The occupation and militarisation of 80-90% of the South China Sea islands which are formally claimed by other nations. Including the Spratly Islands. The Chinese regularly threaten any military vessels that pass through here. Look up videos on youtube on the radio conversations.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3126656/sou...

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ed8539753d69434596cc239...

Ok but it's not some vast annexation over a sovereign nation.

Canada and the USA has an awful lot of these kinds of conflicts. Worse when indigenous rights start to get involved.

Vietnam and China go way back for conflicts.

Our fear here is China invading sovereign neighbours like south korea, japan, australia, and the usa.

Is china planning to do that?

Well..President Xi has himself openly declared that re-unification of Taiwan - along with all ancient Chinese domains will happen within his term of governance. And no (sane) leader declares more than one planned invasion at a time. So plans for annexation of India's eastern provinces are on hold presently.

Right now China is at the ending stages of modernising its military forces - a process that started a decade and half ago. Once Xi successfully passes his traditional term limits with no hiccups and consolidates his firm control on the CCP over all objectors, you can bet on a Chinese annexation of Taiwan in 2023-25 period. (assuming no economic disasters or another Covid variant)

Japan & South Korea are pretty impossible to annex without extreme mass casualties, especially with the extraordinarily heavy US military curtain and the eye-boggling dense build-up of weapon systems in place.

>Well..President Xi has himself openly declared that re-unification of Taiwan - along with all ancient Chinese domains will happen within his term of governance. And no (sane) leader declares more than one planned invasion at a time. So plans for annexation of India's eastern provinces are on hold presently.

Lets not forget Manchuria. Russia actively owns chinese land. If one china is so important to invade taiwan... giving up on manchuria seems backwards.

For all I know China invades everything soon and world war 3 triggers. Asia will probably be an absolute shit show. But from my point of view reading xi jinping. It seems more and more like he understands that war isn't good for anyone. The very low funding on military means he can invest so much more into themselves and that's how they grow so much more.

>Japan & South Korea are pretty impossible to annex without extreme mass casualties, especially with the extraordinarily heavy US military curtain and the eye-boggling dense build-up of weapon systems in place.

What I hope for, Sanctions against Russia work really well. War ends and the world tells the world that we are all united against territorial conquest. Our crippling sanctions can even stop a nuclear power.

Then everyone settles down knowing they aren't threatened like this again.

> The very low funding on military means he can invest so much more into themselves and that's how they grow so much more

China is now the nation with the second highest military expenditure after the USA. It has increased its military budget continuously year by year. China’s military spending far exceeds that of its neighbours and was greater than the combined expenditure of India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in 2019.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/understanding-chinas-2021-defe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Due to significant increase in the last few years, all the neighbours are also now forced to drastically increase their expenditure.

Vietnam incursions were in the 1970s I believe. (Now I have checked) seem to have lasted between 1979 - 1991 off and on.

Island and coastal nations of the South China Sea seem concerned about the island militarisation going on. Taiwanese people don't have a particular reason to rest easy either.

Well, they do want Taiwan back.

>Well, they do want Taiwan back.

Back? They currently own it. No country in the world recognizes them as their own country. They are not in the United Nations. They have no alliances.

If Taiwan declares independence and is recognized... and China invades to stop this. Who can even stop China if they decide to take them? Nobody is coming to their aid. This is a super silly thing to say.

Republic of China (Aka Taiwan) is not the same thing as The People's Republic of China (Aka China). And pardon me for talking about Taiwan as being sovereign, which it actually is, but I recognise it's a little more complex than that: https://international.thenewslens.com/feature/taiwan-for-sal...

Anyway, you are more wrong that I am.

I don't think it makes any sense to say China 'owns' Taiwan. For all the formalisms you list, PRC exerts no controlling influence over life in Taiwan whatsoever. It has a free market economy, free elections, free media and makes it's own trade and political agreements internationally. These are the things that really matter.

>These are the things that really matter.

And in event of PRC attempting to reunify TW, formalism will categorize that as a civil war, not an international one where sovereignty is violated like current RU/UKR conflict. As far as I know, PRC doesn't need UNSC approval to finish an civil war, it's already dejure a legal ongoing war. Plus there's all sorts ambiguity on 3rd parties aiding UKR with lethal aid right now, but aiding TW will be declaration of war with PRC. These are the things that really matter politically when bombs start exploding.

I suppose it makes more sense to say PRC owns "China" including TW in the same way it makes sense to say TW owns "China" including mainland.

Yeah, they raised the alarm about Covid and the WHO just flat-out ignored them at China's behest.

No one is going to invade India unless they want to welcome nuclear annihilation and face 1.5 billion angry Indians.

India & China both have a formal "No First Use" position that has been repeatedly reaffirmed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

A grab of a portion of east Indian states via conventional warfare, followed by cease-fire and negotiations is very much in the ambit of China's strategy. Modi is attempting to prevent this by scaling up military infrastructure on the eastern front, but its still way-way behind what China already has in place. (by orders of magnitude)

https://www.newindianexpress.com/thesundaystandard/2021/oct/... https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/new-weapons-deploy...