Nobody is crying wolf here, this is just a statement of imports and exports based on publicly available data giving context to China’s interests in the region. Is admitting that China works for their own geopolitical interests too much for you? We’re now down to dismissing public customs and OPEC data because engaging in foreign economic interests is a little too close to American imperialism for comfort?

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

My take may have come across a bit too doomer: I wouldn’t say humanity itself unavoidably fucked, and our current choices do matter for what generations may come after. My working theory is that the gravity of sedentary civilization is unavoidable due to clear benefits but it’s also inevitably self terminating. Our choice is in how we navigate it.

We can’t grow our way out of our universe’s material limits but we also can’t voluntarily exit the Nash equilibrium of our established civilization. At some point the treadmill of progress ends and we can’t avoid that no matter how slowly and carefully we approach it. After the dust settles we return to a primitivist state, except this time it is physically impossible to reach the same destructive heights. Accessible surface metals are expended, radioactive fuel is spent, mineral deposits have been tapped and diffused, etc…

Our main job is to ensure that the earth remains livable when that time comes. There’s nothing inevitable about a global nuclear apocalypse or total climate collapse. If we avoid those we can achieve something like a soft landing, but we have to accept that our global population and quality of life will plummet no matter what because it’s not sustainable in any other system. Notice that this isn’t quite the same as Anarcho-primitivism even if the end goal is similar, we can’t change the broad strokes of history but we can choose how hard we crash the plane.

Old as in proven? Diffuse, stable and peaceful power is infinitesimally unlikely because violence (or the threat of) is the only tool you can have in a sedentary civilization. Resources are not evenly and equitably distributed in the world, e.g. the people who can only grow wheat can’t stop the people with access to iron weapons from taking it. There’s no way to pack up their fields and run away. There is nothing to maintain an equilibrium of peace among polities except for a hierarchy of violence above or a balance of violence among them.

Let me know when you find a plausible alternative. There’s nothing special about our information age civilizations except for our vastly increased productivity and the efficiency of our violence. Somebody will always control the water/rare minerals/oil/food and that will create a power imbalance against their peers. When push comes to shove (e.g. a Carrington Event), whoever can project violence better will come out on top.

I suppose the best we could hope for is a global federation but I have no faith that something of that size + complexity could remain stable. Even if it could, it would still be subject to resource constraints and earth’s carrying capacity. Our modern infrastructure and technology all are based on the unlimited availability of non renewable resources. Once we inevitably run out of sand for concrete or petrochemicals for plastic or minerals for solar panels or arable topsoil the game is over.

China’s long game strategy is working

Is it though? Lets project a bit into the future:

Their focus on hyper productivity is based on access to a stable and open global market. When that market collapses their economy grinds to a halt and they suffer domestically. Idle factories and an unemployed populace can’t be put back to use without strong arm diplomacy to enforce geopolitical stability.

There’s no possibility for newly impoverished states to pay for your wonderful solar panels and batteries unless you loan them on credit, and you can’t collect that due without a mechanism to project your strength.

Those factories start to make tanks and drones and surveillance hardware because raw force is the only true way to preserve your power. This becomes a club to police problems both foreign and domestic which grows into a hegemony and starts the imperial cycle all over again.

It’s a smart strategy if your goal is to get your five minutes on the global throne. Then you suffer the same decay as the Assyrians, Rome, Persia, the Qing Dynasty, Spain, Great Britain, the USA, etc… The key issue is that time is running out on this game; no great power will ever be able to overcome the reality of the dwindling resources on our pale blue dot. In that sense it’s just another depressing and inevitable step on humanity’s march to self-extermination.

There’s nothing particularly shocking about this. It will probably eventually happen in China, Russia, USA and most major countries as their economies collapse from a century of unsustainable hyper-growth + climate catastrophes. They’ll cry foul but a foreign adversary can’t spark a fire without dry tinder, and all of these governments have leveraged their populist legitimacy against a quick buck for decades.

Some people are so blinded by ideology and political theory that this basic cause and effect has to be tinted to their chosen world view. Go ahead and call whatever you like a color revolution or illegitimate or reactionary, but if half a country can be mobilized in resistance to their government then that government deserves to be toppled. People have a right to reorganize their society however they want and whenever they want. A social contract is drafted by the people for the people and prior consent to governance can’t be eternal.

How free can it be if his actions don’t represent the will of the people and we have no legal mechanism to remove him? Why don’t you spew this “evil sheep” rhetoric about other tin pot dictatorships? If a foreign country isn’t your fault then how is 200 years of entrenched political decay my fault?

