuase, as I have kept elucidating on multiple occasions on this thread, the entire ecosystem for these goods simply does not exist in Europe, and no European member state is interested in opening their pocketbooks to subsidize manufacturers to move to Europe in order to begin manufacturing the intermediate parts needed.
Countries like those across ASEAN, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, the US, and India offer millions to billions of dollars in hard cash, land, tax subsidizes, or a mix of all 3 in order to attract or retain manufacturers. EU member states simply does not do the same for electronics. Some of them absolutely do so for biopharma (such as Denmark), but by and large they tend to be exceptions of the rule.
> Pharma gets special privilege over industries like cars, phones or semiconductors, since it deals with people's lives
Ime, Pharma PLIs and incentives are fairly comparable to those that would be provided to electronic industries as well. The same tax sops India gave to attract Apple to TN were similar to those that India gave Novartis and Bayer decades ago, and China has been using the same subsidy program it used to attract electronics manufacturing to attract and become a major player in the biopharma space.
[0] - https://pharmacia.pensoft.net/article/172383/
[1] - https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/05/india-vaccine-heist-shod...
It's almost like there is a propaganda campaign run all over social meda. Try a fun game, "What's it got to do with china?". Someone or something always tries to tie it to china.
Additionally, a Tokyo HQ often manages your South Korea and Taiwan operations as well because of legacy business ties from the colonial era as well as the flying geese era. That said, Sapporo does remain a bit of a niche area like Seattle or Portland before semiconductors because of how dominant Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya are.
Knock on wood the Rapidus helps spark a Japanese Beaverton.
Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain. Neither the EU nor any member states seems willing to do anything about this though.
Europe still is in a position, where it feasibly could control 100% of the semiconductor value chain on the continent. But besides meaning posturing there is nothing being done.
To be fair, Europe does have ASML which has something like 2/3 market share in DUV and almost monoplistic in EUV.
The moat is enormous, so they are unlikely to face any serious competition for at least a decade if not more.
Sure of course, just like COMAC vs Airbus/Boeing, BYD vs Western EVs etc.
But this is a bit different IMHO.
First there's still a lot of catching-up to do.
And second are they going to be able to gain sufficient marketshare in the Western market ? I am thinking here, both in terms of displacing ASML and in terms of Western companies being willing to depend on Chinese tech for such critical activities.
Who falls for this crap? An ASML EUV machine costs over $100 million and is delivered in dozens of shipping containers, taking up 2 floors in a fab.
You're going to need really extraordinary evidence that the PRC has a "desktop sized EUV machine" if you want us to believe you.
Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out reliability and overtook US competition. What are the odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?
They're also a critical player in supplying small drone parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.
We quickly improved product quality, and suddenly "Made in Germany" was a sign of quality. The same happened with Japanese products, with Korean products and the same will happen with China.
That's not possible. There are just too many different parts going into semiconductor production and they're scattered around the world.
Case in point: the source of the best semiconductor-grade quartz is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina and while there exist alternatives, for cost-competetiveness you want that.
Hilariously enough it belongs to Sibelco, which is a Belgian company, but it's still US territory, so subject to local politics.
Do you have any actual examples of things which could not be in sourced into Europe? I am very aware that for many reasons, among them costs, semiconductor fabrication is spread globally. But is there an actual reason why it would be impossible to have every single one of these pieces in some capacity in Europe?
Europe is continually moving further apart politically from both the US and China. Relying on the US for supplies and betting on Chinese, Taiwanese peace seems increasingly foolish. How can Europe secure itself in such an environment, without its own semiconductor supply chain?
It is possible that the EU could develop their own state-of-the-art lithography light sources but for now ASML is dependent on the US for it.
Then we can again focus on trade, lowering taxs and creating value. The only thing that is happening now is that the political class has become enormously rich through bribes and by having managed to phase out democracy and enriching themselves.
US has been doing the same thing for last 200 years and you act like its been different ???
oh, is that because you dnt get benefit as opposed to instability that US cause like middle east, south america, africa and asia ????
You are seeing from European perspective but I can assure you that there is people that seeing western country is a "bad guys" from these region because Western power always trying exert their influence via trade deal, regime change, fund armed group etc
What do you think the EU is? It's not a country, not a federative union. These things need a lot of discussions and synchronization among member countries, it does not work otherwise, so it takes time. I also hold the opinion that time is a resource the EU does not have, so it badly needs to reform itself - its framework no longer works for this "new age".
The #2 problem is language. Despite what many on HN think, European borders very much exist. They exist via language and bureaucracy.
These two combine to create many problems the EU and Europe in general has. The lack of vision, the excruciatingly slow bureaucracy, both are symptoms of the same underlying problems.
Japan is a single country with a single government that can unilaterally decide what it wants to do.
That's an especially obtuse way of minimizing the significance of their manufacture of the most complex machine ever made.
Google deepmind headquarter is located in Europe, US tech dominance just that good to attract talent all of europe
You can see list of AI researcher that comes from europe+asia
Universal healthcare? Vacation time you can actually use? Data privacy laws?
What a bunch of losers! Next you’ll tell me they actually give parents time off to raise their kids instead of dumping them into daycare after a month of drudgery and try to call it bonding !
Most European governments are for a long time now pushing migration hard overtly or subversively(since it's unpopular) arguing as if they're importing tools for the economy.
Given that our market share on the global economy is dropping steadily, this won't hold forever. By 2040 or so it might be more advantageous for Asian producers to just avoid our bureaucratized space altogether.
Already this year we had a showdown with Qatar over some ESG reporting and we lost handily, because we needed their gas more than they needed our money.
in favour of what? Every other large market (China, India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
> in favour of what? Every other large market (China, India, USA) has extreme protectionism in place.
The EU has higher tariffs than the US overall, especially for agriculture and cars. Policy is structured and uniform.
The IS has lower tariffs than the EU overall, but often used as political/economic weapon on specific countries and sectors.
The current administration's tactics notwithstanding.
This region with 500 million people in it will oscillate between Chinese and Indian influence. The Chinese are more powerful and richer, so the only way in which India can compete for influence is being more friendly.
china keep them in check via pakistan
India has been doing some incredible things lately. They just electrified their entire rail network in some five years. That is actually impressive - you need a lot of qualified people and coordination for that.
