- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
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The news media needs to stop using the word “reunify” to refer to the PRC’s threatened imperial conquest of an island they’ve never controlled.
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If they’re using a false term but quoting someone they should use quotes:
Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will “reunify” Taiwan with China
Iit should always be apparent there is editorialization happening tho. Kinda like [sic] -> that is obviously the author clarifying they are not misquoting or misspelling
What you’ve written is still editorialising. The way it’s written is also clear who was making the statement, Xi was. In the eyes of China it is reunifying, so no matter one’s opinion, it is their stated opinion, so seems weird to put “reunfiy” in quotations when the rest isn’t.
report what is true and verifiable
if they did that there wouldnt be much news, a lot fewer journalists, less jobs overall, and much less advertising revenue.
never gonna happen
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Yep, this word is used intentionally by Xi and he knows he means “conquer the nation developed by the people that escaped his predecessors”.
The nation wasn’t developed by the people who escaped. That’s an ahistorical way of framing the issue
Taiwan was developed by the overthrown proto-fascist military junta who just lost the civil war. After taking the island, they didn’t tell the people of Taiwan that the war had been over and they were no longer China until 1991. The first labor laws outlawing slavery were introduced to the people of Taiwan in 2006. The people of Taiwan still consider themselves China (it is afterall the name they go by, not Taiwan) and full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island.
Just to be clear, I am a supporter of their independence, but this is a very messy situation in which the political party who comrade the country is the same fascist party who lost the war in the first place and still maintains to the UN that they are the legitimate government of the mainland. Full separation is convenient for the West, but neither side actually wants that, they just don’t want to be ruled by either fascists or communists, and I think that is incredibly fair for all people actually involved to want.
full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island
Excuse me wut
of an island they’ve never controlled.
Oh boy this might get me downvoted. Saying the Communist Party never controlled it is a tautology. That’s what happens when there’s a civil war that turns into a stalemate: one side does not control the land of the other side. So of course the Communist side never controlled it. This is ducking the nuance of what the actual situation is, that there was a civil war that never ended.
Even before that Taiwan did not belong to the rest of China.
There were some settlers from the main land, but the indigenous population always controlled most of the island and the Chinese settlers were careful not to antagonize them.
This lasted for hundreds of years, pretty much until a brief period at the end of the 19th century when the Chinese government decided to send troops to brutally subjugate the indigenous population, only to shortly after lose control of Taiwan to the Japanese.
It’s a historical fact but how is it a tautology? Territory can change hands during a civil war as evidenced by the RoC no longer controlling China. Unless I’m misunderstanding something. Either way I don’t think that changes the point, if that’s a tautology then claiming that it can be reunified is a contradiction.
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If they invade, won’t all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? Pretty sure TSMC said that was the plan.
Doesn’t seem like they’ll be able to capture a whole lot aside from land and that will come at a pretty steep cost I’d imagine.
I heard about that too. The technology produced there is too valuable to be left to invaders.
The chip thing is definitely an issue. However, even if they didn’t get any chip tech or factories, they still get the island. Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security. Additionally, it will grant them control over the shipping lanes in the surroundings waters, which are heavily used for international trade.
The US needs it for trade/their economy. China needs it to protect itself and gain more economic power. For these reasons, it makes sense for both China and the US to be heavily interested in controlling Taiwan. Personally, I really don’t see a likely solution to avoiding military conflict unless the powers of the two sides figure out how to resolve their antagonism, which I think is unlikely without a change in Chinese leadership.
Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security.
I don’t really know if that makes a whole bunch of sense… The only country with the capabilities of attacking China is the US. The only real provocation that may spark that military conflict is an attack on Taiwan or South Korea.
Taiwan isn’t even that advantageous of a location for an invasion either way, the strait of Formosa would be a death trap for any amphibious landing. The most militarily important region for China is and always has been the Korean peninsula.
