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High-Tech Firms Worry About Taiwan-China Tensions
Andy Tai writes "This San Jose Mercury News story shows high tech companies in the Silicon Valley worry about a possible war between mainland China and Taiwan. Both play important roles in the computer industry and the U.S. depends on both to finance the federal budget deficits. Many businessmen hope that economic considerations will prevent both sides from marching down a self-destructive path."
It's nice to think that what with war looming, the prospect of thousands of people being killed, all business men can think about is money. It sickens me.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Also consider the large number of immigrants from China (both the ROC and the PRC) in the Silicon Valley. Many of them have family back there who would be caught in the conflict. I used to work for a company in which a majority of the people were from Taiwan. I can imagine them getting quite worried.
-- $SIGNATURE
Funnily enough, China has one of the most stable political environments in the world. A near miracle considering it's vast and diverse population.
They say they don't want a war because it'd be unprofitable. Isn't avoiding unnecessary bloodshed a good enough reason anymore?
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
I doubt Hyundai (South Korea) or Micron are particularly worried. In fact, they might prefer a war between the Chinas.
Personally, I wondered why Hong Kong banks didn't get together and go buy a small South American country, like Peru. Land is so expensive there that they're buying fill from mainland China to expand the island (with fiber optics and other necessary utilities built in as it goes).
If they had just bought Peru (or any other small, poor country) they could have done some terrific things.
Israel could do the same thing. Their neighbors would probably pay for the purchase. I'm certain they could even take the holy land with themselves. How many feet down? 6? load it onto freighters and ship it to wherever they bought. Bang, the mideast problems ends.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Who does more of the provking?? Now think about that...
there wil not be a war between china and taiwan for several reasons. now you need to understand some military history (which fortunately is my vocation, geekdom being my avocation).
first, china simply can't go to war with taiwan. (oh sure, they can fire some missles, but then see down the list.) see, to cross 70 miles of the strait of formosa (taiwan strait) would be an undertaking that would make normandy and okinawa be minor ops. they don't have the 1) airforce to provide cover, 2) the navy to carry them over, 3) the ability to protect the invasion from being observed from satelites, which would give us and taiwan advanced notice, 4) the ability to hold and maintain a beachhead once there. it doesn't matter if you have one million, or 10 million, troops in an invasion. if you can't support them, they're targets.
second, china built the three gorges dam. they have so much capital (even in communist china!!) tied up in it, it generates such a large portionof power. and, it is impssible to defend from air ro missile attack. we could take it out in about 10 minutes. and they're fscking toast.
third, china is so dependent upon the US trade for an in flux of capital and hard currency. anything more than sabre rattling, and we shut that off, they take a shit. they are fscked.
i could go on further. the cuyrrent regime is on its last legs. this is an in ternal power struggle between the old commies and the younger reformers. nothing else.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
So you are saying that Taiwan doesn't have the right to become independent? The would would be a better place if China was more like Taiwan.
Taiwan is rumored to have nukes just like Israel.
Perhaps they both got the raw materials for their nukes from the same place (USA) or perhaps Taiwan bought the remains of the South Africian nuke program.
This is a rather bad assesment of the likely outcome. Let's ignore outside powers for a second, and just look at China versus Taiwan. The former has about 30 times the population and (guessing) probably five or six times the economic output. However, China's air force is not terribly modern and, most critically, they have practically no navy. Since the two are separated by a good chunk of ocean, the only way China could conquer the country is by sending soldiers over on boats. They don't have enough boats.
China's saber-rattling is just bluster. They could probably gain air superiority and bomb everything into tiny pieces, but that kind of runs counter to their stated goal of reunification. They don't threaten a massive bombing campaign, they threaten invasion. They don't have what it takes to actually pull one off, though.
It already looks bad, now enter the external powers. Particularly the United States. The US has very strong treaties and military ties with Taiwan. We have not hesitated to send a carrier battle group into the area before when things heated up. China sells us things for cheap, but if the US failed to defend Taiwan after promising to do so, our alliances with the rest of the world wouldn't be worth the paper they were written on.