If they keep up, they will become a strategic adversary of China in Indochina (see the name?) quite soon.
India's promised ascendance to power and influence remain perpetually a few decades away. Meanwhile, the poor continue to lose purchasing power, the rich exploit the entire country, and India's total economic exports are comparable to those of the Netherlands.
I am sure that some part of the EU establishment is aware of this, but the measure taken are practically laughable compared to the magnitude of the problem. At some future point in time dealing with the EU will just not be worth it, as competitive companies outside the EU, not weighed down by EU regulations, will fill the gaps and entering the EU market will be seen as too toxic.
And those regulations are, more often than not, for everyone's benefit - at least EU, but often the Brussels effect applies so a lot of the rest of the world benefits too.
Germany's entire industry is currently dying since it is impossible to have a cost competitive manufacturing industry while having some of the highest energy prices in the world.
Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
Do you think Germany or France will continue to have a car industry, when China makes cars or the same quality for 70% of the price? Because that is currently the reality.
How exactly is that even remotely relevant? They only sell in select markets, and are killing it in them (best selling EV in the EU, Renault 5). What, if it's not a global behemoth dominating the world, it doesn't count as manufacturing? What exactly is your argument here?
> Within a decade or so COMAC will have a competitive passenger plane, seriously threatening Airbus market share.
Nope. Their own goal is to have, within a decade or so, a fully Chinese plane (their current C919 heavily relies on engines and other critical components from European and American suppliers). Specifically for the engines, they're looking at a comparable to the Leap 1C they were sold by CFM (American General Electric+French Safran joint venture). Those engines are around a generation behind the current best ones (Leap 1A, Pratt&Whitney GTF). In a decade, CFM and Rolls-Royce will have a new generation out, both having new models being tested right now.
So, in around a decade, the Chinese engines will be two generations behind. Efficiency is critical in aviation. And that's just the engines, in a decade Airbus will have a new A320 series replacement out, and Boeing will have one on the way too. And this is just for short to medium haul planes. And both the C919 and the C909 show that it's taking years for production to ramp up to any relevant numbers. Airbus recently opened a second final assembly line in Tianjin for the local market, they wouldn't have done that without being sure they have a market there for at least a decade or more.
> Your entire comment looks at the current status quo, not at the continuous downward trend or the abyss which awaits if Stellantis or VW Group get pushed out of the market by Chinese competition.
This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Potentially, but previous attempts (like the Xian MA60 and MA600, which are derivatives of the designed in the 1960s An-24) have been very unsuccessful. It made some sales in Southeast Asia and Africa, but a few of those have had accompanying corruption/bribery allegations and investigations, and most have been grounded after serious incidents and troubles keeping them operating at reasonable costs.
But my overall point is, it's going to take them more than a decade, probably around two, to be able to churn out fully Chinese passenger jets in any relevant numbers. The Chinese airplane market is massive, so even then they probably won't be able to deliver enough. There also aren't any plans to get the C919, existing or future fully Chinese version, certified by EASA or FAA or anywhere else, so legally the jet can't even fly anywhere else other than China for now.
So we have at least 2 decades more of COMAC being very behind and churning planes at a slow rate, at best. And honestly, anyone who thinks they can predict the aviation market 2 decades ahead is out of their mind. We could have hydrogen powered flying wings by then!
My argument is that China is producing EVs of the same quality for 70% of the cost. European wealth comes from exports.
>This is assuming that the Chinese competition would be allowed to compete on the same terms, which we already know won't happen - both the EU and the US have put in tariffs. And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point. There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
The car market for these companies will shrink from the entire world to Europe, surely you can see that this is an existential threat to European manufacturing.
>And we can see that a low cost Dacia EV is similarly priced to a low cost BYD EV.
Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. A BYD EV with 27% tariffs applied is cost competitive to the lowest end Renault Platform. In other words, the only reason Dacia is selling any cars is because BYD is not allowed to compete.
On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines. You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
That's certainly a claim. The EU market is pretty big, and has multiple avenues for growth (the whole of the Balkans is either in the EU but catching up, or outside the EU begging to be let in). It's not axiomatic that the EU needs to export to the whole rest of the world. And even if it is, there are plenty of countries that have an appetite for European goods for a variety of reasons (be it luxury or just quality associations, or innate hatred of China, like in India or South Korea).
> Exactly. The European car industry only exists because China is not allowed to compete, this is my point
Alternatively, because Chinese dumping is not allowed to destroy the European car industry, if we're only talking in economic terms. But the reality is that cars aren't that simple, as a market. For many cars are a status symbol, or otherwise everyone would be driving Dacias and Skodas and nobody would be buying Porsches vs VWs.
> There is no German/French/Italian car export industry anymore. Who is buying a German or French EV when he could be buying a better car for the same price or the same quality car for a lower price.
Of course there is. Stellantis, Renault, VW Group are selling well in their local markets, across Europe and various other markets (e.g. the US for Stellantis).
> On the topic of aircraft engines. The Chinese have mastered almost every technology the west has, it is delusional to think that they will never make competitive aircraft engines
Never said never, said their own timeline is a decade, for something competitive to the previous gen, while in a decade we'll be two generations ahead. Considering Chinese aerospace engineering has been struggling with engines forever, and Russia never managed to get close, ever, I wouldn't bet on China suddenly being able to leapfrog their own timeline.
> You are correct, COMAC will take more than a decade to compete with Airbus, but with the current trajectory it is practically inevitable they will catch up.
They will catch up to ~previous generation (A320ceo), by then Airbus will already have the replacement to the current gen (A320neo, future gen not named yet). So China will still be ~2 decades behind, in a decade-ish. Yes, they will definitely catch up by some point in the ~2050s, so what? Airbus caught up to Boeing, and there is enough market to go around for both. Embraer is in the process of catching up too. There being one more new entrant on the (again, only short to medium haul) passenger jet market, in a decade, really isn't the end of the world you're making it out to be.
To believe that the European car industry will survive purely on brand recognition is foolish and all current trends indicate otherwise. The Chinese are cars at the same quality for 70% if the price. That is obviously not sustainable and no amount of brand loyalty will overcome this.
None of your arguments seem convincing at all. Making worse cars at higher prices can not work. It is not a feasible long term strategy in any way.
