Sorry, again, you unironically think that the USA is going to attack China? A nuclear power with over double the USAs population?

We’ve been building up the Pacific Fleet since the Bush 43 administration. War with China was the plan for PNAC prior to 9/11. And the Trump admin is flush with China Hawks.

What are the metrics and standards of living in Taiwan as compared to China?

PPP is a great place to start. Taiwanese cost of living has been climbing since Trump 1 while China has kept itself stable.

Basics - food, housing, transportation, education, health care - that Taiwan domestic policies privatized during the boom years have come back to eat their lunch in the lean years. Flat wages, rising debt, you do the math.

You see the same problems across the Pacific Rim capitalist colony states. Everyone from Japan to India has been pinched by supply chain failures and venture capital excess. Taiwan’s not unique in this regard (honestly doing a lot better than most of their peers). But the check always comes due.

You understand Taiwan is by far more liberal on LGBT rights than China, right?

They’ve had a liberal turn with the DDP. That’s coming to an end. The '24 election introduced a reactionary majority in Parliament.

Taiwan’s Conservatives are in ascendence, and the island is taking a reactionary turn.

Also, where is your data that homelessness is more prominent in China than Taiwan?

I’ve already been linking you sources and you’ve been ignoring them.

You are an absolute clown

The US and Taiwan signed a two-year specialized training program for Taiwan’s navy, the Ministry of National Defense said today, in an unexpected announcement confirming US training.

The US has a history of stationing military instructors and special ops teams in Taiwan to quietly assist with training, but details have been classified.

On Jan. 2, the ministry’s military delegation to the US signed an agreement with the American Institute in Taiwan, an announcement from the ministry showed.

We can do this all day. China drilling to repel a US assault is about as threatening as the US running drills out of Hawaii.

Weird that the US is running drills significantly farther East.

I can read you, verbatim, CCP press releases saying they are doing this to intimidate Taiwan

You can read US agitprop that selectively quotes and mistranslates statements. Or you can just throw up generic statements with a flashlight under your chin.

Lmfao what did I deny??

Jesus, it’s like Charlie Kirk never died with this level of bullshit

we were talking about encircling Taiwan which the PRC

How do Chinese ships depart from Fujain without encircling Taiwan? Literally look at your own maps. They’re neighbors.

Might as well declare Australia is encircling New Zealand.

Are these international waters or aren’t they? Do ships have right of passage or don’t they? Or is it your belief that Taiwanese waters are American territory?

Come on champ, you can do better than that.

You want to play at denialism then scream about foreign aggression. No wonder nobody takes your foreign policy seriously anymore

Where is your evidence that Americans are trying to use Taiwan as a base for regime change?

A century of US foreign policy aimed at rival governments, combined with stated positions within US think tanks.

And your analysis on Taiwans housing prices and rent could be literally any major city in any major western country on earth

Crazy how free market housing prices just do that, huh? Almost as though it’s a consequence of their public policies.

More than the KMT or TPP certainly. Taiwan only legalized same sex couples in 2019, after repeated populist opposition campaigns and defiance of court orders.

But, more pressing, do you think homeless LGBTQ people want to live under a government that denies them rights to the barest essentials of survival?

Social conservative politics dominates the Pacific Rim. It isn’t unique to any single country. Economic progressivism is where you find the sharpest divide.

China’s overall end-goal is specifically to annex Taiwan. Taiwanese people do not want this.

China’s overall end goal is to build a prosperous nation, safe from future re-colonization.

Taiwanese people are happy to trade with, travel between, and live amicable with their Chinese peers. And one day, their position on annexation may change. That’s the project Beijing leadership is working towards.

Americans are trying to turn Taiwan into a forward operation base for regime change. And that’s what leads to these endless naval patrol pissing contests and US fear mongering campaigns aimed at Taiwanese expats.

What data are you referring to?

Here’s an excellent write-up

in Taiwan, the average starting salary for a university graduate is around 33,713 New Taiwan dollars (about US$1,100), and even a department manager at a major corporation earns only about US$2,100.

Meanwhile, housing prices in Taipei are comparable to those in Seoul—and in some areas, they even surpass Seocho, the most expensive district in the Korean capital. Until recently, people could endure thanks to relatively low living costs. But after COVID-19, things changed: not only was home ownership already out of reach, but inflation has driven everyday expenses sharply higher.

Nothing illustrates the poverty of Taiwan’s youth more clearly than the phenomenon of the taofang. A taofang is essentially an apartment divided into multiple tiny units, often with illegal extensions that stick out like container boxes to maximize floor space. These cramped rooms, barely large enough to lie down in, rent for $290 to $360 a month in Taipei.

If you know Taiwanese Americans, this isn’t a secret. Nobody wants to go back to the island and earn a tiny fraction of their American salaries under a ruinously expensive living standard.

You’ll find more US naval drills around Okinawa, Japan and The Philippines, far from any US shoreline.

China should definitely subjugate Taiwan

Only you guys seem to think this.

You’re obsessed with global conquest and you think you’re in a race with China to do it.

who have benefitted from trillions of dollars of trade from the US.

Have they? Why is Taiwanese standard of living so low?

I must be going colorblind because those ships are flying a very red American flag…

You’re spitting distance from the coast of Fujain. I gotta wonder why you’d expect to see an American warship on the Chinese coastline.

Unless…

Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam (CG 54) and USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) are conducting a routine Taiwan Strait transit August 28 (local time) through waters where high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.

Crazy how it’s international waters when an American warship is in them.

I really doubt that any Chinese civilian on Chinese soil is going to get so much as a dirty look from any US armed forces…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_espionage_in_China

Liberals will be in the middle of a bombing run on Venezuela and stop to complain about Chinese aggression

Wouldn’t be the first time

none of them should have more than a few percent in them

Tesla makes up 2.3% of the S&P 500 and 4.5% of NASDAQ. Then you have business downstream of Tesla - Luminar Technologies sells the majority of it’s LIDAR systems to Tesla, Hertz’s EV fleet is plurality Tesla, Panasonic co-owns Gigafactory 1.

I was more speaking of the lenders who enable Musk’s bullshit like buying Twitter or fucking around with our elections.

They do it so they can be first in the door for future IPOs. JP Morgan has been a close ally of Musk’s for decades. And he’s repaid them with numerous opportunities to resell their debt. The Twitter loan was a small price to pay by comparison.

😏

Guy who has never seen a world map

Except that was a peaceful process, not an invasion/annexation

The only invasion I’m seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.

they hold a gun to the head of pretty much all of the most advanced chip fabrication in the world

That’s been the American line for going on ten years. But the real gun has always been the Pacific Fleet, threatening to repeat the crimes of Vietnam on Chinese civilians, much like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Venezuela and Nigeria.

Scammers gonna scam