China's leaders may be overly powerful and overly willing to exercise that power, but they are rational. They know that their nice lives will be rather disrupted during a gigantic slug-fest involving China, Taiwan, and whatever US carrier battle groups and long-range bomber wings are able to make it to the party in time.
Taking all of this into account, I don't worry when I read these stories. Both sides are run by rational people. Rational people don't start wars they can't win for stupid reasons.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Check the price of land in Taiwan. Check the price of land in Peru.
An old adage in business: for enough money ANYTHING is for sale. Taiwan doesn't have to show up and say: How much for your lovely country, they could just start buying up real estate. Asian bankers have bucks and backing. It wouldn't take much to start developing Peru, or whatever other country was available.
Look, they might need some new laws regarding percentage ownership, but it's not like they couldn't buy political influence too. I'm also not talking about throwing out the old population, just buy, develop and move in.
If Peru doesn't want the obvious economic benefits, there are certainly other countries that would take the deal.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Actually, I stoped viewing China as communist a long time ago, and I'm communist. China nowadays is more capitalist that anything else, but the important thing here is that China is imperialistic by nature, and culturally used to totalitarian regimes. Remember that much of the problems China had in the 80's were with the USSR ( I have a book here from Novosti Press - USSR's official press - from the 80's called "China: Imperialist and Authocratic Regime").
What I said about totalitarian regimes doesn't mean it makes it OK by me, but every kind of political definition of China must take into account the very specific history of China.
Toa add to this the "founding fathers" of Formosa, the Kuomitang, were also completely against independence: Taiwan's view on this issue was (and is) exactly the same as PRC. The Real Government of China was the one in Formosa, mainland China was a rebel part of the country.
What is happening now is that the new generation of taiwanese wants independece. PRC will not allow this. We had to "return" Macau some years ago and it was a) not part of China when conquered and b) never ruled by an asian potency for 500 years. Still, China made this huge thing about it, and since it has the weapons, well, let's just say that it would be kind of impolite to refuse.
Of course, they could just say "ok, you're independent, fine with us", but I think they are going to choose the American way: "Want to seceed? Ok, here we go!!!".
cheers
You're quibbling over a constitutional point while discussing the "People's Republic" of China? The communists don't give a shit about any rights a piece of paper says their people have. It's an oligarchy, run by power hungry old fucks who could care less what sort of government they have, so long as they're running it.
The constitution of the old Soviet Union gave every citizen the right to free speech. How free was speech there?
How close are we to developing a value system which would see war waged wherein the combatants maintain economic ties. There are many costs to war but one of the foremost costs is loss of economic infrastructure. Weren't there business relations between the Allies and Germany during WWII?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There has been a recent survey of mainland Chinese people on their opinions regarding the Taiwan issue conducted in the beginning of December. About 4,000 respondents from different chinese regions including big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but also small towns and villages in several provinces were asked during the survey.
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The result was quite interesting, so let me translate it for you. Those of you who can read Chinese may check it out here: http://tw.people.com.cn/GB/14810/14858/2235881.ht
--- begin survey results ---
The overwelming majority of mainland Chinese supports unification with Taiwan. Those who wouldn't mind if Taiwan becomes independence were only 2.3%, while nearly 60% hopes developments of economic cooperation and enhancements of communication and understanding could help both side come together one day.
Those supporting immediate use of military force are 14.7%, those wanting to keep the status quo but believing military force may still be necessary in the end are 13.2%, and there are 11,3% who don't feel like being able to make a choice due to lack of information.
Further analysis shows the group of people favouring unification through economic cooperation are mostly city residents, younger than the average and relatively well educated. The core of this group are male city residents between 26 and 35 of age, with an university graduation and a middle to high income. The core of the group favouring status quo are female city residents between 36 and 45, with a college graduation and middle to low income. Those supporting immediate use of force are mostly male village residents.
--- end suvey results ---
Now, this reads quite stereotypical, but it's not surprising so. While "businessmen hope that economic considerations" will win over hollow ideology, the less educated Chinese villagers hope national pride will win over monetary greed. I for myself can't say that the one type is better than the other. If they had asked me, I would belong to those "lacking information", while in fact I'm pretty sure of being far better informed than 90% of all those people they asked.