I think Chinas main motivation is that Taiwan disrupts their plans to completely control trade routes in the South China sea. Once the 9 dash line is under control and expanded to include the territorial waters of Taiwan, China will have a defacto monopoly on trade for most of eastern Asia.
The land is most of what they want. Taiwan is militarily strategic land, it essentially blocks all access to the Pacific.
Thing is, that would only bring them to parity for the current gen, which they would instantly fall behind on having to start everything up again and train or force people into running the modern nodes.
These fabs (and pretty much ALL fabs) depend on tech to run their processes and make their chips, which isn’t made in Taiwan.
If they do it for the silicon, they’ll also need to take a good chunk of West Europe.
Would it set the West back a bit? Yes, but not all that much. There are non Eastern fabs up to date and the people in Taiwan trained to operate bulk fabs are probably on a shortlist for extraction targets too.
Even just destroying the competition makes their stuff much more valuable.
TSMC just finished building a factory in the US mainland.
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They moved TSMC production facilities to Phoenix, Arizona. It’s slated to open in 2025.
They didn’t move them, they’re just building new fabrication plants here so we don’t have to depend on threatened foreign land for the production. https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Also SMIC (China’s chip manufacturer) is now also producing 7nm chips, even though they were sanctioned in 2020. That means they either had a breakthrough in the process or they obtained and were able to repair and operate/reverse engineer the incredibly complex TSMC fabs.
7nm doesn’t need EUV, as things get smaller it doesn’t suddenly become impossible to do things with traditional lithography it just becomes harder and at some point incredibly uneconomical. They certainly ripped off the node from TSMC in some way (whether spionage or reverse-engineering), that is, the shape of the transistors and stuff but that doesn’t mean that they’re producing them in the same way.
Thank God they’re finally building some chip plants here. The fact that our whole economy depends on some foreign island next to a huge country that has always hustorically threatened to take it back is insane to me. Although I think we should have more manufacturing in the homeland in general. Thanks capitalism, for off shoring manufacturing for the last many decades -_-
TSMC is just the end of a long supply chain of one-of-a-kind suppliers, all conveniently aligned with the West. TSMC does not make the lithography machines, the Dutch ASML is the only company that does (though they have some plants in the US now I think). Even so, ASML would be dead in the water without Swiss Zeiss optics.
The US’ strength was never autarky, but global trade. The reason the US economy is so resilient is because most US dollars are not in the US, but in reserves across the world. That means even the US currency is intertwined with global trade. If the US attempted autarky, it would collapse both the US and the world economy. That’s why Trump’s policies were beyond stupid by the way.
Zeiss is German. The Semiconductor supply plant is in Oberkochen.
It’s a pretty interesting story where Taiwan decided to invest enormously into chip production so they could use the economic benefits to shield themselves from China. Worked pretty well eh
It was a gamble to focus on fabrication only and not include design. It payed off but it was a gamble.
Except they have problems finding workers. 3rd world Americans aren’t cut out for the jobs it seems like.
I think it’s mostly because it’s in Arizona… Not exactly the tech capital of the U.S…
They wanted somewhere where land and labor was cheap and neglected to consider educated engineers and water are vital for a semiconductor fab to operate.
It was a fucking stupid decision, and TSMC has been flying in Taiwanese engineers and workers in general to make up for the short comings.
[Curb Your Enthusiasm closing credits song plays]
More info on TSMC from an AI chip manufacturing perspective: https://youtu.be/AJGrdtKT3LM?si=M-3EWWOPcIXX8vgv
That’s a good threat if plausible.
That’s probably not a good plan, however. What you gonna do after the blowing up the plant? Emigrate, maybe, but for those who’ll stay: Congratulations, you have just blown up your job, your life and any bargaining chip you ever had.
“Reunify”. Just like Putin tries to reunify Ukraine with Russland… Strange how one is called Invasion and the other Reunifying
This is xi calling it reunification. It’s just your average land grab invasion based off “but 300 years ago we successfully conquered if and had it for almost a century so we have the right to conquer it again!”
