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Taiwan - Chances of War with China this year?

What part of - If massive China decides to invade tiny ( in comparison ) Taiwan...
What part of "Let the Taiwanese lead on any measures they deem necessary for their own defence" are you having trouble with? They've clearly stated often enough that the excitement and hyperbole isn't helpful.

Unless the democratic mandate given to and expressed by a democratically elected government isn't democracy enough for some reason?
 
What part of "Let the Taiwanese lead on any measures they deem necessary for their own defence" are you having trouble with?

I'm not - It is only right and fair that the Taiwanese take primary responsibility for their own defence.

It is you who is struggling with.

* The Democratic will of the Taiwanese people

* The Democratic mandate of the Taiwanese people

To remain Taiwanese means Jack Sh1t should the Chinese decide to invade and absorb Taiwan into China.

Did you have trouble trying to move those goalposts.
 
To remain Taiwanese means Jack Sh1t should the Chinese decide to invade and absorb Taiwan into China.
It's going to be the sole determiner of how hard they fight, which you seem to doubt for some reason.

Why do you feel that their opinion on what the threat is and what response is required is inaccurate?
 
When US President Joe Biden recently signed off on a $80m (£64.6m) grant to Taiwan for the purchase of American military equipment, China said it "deplores and opposes" what Washington had done.
To the casual observer it didn't appear a steep sum. It was less than the cost of a single modern fighter jet. Taiwan already has on order more than $14bn worth of US military equipment. Does a miserly $80m more matter?
While fury is Beijing's default response to any military support for Taiwan, this time something was different.
The $80m is not a loan. It comes from American taxpayers. For the first time in more than 40 years, America is using its own money to send weapons to a place it officially doesn't recognise. This is happening under a programme called foreign military finance (FMF).
Apparently it's in line with 'rules based world order'.
What is the state of Taiwanese armed forces?
The assessment of long-time observers is blunt: the island is woefully under-prepared for a Chinese attack.
The list of problems is long. Taiwan's army has hundreds of ageing battle tanks, but too few modern, light missile systems. Its army command structure, tactics and doctrine haven't been updated in half a century. Many front-line units have only 60% of the manpower they should have.
Meanwhile
...now China has the world's largest navy and a far superior air force. A war-gaming exercise conducted by a think-tank last year found that in a conflict with China, Taiwan's navy and air force would be wiped out in the first 96 hours of battle.
For Taiwan the lessons from Ukraine's invasion have been shocking. Artillery has dominated the battlefield - it has a high rate of fire and is terrifyingly accurate.
Ukrainian crews have learned they must be on the move once they've fired a salvo of shells - or within minutes, Russian "counter-battery fire" comes raining down on their positions.
But many of Taiwan's artillery troops are equipped with Vietnam War or even World War Two-era guns. These are loaded manually and are difficult and slow to move. They would be sitting ducks.
 
Looks like Xi has been given a slap inna face.

China very rarely has any impact on Taiwanese elections. This one was decided by a lacklustre KMT completely buggering up their last chance of success by failing to strike a deal with third-party candidate Ko Wen-Je on a coalition.

To put it into context, the current President (also DPP, same as Lai) was elected with 56% of votes cast on a 66% turnout, then re-elected with 57% on a 75% turnout. Lai in contrast barely scraped above 40% with a 72% turnout - in other words, he lost 17% of Tsai's voters to his opponents and has the second lowest vote share of any elected president in Taiwan's history.

His KMT opponent Hou You-Yi had a terrible campaign. He's an ex-policeman who was president of the Central Police University and is currently mayor of New Taipei City, the municipality surrounding Taipei itself and which has an extremely complicated urban/rural, fishing/agriculture/industry brief. His tenure has been sound but unspectacular but the trouble is, he's been incredibly forgettable throughout his campaign and all but disappeared from view after announcing his VP candidate. He took 33% of the vote this year, which in context was even worse than the last KMT candidate, Han Guo-Yu (who won Kaohsiung for the KMT - think Tories winning Liverpool on a platform of free copies of the Sun - then flopped miserably at the presidency), and his own municipality voted convincingly for Lai instead of their own mayor.

Ko Wen-Je was the dark horse and I personally was pleasantly surprised and extremely impressed by how well he did. He was a highly respected surgeon at National Taiwan University Hospital (the nation's premier teaching hospital) before standing successfully as an independent for Taipei City mayor. He was helped by the DPP withdrawing their candidate and as NTU is historically strongly associated with the Green camp (DPP-led) he was widely perceived as independent in name only, not least by the DPP. He pretty quickly disabused everyone and the extent of the vitriol aimed at him in this campaign shows just how upset they were. He gained 26% of the vote which given he's essentially a one-man party with limited representation outside of Taipei and who only entered politics seriously 8 years ago is amazing. His voters were typically under 35 and dissatisfied with the performance of the DPP after 8 years in office but unwilling to vote KMT. I personally believe he would have polled higher, but in Taiwan you can only vote in person at the polling station in your registered place of residence, and a lot of young people moving to the bigger cities for work may have found the loss of income involved in going home to vote unaffordable.

