What is interesting is if the world is not that reliant on Taiwan chips anymore would China really care that much about Taiwan?

China is not interested in Taiwan for the chips. They want it back since they believe Taiwan is part of China.

Taiwan also believes they are (part of) China

Or more accurately, the Taiwanese government also believes that mainland China and Taiwan should be unified (ie. a One-China Interpretation). But that this One-China should be under the rule of the Taiwanese government and not the CCP, which they considered an illegitimate government, up until the 1992 Consensus.

After the 1992 Consensus [1], the Taiwanese government still considered the Mainland its territory (again under a One-China Interpretation), but also acknowledges the CCP's interpretation of One-China. In practice, this meant they officially abandoned plans to re-take the Mainland, and focus on maintaining the status quo of peace and stability.

Interestingly, the Taiwanese government also used to lay claim to Mongolia in addition to the Chinese Mainland.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus [2] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2024/08/25/20...

Almost no one in Taiwan still believes that though. But China has made it clear that they will invade if the Taiwanese government changes their official stance to be that they’re an independent country.

The unification isn't the issue.

It's whose government will get to run the whole thing.

The UN has only ever recognised one China - they just switched from recognising the ROC to the PRC in 1971.

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

Not the young.

It's more complicated than that, and I think many people in Taiwan (even some in government), especially younger folks, wouldn't really think that way anymore. While it's dicey to say so, many would support full independence.

Wasn't China already pissed about Taiwan long before Taiwan was doing a lot of semiconductor manufacturing?

Probably, my understanding is that the primary reason China cares about Taiwan is internal pressure about the separatism. The power Taiwan has is the only reason they haven’t acted.

Yes, they would. However, if Taiwan wasn’t as important to the world because of their chips then the world would probably not care as much about what communist China wants to do to them.

They would. The main reason has always been the location. It’s right at the doorstep of China. It’s the same reason when Russia tried to install missile in Cuba, Americans dont like that. Cuba “crisis” is actually a US centric term. Also on east coast of Taiwan, theres a deep waters, submarines can enter pacific ocean much more stealthily.

Everything else is just bonus to them. Semiconductors, supporting nationalism, you name it.

South Korea and Japan/Okinawa seem either just as good or better if the US wants to have bases near China. And the US already has 80k troops there

You have to take a look at a map to really understand Taiwan's importance.

Taiwan isn't about military proximity. It's about access shipping access. Try open up a map. Despite China having a vast coastline, they do not have access to the open seas. Every one of their shipping lanes requires passage through another nation's waters.

If a heavy conflict were to erupt, China's supply chains would be cut off via naval blockade. It's a huge risk to China, and one they've attempted to ameliorate via the Belt and Road Initiative.

That changes if they acquire Taiwan. Taiwan's importance is not of offensive, but defensive primacy.

> If a heavy conflict were to erupt, China's supply chains would be cut off via naval blockade

Or possibly the 30+ fast attack submarines sinking every military or resupply vessel in the region, augmented by a colossal amount of rapidly-deployed naval mines.

Taiwan doesn't buy them much in this regard. Why would China be permitted to use sea freight at all in a "heavy conflict" scenario? Why not just sink these vessels near their origin - why allow Brazilian soybeans to even make it out of the hemisphere?

> Despite China having a vast coastline, they do not have access to the open seas.

I didn’t realize that Okinawa is halfway between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan, and the Japanese territorial waters extend right up to the Taiwanese EEZ on account of Japan’s far-flung southern islands.

This seems more correct. It's the same reason they got involved in the Korean war - didn't want anyone to cross the Yan(?) river that wasn't an ally of China. Too close for comfort.

China has wanted Taiwan long before they fabbed semiconductors. It's a matter of ego and nationalism, not economics.

It's also political: China hates that there's a Western-style democracy full of "Chinese rebels" on an island 80 miles from their doorstep. They also don't like the cozy relationship between the Taiwanese and US militaries.

when? 1945 was a long time ago

Ukraine split from the Soviet Union in 1991 and then 31 years later Russia invaded to take it back.

It was autocorrect - I have no idea why it’s in there to be honest. Neat to know the right way to write it though - thanks

What is so attractive to attempt the greatest amphibious assault in human history just to get an island with a bunch of people who will hate you and have nowhere to run away.

1) politics 2) breaking the US's submarine detection on the pacific, so now they can essentially slip unlimited undetected submarines into the pacific (and therefore the atlantic/indian) 3) being harder to navally blockade 4) disrupt the West's military chip advantage

> breaking the US's submarine detection on the pacific

This doesn’t really hold up when looking at a map that includes Okinawa and Batanes.

Political reunification, i.e. land > people, see PRC saying "keep the island not the people". At this point no amphibious assault needed, just blockading TW and turning into gaza via mainland munitions now that starving masses is normalized is an option too.

How do you turn an island into Gaza when the US is providing weapons to it, and not to the other side? Ukraine seems like it would be a better example.

US+co essentially incapable of resupplying TW if PRC motivated to stranglehold blockade. TW is 15 times smaller than UKR, the quality of ISR and amount of munitions PRC can pour onto anywhere in the island and adjacent waters is also orders of magnitude more than RU and resupply via water and air is basically transparent vs myriad of obfuscated land routes UKR has, PRC can trivially locked down TW airstrips and ports from purely mainland platforms. Short distances involved = extremely rapid responses, as in not enough time to unload supplies - low single digit minutes from higher end PRC missiles... doesn't even need navy to enforce a kinetic blockade. TW also 98% dependant on energy imports, 70% on calories. Better example is Cuba, if US wanted to blockade Cuba or depopulate the island, there isn't anything anyone can do about it, i.e. PRC take out some power infra (refrigeration) and water treatment plants and island basically becomes Gaza in days. Ironically, if that happens the only actor with the logistics capability to sustain island with population of TW is PRC - US airlift capacity smaller than Berlin airlift and that was... for 2m vs 24m mouths. Which is why IMO all those new fancy landing barges likely going to be used for "humanitarian" relief - realistically no one in/out of region has the surplus to arbitrarily ramp up supplies for island of 24m... except PRC since that's ~1% of PRC population, almost rounding error vs covid0 mobilization.

