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China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict, testing Taipei’s resolve to defend itself and its arsenal of U.S.-made weapons.
The Eastern Theatre Command said it had deployed troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its “Justice Mission 2025” exercises to encircle the democratically governed island, conduct live fire and simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade Taiwan’s main ports.
The live-firing exercises will continue on Tuesday across a record seven zones designated by China’s Maritime Safety Administration, making the drills the largest to date by total coverage and in areas closer to Taiwan than previous exercises. The military had initially said artillery firing would be confined to five zones.
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WHHHAAAATTTTTT??!??!!!?
But all Lemmy.ml dwellers said China is not an imperialist country!!!
This must be some shitty western propaganda!!!
Did you read the fine print?
.ml: “China is not imperialist*”
"*because all of Asia, all islands, all African countries and all South American countries already belong to China"
I just want to point out that this is not like for example Italy invading Africa. ROC was the government of mainland China before the revolution, they fled to Taiwan which used to be a part of China. Both ROC and the PRC think they are the true rulers of all of China, meaning both Taiwan and Mainland. If ROC would be militarily stronger, it would probably plan to invade the PRC.
People may or may not think that that is imperialist, but at least it should be taken into consideration.
Interesting that would consider it imperialism when a country does a military exercise on the coast of their own country near an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists when the military exercise is specifically to confirm readiness for the thing that the imperialists keep saying they are going to do - establish greater and greater military presence in the region.
Remember, you likely already agree that the US is an imperialist force, the largest in the world. Does the US deploy its military for good reasons or is it an abusive bully? If China says that it hears the US threats to build up military surrounding China and in particular in Taiwan, is it consistent for us to believe the US is telling the truth this time?
The CPC never controlled Taiwan so it’s inaccurate to say it was stripped from them.
US being imperialistic doesn’t make encirclement and threats towards an autonomous island any less imperialistic. That’s just whataboutism.
If the CPC only cared about the security of their coastline then this aggressive military strategy makes little sense because it’s only likely to increase the risk of conflict. Pursuing peace and closer ties with Taiwan would disarm the whole reason they have for working with the US. But of course that would require the CPC to respect their autonomy, which imperialists will never do.
Political parties don’t control territory. Nation states do. The island of Taiwan is a province of the nation state of China - it was ceded to the Japanese imperialist who invaded China and took Taiwan from China making it part of Japan (not part of a specific party in Japan) and then the nation state of China, collaboratively amongst its political factions, liberated the island and restored it as territory of the nation state of China.
This talking point about the CPC never owning it is a category error and you would never imagine making such claims about Labor or Conservatives owning this or that part of England, or Texas being the rightful property of Republicans or New York being the rightful property of Democrats. This use of language is double speak.
As for defending against US aggression being whataboutism, that’s not even close to being n accurate use of the phrase. For example, when Russia stationed nuclear weapons in Cuba, the US threatened total nuclear annihilation because it was threatened by what was a consensual agreement between two independent nations. The US making it very clear that they were going to bring their military might to Asia, while expanding their drone war and demolishing a half dozen countries is a far greater threat than the USSR ever was to the USA, but for some reason you bootlickers want to pretend that the US moving 2/3rds of their naval assets to the Pacific theater and constantly writing strategic assessments about whether the US could win a nuclear war if it encircled its opponents with sufficient offensive and defensive capabilities. The US’s interest in Taiwan is nothing more than as an unsinkable aircraft carrier that produces computer chips (which, btw it has been trying desperately to bring into the US so that it can use Taiwan exclusively as a war zone).
Whataboutism would be saying that China is allowed to kill 500K Taiwanese children because the US killed 500K Iraqi children. Realpolitik is recognizing that China has a requirement to be hyper vigilant regarding everything on its coastline and nearby waterways and islands because the US and UK have been abundantly clear that they are not happy that China has recovered from the Opium War and the subjugation that followed and that the imperialists have no problem with killing people anywhere in the world if it means advancing the interests of their ruling class.
They can’t do that because NATO imperialists are forcing their hand. Obviously.
an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists
Can you elaborate on this? I love watching gymnastics.