What have you done to reverse the march of fascism aside from look down your nose at everyone else? Are you out in the streets calling for US sanctions? Gonna stand by your inaction by telling yourself “it can’t happen here”?

He literally didn’t. Is it too much to look up a basic verifiable fact before you post dumb shit?

Edit: You might mean a he won a plurality which is just as stupid a thing to say. “More people didn’t want Trump than wanted him, go cry somewhere else”

Lol good job just equating two things as if it’s a gotcha. Damn, America really do be doing shitty things, therefore by association… Taiwan bad? The PRC must be the evil incarnate with all these decades keeping USA as their top trade partner. 'Merica bad, you really got me.

And btw, love dodging the entire argument with a tangential tweet and NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE. Come on, give me a prolewiki link or something; tell me why every Taiwan public opinion poll is actually fake or, if they’re real, why the Taiwanese public is wrong and papa CCP needs to spank them. I need a good laugh! And tell me more about denialism ☕

Nice, glad to see you admitting defeat. Fucking quotes from the CCP are agitprop? Give me a fucking break. Go ahead and translate those for me; you’re clearly a bastion of free and rational thinking. Oh wait, you can’t read anything but English and are arbitrarily choosing to discard sources that don’t fit your bias? Anything that runs counter to your red fanfic is a lie or a conspiracy.

The sheer lack of basic logic is incredible. You think that the USA is sneaking in and forcing Taiwan to prepare for PRC military action? Like they’ve got a gun to these poor Taiwanese soldiers forcing them to do push ups? The people of Taiwan want them there to maintain the status quo against PRC annexation. The polls say that in no uncertain terms (as I’ve covered in other comments). Maybe they wouldn’t be so willing to jump at the USA’s aid if they didn’t have fucking PRC rockets landing all around them.

Conversely, if the PRC held domain over Taiwan then they wouldn’t allow this interference. But they clearly don’t if Taiwan is acting independently to protect its own sovereignty. If you ignore reality by starting with “PRC owns Taiwan” then no shit your circular logic will justify any PRC action. This is insane.

“Stop training to defend against a PRC invasion invade mainland China [with your 150k troops 😂] or we’ll invade you” is a lunatic stance when you’re preaching peaceful reunification. Is this tiny island with 1% of your population a military threat? Or is the superpower with ICBM nukes the problem? Because if so, bullying [sorry "protecting"] Taiwan does literally nothing but feed plausible excuses to the USA hegemony machine. Ignore Taiwan and go run those drills off of Hawaii if you’re dying to be a tough guy. But if they’re not doing that then they must have a different plan in mind 🤔…

Now go ahead, it’s your turn to pick some minor point in this dead simple logic and try to counter it by citing an anonymous blog post or something…

Also I’m still waiting for you to tell me what I denied, I don’t think eye rolling is a real answer 🙄

How do Chinese ships depart from Fujain without encircling Taiwan?

You are an absolute clown:

China’s Eastern Theatre Command conducted 10 hours of live-fire exercises, launching rockets into waters to the north and south of [Taiwan] […] naval and air force units also simulated strikes on maritime and aerial targets and carried out anti-submarine drills around the island, while state media released images touting Beijing’s technological and military superiority […] China’s military said on Monday that simulating a blockade of Taiwan’s deep-water Port of Keelung to the island’s north and Kaohsiung to Taiwan’s south, its largest port city, was central to the drills.

I can read you, verbatim, CCP press releases saying they are doing this to intimidate Taiwan (“[they will] smash their heads bloody against the iron walls of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”) and you pretend they’re just out for a sight seeing cruise. Absolutely incredible levels of delusion. Xi should mail you some kind of medal for this…

You want to play at denialism then scream about foreign aggression.

Lmfao what did I deny?? I didn’t deny anything in any comment! I’m the one drawing the obvious parallels to US aggression! You’re just pulling from your stock response bag because your argument is completely hollow.

Crazy how it’s international waters when an American warship is in them.

Never said shit about it being international waters or claimed the US Navy was never there, we were talking about encircling Taiwan which the PRC literally just did. I hope you have the same decorum about US ships totally not practicing invasions of Mexico (😉). It’s right over the border after all.

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

Come on champ, you can do better than that. We’re talking about big scary warships and military bases and all you can link me is some run of the mill espionage shit? And it’s on Wikipedia no less, I’m gonna need to revoke your tankie card.

You’re name dropping Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, I need a chance of a military occupation or some Hueys blaring CCR. Give me a real military threat that requires a show of force on this puny island. If flimsy proxy wars counted the USA would be the #1 most righteous belligerent in every conflict from 1945 onward with how much the KGB/GRU tickled them.

