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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.
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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!
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.
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
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
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.