Tag: China

Let’s Run The ‘China Attacks Taiwan’ Scenario


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

August is careening towards us. And we all know that August sucks as a month. If something shitty is going to happen in 2021 – it’s probably going to happen in August.

So, let’s say it’s China going to war against Taiwan.

First, let me say, I have no expertise in this subject, so this is just a rough back-of-the-envelope scenario. But let’s suppose at some time in August, 2021, we find ourselves with a major East Asian war. What happens?

Well, at first, the United States would freak out. There would be a lot of rallying around the flag and Biden’s approval rating would skyrocket. And…then…once it became clear that the US wasn’t going, to, uh, blow the world up to save Taiwan, everything would go back to normal.

The center-Left would support Biden’s thoughtful, reserved approach, while the MAGA New Right would would suggest that what they believed all along — that Biden is “soft” on China — was right and why isn’t Trump president since he really won?

The other thing that would happen is such a huge event in the world would great destabilize everything. Flashpoints across the world would likely heatup for no other reason than a governments with an itch for conflict would say, “Well, China is scratching their itch, why can’t we do it?”

The DPRK is the country I would be most concerned with. It’s easy for me to imagine that as part of this scenario, that the DPRK would attack the ROK as some sort of Communist brothers-in-arms thing. In fact, I could even seen the PROC gently goading the DPRK into doing just that as a way of distracting the US so it could successfully secure Formosa.

Anyway, the whole thing would be a fucking clusterfuck. If China was cocky enough to attack Taiwan, then we really would be in a New Era. The entire post-WW2 liberal order would collapse and who knows what would replace it.

The Coming Sino-Taiwanese Singularity War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love to run scenarios in my mind. Some of these mental games grow very elaborate and span decades of mental energy. But when I was in Seoul, I came up with a pretty bonkers scenario for how China could strike Taiwan — build a land bridge to the island using nanotechnology.

This is an extremely fanciful (at the moment) idea, but it’s just the kind of thing that would stun the world. Take something we know in theory could happen, then say, “What if it happened NOW?”

I would say this idea would make for a great movie, but, lulz, Hollywood is so beholden to the China audience this would never happen.

But if I were to guess about what kind of really shocking thing was going to rock the world in the 2020s, something like China building a land bridge to Taiwan using nanotechnology would be it.

Realpolitik: Would A Healthy China Strike A Sick World?

Makes sense to me.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

COVID19 cases in China continue to drop, just as cases outside the Middle Kingdom continue to rise dramatically. This leads to a scenario where what we all know is inevitable — China replaces the United States as the center of the global order — happens now, not 30 or 50 years from now.

It could happen a lot quicker than any of us might want to think, like, in two weeks. If the United States buckles sometime just past The Ides of March, you might see China make it clear who owns some pretty valuable islands in South China Sea. That would be just the beginning. They might attack Taiwan while they can. They might also gobble up North Korea if that nation collapses for some reason.

If they got away with that, then they might go for broke and make a huge land grab in Russia’s Far East. If Russia is just as incapacitated as everyone else by this point, then Siberia itself might be in play. Russia without Siberia is a major European power who might have a sudden reason to be far more nice to everyone around it. Maybe any election interference in the Untied States they do has a far different objective?

Or, really, you might even see any major land grab on the part of the Chinese as the thing that totally changes everything — suddenly Russia, the United States, India and Europe all join forces to control China. A pandemic might be just the thing to give China reason to believe they could strike Russia in a big way without fear of being vaporized.

Who knows. It’s interesting to think about.