South China Sea Heats Up

[Windigo]

I'm sure when you watched Napoleon march across Europe you said the same thing.

Fortress North America Baby!

[JasonPratt]

French Canadian confirmed.

[FarAway Sooner]

I'm sure when you watched Napoleon march across Europe you said the same thing.

Fortress North America Baby!

Weren't the Redcoats burning Washington, D.C. to the ground around the same time that Napoleon was marching across Europe?

[Windigo]

I'm sure when you watched Napoleon march across Europe you said the same thing.

Fortress North America Baby!

Weren't the Redcoats burning Washington, D.C. to the ground around the same time that Napoleon was marching across Europe?

T'was a mere bush party that got out of hand.

[Gusington]

^That's...what she said 

[Sir Slash]

If Dolly Madison had broken-out a keg or two of ale and a set of Cricket Sticks, the Brits would've never struck a match. 

[FarAway Sooner]

https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/xi-jinpings-worst-nightmare-a-potemkin-peoples-liberation-army/

I know I gave a response to this, but I forgot to say what a well thought-out article this was.  Lots of good material in here, and a clear indication that, if missiles ever start flying around Taiwan, it'll be a lose-lose for everybody involved.

[Windigo]

Chinese leadership is so vested into their positions and lifestyle, they won't give that up for the sake of a minor territory.

[JasonPratt]

What I've been calling the Silk Road project (which is also its informal name), formally known in English translation as the Belt and Road Initiative, has a bit of an update on its janky collapse.

[GDS_Starfury]

whats the tldr of it?

the irony of asking you of all ppl.

[JasonPratt]

Economic force
needs a path to follow west
owned by Chinese arms.

Make bad loans and then
take their land with ports and things
building out the path.

Bad loans eat up cash,
never coming back, but hey! --
now more Chinese land!

Land gets worthless fast,
if nations suck so bad they
cannot pay back loans.

Then the plan implodes!
Holy bleep we need Taiwan!
How to get that done?!?

****************

The TSDU (too short didn't understand) version:

China has been loan sharking nations with bad chances of paying off, in order to gain land with resource and/or logistic facilities (like ports or diamond mines) when the loans default. The goal was to create Chinese-owned logistic resource and transfer paths westward across Asia and Africa into Europe.

They've done so much of this, that the necessary loss in their working capital (ironically) has had a significant impact on their own stumbling economy contributing to a coming crash; while the facilities (with territory) they're getting in return are increasingly handicapped by the local surrounding governments crashing even harder. (To pull a random example, a port facility or diamond mine isn't much good if you can't get enough fresh water or electricity to it.) Sri Lanka's nearly total collapse is a particularly damaging example. The video is catching up on some details since the channel's prior report a few months ago.

The pressures and goals involved in the BRI have radically variable effects on China's intentions toward Taiwan: they need Taiwan in itself more than ever (and not only as an important staging area for their BNI plans, but that, too); but China is increasingly handicapped, partly thanks to the BNI plan's implosion, about being able to support a takeover of Taiwan (or even stage an attempt to begin with).

There has also been some strategic speculation (not in this video as I recall) that with China's economic implosion on the way, Xi may be gearing up to try to take Taiwan even though he knows he's 100% sure to fail spectacularly, so that he can blame China's coming economic collapse on Western military action, which would be preferable in several ways than the CCP having to acknowledge its own responsibility for the collapse. The CCP is well aware, from its ideology if nothing else, that the destruction of a society's stability leads to revolution which a nation will be unable to effectively resist; so being able to point to a definite external threat would at least shift the apparent blame to someone else and allow for a call to circle the wagons for defensive cultural solidarity.

Edited to add: the BNI plan has a lot of relation to the Ukraine war, too, since China wants an overland staging area to the Black Sea.

[Windigo]

whats the tldr of it?

the irony of asking you of all ppl.

  

[FarAway Sooner]

Jason, is that haiku composition above original, or did ChatGPT write it for you?

 

[JasonPratt]

I don't even know
how to ChatGPT
as far as you know.

 

[Sir Slash]

I tried to chat with ChatGPT and it told me to go away and stop bothering it. But it keeps sending me pics of Retirement Homes. Seems kind of cheeky to me.