Also, Stellantis is not selling well, they have huge problems with underutilized factories. Porsche is also currently in serious trouble.
Yes, we're talking about the current reality and trends about the future. Which is it, are EU manufacturers at large on the decline, or am I too focused on the current reality that they're doing okay, with exceptions?
> Making worse cars at higher prices can not work.
Who is talking about worse cars or brand loyalty?
A Renault 5 or Renault 4 are objectively good cars that sell well based on their performance and looks. Cars aren't bought only on the basis on cost, which is why premium or even just any other brand other than the lowest cost Skoda or Dacia exist in the first place.
> None of your arguments seem convincing at all.
It's not very convincing to say that manufacturing in the EU is on a death bed when its double the % of GDP as in the US, and has multiple domains where there are good performances. And then get extremely hung up that EU manufacturers must export, and that somehow cost is the only metric by which people buy stuff. And then get extremely hung up on car manufacturing in particular. But also somehow that EU manufacturing is worse quality, which you don't even attempt to prove. Yeah, when you put down the wrong conditions, you're going to get the wrong conclusions. And repeating them again and again doesn't make them more convincing.
Most best selling EV models in the EU are Tesla, from Renault or VW Group. Practically all of them are manufactured in the EU. This is not a declining trend.
And of course you're completely ignoring the reality that tariffs against Chinese dumping are a reality and here to stay in many markets. Manufacturers that relied a lot on e.g. the Chinese car market, like VW, will suffer. Others that didn't, like Renault, are doing just fine.
I believe that a Chinese car of the same quality, sold for 70% of the price of a European made car, will outperform the European car in every market, where those cars compete on equal footing. You disagree with that for reasons unfathomable to me.
I believe that the European export economy is vital for its prosperity. 45% of Germany's 1 trillion+ exports are to countries outside of the EU. You believe that loosing that economy can be made up in other ways, again for reasons which are unfathomable to me.
I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise. That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars or that European products are of lower quality) makes me not want to talk to you at all.
I disagree with that for pretty obvious reasons. The fact that companies like GM and Ford still exist, and not everyone has been buying the cheapest car that fits their needs, unquestionably proves that buying cars is more than just price. Quality is hard to directly compare, but you also have maintenance needs/availability, brand recognition, design.
But anyways, you're talking about manufacturing more widely, and we spent too much time talking about cars. 20% of the EU GDP that are in manufacturing really aren't all about cars.
> I do not think any evidence I could provide to you could convince you otherwise
That's an almost smart way of getting out of having to provide any.
> That you are lying about what I said (e.g. that cost is the only thing that matters for cars
How else would I interpret your incessant attempts to try to convince me that a Chinese car at 70% the cost of an European one would always win? The fact that you're completely ignoring the presence of brand or the importances of marketing and design on car buying choices clearly indicates you only think of cars as their cost to buy. Which is really not what most people's first consideration is, otherwise, again, we wouldn't have Tesla, VW, Audi, Porsche, GM, Ford, Lexus, etc etc existing.
https://www.americanchemistry.com/chemistry-in-america/chemi...
As for the Japanese professional classes, environmental issues are always an afterthought. Don't let the "harmonious" design philosophy of the fab fool you..that's tatemae. (Remember Jobs and pancreatic cancer? There's the price to pay for the shiny toys)
I wont be eating from Hokkaido if this pans out (their milk is overrated imho, but the seafood is top)
Maybe I'll get to eat more Austrian millet in the near future..
But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
Apparently these were not huge blows to their fabs, otherwise we would be talking about that day-in-day-out, but there's always a risk of that happening.
Japan is building Japan at semi conductor industry, for the benefit of itself, of course it is located in Japan.
Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China
China just has a history of denying what they're doing as they're doing it.
There are so many examples online. My favourite is of a Chinese warship ramming into its own coast guard vessel as they fail to intimidate the Philippines Coast Guard.
China built a road and villages and military outposts in Bhutan, over China-Bhutan border.
Also a success by the PRC would still result in the political destruction of the Republic of China and the subjugation of its people.
Back in reality, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is fully independent from the People's Republic of China and fulfills every criteria of nationhood.
Facts on the ground appear otherwise, but facts on the ground also imply that Taiwan is not part of the PRC's version of China.
No. I don't understand how you came to this conclusion. Both governments claim legitimacy and only one has actual sovereignty.
Taiwan is an independent country.
Taiwan is an island. It is still China. It is impossible to both give deference to the ROC and say otherwise.
I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate
One of the benefits of a free democratic society is that you can ask; and people vote according to their preferences. A recent study suggests ~13% of the public support unification with China: https://www.tpof.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPO... . Taiwan's politics are dominated by the KMT and DPP parties, both of which oppose unification.
> I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country
Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?
That or a remarkably flexible sense of morality, coupled with a supine nature and a total lack of balls.
But even if the state is parasitical, in the case of an invasion it's usually moral to support it.
Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't moral for the French to fight the Nazis or the people of Afghanistan to fight off the Soviets and Americans?
>You should support yourself and bide whatever state imposes itself on you.
Pathetic. Might as well go back to feudalism with that attitude.
It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you have influence over, that's democracy.
> It is not nationalism to want a sovereign nation that you have influence over, that's democracy.
So what's our excuse? Do we not have a democracy, or are we simply a contemptible people?
I live in the US. I think it's pretty obvious the PRC is more competent in every way than our own government is.
And from what I've seen of the ROC parliament, it is also an embarrassment to their own people
Yes, and you wouldn't be able to express your political opinion (like you do here on HN or anywhere else) if you were living in China. People living in the US tend to overlook that minute detail.
Being able to express our opinion doesn't mean much if nothing ever changes or improves
> the PRC is more competent in every way
I guess it depends what you mean by competent. Dictatorships can be frightfully competent at certain things, but that doesn't make them a good place to be. We're talking about a country that is genociding its own Uyghur ethnic group, represses Tibetan culture, disappears its own elite athletes, and has a horrific LGBTI record. The US is far from perfect, but has nothing on China in terms of nastiness.
That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
I think you have this reversed, friend. Our culture is based on violence and death. Theirs is based on stability and prosperity.
