Taiwan and China thread.

[Terminal_Boy]

Implying they plan to do a Russia, probably try and drop special forces into the capital to execute the president and members of government, except Russia completely failed in Ukraine

And China would fail against the US and allies in any action against Taiwan.

China is hailed as “near peer” to the USA in some quarters, but so was Russia until they invaded Ukraine.

Having more things and more people operating those things hasn’t been a winning strategy since the Eastern Front in WW2.

 

[StriderX]

Taiwan is literally miles away from the Chinese Mainland, it will be flattened before the US could finish arguing about whether it was worth risking their vanity carriers.

 

[Chojin]

US has a huge budget but I'm sceptical of how quickly they can manufacture and replenish stocks. China surely has the edge there. US would be relying on a quick and decisive victory which going by previous wars is unlikely.

If Taiwan has agreed to have advanced chips manufactured abroad then they are basically opening the door to China at a future date. By then US will have derisked themselves. They will be less motivated to defend Taiwan when their top companies can survive without it.

It depends what is more important to China - securing the semiconductor fabs, or the land/people. If the former then moving the fabs abroad is going to put pressure on them to act before then. There's an AI revolution underway and if a single country can gatekeep that technology then it gives them world domination without any rivals.

 

[bjorkiii]

China need to invade the Uk asap. Preferably before 10 to 9 tonight.

 

[ianh]

As long as they bring food with them, I'm starving!

 

[Dis86]

As long as they bring food with them, I'm starving!

Sadly I don't think they do Chow Mein as we know it

 

[Rroff]

It depends what is more important to China - securing the semiconductor fabs, or the land/people. If the former then moving the fabs abroad is going to put pressure on them to act before then. There's an AI revolution underway and if a single country can gatekeep that technology then it gives them world domination without any rivals.

Securing the semiconductor fabs actually makes little sense - it isn't like your average manufacturing facility where you could capture them, replace a few staff and be pumping stuff out a few weeks later. They can, and probably have already done so, acquire most of the knowledge base through corporate espionage, the facilities themselves are only a part of a bigger equation and they'd also need the support, maintenance and design elements from Western based companies as well as a raft of critical personnel. To put them to use in any useful way for China is probably almost as much effort as developing and building the ability to produce advanced semiconductors from the ground up.

TBH China's only option really right now would be flattening the place anyhow, their military infrastructure is probably still 2 years away from being able to support an invasion of Taiwan if it was even moderately defended - I earlier said 2025-2027 but China hasn't really made extensive moves since then which would make next year really feasible, unless they were happy to grind it out at huge losses.

 

[Chojin]

Securing the semiconductor fabs actually makes little sense - it isn't like your average manufacturing facility where you could capture them, replace a few staff and be pumping stuff out a few weeks later. They can, and probably have already done so, acquire most of the knowledge base through corporate espionage, the facilities themselves are only a part of a bigger equation and they'd also need the support, maintenance and design elements from Western based companies as well as a raft of critical personnel. To put them to use in any useful way for China is probably almost as much effort as developing and building the ability to produce advanced semiconductors from the ground up.

It's an AI race and essentially a zero sum game if one country can gain exclusive access to some proto-AGI in the next few years. There is the possibility that China will try and spoil America's party over that if they have superpower aspirations.

Knowledge is one thing, in the tech industry it's common for knowledge to spill out when you have employees rotating around Nvidia, AMD and Intel over the years. Can't really keep a lid on that.

Which makes physical resources more prized than raw knowledge. Creating a fab is a difficult time consuming process. If it was just a case of throwing money at it China would already be at the top now. It took China decades to manufacture their own ballpoint pen. They probably knew the theory long before they cracked it. I think if they had inherited a western factory that would have taken much less time.

 

[Rroff]

Which makes physical resources more prized than raw knowledge. Creating a fab is a difficult time consuming process. If it was just a case of throwing money at it China would already be at the top now. It took China decades to manufacture their own ballpoint pen. They probably knew the theory long before they cracked it. I think if they had inherited a western factory that would have taken much less time.