But if you’re israel and say GOD gave you that land thousands of years ago, then here’s $100+ billion in addition to the billions already given annually to you to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.
“Re-unify” is dipshit-speak for invade, pillage and crush… for anyone wondering.
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Reunification of Germany was entirely nonviolent.
Yeah but they actually both wanted it.
Taiwan, judging from the enormous amounts of military material it has invested in, doesn’t really want to be friends with china, let alone be conquered by it
The Kuomintang party supports one China
There is currently one China. It just goes by the name Taiwan. The CCP is as Chinese as my local takeout.
You must be one of those people that can’t accept when civil wars are lost. I’m assuming you’re also waiting for the South to rise again.
Yes Lost Causers are famously aware of world history. That must be it.
If you’re aware of history, then how exactly is China not China? I must’ve missed a century somewhere
And Russia is trying reunification with Ukraine. What’s your point?
No, that’s annexation, ya dingus
Were the people saying they were going to reunify dipshits in that case?
Right, you’re saying that in hindsight.
When a tyrannous dictator preaches reunification as a descriptor when outlining their future plans the context changes a bit. Hope that helps :)
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Sorry there was no meaning in your statement because I disagree.
I miss when opinions were just opinions.
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Is that your opinion though? Feels like a straw man to me.
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That’s pure speculation on your part. Xi specifically stated the goal is peaceful reunification.
speculation
Well when all the direct quotes I read don’t match the history I have to speculate on what XI really means.
He said he wants to reunify Taiwan, he didn’t send me a PDF of his specific strategy.
You’re speculating that it will be peaceful with the same logic.
I still remember what was happening in Taiwan just a few days before COVID hit. Do you?
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Your answer: no
Well, what was the answer?
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The entire idea of reunification is that it is supported by the will of the people. I’m not speculating that it will be peaceful, I’m just pointing out what Xi said. You claiming that he’s lying is speculation.
You claiming I’m speculating is also speculation. Take your semantic garbage and share it with someone who can respect your thoughts.
Your speculating that I’m speculating is also speculation! You are the one whomst engages in frantic semantic antics!
Don’t be mad cuz you’re wrong. Xi Jinping stated that he has plans to peacefully reunify Taiwan and China. How you want to interpret that is up to you, but the media wants you to interpret “peaceful reunification” as “violent invasion.” If you want to believe that, that’s on you.
I think China is more than capable of reunification of Taiwan peacefully and invading would be a real dumb idea. Also, according to their own news, only 48.9% of the Taiwanese people support national Independence. So there’s definitely a possibility of China winning the people over.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/09/02/2003805648
If you believe that then I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. In fact it’s 2 for 1, but only if you buy by midnight!
Uhm, isn’t a bridge the means of producing safe travel across a span? You should get the wall for owning means of production.
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Well London Bridge is in Lake Havasu, AZ now. Why can’t you get a bridge too?
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Did they say how? Peace would be preferred, but the Taiwanese need to be willing to cooperate.
The Kuomintang party is willing to cooperate, while the Democratic party is not
After what’s happened in Hong Kong, why would Taiwan trust them?
Exactly my point
A. Xi said they would prefer to do it peacefully.
B. Autocratic regimes routinely define “peacefully” as a coup or overnight invasion.
C. Xi specifically set an atmosphere of strategic uncertainty by saying a time “hadn’t been decided”.
That tells me they’ve given up on winning elections in Taiwan. If they’re scheduling it then it’s not on Taiwan’s election schedule. Ergo, definitely not peacefully in democratic terms.
Well it will be interesting at least.
Well it will be interesting at least.
As in “May you live in interesting times?”
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Your prize options are nuclear incineration during Friday rush hour or cake.
I suspect this will happen during USAs election… you know when the world stops existing for a few days.
Well the Russians largely succeeded with the Olympics. So that’s a possibility too.
