Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan during his televised New Year’s address, renewing Beijing’s threats to take over the self-ruled island, which it considers its own.
Taiwan split from China amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing continues to regard the island of 23 million with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary.
“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi said in his annual address, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
China has described Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that’s basically what they say in every address since forever? I’m not saying there are no tensions but this is not something new or even recent.
Yes, they’ve been saying that since forever.
They have the sabers so they might as well rattle them.
They know it would risk a war with the US which they know they can’t win.
Tbh I really dont see what could China possibly get with taking Taiwan. It’s wouldn’t be an easy hold and China would lose so much goodwill and international growth. People don’t want to believe it but China is likely to outgrow everyone else by not really doing anything drastic and continueing with the current strategy.
It does feel like a sabre rattle almost every rational way you look at it but it is still so uneasy to read threats like that.
I agree that Taiwan is probably more useful to Xi as a threat to rile up the nationalists than as a legitimate military objective.
I think the real risk, though, is that a mistake or overly aggressive demonstration of strength could very easily force China to commit to a full invasion once it begins to get out of control.
Massive control over the semiconductor market. There are 2 companies that have basically the entire market TSMC (Taiwan semiconductor) and samsumg.
That’s actually a myth. No way China is taking the factories in tact so the market would just shift even further away from China.
Aren’t they all rigged for sabotage in the event of an invasion? I feel like I read that at some point but maybe I made it up lol