There isn’t anything could do about the US invading Cuba because no one has much of a blue water navy outside the US itself.

Now granted, China is getting there but their navy is still mostly brown water (by design). And in any Taiwan / SCS conflict they would have an advantage because they can use their land assets, especially air force and land based anti ship rockets, on top of their navy.

The US land bases in the region are few or dependent on the grace of the host countries. Depending on political situation they might not Ok strikes against China if a conflict occurs for fear of being drawn into the war and angering China if the US loses. The only one Id be 100% on is Japan, they’d fight China to the last.

My gist is more no current bluewater Navy, including US is scaled to fight attrition battle in a near parity peer sized adversary's backyard. On paper this applies to current USN vs WestPac. Axis JP+DE during WW2, peak USSR were both ~1/2 of US comprehensive power, i.e. gdp ppp, % of global output, domestic industry output. PRC vs US closer to ~1-2x, with some metrics such as ship or munition building... order of magnitude more. In some gaps, US not even peak JP or USSR in relative terms. Even the month long 90s Iraq curbstomp required generational tech gab (french designers leaked/compromised IADs), 5 carriers and favourable regional basing (vs westpac), unsustainably high tempo sorties... when US militarily hasn't declined to current state in terms of capitalization... and Iraq then is charitably 1/100th the size of PRC. Unless there is unrevealed tech gap that still enables asymmetric curb stomp with a much smaller force - perhaps somehow none of Chinese hardware works, which at this point likely means completely dismantling PRC kill chain, i.e. what PRC intends to do vs US.

TLDR is the potential regional balance is increasingly lop sided in favour of PRC with gap widening, i.e. US+co can't preposition hardware at relevant rate. PRC hinted their cruise missile gigafactory has capacity to exhaust/target entire current US+co hardware inventory + stockpiles with few months production. A few more months enough to comprehensively shatter critical infra of US partners in 1IC. Hence why JP likely won't fight, because ultimately they're just a larger TW, also dependant on energy and calorie imports, and main islands also entirely within umbrella of PRC mainland fires. Mainland China is much better postured to operation Starvation JP than US from Marianas (25% further, and still needed logistics from CONUS) was during WW2. And if JP gives PRC excuse to fight them then PRC will (LBH be somewhat eager) to fight to the last JPnese. If JP doesn't, then they... well survive, maybe even still keep US protection. Most likely they'll only lose Senkaku when regional dynamics reconfigure. IMO current sign of JP not fighting is stronger than JP will fight... i.e. not opening main islands to distributed AGILE basing - US basically said they need JP in TW scenario, but they need to disperse all across JP not just Okinawa and Ryukyu's for survivability and JP action so far (since Trump1) is to not. It doesn't matter what JP politicians say for security theatre, IMO JP not committed until they start heavily militarizing main islands.

That type of blockade is typically regarded as an act of war equal to dropping bombs. So that in itself could trigger a war.

It is a way to fight the war that doesn't require amphibious landings.

PRC-TW/ROC is already ongoing civil war that never ended in ratification, so legally it doesn't really matter. It's no different than ROC doing port closure policy for decades.

Taking the island gives China a large military advantage controlling access to Japan.

The thing about autocracies, there is nobody to stop an obviously wrong decision (for example, Russian invasion of Ukraine).

Yes, because in Western democracies we were very successful at stopping invasions such as Iraq x2, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc.

The fact that democracies make mistakes, isn't an argument against dictators having more carte blanche to make mistakes.

Any form of government is going to make mistakes.

These wars weren’t mistakes. The ruling class wanted them and got them.

By your very own logic, I could argue that dictators have more carte blanche to make correct choices, where democracies are mired down by compromises and too many cooks in the kitchen.

The possibility exists, but the reality is very different.

>"The fact that democracies make mistakes..."

Going to war and killing people is "a mistake". Let me rephrase it for you:

The fact that democracies are the same murderous criminal fucks when it suits their goals as are dictators. Yes the have more problem having their population to approve it but do they give a flying fuck?

Think of all the wars we didn't have :)

Democracies aren't perfect, but they can change, admit mistakes and adapt.

I think it is other way round.

In a democracy ideas are ingrained in public psyche for support. Be it Muslims/Jews/Christians good/bad, immigrants evil, abortion bad all become part of a large percentage of people's belief and changing that requires equally herculean efforts.

In autocracy, people are generally kept aloof of such decisions so you can always switch enemies from Eurasia to Eastasia and no one cares. In case of China, the value of Taiwan/Arunachal/... is mostly egoistical, based on some notion that Qing China boundaries must be restored. If tomorrow a new leadership comes and makes EU kind of setup with Taiwan, people will have no say and most won't care.

There is nobody to admit a bad decision and reverse course on it?

I mean Vietnam was stopped? And Afghanistan? Korea the US never started.

The upside isnt huge to China. It is mostly their pride. The downside if not everything goes to plan is huge. Could end the communist party in China. I think it is a really though decision for the communist party if they should go all-in or not.