Declaring closed straits to Chinese military surface vessels on the Taiwan-Philippines and Taiwan-Japan gaps, along with resupply of Taiwan from the east, seems a reasonable response for the US (and possibly Japan).

China's calculus changes if they have to strike Japanese and Philippine sovereign territory (even if it's hosting US forces) in order to accomplish their goals.

And it's unclear if even Xi is willing to send as many ships and bodies as it would take to the bottom of Taiwanese straits to get an invasion force across. (Which then faces a guerrilla insurgency in mountainous terrain)

If Xi sees Taiwan as a gateway to Pacific hegemony, maybe that math is worth it...

But asking a populace to support that in the face of economic weakness and high youth unemployment is a tall order. The COVID lockdown riots demonstrated that even China's social control is a fine line.

Many leaders have discovered that war against an external enemy is a powerful unifier, at least in the short to medium term. I would never assume that Xi won’t eventually take advantage of that.

Honestly, Russia invading Ukraine, the global economic response to Russia, and China seeing all of that... probably saved Taiwan.

China doesn't have the natural resource base within its borders (they're digging up their iron ore reserves faster than any country, and they have to import oil) that Russia does.

Consequently, economic sanctions slow their economy down a lot faster than Russia's.

War may be an internal unifier... but unemployment, poverty, and scarcity is a rapid internal disintegrator.

>"unemployment, poverty, and scarcity is a rapid internal disintegrator."

Looking at "disintegrated" Cuba...

China is in no shape to invade, being in a great depression https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/01/22/chinas-..., up to its eyeballs in debt, and having horrible demographics. And having horrible tax base.

For reference, when Germany and Japan was expanding, they had great, young demographics, and thus very good tax base. Japan had very low debt in 1920 when they started the wars https://www.rieti.go.jp/en/columns/s15_0004.html. Germany had suspended the gold standard and financed the war by borrowing, something China cannot do today.

Another way to think about this is, instead of all the possible money China made that it could have spent on war, instead it decided to build half-finished tofu dreg buildings, then the CCP elites took those dirty money out of China and into western economies :). Even the elites knew China was no match for the combined wealth/forces of western countries.

Also, the Chinese army in general is probably non-functional. Too much corruption, case in point: Corrupt Chinese Officials Filled Missiles With Water, Report Says https://www.newsweek.com/china-missiles-rocket-fuel-corrupt-...

That is piss-poor journalism. Most military rockets are solid fueled, for one.

Perun covers the topic of Chinese military readiness with excellent sourcing and great detail, as always:

https://youtu.be/vhI_tTEE2ZQ

What state was Russia in before the Ukraine invasion? Putin and Xi aren't leading democracies, they can do whatever they want. Their countries are basically their property. Neither will go hungry if their country has a famine, etc

I agree China is probably not in the best shape regarding fighting, but for a different reason: bureaucracies don't like wars. They are hugely unpredictive, and more importantly, wars bring generals into the front row, so if you are not a general you are going to stand back, lose power and receive order from somewhere.

For example, usually the party provincial secretary (most powerful man in that province) concurrently serves as the first secretary of the provincial military region party committee, but he doesn't have real power in the military. When war comes, it's the group of people who are more experienced with military (the generals) going to make the call, and everyone else is not going to be happy.

Think Politburo and the Central Military Commission. When war comes it's the CMC who is going to make the call. Some people take seats in both but some not. They all stand in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party -- but power distribution is going to shift when things move.

That's why I think the biggest resistance comes from the party itself, not depression. Depression, historically, usually leads to wars, not from them.