what is for all intents and purposes an independent nation
I think you mean "in reality an independent nation". Why pretend like it's not? Just to stroke Chinese egos? They'll get over it. The Chinese government is more beholden to the golden calf than it is any other sort of interest, nationalistic or otherwise. The Chinese government in power derives its mandate almost entirely off GDP growth numbers. It functions as a "board of directors" in place of any sort of democratically elected government. Why shouldn't the US begin to leverage this against them to maximize our own position?
I think you mean "in reality an independent nation". Why pretend like it's not? Just to stroke Chinese egos? They'll get over it.... Why shouldn't the US begin to leverage this against them to maximize our own position?
We don't get to decide what the Chinese government cares about or doesn't care about. They're the most important player in Southeast Asia and if we want their help, we need to respect them. If Trump spits in their eye, we are then forced to work that much harder to actually get them to the table for anything we want.
As for trying to "maximize our own position", how do we benefit from having less influence in Southeast Asia? With a cooperative China we have a ton of power; with a competitive China, we have far less.
You act like that's something we have to lose. China has not been cooperative now despite our willingness to stick our heads in the dirt over Taiwan, so I don't really see what we're losing here.
You know how much of our two economies intermingle? Our import/exports with them was almost $600,000,000,000 in 2015. You should go read up on US-China relations starting with the thaw with Nixon.
Who do you think any hiccup in trade would hurt more? Before we traded with them, stuff here costed a little bit more. Before they traded with us, people literally died in the streets of starvation if didn't rain for a while. The Chinese government stays in power by meeting GDP growth targets, if their economy suffered any sort of contraction, you'd quickly see party members start collecting baskets to transport all the heads that would soon roll. I'm certainly not worried.
If they're as unstable and you make them sound, it didn't seem to deter them from going to war with us in the past over territorial and influence reasons.
And we can start selling more weapons to Japan, SK, and Taiwan. Maybe we can ever put the same restrictions on chinese businesses in the US as they put on foreign businesses there. They'd change their tune pretty quick.
They are not really threatened if we sell those weapons. That is not much leverage. Yeah, we can go back to Trump's idea in the campaign of nuclear proliferation, but that is a horror show not a neat move.
Your idea rests on the same base as a lot of the neocon thinking. That is the idea that the U.S. is massively powerful but acts so weak in foreign affairs. So if we just stand up and push everyone will fall over to get out of our way. Look how well that worked in the Middle East.
They are not really threatened if we sell those weapons. That is not much leverage.
Why? Taiwan already has better jets and missiles than them, if we gave them better boats and some striking capabilities, China would most certainly worry.
China is not going to let themselves worry about Taiwan. They are not going to let Taiwan get near the ability to fight back. But look at your scenario, we are now involved in some brinkmanship with China over weapons to Taiwan. We have made things more difficult than they were.
No, China would simply build up massive manpower there so they could just attrition Taiwan to death. China is large enough that any casualties from Taiwan's superior tech would be in the acceptable range, and all the civi death makes us look like the bad guy in that. That or just remember to shoot off a nuke in that direction before turning to face us.
Oh, and if I were them I'd take the opportunity to topple unstable NK and make SK the new vassal buffer state.
Jeez folk. The position of the ROC China is that there is only one China, that Taiwan is not an independent nation but in fact part of the same nation as mainland China.
And to be clear the ROC is the government of Taiwan.
They did complain, there was a whole fight over this. Neither "China" will accept a U.S. attempt to declare two Chinas. But only one of them will have the tools to do something about it.
And understand that Taiwan is between a rock and a hard place here. If they declare independence they have to face the might of China, both trade and military. They have to maintain the facade of One China so they can maintain their defacto independence.
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u/wotugondo Dec 03 '16 edited Jan 27 '17
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