PREVIEW： Realpolitik #17 ｜ After China Invades Taiwan
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Summary
In this episode, Firas talks about what will happen if China invades Taiwan, why China should invade Taiwan, and what the United States is trying to do to prepare for this. He also talks about the new trade restrictions that China has been introducing gradually over the past few years, and why they seem to be designed to prepare the world for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Transcript
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Hello, welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mordad.
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Today we are going to talk about what happens after China invades Taiwan, but before that
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we'll talk about why China should be invading Taiwan, or will be invading Taiwan I should say,
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what the Americans are trying to do to prepare for this, and what will the world look like
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after that happens. I kind of assume that it will probably happen in the next two, five years. I
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wouldn't be surprised if it happened tomorrow, but we're going to talk about this, and we're going
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to talk about what the United States is trying to do, and what it means for the world. This is a
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live episode, so please leave your comments, leave your chats, let me know what you think, let me know
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what topics you think I'm addressing well or not addressing, and ask any questions that you have.
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So, where I want to start is with the new trade restrictions that China has been introducing
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gradually over the past few years, but these have been tightening slowly. It looks to me like the
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Chinese are preparing for not just an invasion of Taiwan, but also the kinds of sanctions and
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export restrictions that would paralyze the West. What they're doing is they're imposing a lot of
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restrictions on rare earth minerals, among other areas. These are targeting mostly defense companies,
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but also logistics, and now it seems automakers. And the reasoning behind that seems to be to try to
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cripple Western industry and Western manufacturing, meaning that they're in a bit of a race against time,
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because what Trump is trying to do is to get the West to become independent of Chinese
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supply chains. And anybody who's in the defense industry, in manufacturing drones, in manufacturing
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chips, can see that this is happening. And so what the Chinese are doing is imposing the kind of
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restrictions that make that transition much more difficult. But because that transition is happening
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anyway, that means that the restrictions that are being imposed by China only have value for a
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limited period of time until the West has actually adjusted and got into a position where it is in fact
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autonomous of Chinese industries. Rare earth minerals are a big vulnerability because they go into anything
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that relates to engines and anything that relates to lenses, among other things. And if you know anything
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about drones and missiles, there is a massive importance for the manufacturing of engines and for the
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manufacturing of lenses and for the manufacturing of chips that allow these things to operate. And this
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sort of goes across the whole industrial spectrum. So it applies to missiles, it applies to drones, it applies to cars,
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it applies to logistics, and in all of the other industries that rely on these sectors.
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So this is what the Chinese are doing. And I would argue that if they impose more and more restrictions on
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chemicals, that would suggest that the day is drawing closer where they have a much shorter window
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in which to cripple the West industrially, take Taiwan, go to war, in a position that is advantageous,
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where the West can't produce enough equipment to really go against them and to really challenge them.
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So these trade restrictions actually matter and they're important. And it seems that the Chinese are doing these
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things for a good reason. And it's worth remembering that the Chinese are really the technological leaders
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in a huge number of sectors that are militarily very important. So this is a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,
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which looks at who is the most developed in terms of their manufacturing.
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And there is just one brief paragraph that I want to read to you. The new results reveal the stunning shift
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in research leadership over the last two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific,
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led by China's exceptional gains. The US led in 60 out of 64 technologies from 2003 to 2007.
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But in the most recent five years, 2019 to 2023, is leading in just seven of those technologies.
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China led in only three out of 64 in 2003 to 2007. But it's now the lead in 57 out of 64 technologies
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in the period 2019 to 2023. So what the Chinese are doing basically is that they're really getting ahead
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in everything that is related to cyber, to technology, to manufacturing, to smart manufacturing,
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even to biochemistry. Pretty much across the board, electric batteries, photovalvics, genetic engineering,
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even AI. They are quickly becoming a lot more competitive. And now the West has awakened to this
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and it's beginning to adjust. Meaning that the relative power of China is at its highest. Meaning
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that these trade restrictions that the Chinese are imposing are intended to keep that leading position
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for longer. But also meaning that over time, the relative power of China is going to decline.
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And if you are a power that is declining, but that hasn't secured its key strategic interests,
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then you really need to act now. And the Chinese military preparations show this.
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So not just a quick aside here. China is the lead manufacturer of the world. It's the superpower of
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manufacturing. It controls almost 30% of manufacturing output versus the US is 17%. And then Japan and
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Germany with 5% each, and then South Korea with 3%. So this kind of advantage that they have
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have is something that they need to exploit sooner rather than later, because people like Trump are
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saying, we must re-industrialize. And we must re-industrialize very quickly. So just to reinforce
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that point. And in terms of military preparations, we've seen the Chinese start building ferries that
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would be very important in an attack on Taiwan, because what these special, or actually bridges
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rather than ferries, what these special maritime bridges do is that they can sail up to any location
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along the coast, so long as there's a highway nearby, and start offloading vehicles, military vehicles.
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And they're building ferries that sort of plug into these bridges, so that the Chinese can ferry troops
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across the Strait of Taiwan as quickly as possible, and get them into Taiwan as quickly as possible.
