Comment by JumpCrisscross

Comment by JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago

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> I don't see China collapsing anytime soon, nothing like the Soviet Union

I don’t either. But the Soviet Union’s space programme lost its steam in the 1970s. (Venus was its last ambitious achievement.)

If China gets bogged down in Taiwan because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him, that’s going to cost them the space race. (Same as if America decides to replicate the Sino-Soviet split with Europe over Greenland. We can’t afford a competitive space programme at that point.)

anigbrowl 4 hours ago

If China gets bogged down in Taiwan

The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil. They could face an insurgency, but there isn't a whole lot of rural Taiwan for insurgents to vanish into and occupying cities is a lot easier absent language and cultural barriers. The could be isolated politically and economically, but realistically China's territorial claim on Taiwan is on far firmer legal and historical ground than many other territorial disputes (eg their control over Tibet).

I don't see the US involving itself directly. What are they going to do, counter-blockade? Start a naval shooting war with a full-on nuclear power on the other side of the world? I don't see Japan backing that either, despite their natural anxiety over the vulnerability of the Ryukyu islands. Support for US bases in Okinawa is ambivalent at best, and while Japan is surely not thrilled about Chinese regional hegemony it's also a reality they've dealt with for thousands of years.

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  • JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago

    > odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil

    The odds of them winding up in a Russia-Ukraine are not nil. (Combined-arms war is hard even without ideological purges.)

    America isn’t only outside power investing not only in helping Taiwan fight, but also making any victory pyrrhic. And following that, we’ll see Indian and Japanese containment go into overdrive. (To say nothing of the Philippines or Vietnam.)

    I think Xi probably takes Taiwan. But that trades off China’s century of prosperity on economic and diplomatic fronts. That’s the trap the West has been laying, and Xi’s ego and internal constraints almost force him into it.

    (Again, if China had showed its pre-Xi patience in the 2010s, we might have seen Taiwan voting to unify right now. Instead he rushed things for personal glory and enrichment.)

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    • anigbrowl 3 hours ago

      I really don't agree on the Russia-Ukraine comparison; I just can't see where the Taiwanese strategic depth is supposed to come from. In an earlier era it would have been feasible to conduct an insurgency from mountainous redoubts and infiltration around ports, but I really can't see that happening with a 21st century urbanized population, in the same way that Russia's strategic problem in Ukraine is the ability to maintain/grow its front, rather than difficulty sustaining its gains in the rear. However I've never been there so I'm sure I'm overlooking ground factors that might make a big difference.

      I agree with you about Xi's impatience but I think you're overestimating the political and economic fallout in the same way that people overestimated the ramifications of China retaking and consolidating its control of Hong Kong. The latter is definitely not politically free in the way it used to be but nor has it fallen into decline or dystopia.

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  • bmitc 3 hours ago

    > The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil.

    Exactly. Everyone keeps acting like it's 50 years ago. China has the world's largest navy and the largest navy almost always wins. They also have a home court advantage. Anyone trying to militarily protect Taiwan would either get the pants beat off of them or suffer starting a world war.

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Animats 5 hours ago

> If China gets bogged down in Taiwan...

Look at the geography. Taiwan is a long, narrow island. All the important parts are in a narrow plain on the west side, facing China. There's only about 20km of depth from the sea.

The war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that.

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  • JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago

    > There's only about 20km of depth from the sea

    Don’t underestimate the stopping power of water. Taiwan will be China’s first combined-arms assault with a critical amphibious component.

    > war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that

    Wide-open plains are traditionally easier for large armies to conquer than mountains.

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mitthrowaway2 4 hours ago

Although I agree the space program lost steam, I'd still count the Mir space station (1985) and Buran space shuttle (1988) to both be ambitious achievements.

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protocolture 3 hours ago

> because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him

Are they being fired for disagreeing with him, or for misconduct.

I mean its hard to tell the difference from a western country, but "Zhang was put under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, promoting Li Shangfu as defense minister in exchange for large bribes, and leaking core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the United States."

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

Seems fairly reasonable. Like the US Military would act in the exact same way, if those circumstances are correct.

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adventured 6 hours ago

There's a question as to whether China's surplus capability is enough to overflow the deprivation that a space program might suffer in a chaos Taiwan scenario.

Their resources and capabilities are obviously substantial and sustained (not going anywhere). The USSR had only a few patches of sustained serious economic output, the rest of the time was rolling from one disaster to another, one deprivation after another.

It seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan, and go to the Moon during the Vietnam War (plus cultural chaos).

That said, China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining. China will ultimately regret not moving on the island sooner when they see how easy it's going to be to take it and how weak the US response will be (the US can't sustain a stand-off with China in that region for more than a few weeks before folding, unless it's willing to go to full war mode economically (which it's not)).

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  • JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago

    > seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan

    We probably lost basing on the Moon because Bush went into Iraq.

    China getting bogged down in Taiwan means more political repression, more restiveness in Xinjiang and—if New Delhi isn’t totally stupid—needing to prop up Pakistan and its strategic fronts in the Himalayas. It also almost certainly means demand destruction in Europe, the EU and ASEAN.

    > China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining

    The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.

    China invading Taiwan demilitarized Japan and India. It fundamentally changes its doorstep in ways that incur costs. To the Soviets, Afghanistan. To America, Iraq and possibly Greenland. To China, Taiwan.

    (And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.)

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    • alephnerd 4 hours ago

      > And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.

      From what I've been hearing from my buddies still in the NatSec space what matters at this point is the 2028 Taiwanese Election and maybe the 2028 Philippines Election. If neither see a definitive victory for either side in 2028, it gives a face saving off-ramp for the Xi admin to argue they brought the "Taiwan Problem" back on track to the pre-2014 status quo. Of course they could be closeted KMT/TPP supporters but most delivery roadmap's I've been hearing align with a 2028 date.

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    • wafflemaker 5 hours ago

      >The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.

      Please note that Kiev not falling after a week in '22 (assuming you misspelled) was pure luck. Russians had extreme advantage in man and firepower. They made a big mistake by using their army against their doctrine - not bombing/shelling targets before attacking (what Russian army was designed for).

      But them losing the war (at least the first week) is due to a few lucky dice rolls for us. Us both Europe, but also for me as a Polish expat, knowing my brothers and friends are not dying right now fighting Russian army with all the Ukrainians conscripted into it.

      These lucky dice rolls that I can come up from memory: 1. Shooting down one of two military passenger planes with russian Seals that were to take Kiev's Hostomel airport and open an air bridge. The group from the plane that survived did take the airfields, but they couldn't decide on their own to move and take the airports buildings - no distributed command in Russia at that point. Thanks to that, local territorial defence managed to easily kill these elite forces. 2. Fast and generous support from England in form of Javelins that limited Russian heavy equipment advantage. Sorry if I don't credit the countries involved correctly. 3. Fast and generous aid with post soviet equipment from old Warsaw pact countries. These tanks could be used right away as they required no re-training. 4. General incompetence and duty negligence that was systemic in Soviets and is still systemic in Russia. To that we owe cars running out of fuel, or having their tires pop, because, against orders to regularly move them, they all sat with sun damaging one side of the tire so many years, while the responsible for maintenance were drinking vodka and eating pierogi with kielbasa.

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      • hparadiz 4 hours ago

        > pure luck

        this is actually skill, bravery, and fortitude

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      • JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago

        Putin ignored his army and tasked the FSB with the project. He fundamentally got fucked by putting loyalty ahead of merit. It’s what Hegseth is doing in America and now Xi, again, in China.

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