Problem is it is the same for running a fab, especially for putting new designs through it, etc. it is probably just as prohibitive even with an existing facility to do something useful with it as building it from scratch unless you also inherit the entire end to end process (including all the support from external companies) - if you don't you pretty much have to redesign a lot of stuff anyhow.

And I'd imagine at the first hint of any serious invasion kicking off removing key staff and sabotaging or removing key equipment would be high up the list of priorities.

 

[Chojin]

Problem is it is the same for running a fab, especially for putting new designs through it, etc. it is probably just as prohibitive even with an existing facility to do something useful with it as building it from scratch unless you also inherit the entire end to end process (including all the support from external companies) - if you don't you pretty much have to redesign a lot of stuff anyhow.

And I'd imagine at the first hint of any serious invasion kicking off removing key staff and sabotaging or removing key equipment would be high up the list of priorities.

If it's ASML Holding you are referring to then indeed, China's SMEE are a few years behind them, and you would expect an invasion to sever any connection between them and China.

But when it comes to sabotaging equipment then that might be all that China wants in the end - to create a "semi-conductor winter" lasting multiple years and giving them enough time to catch up.

Since there are restrictions on supplying high-end chips to China they could take a sour grapes approach to that, and if Taiwan's fabs are destroyed then I suppose would leave the West with Intel and then TSMC in a few years.

 

[Rroff]

If it's ASML Holding you are referring to then indeed, China's SMEE are a few years behind them, and you would expect an invasion to sever any connection between them and China.

But when it comes to sabotaging equipment then that might be all that China wants in the end - to create a "semi-conductor winter" lasting multiple years and giving them enough time to catch up.

Since there are restrictions on supplying high-end chips to China they could take a sour grapes approach to that, and if Taiwan's fabs are destroyed then I suppose would leave the West with Intel and then TSMC in a few years.

I think denial is a more likely scenario (also advances in AI, etc. could potentially force a situation where China feels like they have no other option if they can't compete - as per something I've mentioned in other threads recently situations like that have happened historically and are perfectly possible to happen again if a country feels like they are backed into a corner even in this day and age).

Not just talking about stuff like the scanners but that is one of the bigger complications.

 

[Bug One]

Taiwan is literally miles away from the Chinese Mainland, it will be flattened before the US could finish arguing about whether it was worth risking their vanity carriers.

I think you may be underestimating the military power the three carrier strike groups in the area could unleash, let alone the land based assets the USA have in the region.

 

[BongoHunter]

And China would fail against the US and allies in any action against Taiwan.

China is hailed as “near peer” to the USA in some quarters, but so was Russia until they invaded Ukraine.

Having more things and more people operating those things hasn’t been a winning strategy since the Eastern Front in WW2.

Quantity does have a quality all of its own though. In the Air and Naval domains at least 50-90% of all the the really fancy high end US capabilities would be expended in the first few weeks of an all out war in that theatre. The industrial capacity to volume produce the fancy stuff on tight timelines isn't really there (look at Patriot and SM production rates - sure they can be ramped up, but not to the rate they would need to expend them)

Numbers don't mean everything, but if you can take out 4 of their guys for every one of your guys - you still loose if they had 5 to one advantage to start with.

US has a huge budget but I'm sceptical of how quickly they can manufacture and replenish stocks. China surely has the edge there. US would be relying on a quick and decisive victory which going by previous wars is unlikely.

If Taiwan has agreed to have advanced chips manufactured abroad then they are basically opening the door to China at a future date. By then US will have derisked themselves. They will be less motivated to defend Taiwan when their top companies can survive without it.

It depends what is more important to China - securing the semiconductor fabs, or the land/people. If the former then moving the fabs abroad is going to put pressure on them to act before then. There's an AI revolution underway and if a single country can gatekeep that technology then it gives them world domination without any rivals.

They wanted Taiwan dealt with before the rise of the semi conductor industry. It might be an economic objective - but there's no way it would be the main aim. Besides seizing the actual fabs intact couldnt be guaranteed - and the fabs alone are not enough to do anything other than disrupt the global market. They need the supply chains, expertise, service contracts with western companies etc for the fabs to be worth a war for.