> That's not even touching the biggest problem of dictatorship, which is what happens when Dear Leader takes a fall. I doubt Xi has much more than a decade of leadership in him, and I worry for the Chinese populace when he goes.
I pray he liberates us before he passes. I agree it's not likely but.... one must maintain hope in this world
The fact that you wouldn't fight being occupied and forced to be a slave doesn't speak highly of you, but I must admit it's an honest statement, and it's true that a lot of people might feel the same way. A majority of people everywhere are cowards, collaborators and sycophants. But they're along for the ride.
Now, if your country is Burma, I don't blame you.
Surely rights to more substantial things like healthcare make this quite an easy decision. Freedom to criticize a government doesn't matter if you can't force the government to actually give a shit about anything
> According to the Numbeo Health Care Index in 2025, Taiwan has the best healthcare system in the world, scoring 86.5 out of 100,[6] a slight increase from 86 the previous year.[7] This marked the seventh consecutive year that Taiwan has ranked first in the Numbeo Health Care Index.[8]
I don't know how much the Taiwanese would be willing to fight and die in a military invasion though.
Realy? What is your country and why would you prefer to live under a dictatorship?
I’d be careful what you wish, you might just get it.
I like how this can be interpreted two ways, depending on whether you place loved ones above governance, or vice versa.
Premodern States simply couldn't afford the level of oppression and exploitation that is possible today. They usually just replaced the upper layers of the old hierarchy, put some small garrisons in a few places and left most local elites in charge, often with their local armies. If there was an organized rebellion, there would usually be a a few skirmishes and then a re-negotiation of the terms.
Today even Morocco could afford to turn Western Sahara into a territory with total surveillance, checkpoints everywhere and an impenetrable wall in the desert while slowly ethnically cleansing the native population.
because Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that
For the China part: Yes, the "by force" part certainly exists as a position, in competition to the peaceful unification approach. It's important to keep in mind, though, that the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction. There was an interesting piece in Foreign Policy about that, a social scientist from the US was questioning Chinese students at an elite university on this very topic and thus had the chance to do a time series observing the attitude change following US actions.
Secondly, in Taiwanese politics, Unification is actually a big topic and even has its own party, the New Party, advocating for it (plus the fringe CUPP). Not popular right now, but certainly existing - and evidently falsifying the notion that the all of "Taiwan doesn't want to be part of Beijing's China".
The existance of a faction within Taiwan that wants Taiwan to reunify with Beijing's China isn't materially relevant if they don't have any path forward to accomplish their goal.
This is the argument that you hit your wife because someone on the telephone made you angry.
Even within the framework of (structural) realism so popular in contemporary US politics there's this well-known problem that the buildup of defense capabilities of party A looks like aggression to party B - and vice versa. See the seminal work Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Or the relations of Britain and Germany before WW1 and WW2.
The FP article I mentioned, "Trump’s Trade War May Make Elite Young Chinese More Nationalistic" [1], illustrates the argument. You have actual empirical data, changing over time, after exposure to the "treatment". So at least a hint of causality.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/21/trump-tariffs-china-tra...
Declaring "I am a friend of democracies threatened by totalitarian countries" before every economic utterance looks as performative and ultimately counterproductive to me as all the "land acknowledgments" that infected the US academia. (Not coincidentally, those don't help actual Amerindians at all.)
Yeah, Central Europe in the 1930s was politically unstable, no way around it. And it wasn't just question of Czechoslovakia vs. Germany either. Most countries had irredentist movements and/or land demands on their neighbours.
[edit] I also spent about a year living in Prague and I love your country, Czechs are the best, and their sense of freedom is an immense relief from let's say other countries in the EU, so, I think it's amazing that you have maintained your independence from the enormous forces surrounding you and pulling in all directions. I think part of this is something I observed, that Czechs act like they are part of one small family.
BTW "Declaring your neighbor "politically unstable" and presenting yourself as its savior was the clearest way in the 20th Century to declare war without any casus belli" is not really true, sometimes this happened, but wars have been declared for all sorts of putative reasons, like "our particular minority is being oppressed" or "the neighbouring government plotted against the life of our sovereign" or "they are infidels, go get them".
Anyway I don't really see what you propose. Binning expressions because someone someday used them in bad faith, in the belief that this will stop future invasions from happening?
This seems to be somewhat futile to me. Invasions aren't fundamentally caused by words. Words only work as a cloak and one cloak can be easily substituted by another, and it will, depending on the current state of politics in the invader and invadee country.
Note that the Russians explained their invasion into Ukraine by calling them "fascists". Should the Western civilization drop the word forever because of that?
Yes, there have been other spoken reasons for invading a peaceful sovereign country. This does not change the fact that Russia is the belligerent party against Ukraine, or that China is the belligerent against a completely harmless and peaceful Taiwan.
Taiwan's situation right now is very similar to Czechoslovakia's in 1938. There is no international treaty with teeth to protect it. There is every reason for China to create a rationale for invading it. The people there have a decent life and don't want to live under occupation. And the reasons for invasion look similar; taking over industrial capacity under the guise of saving people from their confused political state.
Needed? Probably not. There is just no reason not to use that cloak of words.
If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in context of their own jobs.
FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France, Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that, but you could feel it every day in the way people treated each other. There is something incredible there about the people, the family, the place and the intelligence of Czechia. It is about keeping a small land for your family and people. I would say it's similar in many ways to Israel.
Now someone will come and shoot me, heheh.
But - there was a point. This is also why I defend Taiwan and I think everyone should. People should be free to get together to decide that they want to be part of something, not swallowed up by neighbors who despise their way of life.
We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people just prefer sticking their head in the sand.
Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning building-up danger, because of their long history of persecution.
I can't speak for all Jewish people, but yes we are raised reading history to understand the way that threats can build up over time, and the multiple masks that threats can wear. For me, personally, I see this as an affinity to all small, powerless but free people... Kurds, Taiwanese, Ukrainians, Tibetans, Yazidis... particularly those who don't evangelize but simply want to be left alone to prosper and live in peace with their own people. Czechs are similar to that as the most "western-facing Slavic people" and I grew up in America enthralled by Vaclav Havel as a beacon for individuals and every small nation wanting freedom.
You are of course right that this history of persecution raises one's antennae and evokes horror at anything that seems to favor totalitarian modes of thinking. But the Czechs level of paranoia made me laugh sometimes, maybe because it was so similar.