During the Chinese civil war, the PLA defeated the KMT and the KMT fled to the island province of Taiwan, a part of the nation state of China.
The US and British navies protected the KMT during their retreat and afterward, essentially creating a protectorate out of the island while the KMT prosecuted the fascist White Terror, with mass killings and political repression for the next 40 years, only adopting a liberal democratic formation once the Brits established a similar one in Hong Kong, which was another imperialist holding stripped away from China.
That you don’t know this about the history of the island you claim as your cause is unsurprising
My question was how exactly it was “stripped away from the CCP’s control”, which you didn’t address at any point in your colourful answer. You yourself admit it was always Republican territory. so which is it, then?
I love repeating myself in these threads. It’s so fun. Political parties do not control territories. That’s not how anything works. When Japan took Korea, it was not a party within Japan that took it. It was the nation state that took it. When Japan took Taiwan it was not a party within Japan that took Taiwan, it was the nation state that took it. When the US took Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc same thing. You would never say that it was Democratic-Republicans that own the Louisiana Purchase even though they were in power when the purchase took place.
The nation state of China, with its competing factions, reclaimed the island of Taiwan by pushing out the Japanese. The retreating army of the KMT fled to the island as refuge and the British and American warships protected them, setting up the island and the party to be a fascist vassal of the North Atlantic imperial regime. At no time did the retreating army secede nor declare independence. It claimed that despite having lost the war and despite having lost popular support that it was still the rightful government of China. Never mind that it had to kill tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who disagreed. Never mind that it spent 40 years violently and brutally crushing all forms of dissent against its position. And never mind that the imperialists never stopped supporting the KMT with warships, intelligence, arms, foreign direct investment, and diplomacy despite it being about as legitimate of a government as Juan Guaido.
Saying that the island belongs to the KMT is a category error. Parties don’t own territory. Nation states do. This is why the UN doesn’t have separate delegations for Labor, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Greens, AFD, etc.
You have a pretty peculiar understanding of how nation-states claim territory. Using your own logic, I take it you believe that Gaza and the West bank are rightfully Israeli territory? if not, what’s the difference?*
* “Murica bad” is not a valid answer
All of Palestine was declared Terra Nullus by the imperialist. It is they who setup the system of Westphalian nation-states. This is, as they call it, the rules-based order. The reality is that Palestine should have been granted nation-state status by the entire world decades ago, but racism prevented that from happening, and now we have the situation we have. Some nation states have officially recognized Palestine’s status as a nation-state, but it has not been enough and it is far too late to have immediate impacts.
As for whether my understanding is strange, I would ask you to consider why the KMT itself did not claim Taiwan to be an independent nation state for the 50 years where it was a one-party fascist dictatorship on the island. Why did they find it so important to establish that they were still a faction within China and not a secessionary movement away from China? I didn’t decide that that’s what they would do. My understanding is fully inline with the understanding of the KMT and the CPC and the rest of official governments of the world. It’s really only the uninformed and the politically biased that have a strange understanding whereby the rules don’t matter, the never matter, and only what they believe is the correct moral answer, given their limited understanding, could ever be the right answer.
Poor China trying to defend itself from the boolies 😭
LOL - as though it’s not believable to think that a country that hasn’t dropped a single bomb in 35 years might be concerned about the most violent nation in the world continuing to destroy country after country announcing “the pivot to Asia” in 2008 as they expanded drone warfare beyond anything the world had ever seen as we watched video after video of double tap strikes, bombings if weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools and now we watch as that bully double taps fisherman in the Caribbean. To say that the US is not an existential threat to literally every country in the world is to allow your entire worldview to be shaped by centuries-old Yellow Peril propaganda
This is all whataboutism and has nothing to do with China threatening to invade Taiwan.
Sorry can you remind me the conditions that China has set for why it would invade? Or is just threatening generally?
No. I’m not engaging with a disingenuous person with an obvious bias. You claim to know all about this issue. I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding it yourself.
LOL, the projection is strong with this one. You made the claim that China is threatening to invade and I asked you to clarify and backup your claim. But yes, I am disingenuous and obviously biased for … not believing the US is a trustworthy actor in the Pacific theater with respect to Chinese national security.