Maybe these company CEOs should signal the Taiwan government that it's not good for business if you intentionally provoke a neighbour with nuclear weapons and the world's largest standing military.
It is now considered provoking to tell an agressive outsider who has been eyeing you up for about a century that you will not be governed by a murderous Communist regime?
Maybe we should be telling the Chi-Comms that they need to keep it in their pants. Unlike Tiananmen Square, an attack on Taiwan would effect the economic interests of just about every other country on the planet. Many of us have more nukes than they do. And one of us has a treaty with Taiwan that will function as a defense treaty.
Don't fuck with Taiwan.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The government of China is the social equivalent of syphilis.
The have destroyed the religious freedoms of Tibet, there own people and are backing the communist rebels in Nepal, while threatening anyone who dares to disagree with them.
Free Tibet
Remember Tianamen Square
Remove artifical constraints on the Chinese Currency or the world should put enourmous tarriffs on everything shipping out from there.
China steals all it's tech knowhow anyway.
It's an internal matter to the USA if Tawain asks us to be involved. If mainland china doesn't like it. Thats just too fucking bad.
I say again...Free Tibet, stay the fuck out of Nepal.
Recent events have cast a more optimistic look on the whole situation. In this recent CNN article on 12/11/2003, Wen says, "We respect the desire of the Taiwan people to develop and pursue democracy. However, we firmly oppose the attempts by certain separatist forces in Taiwan to pursue Taiwan independence under the disguise of promoting democracy in an attempt to cut of Taiwan from the mainland." If reunification is the purpose, there's no point in going there and blowing everything away.
The biggest challenge Chinese leaders face is growing the economy while maintaining political control. People with no running water and no electricity are too busy surviving to worry much about the politics of their country; people with DVD players and new cars to protect want responsive (and if at all possible, representative) leadership.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
The big question question here: why haven't the wizards of Wall Street done their job and gotten it together that factors like this just couldn't sabotage the Computer industry or western economies? I think the financial types need to do more real work and less politicing.
I'm more interested in how people in Taiwan feel about independence or unification, they should be the people that are questions about such things, as it is their decision if they want to be independent or not.
Asking people in mainland China if they support keeping Taiwan would be like asking people in England if they thought it'd be a good idea to hang on to the American Colonies or India while they had the chance.
What?
So I read this entire thread and most of it is, China wont do it, or China thinks it will unite back up or blah blah blah. Um, what do the Taiwanese think about this? They do not like China. They are very happy being independient. I hate it when Chinese think that unification is great. Great for whom? Taiwanese dont want the unification to take place. Chinese are just being selfish and ignorant thinking that Taiwan should unify.
Unification is such a lovely word. But in reality it really means China takes over taiwan, forces its values and culture on it and turns it into another provence. Taiwan looses its culture, heritage and everything that made it special and different to those people that live there. Havent we already learned that imperalism does not work?
Ask any taiwanese where they are from and they will say Taiwan. THey will say they are Taiwansee. If you ask if theys peak chinese they say no, we speak Manderian. They dont say we are a rebel provence of China nor do they say we are People's Republic of China. They say they are Tawianese, and very proud of that. They do not want to go back to China.
HK is now very different now that China has taken it over. What you can do, what you can say, and what you can read is different. There are no elections really. It just does not feel the same. You are just a random city of China not some special port that you use to call your own. Taiwanese like there little island. It is not just about politcal strugle, but about individualism and ideals. You can start your own company, elect officials, etc, in Taiwan. Taiwanese feel that those rights will be stripped when they become part of China.
I read in one post about cycle and division and unification. Yeah, that may have worked 1000 years ago but welcome to the 21st century buddy. For a few thousand years china remaind the same basiclly but over the last 100 years it is compeletly different. There was no western powers, no internet, not globalization, it was just China and some bording countries. Now the planet is very very small. The cycle has been broken.
Taiwan will never join China. They will fight for there independence till the end.