It's a historic moment, though. The first time a political party has had 3 consecutive terms in office, but as the DPP failed to gain a majority in the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan parliament, voting took place concurrently to the presidential election), Lai will struggle to achieve anything.
 
China very rarely has any impact on Taiwanese elections. This one was decided by a lacklustre KMT completely buggering up their last chance of success by failing to strike a deal with third-party candidate Ko Wen-Je on a coalition.

To put it into context, the current President (also DPP, same as Lai) was elected with 56% of votes cast on a 66% turnout, then re-elected with 57% on a 75% turnout. Lai in contrast barely scraped above 40% with a 72% turnout - in other words, he lost 17% of Tsai's voters to his opponents and has the second lowest vote share of any elected president in Taiwan's history.

His KMT opponent Hou You-Yi had a terrible campaign. He's an ex-policeman who was president of the Central Police University and is currently mayor of New Taipei City, the municipality surrounding Taipei itself and which has an extremely complicated urban/rural, fishing/agriculture/industry brief. His tenure has been sound but unspectacular but the trouble is, he's been incredibly forgettable throughout his campaign and all but disappeared from view after announcing his VP candidate. He took 33% of the vote this year, which in context was even worse than the last KMT candidate, Han Guo-Yu (who won Kaohsiung for the KMT - think Tories winning Liverpool on a platform of free copies of the Sun - then flopped miserably at the presidency), and his own municipality voted convincingly for Lai instead of their own mayor.

Ko Wen-Je was the dark horse and I personally was pleasantly surprised and extremely impressed by how well he did. He was a highly respected surgeon at National Taiwan University Hospital (the nation's premier teaching hospital) before standing successfully as an independent for Taipei City mayor. He was helped by the DPP withdrawing their candidate and as NTU is historically strongly associated with the Green camp (DPP-led) he was widely perceived as independent in name only, not least by the DPP. He pretty quickly disabused everyone and the extent of the vitriol aimed at him in this campaign shows just how upset they were. He gained 26% of the vote which given he's essentially a one-man party with limited representation outside of Taipei and who only entered politics seriously 8 years ago is amazing. His voters were typically under 35 and dissatisfied with the performance of the DPP after 8 years in office but unwilling to vote KMT. I personally believe he would have polled higher, but in Taiwan you can only vote in person at the polling station in your registered place of residence, and a lot of young people moving to the bigger cities for work may have found the loss of income involved in going home to vote unaffordable.

It's a historic moment, though. The first time a political party has had 3 consecutive terms in office, but as the DPP failed to gain a majority in the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan parliament, voting took place concurrently to the presidential election), Lai will struggle to achieve anything.
Here's the CBC's story on it:
Voters in Taiwan reject Beijing's warnings, elect presidential candidate viewed as 'troublemaker'
Their subheading was "DPP's Lai Ching-te vows to maintain the status quo in relations with China", which pretty much seems to sum up the story. Lai is apparently looking to maintain the status quo so far as relations with Beijing are concerned.

Overall his campaign was based on maintaining continuity with existing policies in both the foreign and domestic spheres.

Previous stories said that the main issues in the campaign were the cost of living, housing, and the economy in general. Relations with Beijing apparently ranked lower on the list of issues the voters were worried about.

The focus in our own press on Taiwan's relations with Beijing are apparently the result of a combination of that's what we care about, and not many people in the west really understand much about Taiwan itself or its people.
 
The DPP also lost their majority in parliament - so its not really a ringing endorsement.

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, Taiwanese are pretty evenly split when it comes to views on China.
 
Contrary to what the media would have you believe, Taiwanese are pretty evenly split when it comes to views on China.
Almost nobody is interested in reunification under the CPC and the extent of this 'pro-China'-ness the press talk about for the KMT is that it's a reality that Taiwan needs to deal with. There isn't any practical difference in the nuts and bolts of the two parties' cross-straits policies, though.

The Taiwanese public is fairly evenly split about the balance of advantages/disadvantages in cross-straits affairs, but since the media have their own story to tell that signal gets lost in the noise.
 
The BBC article covering Lai's election has managed to piss a lot of people off as it frames Taiwan's election in terms of China.

All in the name.of supporting democracy, of course.
 
The focus in our own press on Taiwan's relations with Beijing are apparently the result of a combination of that's what we care about, and not many people in the west really understand much about Taiwan itself or its people.
Heaven forfend that our press promote an understanding of their topic through underpinning their stories with investigation and explanation. That's not what journalism is about.
 

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