The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 21, 2025


PREVIEW： Realpolitik #17 ｜ After China Invades Taiwan

Topics
trade restrictions
Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Trump Firas Mardad Xi Jinping Normandy Matt
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1277 The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1279

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

144.4

Word count

2,239

Sentence count

120

Harmful content

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mordad.
00:00:10.480 Today we are going to talk about what happens after China invades Taiwan, but before that
00:00:15.700 we'll talk about why China should be invading Taiwan, or will be invading Taiwan I should say,
00:00:21.220 what the Americans are trying to do to prepare for this, and what will the world look like
00:00:26.500 after that happens. I kind of assume that it will probably happen in the next two, five years. I
00:00:34.980 wouldn't be surprised if it happened tomorrow, but we're going to talk about this, and we're going
00:00:38.920 to talk about what the United States is trying to do, and what it means for the world. This is a
00:00:45.160 live episode, so please leave your comments, leave your chats, let me know what you think, let me know
00:00:51.280 what topics you think I'm addressing well or not addressing, and ask any questions that you have.
00:00:56.500 So, where I want to start is with the new trade restrictions that China has been introducing
00:01:03.420 gradually over the past few years, but these have been tightening slowly. It looks to me like the
00:01:13.120 Chinese are preparing for not just an invasion of Taiwan, but also the kinds of sanctions and
00:01:20.800 export restrictions that would paralyze the West. What they're doing is they're imposing a lot of
00:01:27.460 restrictions on rare earth minerals, among other areas. These are targeting mostly defense companies,
00:01:34.480 but also logistics, and now it seems automakers. And the reasoning behind that seems to be to try to
00:01:41.140 cripple Western industry and Western manufacturing, meaning that they're in a bit of a race against time, 0.78
00:01:49.400 because what Trump is trying to do is to get the West to become independent of Chinese
00:01:57.200 supply chains. And anybody who's in the defense industry, in manufacturing drones, in manufacturing
00:02:03.800 chips, can see that this is happening. And so what the Chinese are doing is imposing the kind of 0.94
00:02:10.000 restrictions that make that transition much more difficult. But because that transition is happening
00:02:16.000 anyway, that means that the restrictions that are being imposed by China only have value for a
00:02:24.800 limited period of time until the West has actually adjusted and got into a position where it is in fact
00:02:32.340 autonomous of Chinese industries. Rare earth minerals are a big vulnerability because they go into anything
00:02:38.960 that relates to engines and anything that relates to lenses, among other things. And if you know anything
00:02:46.000 about drones and missiles, there is a massive importance for the manufacturing of engines and for the
00:02:55.200 manufacturing of lenses and for the manufacturing of chips that allow these things to operate. And this
00:03:01.520 sort of goes across the whole industrial spectrum. So it applies to missiles, it applies to drones, it applies to cars,
00:03:07.920 it applies to logistics, and in all of the other industries that rely on these sectors.
00:03:13.680 So this is what the Chinese are doing. And I would argue that if they impose more and more restrictions on 1.00
00:03:18.960 chemicals, that would suggest that the day is drawing closer where they have a much shorter window
00:03:27.520 in which to cripple the West industrially, take Taiwan, go to war, in a position that is advantageous, 0.92
00:03:36.160 where the West can't produce enough equipment to really go against them and to really challenge them.
00:03:42.240 So these trade restrictions actually matter and they're important. And it seems that the Chinese are doing these 1.00
00:03:47.840 things for a good reason. And it's worth remembering that the Chinese are really the technological leaders
00:03:56.480 in a huge number of sectors that are militarily very important. So this is a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,
00:04:07.200 which looks at who is the most developed in terms of their manufacturing.
00:04:12.160 And there is just one brief paragraph that I want to read to you. The new results reveal the stunning shift
00:04:20.320 in research leadership over the last two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific,
00:04:26.560 led by China's exceptional gains. The US led in 60 out of 64 technologies from 2003 to 2007.
00:04:37.600 But in the most recent five years, 2019 to 2023, is leading in just seven of those technologies.