I can almost hear him. That is basically the essence of Czechdom :)
It is interesting how some aspects of culture are essentially the same and others diverge wildly once you cross the border. When it comes to Bier and Schnitzel and snowy Christmas, Czechs are almost indistinguishable from Bavarians. But in other aspects it is just as you saw it, two worlds apart.
Taiwan’s democracy is absolutely threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower, that wasn’t in any way incorrect or misleading, and that’s how the GP post phrased it. Its state is threatened with destruction. That’s entirely accurate.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
You want it to be a state but your own country says it’s not one most likely. Stop embarrassing yourself.
[edit] I think I’ve used the wrong term here but I think I get the idea across. There are diplomatic lies maintained in many situations where everyone largely operates like it’s not true, and the situation with Taiwan is so quintessentially one of these that’s it’s a common first example to illustrate the point. In my defense it’s been a loooong time since my last international relations class.
The standard authoritarian playbook would require moving to step two, which we saw in action a few years ago on the other side of Eurasia:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/stark-b...
Hokkaido is significantly safer compared to Honshu. It does still experience quakes, but it is at least not directly on major fault lines.
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
Then if it's decided it's illegal, who enforces that decision?
*reasons given for China being an actual threat*
"Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave, then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
You still haven't answered my question and are beating it around the bush with silly jokes.
And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same with China's actions. When you're too big and too powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing that you do can be illegal because legality is an artificial man made construct where the strong enforce their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors by pretending it isn't like this.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
Otto von Bismarck
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468/ch...
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places are part of the same country, and the international community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises one government, but de facto everyone trades with both countries and deals with both governments.
Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones of actual control, and India turned them down.
Interestingly enough, there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in Scandinavia, not Finland.
I'm not sure you have a good grasp on the meaning of the word "recent". A recent theory, by definition, must differ from the consensus.
> There is no credible theory to that effect.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.13.584607v2
Granted, they don't say "Finland". They say "the northeast along the Baltic coastline".
There’s no new theory here at all, just some nice archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am constantly reading Germanic–Finnic and Baltic–Finnic contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat stuff.
You've quoted something that says after proto-Germanic had diversified, daughter lineages left southern Scandinavia to establish themselves elsewhere in the world.
But I pointed out a completely different idea in the paper, that before proto-Germanic diversified, about 2000 years before the time you mention, its speakers arrived in Scandinavia from "the northeast coast of the Baltic".
Moreover, you posted about a “new theory”, but the paper here only gives new evidence for an old theory.
Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s Prime Minister), on the day that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can always be said but here’s a 2 minute video that explains the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek
You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun? That wasn’t a metaphor. That is PRC policy since 1949.
There is not going to a be a war in the modern context.
Secondly, only one war has happened between China and India, in which arguably we Indians kind of started it- Read here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_policy_(Sino-Indian_co...
""" The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]
"""
Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will.
Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them.
Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy, resources or anything.
Much ado about nothing!
Americans love sending other people into meat grinders for bankers' profit.
By the way China doe not want to share the power with anyone in Asia
I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it’s crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with Indian forces.
The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.
Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.
For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.
Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).
So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.
Now do the same for the USA, UK, Japan, Italy, Turkey, etc.
How about a fake alien reveal?
We need to win the AI race! The implication being that there can not be more than one winner…
These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they didn't, because these are war machines for invading Taiwan.
Almost all other military buildup China has done can be validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges cannot be considered anything else.
>What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon?
China has publicly declared their intentions to take back Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent country it is.
Stop squeezing your eyes shut.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.
Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?
For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
Is that not a threat?
The Chinese threat is also being handled by rapid rearmament. JSDF has been like, dual-fast-tracking lots of things including MRBMs for operational capabilities in 2026-27 timeframes.
- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, in reference to Japan
China will not annex Japan or South Korea. As a Chinese person, I can assure you that this is not how our mindset works at all. Most of the Western media hype about this is deliberately designed to muddy the waters around the Taiwan issue. Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity. But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples. Every non-Chinese group has always been viewed as a net burden. Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port, the price would be having to assimilate tens of millions of Burmese people. That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it. The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.” So with South Korea and Japan, the real goal is to surpass them industrially and economically, to leave them in the dust on the factory floor and in the lab. When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table. No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.
Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.
(Thank you for acknowledging that this is a civil war — that's something you rarely see on Western forums.)
It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil war and France helped out.
No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland are standard course material; the history and politics around reunification aren't some big mystery.
Don't get me wrong. The history is interesting, but from an American perspective interesting history doesn't translate into justification for violent incursion on an established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with. The American lesson from our history isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
Of course you don't support invasions of your puppet nation that only exists because of your intervention. But let's flip this around. Suppose that there was a second American civil war, one side lost and retreated to California. PRC funds the losers, stations troops there, signs a treaty guaranteeing to defend their independence. Do you think the US would ever, in a million years, accept that? Even after 75 years, it's obvious the US is going to state that California still belongs to it, and would try to reclaim it whenever possible.
If you looked at this objectively, rather than from your perspective as the defender of the puppet state, it would be clear that PRC's claim is justified. All the more so because not only was the territory rightfully theirs, but now they have a hostile power from halfway across the world threatening to use it as a staging point against them.
Your American lesson, also, does not disbar any country from having any claim to any land. America is by far the most egregious actor in the world stage because it routinely does, in fact, invade lands that are halfway across the world. It can be true that invading a country on the other side of the planet is wrong, and that seeking to re-unify your partitioned country is not so wrong.
That said, I don't particularly expect it to ever come to war, anyways. I think it's much more realistic that PRC will exercise political influence and economic pressure to achieve re-unification rather than invasion.
We're 79 years removed from Philippine independence, and you would have to try very hard to find a single American who wants them back. The US military would have been fully capable of annexing Iraq and Afghanistan with violent repression of dissent and zero concern for civilian casualties, had that been the will of the people. After 75 years of peaceful coexistence with a hypothetical independent California, I would be very surprised to see any political will for annexation.
