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WASHINGTON (AFP) - China's secretive transformation of its military power leaves the United States preparing for the worst eventualities, including over Taiwan, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.
About 900 Chinese missiles are in place opposite Taiwan, while China is also rolling out far more sophisticated long-range nuclear missiles, combat planes, warships and submarines, the Department of Defense official said.
US military prepared for 'worst' with China: official - Yahoo! News (broken link)
I think it is possible China may eventually take a military action on with Taiwan. However, I think it is far more likely that China will want to expand their trade influence and have the provision that those who trade with China cannot trade with Taiwan, and slowly have Taiwan decide to reunite with the mainland due to economic inconvenience.
The Chinese really screwed the pooch with Hong Kong and Macau. I think many Taiwanese were watching to see if those areas could be integrated while maintaining the rights and freedoms unique to those areas. The answer has turned out to be, "no," and I think has served to disillusion many Taiwanese of the idea that Taiwan could follow a similar scheme successfully.
They great irony is that the greater the threat the mainland becomes, the harder Taiwan will be pressed to declare full independence.
Does anyone realize that China is funding our wars? Does anyone realize China holds a LOT of our Debt they could call in, in which case we'd be screwed?
It would be sheer lunacy (even worse than Iran) to take on China.
We talk a good talk, but there's no way we defend Taiwan if China invades them. Even though we still clearly have a huge military advantage over China, they could level most of Taiwan from the mainland without ever even landing a single troop. Besides, politically and militarily we are worn out over the war in the middle east. Our president would have to be insane to go to war with China over Taiwan. We don't have enough troops to maintain adequate troop levels in the middle east as it is.
By allowing the Chinese to maintain a huge trade imbalance we have given Red China the keys to our economy. Even further, they could actually level Taiwan with missiles they manufactured and purchased with our dollars.
But what will happen is we will let the Chinese continue to maintain unfair trade practices with us. They will continue to suck up US dollars, they will continue to finance our War on Terror by purchasing dollars this administration is just printing, and when the Chinese are ready to take Taiwan they will just march right in without a shot being fired and take it. The Taiwanese themselves will offer no resistance. And we will not be in any position to stop them even if we wanted to.
We talk a good talk, but there's no way we defend Taiwan if China invades them. Even though we still clearly have a huge military advantage over China, they could level most of Taiwan from the mainland without ever even landing a single troop. Besides, politically and militarily we are worn out over the war in the middle east. Our president would have to be insane to go to war with China over Taiwan. We don't have enough troops to maintain adequate troop levels in the middle east as it is.
By allowing the Chinese to maintain a huge trade imbalance we have given Red China the keys to our economy. Even further, they could actually level Taiwan with missiles they manufactured and purchased with our dollars.
But what will happen is we will let the Chinese continue to maintain unfair trade practices with us. They will continue to suck up US dollars, they will continue to finance our War on Terror by purchasing dollars this administration is just printing, and when the Chinese are ready to take Taiwan they will just march right in without a shot being fired and take it. The Taiwanese themselves will offer no resistance. And we will not be in any position to stop them even if we wanted to.
Well, I agree with you on the highlighted point. Never underestimate a man of this stature. They do hold our debt, they do have missiles aimed at Taiwan, we can still militarily attempt to defend Taiwan. Sheer Lunacy? Yes, but then look who we have in the White House.
That debt works both ways. China attacks us and we invalidate their debt holdings leaving them 1 trillion poorer. All it takes is a quickie law (or in Bush's case an edict from the throne) which states that any country which attacks US forces will summarily have their debt holdings invalidated or frozen.
That debt works both ways. China attacks us and we invalidate their debt holdings leaving them 1 trillion poorer. All it takes is a quickie law (or in Bush's case an edict from the throne) which states that any country which attacks US forces will summarily have their debt holdings invalidated or frozen.
What do you mean "invalidate" their debt holdings. That is how much debt we owe them. They can still call in their debt, leaving US poorer. Maybe you mean because they depend on our interdependent relationship so much for other things?
BTW, they don't need to attack us. All they need to do is dump our debt, before any war stuff at all. Then it's really over for us, anyway. They fund us to continue the Iraq war.
BTW, China is not going to "attack" the U.S., but it will fight over Taiwan. Different animal.
China's debt consists of US Treasury bonds and notes, each serial numbered and payable at the end of their term (generally ten years). China cannot demand payment on their Treasuries until the securities reach maturity (however we can repay the debt prematurely at any time).
What we could do if there is threat of war with China, is to simply cancel or freeze their Treasury holdings (like we did with Iran and Iraq and Libya). So long as they are frozen the Treasuries they hold become worthless because the securities would mature but not become payable.
They've given us 1.4 trillion dollars in exchange for our promise to pay them back with interest. We just tell them, "We're not going to repay if you attack us." This is a problem for China. China's currency does not float on the world currency market and so is worthless outside of China itself. In order to buy goods from outside China, China has to use a hard currency like Euros, Dollars, Yen, or Rubles. They need hard currency and, in particular, US Dollars to buy oil. You cannot buy oil on the world market without US Dollars. Instead of using actual dollars, countries instead buy their oil with US Treasury securities they buy from us. Again though, China's currency doesn't float so that means not only do they need those Dollars, in the form of Treasuries, to buy oil, but also to buy other resources from abroad. China does hold other hard currencies in reserve, but not in the same giant quantity as they own ours.
Now imagine China and US sabre rattle over Taiwan and China attacks. We move to defend Taiwan and, in the process, freeze China's US holdings. We immediately publish each and every one of the serial numbers of the Treasuries we've frozen so that other countries will know that if China tries to buy goods with those Treasuries, that the US will not honor the debt when it comes due. That makes all those Treasuries useless to China because they can no longer buy anything with them because no one will take them as a form of payment for goods or services.
China will have big problems floating their currency because their huge growth rate will fuel massive internal inflation once they allow their currency to trade freely. Right now China keeps the Yuan artificially low to stimulate economic growth. When this happens, Chinese goods will suddenly become more expensive and so fewer people will buy them. The Chinese economy will go into recession and there will be huge internal problems as inflation coincides with a massive economic downturn caused by a drop in exports.
Either way, China will have serious problems if they get into a war with the US. Floating their currency will kill the golden goose and not floating it means they can't trade their own currency for imports they would desperately need in event of war (providing they could protect their supply lines to even receive the goods).
Doing that would damage our economy. China may indeed have a huge stack of T Bills but they also have a bunch of cold hard American dollars due to our trade deficit as well. They could easily dump dollars on the open market, then that compounded with our refusing to honor China's T Bills will drive us into a recession at least. The UAE as well as a number of other countries have already dumped the dollar and gone to the euro as their currency standard.
Add in the fact we are already spending over a billion dollars a day in the middle east that we don't have we clearly couldn't afford to fight a major war on two fronts. To say nothing about keeping supply lines going.
Now having said all that. China doesn't want a war with us. It's a lose, lose situation for them. They would lose their primary market for their products, plus they would suffer huge damage to the infrastructure of their nation.
The United States has never come right out and said we would defend Taiwan if China invades. We have hinted as such. But if China did pull the trigger I really don't think we would do anything except yell and scream in the UN. I really doubt we would even hit them with trade sanctions. Especially right now. Americans are so tired of war we would probably just let it pass. In fact, I doubt most Amerians would even care if China invaded Taiwan.
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Maybe, but...
