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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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It's extremely unlikely that there will be a full blown war over Taiwan at all, in my opinion. The Chinese have no need to risk it all to secure territorial integrity, and as other commenters have suggested, there's no rush for China either. Economic warfare (cessation of PRC-ROC trade rather than outright blockade) is more likely. AFAICT the mainline scenario is where the US continues to onshore the useful productive capacity of Taiwan (chip fab), with possible human capital absorption as well. Eventually, the value of Taiwan for the US will decrease to the point where it isn't worth going to war, and a Hong Kong style handover will begin. This would disrupt the island chain strategy of course, but the reality is that as the Taiwanese economy becomes increasingly reliant on the PRC, and the value of it to the US decreases, there's only one likely direction of travel. Plenty of unknowns but I'd put a 40% likelihood on this kind of scenario playing out in the next 5-10 years or so, much more likely than a hot war involving the 2 superpowers.

Agree, China doesn’t want all the most valuable chip production to be in Taiwan. If they could press a button tomorrow and turn Taiwan into worthless farmland inhabited by a few peasants they’d do it in a heartbeat. They are clearly willing to wait for production to slowly move elsewhere (both to the US and China proper) and then to move when the island is no longer strategically as valuable to the West.