The "same international norms as the rest of the world" you refer to are anachronistic. The post-WWII norms, to a large extent defined and upheld by the US, aren't based around maximal balkanization or unconditional support for separatism, but rather opposition to transfer of territory by force. If that sounds like ladder-pulling, maybe it is, but China has no standing to complain; Western conquests have been largely disbanded, while China remains as the third-largest nation in the world (ahead of the US).
I'm not claiming that the US has never done anything wrong. I asserted the opposite of that. I'm arguing that pointing out someone else's crime isn't a justification for someone to go commit a crime of their own. If you shoot someone from a rival gang, your lawyer isn't going to argue in court that it's okay because someone else from that gang shot someone else a decade ago. There's actually a word for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
But if we both agree that wars of aggression are bad regardless of whether they're started by the US, China, Russia, or anyone else, then we're basically on the same page.
Moreover, the US specifically simply adopted a different model: puppet governance. As did the USSR. You would hardly find an American who would say that the USSR was benevolent, despite the fact that they believe themselves to be benevolent while doing the same things. Invading a country to install a regime loyal to yours is not meaningfully different from annexing the country outright. But it allows the populace at home to believe that they are doing the right thing. Why, their form of governance is the best governance in the world, so they're doing other nations a favor by invading them and replacing their governments!
Americans will make all kinds of fuss over China doing meaningless posturing in territorial waters, meanwhile their government is currently launching missiles in Venezulean waters, actually killing people. They violated the sovereignity of Iranian airspace, dropping bunker busters on government buildings. They assassinated another nation's top general. These are all acts of war. Nothing has changed. America continues to operate as it always has, under the principle of "might makes right", while dressing its operations up in pretty rhetoric.
Pointing out hypocrisy in ongoing international norms is not whataboutism. In a world where nobody is ever punished for shooting a rival gang member, then you either shoot or get shot; that is simply the natural way of things. And moreover, the prosecutor bringing charges against the Red Gang is a member of the Blue Gang that shot theirs first. Why would the Red Gang entertain, for a moment, the charges of aggression from the Blue Gang which did already intervene in its civil war and effectively seized territory from it? For the Blue Gang to possibly be convincing to the Red Gang, it would first need to make amends and to stop actively committing 10x worse crimes than the crime it accuses the Red Gang of. If we want a peaceful world, I'd argue the onus is on the US to live up to its self-proclaimed "rules based international order" first, because it is the one violating those rules the most, and other nations will not simply lie down and agree to be bound by rules that are openly being violated to their detriment.
I'm in agreement that wars of aggression are bad, but I strongly dislike the tendency for that to be selectively leveraged to paint only certain actors in a bad light. I think from a non-American perspective, it's pretty clear that the US is a much more egregious international actor than China. But if you agree with that, you're in a true minority of Americans. Even if there are a substantial portion of Americans who disagree with their own invasions, most of them will still see China as much worse than themselves, despite the fact that the PRC's last and only real invasion was the reclamation of Tibet 70 years ago, and otherwise it has only started a couple of minor border skirmishes for the entirety of its existence. Meanwhile Americans engage in Yellow Scare-esque fearmongering about China invading Japan which, as a neutral third party, seems so far outside the realm of possibility as to be utterly delusional.
I wouldn't unconditionally agree that "the US is a much more egregious international actor than China". I'd use a more neutral descriptor than "egregious", maybe "militaristic". Following the rule of "might makes right", as you point out, the US more or less became the self-appointed world police after WWII. That's inherently going to involve unpopular decisions and occasional abuse of power, but it's a fundamentally different relationship with the world than pure assertion of first-party interests. The ultimate goal of post-WWII American foreign policy has been to ensure that the rest of the world remains stable and open enough for reliable trade, from which China has also benefited tremendously.
US as world police is a mixed bag, but it is what it is. No one outside the US is really complaining that America bears the cost of its navy protecting international trade routes, for example. I'm as harsh a critic of certain US actions and policies as anyone, but modern American hegemony doesn't resemble the prior centuries of great powers running amok. The US today doesn't invade innocent countries for the purpose of stealing their land and resources or enslaving their people.
The concerns about China aren't limited to its past military actions, but also its domestic policies and stated future goals. For better or worse, China's domestic policies are quite illiberal relative to American values. This alone precludes China from being considered a clear ally of the US, and informs perceptions of what a hypothetical Chinese-led world order might look like. China gets to play the "what about America" card because the US is still generally invested in globalism, but how China might behave in a power vacuum created by a US shift to isolationism remains speculative.
I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden was also known for his dovish politics.
Are you referring to 2014s invasion because of ISIS?
If that sounds lacking in nuance, well, I never claimed to believe American political discourse was particularly nuanced ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Trump has been building up our military presence in the area over the last few months[1]
-He's already striking boats that he claims have weapons of mass destruct... I mean drugs in them
- Trump said “I don’t think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,” [1]
- He declared the cartels terrorist groups [2]
I believe he's going to link Marudo to the cartels and use it to justify a war to force him out of power.
Republicans, will support him. He'll lie, like he always does, and they'll believe it either due to stupidity or tribalism. The further they follow him the more painful admitting they are wrong will be.
[1]https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-won-t-congress-ove...
[2]https://www.state.gov/designation-of-international-cartels
There are a number of frozen conflicts around the world, like North/South Korea and Cyprus. Both of those could be regarded as "civil war with external support", like Vietnam. What would be better is if those involved could recognize the situation as it actually is on the ground, and withdraw their claims and intents of actually resuming armed conflict.
Europe knows all about reigniting pointless conflicts over ancient grudges, from the Hundred Years War to the Balkans. The post-WW2 world order was an attempt to finally draw a hard line underneath that.
most of the conflicts today is created by Europe(+US). for example, the china-taiwan issue didn't resovled before is because USA Intervene. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide originated from the artificial division of the same ethnic group during the colonial period; the India-Pakistan conflict was a deliberately left-over dispute by the colonial powers upon their withdrawal(UK); the border issues between Cambodia and Thailand(France), as well as the ongoing turmoil in the Palestinian region(UK USA), are all closely linked to historical interference by external forces(Europe).
No, it's quite common.
China was happy to invade Tibet and assimilate it's population.
Hard to believe that a government who claims all of South China sea, large parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh) does not want to expand.
Or do you think people of Arunachal Pradesh are also Chinese?