00:04:44.720 China led in only three out of 64 in 2003 to 2007. But it's now the lead in 57 out of 64 technologies
00:04:57.920 in the period 2019 to 2023. So what the Chinese are doing basically is that they're really getting ahead 0.99
00:05:05.200 in everything that is related to cyber, to technology, to manufacturing, to smart manufacturing,
00:05:11.120 even to biochemistry. Pretty much across the board, electric batteries, photovalvics, genetic engineering,
00:05:19.600 even AI. They are quickly becoming a lot more competitive. And now the West has awakened to this
00:05:30.080 and it's beginning to adjust. Meaning that the relative power of China is at its highest. Meaning
00:05:37.760 that these trade restrictions that the Chinese are imposing are intended to keep that leading position
00:05:46.720 for longer. But also meaning that over time, the relative power of China is going to decline.
00:05:54.800 And if you are a power that is declining, but that hasn't secured its key strategic interests,
00:06:00.640 then you really need to act now. And the Chinese military preparations show this.
00:06:05.760 So not just a quick aside here. China is the lead manufacturer of the world. It's the superpower of
00:06:15.840 manufacturing. It controls almost 30% of manufacturing output versus the US is 17%. And then Japan and
00:06:24.320 Germany with 5% each, and then South Korea with 3%. So this kind of advantage that they have 0.97
00:06:31.200 have is something that they need to exploit sooner rather than later, because people like Trump are
00:06:38.880 saying, we must re-industrialize. And we must re-industrialize very quickly. So just to reinforce
00:06:46.640 that point. And in terms of military preparations, we've seen the Chinese start building ferries that
00:06:55.360 would be very important in an attack on Taiwan, because what these special, or actually bridges
00:07:02.480 rather than ferries, what these special maritime bridges do is that they can sail up to any location
00:07:09.120 along the coast, so long as there's a highway nearby, and start offloading vehicles, military vehicles.
00:07:16.400 And they're building ferries that sort of plug into these bridges, so that the Chinese can ferry troops
00:07:23.680 across the Strait of Taiwan as quickly as possible, and get them into Taiwan as quickly as possible.
00:07:30.480 And with this kind of preparedness,
00:07:33.360 you know, this is the kind of thing that was done at the very last stages of the preparation of the
00:07:39.360 Normandy invasion. So the US sort of built up its troops in Britain, they moved all of the soldiers,
00:07:47.280 they moved the ships, etc, etc. And then at the last moment, they built the bridges that would go to shore
00:07:56.720 and allow soldiers and equipment to unload. And the Chinese are building that now. 0.92
00:08:02.160 And they're building a whole new military city near Beijing with massive underground components.
00:08:17.120 And this is going to end up housing the leadership of the Chinese military in the event of a war.
00:08:22.960 And it's built to be nuclear resistant.
00:08:25.120 And knowing that the breakneck pace at which China engages in these massive projects,
00:08:33.920 this thing could be ready in a year's time.
00:08:36.880 So they're preparing themselves for a situation where they are in a full confrontation with the West.
00:08:41.440 And the objective, the initial objective is going to be Taiwan. But as I'm going to explore a little bit later,
00:08:51.120 they may not really just stop at Taiwan.
00:08:55.120 Plus, one of the things that China is doing and that President Xi Jinping keeps on doing
00:09:01.600 is that they keep on purging their top military command.
00:09:04.320 Now, there's a couple of ways of explaining this and explaining why China, why President Xi in particular,
00:09:12.960 keeps on firing the top brass of the military.
00:09:16.560 And I would argue that there are two reasons. One is corruption, as is the official stated reason.
00:09:22.160 The second is because Xi is trying to push the military to get ready,
00:09:26.640 and the military isn't moving at his pace, and he isn't sure of their loyalty.
00:09:32.320 So what he's doing is that he's promoting younger people who are probably going to be more aggressive,
00:09:37.520 and putting them in positions of command, and getting them ready to be able to act.
00:09:44.320 And you see this kind of turn in a context where really there is some kind of conflict
00:09:55.200 between the political leadership and the military leadership.
00:09:58.880 And the political leadership is just trying to hurry the military along.
00:10:02.880 And the Chinese have had problems. They've had problems building their aircraft carriers.
00:10:06.320 I think one of them had cracks on its surface, meaning that the jets can't fly from it properly.
00:10:11.760 They're accelerating the building of aircraft carriers, but Taiwan is quite close to their shores.
