• PhlubbaDubba
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    7 months ago

    I have my doubts China will move on Taiwan simply because of just how ready everyone will be able to be for them launching an invasion. Xi has irredentist delusions but he’s far less motivated by them than Putin is, especially with the Belt and Road, the safety valve against blockade across the first island chain, not even close to being completed.

    More likely China will use the outbreak of so many conflicts to build up a list of vassal states that break themselves on the western world militarily before Beijing swoops in and offers them a very one sided basically colonial economic relationship in exchange for saying they swear they’ll totally have their backs “next time”, meaning never because the relationship will leave the vassal so depleted it can’t do anything but export resources to China for their use in manufacturing or in sustaining their population where China’s own resources come up short.

    Key example right now, China’s definitely letting Russia break itself against Ukraine at this point so that they have a stronger hand to demand access to the fresh water in lake Baikal, that and theorized siberian mineral and fossil fuel wealth, China has a lot of young men who are definitely never going to find a family in their lifetime, why not send them all to freeze to death in the snow covered corpse of what was once a superpower?