Chinese warships flexing muscles.

Tish

Tish

SF VIP
Location
Rural N.S.W. Australia
Chinese warships are taking up positions around Taiwan ahead of four days of live fire exercises. Beijing announced the exercises as part of its reaction to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. In response to the visit, China’s military is conducting its largest drills aimed at Taiwan in more than 25 years, which will last through to Sunday.

 

I’m too ignorant and too short tempered to understand why we continue to walk a tightrope with various countries whose polices and hostility towards other nations is so far out of step with our own values.

I would welcome shortages, inflation, and disruptions to our economy if we could successfully unwind some of these relationships.
 
It's just posturing. China has a large but poorly equipped and even more poorly trained military. Also, Taiwan is the premier manufacturer of computer chips, and China is one of their biggest customers. If they damaged Taiwan's chip mfg, China would grind to a halt within a week's time, max.

Due to the pandemic and supply chain issues, there are not enough chips being manufactured as it now stands. Destroying/harming one of the major chip sources would harm China as much or more as it would hurt the US.

China makes a lot of computer chips, but they are lower-level ones. The extremely sophisticated and advanced chips are from Taiwan Semiconductor and its peers. They supply 90% of the global high-end semiconductor chip market.

Xi is just making noise because he's checking to see how much attention the US is paying to Asia, with the Ukraine/Russian war still active. China's economy is in recession and their New Silk Road project is rapidly failing.

BTW, there is another reason why Russia is so intent upon annexing Ukraine, or at least the maximum industrial regions they can hold onto. Ukraine doesn't make chips - but they have the resources needed by chipmakers:

"...The U.S. has historically sourced as much as 90% of required semiconductor neon from Ukraine, which has also provided about 70% of the global supply. Ukraine is also a major supplier of xenon and krypton gases, also critical to chip manufacturing..."
- Sloan Review, M.I.T.
 
Gaer said:
China will emerge as the new economic leader of the world.
This will happen!
We all have to stop buying China goods as it only strengthens the power of the Communist China government.
IMO.
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Thing is they make so many parts for products it's too late to simply stop buying from them. We never should have let them back into the picture at all.
 
chic said:
This is the sad part.
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Maybe not totally sad, if countries all depend on each other, it might help maintain peace as well as give financial advantage that can be used to influence them toward better human rights. Though, I'm not sure how that is going with Russia, I guess ideally there should be multiple sources of everything plus some small ability to take care of ourselves. Personally I hope we never get into political battles with countries that supply coffee.
 
HoneyNut said:
Maybe not totally sad, if countries all depend on each other, it might help maintain peace as well as give financial advantage that can be used to influence them toward better human rights. Though, I'm not sure how that is going with Russia, I guess ideally there should be multiple sources of everything plus some small ability to take care of ourselves. Personally I hope we never get into political battles with countries that supply coffee.
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We used to take care of ourselves until the environmentalists went nuts with regulations and restrictions. It makes no sense to become deliberately dependent on others when you don't need to be. :unsure:
 
chic said:
the environmentalists went nuts with regulations and restrictions
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which regulations/restrictions would you get rid of? I'm not familiar with them but I thought they basically protect the public from being poisoned by companies that are willing to destroy the environment to get rich? When I visited Chicago the tour guides on the river said that it has taken decades to get the water cleaned up and that it still isn't safe to swim in but they are continuing to work on it.
 
Becky1951 said:
Yes we gave over our independence piece by piece (manufacturing our own products) all for the sake of the all mighty dollar (cheaper to make in China).
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There was also the hope that, through open trade and capitalism, the CCP would shift toward democracy, or at least some form of it, and the communist gov't would eventually dissolve. And, at the time, it looked like that could happen.

Open trade and "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" did give them a massive economic boost, and lifted a bunch of Chinese "peasants" out of poverty, but it hasn't changed the CCP's policies at all. They bite the hands that feed them.
 
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