• 201dberg
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      4 months ago

      “We have practiced this so much we can do it in our sleep. Now we are just sipping mimosas and waiting for the order.”

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Taiwan is readying citizens for a Chinese invasion… Issues new patches to members of security forces and Chinese flags for everybody’s houses.

  • IceWallowCum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    What do these people think an integration would even look like? These articles and western propaganda in general just make it seem like chinese soldiers will storm into Taiwan and (???), which has pretty much been the american way since WWII.

    Taking over a country of shareholders, tech and service workers looks very different to taking over a country of farmers

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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      4 months ago

      Exactly, something like 70% of trade is with the mainland and Taiwan imports over 90% of its energy. It wouldn’t last a week with a blockade.

      • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        This is exactly what an “invasion” would look like: ceasing trade with the mainland.

        Maybe China would take extreme action and do a blockade.

        Either way, they’ll sit back and wait for Taiwan to fold first.

        If China really wanted to use military force, they could give Taiwan independence, do a handful of drone strikes on TSMC factories, and just wait until they beg to be reintegrated after the West can’t buy chips from them or use them as a wedge.

        We all saw how Russia outproduced all of NATO, and Ukraine is directly adjacent to their suppliers with fucking roads connecting them. Imagine doing the same thing, but while relying on countries several thousand miles away for not only weapons, but food and basic goods! How is importing all that stuff gonna go when the PLA Navy blocks or controls all your major ports?

        Idk what NATO strategists are thinking they’ll accomplish, but it can’t be military advantage or an independent Taiwan. Only way this makes sense is if they’re banking on China taking the bait, killing a few fellow Mandarin speakers, and getting fucked up by the political fallout.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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          4 months ago

          It’s frankly weird that random people in the internet can understand these things while the intelligence experts in the west are seemingly unable to.

          • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            4 months ago

            You don’t get into those positions by having a solid material analysis.

            Anyone in the armed forces who develops one would get tf out at the soonest opportunity. Understanding the current state of affairs requires (minimally) some understanding of how Marxist and anti-imperialist states operate, which usually leads to sympathizing with the cause, which inhibits their ability to perform their duties.

            Best you’re gonna get is a true believer with good grades from West Point. Tacticians with zero strategic ability. The ranks will be filled with overzealous fascists who jump at every opportunity to strike the enemy.

            It also doesn’t help that the US has no winning moves besides being marginally more intact after a nuclear war. They’re just sticking to what they know…apply sanctions, fund fascist opposition groups, and provoke militarily.

            The West doesn’t even know just how cooked it is yet.

        • USSR Enjoyer
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          4 months ago

          I keep finding it weird how the US floated destroying TSMC “So tHe ChiNEsE cANt HaVe iT”. You’d think that would be enough to give some rich assholes very cold feet about separatism.

  • halfpipe [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Yeah, because it’s patently obvious that the US is in terminal decline, while China is going to be the worlds foremost economic and manufacturing power for at least the rest of the century. Even TSMC has facilities and employees in mainland China now.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
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      4 months ago

      Also, I’m sure even the most brainwashed people can see what’s happening in Ukraine at this point. I doubt most people in Taiwan are going yeah we’d like some of that here too.

      • l0tusc0bra
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        4 months ago

        It sure doesn’t seem like anyone in US intelligence is taking into consideration the fact that they have multiple major military debacles/proxy wars going on rn and are winning exactly zero of them. There’s never been a worse time to throw in with the US. I guess in their heads they’ve just written it all off as not being the US’ fault and just assume everybody else will believe that too.

          • l0tusc0bra
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            4 months ago

            I suppose you just don’t have to learn when you have a monopoly of any kind, let alone global power. Now that monopoly is being broken which is what all of this is really about, innit

  • SugandeseDelegation
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    4 months ago

    a growing number of defense analysts in Taipei and Washington say Taiwan must prepare for the worst possible scenario: a protracted battle on the island itself.

    “Taiwan’s reservists are going to be mobilizing where the fight is happening, when the fight is happening,” said Michael Hunzeker, a retired Marine who studies military reform at George Mason University.