I am willing to bet all of the money I will ever make in my lifetime that China will not invade either one as long as they remain under the US nuclear umbrella.
When Tibet then broke away from China the Brits got what is now Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet.
Hence the ongoing Chinese claim but the days of any military actions are long gone.
Historical claims are meaningless and are just an excuse for expansion.
Chinese territorial claims in general are not "an excuse for expansion", they are rooted in territorial losses at the end of the 19th century and during the revolution of 1912 with the formal aim of recovering them. They also predate the PRC as you'll find that the ROC/Taiwan has the same claims for the same reason. This does not mean that China is going to go to war over them, certainly it won't go to war with India.
No need for drama or hysteria over those claims.
Then why make a claim? Claims are made to prepare the domestic audience so that when war comes there is home support for the action. It is not made lightly.
The Chinese are definitely taking action in the South China Sea. It is not just words.
That's your opinion, not reality.
Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan conflict is just ignorant.
In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
The point I was responding to was the misleading comment that the people of Taiwan are actually just engaged in some kind of internal dispute with the CCP, which is entirely a CCP framing of the issue. Few if any people in modern-day Taiwan believe that they are the true inheritors of the Chinese mainland. The pretense has to be upheld in order to preserve the status quo, but in practice there is no serious movement staking a claim to any part of China.
This is broadly true, not just "CCP framing". Obviously because of history and external influence there is also an "independentist" faction.
I don't see why this should be hard to accept unless the aim is indeed a "reframing" to push the independentist narrative, which does not really need it as the status quo mean de facto independence. So perhaps the aim is actually more along the lines of an anti-China narrative.
If you want to use history as some kind of justification, why don't we go all the way back to when the human race originated in Africa?
But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants unification by submitting completely to the other. So the only way it's happening is with force.
- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, addressing Japan
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
This is correct, since the Qing Dynasty was led by the Manchus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty), not by the Han Chinese.
And the general argument is not about whether there is something inherently imperialistc in the Han -- it is about whether the Han are so isolationist that this should somehow prevent China as a political entity from expanding. Well it has not prevented this before (cf. also the Tang period expansion, if we want to talk about more distant history), so I see no reason why it should prevent it now. Unless, say, the CCP cedes control to an openly Han-nationalist party, but then the last one was imperialist alright (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)).
How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.
(Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower political process. And the country as a whole should agree, with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1 power over it's sovereignity.
do your homework, taiwan also claims its china. maybe you mean its not for them to decide?
The difference is that Taiwan only exists because the losers of the Chinese Civil war ran away to it, and the winners (CCP) were not allowed by the US to finish the job. So for the CCP, Taiwan has always been a problem still left to resolve, an American thorn in their side. It was along the main reasons for them joining the Korean war, because the monumentally dumb McArthur publicly praised and supported Chiang (the leader of the losers of the civil war, the KMT), which led to CCP fears the US will use the Korean peninsula as a sprinboard to attack them and install Chiang back to power.
So while self-determination trumps those concerns for my personal view, I can totally see where China (CCP) is coming from. Especially with a very aggressive American stance against them, why would they want to keep a very friendly to the US runaway province out there?
For Americans, imagine the Confederates ran away to Puerto Rico, force assimilated the locals, and became very friendly with Russia. For the French, that a Bonaparte was ruling Corsica while being friendly with the big bad wolf (depending on the age, Brits or Russians maybe). And on and on.
My main gripe was mostly around the perceived reasoning that ethnicity or culture of some people would make it more okay to try to annex, or invade, anything.
> When it comes to Japan in particular, the deepest desire in many Chinese hearts is for Japan to start a war first—so China can finally settle the historical score once and for all. But even in that scenario, turning Japan into “part of China” is not on the table.
From GP. That is also a bit worrying to me. Who decides what's the fair "historical score"? But mostly, people shouldn't desire for war or use past wars as a reason for new wars. This is more complicated than ethnicity or culture, but it's dangerous and people should just learn to let go or it never stops.
False flag attacks are a thing and have been used many times as a pretext for an attack. Russia has done it. Russia also often uses history as an excuse for new wars. I'm sure it's always possible to dig out some rationalization. The result is mostly more suffering of innocent (who might not have even been born during the cited conflict).
Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.
Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago, the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few decades after being occupied by Japan there still were many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any opposition.
I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would have been their decision.
Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong ties with China for many centuries and which recognized the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily discriminated in Japan.
This dual allegiance of Ryukyu, openly to China and secretly to Satsuma allowed Ryukyu to be an intermediary in some commerce between China and Japan, which officially was forbidden.
The official occupation of Ryukyu by Japan happened only in 1872, after the Meiji Restoration.
After 1609, there was no occupation of Ryukyu by Japanese. There was only a permanent threat of military intervention from Satsuma if the Ryukyuan king would have dared to act against the demands of Satsuma, which included a tribute and unfavorable commercial relationships.
All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China. That’s the essential difference.
No, i'm the lates Kimi model
Then the Treaty of San Francisco (which didn't involve China signing or agreement or anything) said that the Allies would revert control of Okinawa to Japan, which was the Allies choice at that point given that they were in control as stipulated by the Potsdam agreement.
What's the gap between what was said and what happened? You could argue that the WW2 agreements were unfair and didn't follow historical ownership but I'm not sure which part of the agreements themselves was directly violated.
The way to do it, is to propose a UN coalition invasion. Or to quietly provide arms to the side you like more (which never backfires).
Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.
So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.
May I ask if you actually live in one of these neighbouring countries? I do -- in fact I have lived in more than one -- and I can assure you that many/most people living in these areas outside of the Western media bubble absolutely do not share your view.
From the CCP's (and many Chinese people's) perspective:
1) the U.S. repeatedly interfered in the CCP's/KMT's attempts to resolve the civil war -- see e.g. the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (during which the PRC shelled Taiwan), Project National Glory (the ROC's plan to reconquer the mainland) -- preventing the mainland and Taiwan from reunification;
2) the Taiwanese government has lost the civil war, and the loser doesn't get to set the terms.
Pretending that the PRC's interest in Taiwan isn't special is to ignore extremely crucial historical circumstances that are core to understanding the situation today. Regardless of what you think of the PRC's stance on reunification, their desire to reunify doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it takes ahistorical leaps of reasoning to suggest that the PRC might want to annex South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. next.
