Taiwan and China thread.

[Chojin]

If the US did this, the value of the dollar would plummet overnight, this hurting US consumers in the short term but in the long term allowing the US to become more of a manufacturing powerhouse again by creating products for export with its low value dollar and screwing over other low value currency countries also trying to do manufacturing like China and India.

the main reason the US would not want to do this is it would cause short term pain, sharp pain, even though in the long run it would weaken its enemies and make the world more reliant on the US.

The USA already have manufacturing plants on the Mexican border so they are kind of doing that already, just not enough of it.

Same with the EU. When Poland, Romania and Bulgaria joined it would have been perfect to reduce the dependency on China. 15 years of nurturing those countries and who knows where things would be now.

I suppose it comes down to population and even when you add up the workforce of Latin America, Eastern Europe, various African countries, it still doesn't compare to China.

Eventually the Chinese middle class will grow so much that there will be other countries coming along, but by that time China will likely be the new "world police" in town.

The metaverse concept is a possible curve ball though if digital products start replacing physical. Once the mainstream start using VR/AR then that could easily happen.

 

[dowie]

Due to what happened just after ww2, today many commodities are priced in US dollar, such as oil, gold and many others, making the USD the defacto global reserve currency. Because countries need to buy and trade these commodities in large quantities, they must hold large quantities of US dollar in their reserve and because they must hold this US dollars it's very easy for the US to punish a country by taking away their ability to use the USD they have. This gives the US lots of power with its currency but also significantly overvalues the currency compared to what its value would be under normal supply and demand forces.

I'm aware the USD is used by a lot of countries the bit I don't understand is what you mean re: what the US would do - it's all very vague... what do you even mean by " it just needs to take the dollar off the reserve currency list." What list?

I might be mistaken here, I've worked in FX before but I'm not too familiar with the government/central bank side of things - I don't think there is some special list the US can simply edit to remove the USD from and then magically the currency devalues ergo I'm not really sure what it is you're proposing or rather claiming the article is proposing?

Maybe if you link to the article it could be clearer?

 

[ubersonic]

Russian only have a single carrier of the class of carrier they build? Strange.

Er, it's a long story.

Basically, many people think of the USSR as Russia and a bunch of republics it owned, but the reality is much more comparable to the UK (with Russia being England obviously) hell Stalin and Brezhnev were from Georgia and Ukraine. The point here is that while "Russian" and "Soviet" get used interchangeably nowadays it is often incorrect, as many of the best Soviet things were created by the smaller yet important republics such as Ukraine. One example of this are the T-64 and T-80 tanks which are Ukrainian designs (and better than the Russian T-72 design which was a quantity over quality based alternative), another is the Ukrainian designed/built Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane, and a third example is the Ukrainian designed/built Kuznetsov-class of aircraft carrier.

Like most of the USSRs bigger ships the Kuznetsov-class was designed and constructed in Ukraine, Russia never had any docks capable of building or even supporting such ships (they actually still don't have the former, they only gained the latter in the last 12 months). At the time of the USSRs demise Ukraine had completed one and a half Kuznetsov-class aircraft carriers and were in the early stages of constructing a much larger Ulyanovsk class nuclear carrier. The working Kuznetsov class was almost immediately stolen by Russia (who ordered it's Russian captain to disembark all his non Russian crew and sail for Russia), the part completed one was left to rust while the Ulyanovsk was scrapped.

Ukraine tried to sell the part completed Kuznetsov to many countries (including China) but failed, so ended up selling it for scrap value, to a Chinese businessman who wanted to make it into a hotel/casino, who turned out to be a front for the Chinese government/military. China then purchased the Kuznetsov-class plans from either Ukraine or Russia and finished the ship (with upgrades) then built themselves a second from the ground up.

So that's the reason China have two of "Russia's" best ships in A+ condition and Russia only have one that's falling to pieces as it hasn't had any proper maintenance in 30+ years.

 

[Mrwong]

The problem for China is that they can't really do anything, Taiwan is 100 miles off their coast and they don't have some massive amphibious landing force and Navy to back up an invasion. They're pretty toothless conventionally. Kind of laughable they had amphibious tanks on their beaches, what are they going to do, travel 100 miles over the sea to Taiwan with tanks unsupported?

This has been planned by Russia, China and Iran for 20 years. We are going to war between now and 2030.

 

[Roar87]

This has been planned by Russia, China and Iran for 20 years. We are going to war between now and 2030.

China won't have anything that can match the US Navy for 20 years, if ever. The end of this decade is not feasible for China to take on the US. For context the US Navy could beat China and Russia at the same time without any help from NATO.