00:10:18.320 It's not a massive distance. They need the aircraft carriers to go further afield.
00:10:24.160 They're expanding their submarine fleet. They're expanding their destroyer fleet.
00:10:28.000 They're expanding their nuclear arsenal. Pretty much everything that they would need
00:10:33.280 in a full-on confrontation is being prepared. And they're building up the anti-ship missiles that
00:10:39.280 they would need to use against American aircraft carriers if these were to get involved.
00:10:44.960 Now, there are some questions over whether or not they can accurately target aircraft carriers
00:10:50.000 while they are at sea, given that they're mobile. But if the Houthi are managing to sink ships,
00:10:55.840 and are managing to hit ships in Bab el-Mendab, I find it difficult to imagine that the Chinese can't do that. 0.97
00:11:02.560 Regardless of what anybody else might be saying, if the Houthi can hit ships in motion,
00:11:09.120 which is an admittedly difficult feat, then the Chinese can probably do it too.
00:11:15.040 The problem that the Chinese have had is that their submarines are too noisy,
00:11:19.280 but that's something that is quite solvable with some help from the Russians.
00:11:23.760 It takes time to build these, but think about it this way. If they have been building submarines that are
00:11:29.760 very quiet, there are some reasons to believe that the West wouldn't necessarily know about it.
00:11:35.680 Even with the satellite imagery, even on the constant monitoring of China. I got a question here from Matt.
00:11:44.000 Do the Chinese have a willing population that's willing to do this? 1.00
00:11:47.280 They've been cultivating a very high level of nationalism in China, and they have one of the
00:11:54.640 world's biggest armies, the world's biggest army. So they have the uniformed soldiers to do it.
00:12:01.040 Will they be good enough? Will they be able to do it? Probably they, this is a serious military,
00:12:08.240 probably this is a very serious military, and they've always thought that one of their problems
00:12:13.920 is way too many people. And given the extent of control that they have over society,
00:12:21.360 they can do forced conscription much more easily than most. As we're going to mention,
00:12:26.160 the Germans are trying to do some kind of conscription and it's falling apart.
00:12:30.720 Now, why do I think that the Chinese believe that they must have Taiwan? 0.68
00:12:35.920 This is an image from marine traffic, and it shows you where the ships are going all over the world.
00:12:41.120 And this here is the island of Taiwan, if you can see it in grey,
00:12:48.400 buried among all of the ships that are going around.
00:12:54.080 China's biggest ports are all extremely vulnerable to Taiwan.
00:13:00.080 Because what Taiwan acts as is a massive anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and aircraft carrier, 0.87
00:13:06.800 positioned off the coast of China, with the ability to threaten all of the shipping that goes into China.
00:13:14.000 So it's a ridiculously strategic position.
00:13:18.000 Not just that, but Taiwan also polices a lot of the traffic that goes into South Korea here,
00:13:24.960 and that goes into Japan. And these are two American allies.
00:13:28.800 So if Taiwan is in hostile hands, it acts as an anti-ship base, targeting shipping that's going into China.
00:13:38.640 And the U.S. is slowly increasing the flow of weapons that is available to Taiwan,
00:13:43.760 with a view towards deterring China.
00:13:46.960 But very often when you try to build up deterrence, it actually backfires,
00:13:50.720 because it convinces the other side that you're preparing for offensive operations, not just defensive operations.
00:13:58.800 Now obviously Taiwan can't be used to invade China, but it can be used to blockade it.
00:14:04.800 And so for China to have any kind of maritime security, it needs to control Taiwan. 0.93
00:14:09.120 The problem is that this brings, very obviously, Japan and South Korea into the picture.
00:14:18.480 And 50% of the world's shipbuilding capability is in the hands of China, 0.97
00:14:23.600 and the other 50% is in the hands of South Korea and Japan.
00:14:27.520 Give or take a few details. The Indians have some capability.
00:14:30.080 The Russians, some European countries have some capability.
00:14:33.440 The Americans have sort of decommissioned all of their shipyards, for the most part.
00:14:38.080 But really, China, South Korea and Japan are the countries that are really closest to being able to challenge China in a maritime way.
00:14:54.400 They're also ridiculously vulnerable to Chinese missiles, given their geography and given their locations.
00:14:59.280 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.
00:15:20.160 These are the kinds of missiles that you would need to intercept what the Chinese have. 1.00
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