Dude is high on his own supply. China is simultaneously the weakest and strongest global power depending on what argument needs to be made

The only invasion I’m seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.

I must be going colorblind because those ships are flying a very red American flag…

repeat the crimes of Vietnam on Chinese civilians, much like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Venezuela and Nigeria

Lol wtf? Unless you really bought dubya’s WMD bullshit, one of these countries is not like the others… I really doubt that any Chinese civilian on Chinese soil is going to get so much as a dirty look from any US armed forces…

Their president reneged it like 30+ years ago but that doesn’t mean much because it’s basically baked into their constitution. Changing the constitution to reflect their real borders would require triggering a vote and a bunch of formal processes that would absolutely instigate a conflict with the PRC.

Nobody wants that, including the voting population. Thus you see a milquetoast shuffling between independence and reunification parties in order to maintain the status quo (independence for all practical purposes) without being too radical for Beijing. In terms of polling:

• 48.9% are pro-[eventual]-independence
• 11.8% are pro-unification
• 26.9% want status quo

And when forced out of status quo, independence support jumps to out 60%. But for now they’re caught in a Catch-22 that allows the PRC to spit out this propaganda that people gobble up.

miltary conflict or economic blockade of China

So we’re just lying now?

And the concept of China even being bothered by a blockade? Lmfao what year do you think this is? You think this is some WWII Pacific Theater where aircraft carriers and islands and air strips matter? China has about 9000 miles of mainland coast and all the technology and expertise to defend or strike from any part of it. Taiwan, as they’ve demonstrated, could be locked down (or glassed) at whim.

If they didn’t have the annexation ambition, they could wave goodbye to an independent Taiwan today and be close allies in a decade. You accuse the USA of buying Taiwan as a puppet but there is literally nothing stopping China from doing the same thing (with better leverage). Hell, they’ve already shown they can take that route in other small countries but pride and greed prevents them from doing it in Taiwan.

The fact is that they want hostility and instability in the region in the same way that Russia wants instability in Europe and the USA wants it in the Middle East. Little islands waving guns is a great excuse to step in and start “liberating” resources people.

In the case of any superpower actually being invaded, nukes would start flying everywhere. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference if any island has 5 or 500 airbases.

Are you really this dense?

There are mechanisms by which nations are defined

Hate to break it to you but there literally are none. The concept of legal statehood is a fantasy; your existence is determined by what land you hold and who agrees to work with you on the international stage.

Taiwan in 2025 fits basically any state definitions (geographic location, population, government, election sovereignty, etc…), but the only thing holding them back from ratifying their current independence and gaining formal international recognition is the 1.43 billion lb gorilla across the strait. By the PRCs own stance, a declaration of independence would provoke an invasion and cut diplomatic relations with any country that supports Taiwan independence. This is how you get phrasing like the USA acknowledging (not recognizing) the PRCs claims and not supporting Taiwan independence (vs opposing).

Only 51 countries outright endorse the PRCs claims with the rest staying far away from an official position, so it’s not difficult at all to see Taiwan’s de facto independence. But the PRC has a knife to their throat preventing that from being formal, which is great for internet propoganda warriors like yourself.

China has held the line on peaceful reunification since the 1950s

Lmao PRC has nearly been guns hot with their saber rattling brinkmanship multiple times. If they stopped doing that for a few decades then maybe they’d get more support for a “peaceful reunification”, but it’s far more likely that Taiwan would want to remain independent.

national security implications

They’re a fucking nuclear power, that alone is such an obvious deterrent that any Taiwan threat is negligible from a national defense standpoint. We’ve lived in a world with ICBMs since 1957 for fucks sake. It doesn’t matter if a rival superpower decides to attack you from 50 miles or 5000 miles, it’s not going to end well (for anyone most likely)…

But the war games and rockets and patrols serve a much more important purpose than national defense: keep Taiwan hostile and use that hostility to preserve your casus belli. The moment that the USA (or whatever superpower) decides to withdraw their support you can hop right over and clean house. A peaceful annexation is much more risky and politically messy [see Hong Kong].

Spouting “peaceful reunification” is such a laughable farce when their posture is so obviously counter productive.

Nice deflection!

But I do agree, seems like you hit your own nerve reading these comments. Having trouble stomaching the fact that blind support for “AES” means cheering for the jack boots running over hunger striking students? Keep digging up conspiracies and excuses, you’ll beat that cognitive dissonance eventually.

Lmfao it doesn’t get more tankie than mourning the loss of a fucking tank.

Now let’s all laugh about the pictures of actual crushed, shot and mutilated humans [NSFL]. Are these people plain clothes PLA killed by uh… students false flagging as tank drivers?