 

[Grim5]

I'm aware the USD is used by a lot of countries the bit I don't understand is what you mean re: what the US would do - it's all very vague... what do you even mean by " it just needs to take the dollar off the reserve currency list." What list?

I might be mistaken here, I've worked in FX before but I'm not too familiar with the government/central bank side of things - I don't think there is some special list the US can simply edit to remove the USD from and then magically the currency devalues ergo I'm not really sure what it is you're proposing or rather claiming the article is proposing?

Maybe if you link to the article it could be clearer?

This is a good video to watch to explain

 

[LabR@t]

The USA already have manufacturing plants on the Mexican border so they are kind of doing that already, just not enough of it.

Same with the EU. When Poland, Romania and Bulgaria joined it would have been perfect to reduce the dependency on China. 15 years of nurturing those countries and who knows where things would be now.

I suppose it comes down to population and even when you add up the workforce of Latin America, Eastern Europe, various African countries, it still doesn't compare to China.

Eventually the Chinese middle class will grow so much that there will be other countries coming along, but by that time China will likely be the new "world police" in town.

The metaverse concept is a possible curve ball though if digital products start replacing physical. Once the mainstream start using VR/AR then that could easily happen.

Metaverse goods, come on give me break they are not going to replace actual physical goods ever..

 

[Kill_Phil]

Metaverse goods, come on give me break they are not going to replace actual physical goods ever..

I'd tend to agree but if you would have told some folk 100 odd years ago I'd be posting on a forum via mini phone/computer they would think I'm mad and lock me up

 

[Cyber-Mav]

I don't think China would invade Taiwan at the moment, but then I also didn't think Russia was stupid enough to invade Ukraine.

Taiwan is incredibly important for the semi conductor industry globally, and US rely on them a lot more than most.

I hope if China ever fully threatens to take it, that Taiwan blows the fabs up and moves operations elsewhere. Better than putting control into the hands of China.

i suspect those fabs will be rigged to blow up if war turns to chinas favour.

 

[Rroff]

Even capturing them intact they aren't a lot of use for China, at least not in anything other than very long term, - there is a whole production chain hardware, software, parts/maintenance and human expertise and experience involved. Producing a working design on a cutting edge node is often an extended learning process with a lot of failure analysis, etc.

 

[Chojin]

Metaverse goods, come on give me break they are not going to replace actual physical goods ever..

Well it already happens in the games industry with DLCs, why not in the metaverse?

It's just value creation and if someone wants something, they will pay money for it.

 

[Smokey Deza]

Don't buy these steroetype comments that the US is an unrivalled military power who can still steam roll over everyone. They have ackowledged that China's missile capabilities are a very serious threat their navy.

Not forgetting that Sweden's tiny submarine that sank their so called 'unsinkable carriers' years back. Pretty hubris talk in my opinion.

But then I don't think China has the bottle right now. Certanly not with US trolling lol. They suck at war and are likely very nervous concerning the performance of their Western knock off designs.

 

[dowie]

This is a good video to watch to explain

Sorry but it's just not clear what you were proposing and I'm not sure you know yourself as you're not able to answer direct questions. The USD isn't a crypto currency under US Government control, the US can't just make foreign USD holdings disappear. I think either the article you read is very muddled or you've been a bit confused in retelling whatever it is you read.

(Some USD denominated assets are another matter perhaps, China has plenty of US Treasuries for example but the apparent suggestion from the article makes no sense).

 

[Minusorange]

They suck at war and are likely very nervous concerning the performance of their Western knock off designs.

Sun Tzu cries

 

[glenimp617]

Metaverse goods, come on give me break they are not going to replace actual physical goods ever..

7 billion idiots on a planet says otherwise

 

[Jokester]

7 billion idiots on a planet says otherwise

Once people start plugging themselves into the matrix the metaverse, this stuff could be huge.

 

[BowdonUK]

This is a good video explaining the history of the current situation.

 

[azazl187]

This is a good video explaining the history of the current situation.

Poor Taiwan

 

[Mysterae_]

Spoiler, he doesn't actually say why it's in 34 days but it's still interesting.

Having just watched The Big Short recently I can see some similarities, I just wonder what the global impact will be. They say when the US sneezes the UK gets a cold - if China sneezes....well.....

 

[HungryHippos]

Spoiler, he doesn't actually say why it's in 34 days but it's still interesting.

Having just watched The Big Short recently I can see some similarities, I just wonder what the global impact will be. They say when the US sneezes the UK gets a cold - if China sneezes....well.....

We get covid?!