> only during the last few centuries
This is way more than enough time to drastically transform the culture of a society. Taiwan today is culturally much more similar to the PRC than it is to the West. In some aspects it is also similar to Japan, despite the fact that Japan colonised it for "only" 50 years.
The cultural distance between Taiwan and Japan, Korea and Hong Kong is less than the distance from mainland China. Aka Asian liberal democracies (or at least with strong political plurality and civil society). You're mistaking a regional difference with a commonality with the PRC, when in reality the PRC's epistemic worldview is highly distorted in comparison to virtually every other actor in the region. They don't speak for the region.
Taiwan has spent the approx 120 years on a very different political, economic, cultural track from the mainland. Taiwan diverged from the other subject of the Qing dynasty before Han nationalists began their century long project to forge a united Chinese nation. In particular, Taiwan did not go through decades of communist terror, but did experience the fruit of democracy.
I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang
Claims to the contrary are largely historical revisionism. (As are the various claims that Tibet was culturally influenced by China - the story of Princess Wencheng bringing agricultural technologies to uncultured Tibet, as it is often taught in Chinese schools and portrayed in period dramas, is a myth that only came to popularity during the Chinese Civil War.)
Remember also that until 1951, Tibet occupied Chinese territories more often than vice versa - although given the case of Manchuria, China might actually see this as an argument in favor of Tibet being Chinese.
From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.
And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.
And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time
Takaichi is a slightly right of centre nationalist. Pushing a mild tightening of some immigration rules to maintain the social contract around immigration, and fend off the right wing populists. Her policies amount to things like tightening foreign land ownership rules and refusing visa renewals for people not paying their health insurance or pension (which is mandatory by law for all residents).
She’s had friendly relations with SK so far and recently met with the SK President and bowed in respect to the Korean flag.
Her “provocation” of China was to state, when asked in parliament, that an armed invasion of Taiwan by China would be a case of a potential existential threat to Japan.
Which frankly is utterly obvious to anyone, including of course China. Japan hosts American military bases. If China attacked Taiwan, triggering an American repose then there would at the least be Chinese missiles aiming for Tokyo (Yokosuka) and Okinawa.
What, does the Pearl River freeze over in winter?
Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.
Noone is letting China "solve the taiwan problem" like you said.
Such inflammatory language.
If the world reacts to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan the way we have reacted to Russia invading Ukraine, China will consider that a great victory, and might be able to take Taiwan.
If the US, Japan, and Korea do not commit fully to naval interdiction and blockading China from attacking Taiwan, Taiwan is likely to fall eventually.
China is not Russia. Xi somehow is not as utterly isolated from reality as Putin is. Putin didn't even know that Ukraine would resist, and was entirely convinced that Ukrainians would welcome them. China can build new equipment, and new modern equipment at that. Russia can barely manage to bring ancient tank hulls up to 2000s level and send them to the front line. They are also running out of old hulls to do that with.
China has a sizeable and meaningful air force, modern battlespace management that was shown effective by Pakistan's use in their recent conflict.
Is the current US admin actually competent enough to protect Taiwan even if they want to?
It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
If you mean Russia, then no.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 is unwavering. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-japan/Ukraine surrendered the sharpest tool in its arsenal for those assurances, its inherited nuclear arsenal, the world’s third-largest at the time. But the loss was broader than warheads; it was the surrender of a strategic future.
America first means America first. All politicians will say one thing and do another, always check the incentives…
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".Even if they managed to land they would probably be pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are already having trouble supporting troops just across the border. There's no way they would be able to support an invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians could pull that off without opposition, something they would certainly have in spades.
A land invasion of mainland Japan is so unrealistic that even the US in WW2 didn't attempt it.
Knowing those two facts, we can conclude that Russia will not be invading Japan as long as it is protected by the United States. The calculus is very simple when nuclear weapons are involved.
Also, keep in mind that D-Day was the largest amphibious assault in history and all they had to do was cross the English Channel. Russia invading Hokkaido would be suicide, the US nuked Japan rather than try invading the homeland to end WW2 and we controlled every island surrounding Japan at the time.
Maybe its time for people to stop being paralyzed by fear and invest in their future. If China is such a severe threat to Japan, then invest more in the JSDF. Yes, China is powerful and has an aggressive stance, but that's no reason to give up without a fight. Japan and South Korea together can very nearly match China's shipbuilding tonnage per year, and besides that Japan collaborates with America to develop advanced naval missiles like the SM-3 Block IIA. Effective deterrence of China w.r.t. Japan should be achievable if people stop overdosing on blackpills.
And that's just one part of the expansion. But the short version is that the JSDF isn't staying a defensive only institution.
The other side of this is that modern large military ships are almost literally unsinkable. It is very difficult to get enough explosive on target due to their extreme damage resistance.
When the military does live fire exercises where they attack obsolete military vessels with no active defenses using torpedos, missiles, bombs, etc, they usually don’t manage to sink it. They have to send a specialized demolition crew afterward to actually scuttle the damaged ship and turn it into an artificial reef.
An operational large military vessel will have layers of substantial active defenses that make this even more difficult.
The whole point of the navy is to be able to control waterways. The whole point of being able to control waterways is to be able to economically ship large amounts of material and people; in the case of warfare, soldiers, bullets, food, water, fuel, etc.
An unmanned fast attack sub is going to be useless for defending your logistics fleet from strike fighters and anti ship missles. Even a dingy that has a guy in it with a rocket propelled grenade can send a cargo ship to it's grave. You have to have a surface ships with powerful defenses to protect them.
But yes, I agree Japan, Indonesia (as was intended), etc should wise up.
Your "whole humanity 'We'" isn't who's investing in chip industry in Hokkaido. It's Japan.
Same time, Japan clearly wants freedom to do things its own way. Good. It has the freedom. It just has to take it. Do it.
Being deeply embedded in global supply chains and your allies’ economies makes it a lot more difficult for them to justify abandoning you to your enemies.
Shouldn't you take WWII history into the account?
1. South Korea - Korean war happened and majority of South Korean want US military base there 'cause you know North Korea with its nukes point at Seoul.
2. Japan - well, everyone know what happened and the treaty were signed thus military base in Japan.