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you know, this is the kind of thing that was done at the very last stages of the preparation of the
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Normandy invasion. So the US sort of built up its troops in Britain, they moved all of the soldiers,
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they moved the ships, etc, etc. And then at the last moment, they built the bridges that would go to shore
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and allow soldiers and equipment to unload. And the Chinese are building that now.
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And they're building a whole new military city near Beijing with massive underground components.
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And this is going to end up housing the leadership of the Chinese military in the event of a war.
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And knowing that the breakneck pace at which China engages in these massive projects,
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So they're preparing themselves for a situation where they are in a full confrontation with the West.
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And the objective, the initial objective is going to be Taiwan. But as I'm going to explore a little bit later,
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Plus, one of the things that China is doing and that President Xi Jinping keeps on doing
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is that they keep on purging their top military command.
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Now, there's a couple of ways of explaining this and explaining why China, why President Xi in particular,
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And I would argue that there are two reasons. One is corruption, as is the official stated reason.
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The second is because Xi is trying to push the military to get ready,
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and the military isn't moving at his pace, and he isn't sure of their loyalty.
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So what he's doing is that he's promoting younger people who are probably going to be more aggressive,
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and putting them in positions of command, and getting them ready to be able to act.
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And you see this kind of turn in a context where really there is some kind of conflict
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between the political leadership and the military leadership.
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And the political leadership is just trying to hurry the military along.
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And the Chinese have had problems. They've had problems building their aircraft carriers.
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I think one of them had cracks on its surface, meaning that the jets can't fly from it properly.
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They're accelerating the building of aircraft carriers, but Taiwan is quite close to their shores.
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It's not a massive distance. They need the aircraft carriers to go further afield.
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They're expanding their submarine fleet. They're expanding their destroyer fleet.
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They're expanding their nuclear arsenal. Pretty much everything that they would need
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in a full-on confrontation is being prepared. And they're building up the anti-ship missiles that
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they would need to use against American aircraft carriers if these were to get involved.
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Now, there are some questions over whether or not they can accurately target aircraft carriers
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while they are at sea, given that they're mobile. But if the Houthi are managing to sink ships,
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and are managing to hit ships in Bab el-Mendab, I find it difficult to imagine that the Chinese can't do that.
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Regardless of what anybody else might be saying, if the Houthi can hit ships in motion,
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which is an admittedly difficult feat, then the Chinese can probably do it too.
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The problem that the Chinese have had is that their submarines are too noisy,
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but that's something that is quite solvable with some help from the Russians.
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It takes time to build these, but think about it this way. If they have been building submarines that are
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very quiet, there are some reasons to believe that the West wouldn't necessarily know about it.
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Even with the satellite imagery, even on the constant monitoring of China. I got a question here from Matt.
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Do the Chinese have a willing population that's willing to do this?
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They've been cultivating a very high level of nationalism in China, and they have one of the
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world's biggest armies, the world's biggest army. So they have the uniformed soldiers to do it.
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Will they be good enough? Will they be able to do it? Probably they, this is a serious military,
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probably this is a very serious military, and they've always thought that one of their problems
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is way too many people. And given the extent of control that they have over society,
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they can do forced conscription much more easily than most. As we're going to mention,
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the Germans are trying to do some kind of conscription and it's falling apart.
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Now, why do I think that the Chinese believe that they must have Taiwan?
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This is an image from marine traffic, and it shows you where the ships are going all over the world.
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And this here is the island of Taiwan, if you can see it in grey,
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buried among all of the ships that are going around.
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China's biggest ports are all extremely vulnerable to Taiwan.
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Because what Taiwan acts as is a massive anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and aircraft carrier,
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positioned off the coast of China, with the ability to threaten all of the shipping that goes into China.
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Not just that, but Taiwan also polices a lot of the traffic that goes into South Korea here,
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and that goes into Japan. And these are two American allies.
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So if Taiwan is in hostile hands, it acts as an anti-ship base, targeting shipping that's going into China.
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And the U.S. is slowly increasing the flow of weapons that is available to Taiwan,
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But very often when you try to build up deterrence, it actually backfires,
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because it convinces the other side that you're preparing for offensive operations, not just defensive operations.
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Now obviously Taiwan can't be used to invade China, but it can be used to blockade it.
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And so for China to have any kind of maritime security, it needs to control Taiwan.
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The problem is that this brings, very obviously, Japan and South Korea into the picture.
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And 50% of the world's shipbuilding capability is in the hands of China,
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and the other 50% is in the hands of South Korea and Japan.
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Give or take a few details. The Indians have some capability.
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The Russians, some European countries have some capability.
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The Americans have sort of decommissioned all of their shipyards, for the most part.
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But really, China, South Korea and Japan are the countries that are really closest to being able to challenge China in a maritime way.
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They're also ridiculously vulnerable to Chinese missiles, given their geography and given their locations.
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And as we saw with Israel, Iranian attacks against Israel depleted around 25% of the, 15% or 25%, I think 25% of the total stockpile of THAAD missiles, terminal high altitude air defense missiles.
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These are the kinds of missiles that you would need to intercept what the Chinese have.
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