Few days. Months!!!
Someone said after Russia’s military was shown to be a farce, that if they were China they’d be shitting their pants and immediately launch an investigation into how good their military actually is.
China has the advantage of actually having enough people to do the meat for the grinder approach though.
True but that doesn’t work too well to invade an island.
eventually the bodies will pile-up enough that the next batch can just walk over.
That strategy would need quite a lot of bodies given there is an ocean in the middle there.
the strait isn’t that deep, and it’s only about 100 miles across.
It would take around 400 million bodies to fill in a one metre wide corridor across the strait based on some napkin math. So yeah I guess it’s actually possible technically
I feel like this would be a hilariously morbid engineering thought exercise…
China’s big problem is what they offer internationally is cheap labor and they’re going through a population collapse now, like other countries that ascend economically, people have fewer kids and younger workers want better salaries and conditions, (understandably so!) This combined with the US’s trade war with them has caused international companies to move a lot of production to other impoverished nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Mexico, among others instead of to China. China’s economic miracle was because of this large pool of population that is vanishing. Sacrificing soldiers of reproductive age would accelerate this problem.
Not for long. China is on path to have the same demographics crisis as Russia.
They do have a surplus of men, though.
Chinese central command wouldn’t have the power to push such an approach, their army has a very decentralised structure due to its partisan roots.
Take the hint Xi, she’s just not into you.
ROC is gonna take back the mainland?
You mean West Taiwan?
Glory to Taiwan and their West Taiwan acquisition project!
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Depends on the person in question. Some don’t as you’ve said some do.
Source: I’m engaged to a Taiwanese person with family back in Taiwan. Her parents would hate it, her siblings laugh.
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China gaining Taiwan would end global trade. That is the reason no one will let them forcibly take it.
It’s wild how they’re still obsessed with Taiwan, despite CCP being recognized as China for many decades now. I wonder how much of this is elderly people who still consider the civil war unfinished and how much is strategic. It seems like invading would not be in China’s interest. Perhaps they want to do it before their demographic population collapse occurs.
It’s a Chinese thing. PRC and ROC (officially) both see “China” as including the “province” of Taiwan.
Part of it is brainwashing on the PRC side - they are taught from elementary school that Taiwan is a part of China. Part of it is ROC stubborness. It’s even a political issue within Taiwan. While the younger generation generally sees Taiwan as an independent country, the KMT and the older generation refuses to let go of mainland China.
Chinese culture also has the famous line that translates roughly to “after having been united for a while, it must split. After having been split for a while, it must unite” that refers to China in general. Taiwan, HK, and “China” have been split for a bit and the PRC wants to see it reunited.
The problem is that any such reunification would presumably be on the PRC’s terms, and that didn’t turn out so well for Hong Kong.
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Honestly, I think it depends who’s in power at the time.
They want China to be the old Qing borders. Both Chinas still claim it.
It’s that “saving face” stuff which makes you lose even more face by looking silly.
China is hostage state that nurtures Stockholm Syndrome in it’s population (similar to DPRK and others). You can only “leave” if it’s deemed useful and safe for China (i.e. you have Stockholm Syndrome strongly enough). And those that leave are still under control, i.e. their (edited) behavior can be coerced by using carrot and stick methods on their family and loved ones.
Uhm, you can freely leave China? And unless you’re a secret FBI agent, your family is probably safe.
I’ve heard those stories of “secret Chinese police in the Netherlands”, but they are based on words of like one man without decent confirmation
in its* population
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By having the CCP step down, right?
That would be a dream, but not feasible.
I thought they were holding hands at first glance. 🥰
It could happen. In China, among many other places, same-sex hand holding isn’t uncommon among friends and doesn’t indicate a romantic attachment. I dont imagine Biden and Xi have that kind of relationship, though.
simple extortion from the boss of a criminal mafia
I thought I read like 3 weeks ago they had no interest anytime soon