    It’s not Volkssturm if you pre-emptively recruit them 🧠👈

    • IceWallowCum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Taiwan must prepare for the worst possible scenario: a protracted battle on the island itself.

      This is not a prediction, it’s an order. If a conflict does happen, it will have been completely fabricated by the west so that Taiwan gets destroyed instead of peacefully reintegrated

  • Che's Motorcycle
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    4 months ago

    Democracy Dies in Darkness [heh]

    TAIPEI, Taiwan — In the imagined blockade of “Zero Day,” a Taiwanese television drama that will be released next year but is already causing a stir, the Chinese military has encircled Taiwan, cutting it off from the world and plunging the island democracy of 23 million into crisis.

    In a 17-minute trailer released last week, the public responds to China’s blockade with a mixture of terror and resignation. Young couples ride bikes past tank convoys on empty streets. Criminal gangs stir up chaos on behalf of Beijing and its territorial claims over Taiwan.

    Taiwanese shouldn’t fight and couldn’t win anyway, an influencer tells her followers in the series. “Those who want us to enter the battlefield — they really don’t care about our suffering,” she says.

    It may be fiction, but the show’s bleak assessment of Taiwanese readiness to fight touches upon a very real problem facing President Lai Ching-te, who took office in May and whom Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

    The threat from Beijing has intensified as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared China’s “reunification” with Taiwan inevitable. He has underscored his willingness to use force to achieve that goal by sending rising numbers of warplanes and navy ships to probe the island’s defenses.

    Taiwan’s government has been trying to improve its defenses by extending mandatory military service and revamping ongoing training for reservists as part of a broader shift in defense strategy designed to make Xi think twice before taking a gamble on use of force.

    But young Taiwanese are not answering the call [and why would they?], and Defense Minister Wellington Koo recently acknowledged a lack of equipment and instructors has slowed attempts to professionalize reservist training. “I must honestly say that we need to quickly strengthen [training] as there is still a lot of room for improvement,” he told the legislature in June.

    long article is long

    Such admissions may concern Donald Trump, who has signaled a more transactional approach to American support for Taiwanese defense if he is reelected president in November.

    Taipei wants to create a professional backup force to support 155,000 active-duty soldiers. All Taiwanese men born in or after 2005 are now required to enlist for a year of service, while some 2 million former soldiers are supposed to complete refresher training every two years.

    But officials have acknowledged being behind schedule with plans to teach reservists and draftees how to supplement front-line troops in the event of a war. Only 6 percent of eligible conscripts — 6,936 people — took part in the newly implemented 12-month program this year. Most deferred military service to first attend university, meaning the 2005-born intake cohort won’t be fully trained until 2027.

    Those doing military service this year are not undergoing the anticipated training. A select group of one-year conscripts were supposed to be learning to use drones, Kestrel antitank rockets and surface-to-air Stinger missiles but there were not enough trainees this year to begin the training, according to a Defense Ministry officer.

    Taiwan’s slow progress on boosting training concerns military experts in both Washington and Taipei, who are urging authorities to move faster to deter Xi and prevent a war.

    “The last thing that Taiwan wants is for Xi Jinping, as the key decision-maker in China, and for the United States, as the key ally of Taiwan, to doubt Taiwan’s commitments to its own defense,” said Matt Pottinger, who was U.S. deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

    To do that, Pottinger said, Taiwan needs the political will and foresight to dedicate some of its best military officers to recruitment and instruction. “I’m really hoping that Taiwan makes these sacrifices,” he said.

    China’s military, the largest standing army in the world, has 2 million active personnel and recruits about 400,000 conscripts every year. Its defense budget of $230 billion was 13 times as large as Taiwan’s in 2023 and its military regularly trains to take the island in a sudden overwhelming assault.

    The United States is required by law to help Taiwan strengthen its own defenses, including through arms sales, but it isn’t formally committed to intervening against a Chinese attack, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.” While President Biden has repeatedly said he would send the U.S. military to defend Taiwan, Trump has made no such promises. Asked what he would do in an interview last month, Trump said that Taiwan was “9,500 miles away” and should pay for American defense. [Cynical support to Trump?]