Now Taiwan knows where to install the sea mines.
Controversial opinion: war is bad 🫢
Sounds like Taiwan should sign a contract building Sea babies and Sub Baby for Ukraine, just make sure to build a few thousand extra for “future supplies”.
Here’s an interesting evaluation of the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
https://www.stimson.org/2025/rethinking-the-threat-why-china-is-unlikely-to-invade-taiwan/
I feel like their analysis is, “it would be costly and risky so they probably won’t do it,” which could be said for literally any war ever. I’m not sure I find it a particularly compelling argument.
What’s some cool stuff to visit in China that isn’t close to (or is upwind of) military installations or industrial centers? Asking for several thousand friends.
Naval blockades don’t really work when your adversary has a limitless supply of antiship missiles
Taiwan’s military is surprisingly ramshackle, unless you mean the US? I’m not sure they can reliably be considered an adversary of China anymore. Xi could buy a few million of Trump’s crypto and all would be forgiven.
Doesn’t Taiwan have well over a thousand modern ASMs in inventory, and manufacturing hundreds more annually? How would mainland China enforce an encirclement by sea for any length of time with that sort of threat?
I hope they don’t engage in a war. China can bomb all Taiwan and destroy everything and lose on the process a lot of people and resources. If China is not a fool, and I don’t think it is, the best path is to wait (and maybe push) for a second civil war in the US to have the upper hand in a possible reunification talk. And this drills would be just showing muscle before sitting to talk with Taiwan.
AFAIK they don’t have that many of the newer ASMs, and anyway a thousand isn’t really that many, especially given that Taiwan’s missiles are on the smaller end of the spectrum - we’re not talking KH-22 sizes here.
It doesn’t take too many ASMs to sink some really important assets. Size isn’t really important, if one of the mainland’s carriers is within a couple hundred KMS of Taiwan, then it’s in the kill zone. Supersonic maneuvering missiles that work in gps-denied environments and can be sea, air and land launched are just the sort of weapon that works great in an asymmetric conflict and to break naval blockades. The blocader has to defend against every single inbound, the adversary only needs to get one missile through the defenses
While this is all true, the aggressor being the largest green-water navy in the world skews the equation, plus the naval angle is of course only one of multiple avenues of attack. We can’t be complacent about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, no more than we could say for example that Finland could hold off Russia alone.
Taiwan doesn’t need to sink every PLAN ship, they just need to make the political cost of enforcing a blockade higher than the CPC can afford.
Ukraine has area-denied Russia’s most important warm water port and most of the black sea from use by the Russian surface fleet with a small handful of homebrew ASMs and some jetskis painted black with a barrel of RDX strapped to them. And Finland did hold off the red army alone once already.
Ukraine is still being actively devastated after three years by a country far inferior to China - I’m sure the Taiwanese would prefer to avoid that fate. Finland’s “victory” came at the cost of collaoration with the Nazis, which maybe was the right choice at the time, but not great in hindsight to say the least. It’s also hard to quantify the political cost when discussing a one-party state - it’s not like the CCP will lose the next election. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I’d prefer to support Taiwan to such a great extent that we don’t have to cross our fingers.
Ah yes, the infamous ramshackle F35
10 cent army out in force
10 cent army? I want to see Taiwan armed to the teeth. They can’t solo the CCP in their current state.
No one is soloing anyone, including China and Russia
That’s really the crux of the issue. If China finally move against Taiwan, who will help? Japan seems the most reliable ally at the moment, and perhaps Australia. The US are untrustworthy.
Well the supply isn’t limitless, so
Well neither is the PLANs supply of artificial reefs
No, but they can build faster than Taiwan. And I’m sure they have some CIWS that will reduce the number of missiles that hit, so it’s a pure numbers game.
They certainly do work in a world where the naval blockade is literally only a few miles from your own shoreline and MAD is on the table
You can’t enforce a naval blockade when the adversary is flush with ASMs is all I’m saying. And you can’t enforce a naval blockade with only subs either.
I wonder why the word blockade is not in quotes. Perhaps it’s editorializing from the author and not something the PLA actually said