    Taiwan must be “mentally prepared” for a Trump victory in November — and the scrutiny that will come with that, said Mei Fu-hsing, director of the Taiwan Security Analysis Center, a New York-based research center.

    “If [Trump] is reelected, he will certainly demand Taiwan to significantly increase its own defense spending and be more proactive in preparing for war,” Mei said.

    Improved training is a key way for Taiwan to show it is taking military readiness seriously, analysts say. But new programs have continued to face shortages of funding, instructors and equipment, leading to regular complaints from attendees about the quality of instruction, according to reservists as well as official statements acknowledging setbacks.

    “It was a complete waste of time,” said Vincent Tsao, a 30-year-old scuba diving instructor who spent most of his five days of reservist training last week sitting idly inside being taught by retired soldiers who openly acknowledged they weren’t prepared to lead the program.

    Taiwanese men who completed mandatory service within the last 12 years are theoretically called back for refresher training every second year, although in practice many attend far less frequently. Only a fifth of the reservists who went through refresher training last year completed the newly extended two-week course, with the majority doing only five or seven days.

    Preparing 2 million reservists for “immediate combat readiness” as a second line of defense is “very important for defending Taiwan,” said Han Gang-ming, former director of Taiwan’s All-out Defense Mobilization Office, which oversees reservists.

    “Since the reserve force is not the primary combat unit, we are always placed last whenever budgets are allocated,” Han said. [Neolibs gonna neolib]

    Since taking office in May, Lai has vowed to press ahead with his predecessor’s reforms that will improve readiness and warned the military to guard against a “defeatist” attitude, telling troops they cannot presume “the first battle will be the last battle” should China attack.

    But the new administration has not yet announced major changes to training beyond scrapping ceremonial bayonet and goose-stepping drills. Lai also faces fierce pushback from the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang, which controls the legislature, and has accused the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of trying to turn Taiwan into a “powder keg.”

    China, which wants to undermine Lai, has claimed that he wants to turn ordinary people into “cannon fodder.” [Where’s the lie?]

    But analysts say [must be nice to get paid to anonymously tell others to sacrifice themselves for the empire] Taiwan must prepare for the new realities of an increasingly aggressive China. Taiwan’s military strategy has long focused on stopping China before its troops crossed the 110-mile strait that separates them, but a growing number of defense analysts in Taipei and Washington say Taiwan must prepare for the worst possible scenario: a protracted battle on the island itself.

    “Taiwan’s reservists are going to be mobilizing where the fight is happening, when the fight is happening,” said Michael Hunzeker, a retired Marine who studies military reform at George Mason University.

    The island is patently not ready for that, according to people who have completed military training recently.

    Cony Hsieh, 31, who previously enlisted and served as a soldier for six years, signed up for reservist training as soon as women were allowed to join last year. She returned for a second round in May.

    While there were minor improvements, the military was moving too slowly to gain public trust and make training more than a formality, she said. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do in my position if a war breaks out,” Hsieh, who is now working on a master’s degree, said in an interview. Rising public concern about a conflict has left many in Taiwan asking themselves what they would do in a “Zero Day” scenario and how far they should allow China’s invasion threat to infringe on daily life.

    Surveys show a majority of Taiwanese support the decision to lengthen mandatory service, but that doesn’t mean they think training is a good use of time or public funds.

    “Everyone has their own lives and families. My wife would have to work and take care of the child by herself when I was away,” said Hsieh Yu-hsiang, a 30-year-old salesman at an insurance company who attended 14 days of training in early July.

    Even so, he supports government plans to strengthen reservist training. “As the threat increases,” Hsieh said, “it’s inevitable that we need measures in place to respond.”

    • Che's Motorcycle
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      4 months ago

      Never stated in the article is that Taiwan could never repel a Chinese force determined on taking it over. So it’s no wonder young people aren’t eager to throw themselves into the meatgrinder reserves.