China is building its military on a 'scale not seen since WWII' and is on track to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027: US admiral

  • US Adm. John Aquilino said China’s military is building up at a rate not seen since World War II.
  • That puts it on the path to meeting its goal of being ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, he said.
  • Aquilino, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, urged Washington to accelerate military development.

China’s rapid military build-up is more expansive than anything seen since World War II, which means it’s on track with its 2027 goal to be ready for a Taiwan invasion, said US Navy Adm. John Aquilino.

“All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” Aquilino wrote in a testimony to the US Armed Services House Committee.

“Furthermore, the PLA’s actions indicate their ability to meet Xi’s preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed,” added the admiral, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command.

mightyfoolish,

I think Taiwan doing so well in the semiconductor space is a huge win for the region. I fear China attacking would put East Asians in a tough spot; especially if the foundries get destroyed.

anarchy79,
@anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

Oooh Western money is gonna be pissed.

ShaggySnacks,

So does the Chinese think it will be a quick war? Recent history has shown that this kind of years never end. The Taiwanese have been preparing for this for years.

Russians thought taking Ukraine would last a few weeks and that war has been ongoing for couple of years. The Saudis are sucked into Yemen for several years. The US got into 2 forever wars at the same time.

Filthmontane,

Taiwan is a 13,976 sq mile Island. Yemen is a 214,287 sq mile desert. Ukraine is 233,062 sq miles. It’s not a fair comparison. China could take Taiwan very quickly because it’s a tiny little island. They’re more likely to simply embargo the island though and turn it into the next Cuba.

AliasAKA,

It is tiny, but far more parity in terms of arms and the whole being an island thing makes it exponentially harder to invade than say, a country you share a a land border with including roads leading you to where you want to go.

Filthmontane,

No it isn’t. They could carpet bomb the whole island in a week. They don’t even need to step foot on Taiwan to conquer it. Their Navy and Air Force is more than enough. But they’d be more likely to just blockade the country and starve everyone.

That being said, I don’t actually believe China will invade Taiwan. There’s no real incentive. I don’t doubt that they’re expanding their military, but I believe it’s entirely US propaganda intended on selling weapons through fear mongering.

anarchy79,
@anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, man.

3volver,

China could take Taiwan very quickly because it’s a tiny little island.

I assume you have little military knowledge. Personally I don’t make claims like this at all because I know the limits of my own knowledge. If China were to attempt to take Taiwan it would be devastating for both countries. War is absolute shit, many civilians would die, and what would China really gain? They’d gain being on America’s shitlist which historically is terrible. Be careful with statements like these, they’re the same ones I read right before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Filthmontane,

I literally just responded to another comment saying that I don’t believe China would ever invade Taiwan and it’s just US propaganda intended on selling weapons through fear mongering.

FarceOfWill,

Link to show invading is not trivial thediplomat.com/…/why-a-taiwan-invasion-would-loo…

Enforcing a blockade around an island full of long range anti ship and air defences, aided by the US military, is extremely hard. Also and more importantly it’s a very long dragged out war that gives Taiwan time to build allies, and the west to organise, which will make it harder and harder to enforce.

Finally you’re replying to someone saying the war will take a long time, which you initially disagree with then go on to talk about an embargo which more than agrees with it. It’s going to take ages to resolve if they attack and it’ll almost certainly include Russia distracting NATO in Europe. I dearly hope china sees sense and gets rid of xi before his desperation for personal achievements in his lifetime causes the nation and world a lot of pointless suffering

Filthmontane,

I think you’re misunderstanding. If China were to invade, it would be over quickly. I’m not saying that China wouldn’t have losses in the process, I’m just saying it wouldn’t take long due to the fact that the island is roughly the size of Maryland. To add to that, I doubt the US would actually get involved and would instead just try to sell weapons to Taiwan, just like Ukraine.

That being said, invasion aside, like as a completely separate course of action, I believe they’d be more likely to take the long term path of embargo. They wouldn’t be bombarding the island, just preventing supplies from coming in or out. They can do this outside of the range of Taiwan’s defenses and Taiwan is incapable of sustaining itself for very long. The war would likely end within a year, the US would probably make a lot of threats, but ultimately wouldn’t sacrifice the US economy for a war with China.

Now, this is really the most important part. It is well within China’s best interest to not invade Taiwan. They have a symbiotic relationship and the whole situation is just posturing between the US and China and has nothing to do with Taiwan at all.

Blackmist,

Well if nobody in the West is prepared to admit that Taiwan isn’t a bit of China, what are they going to do about it? Probably nothing at this point. It’s far enough away that it’s not really a territorial threat to us, unlike Ukraine.

The real question should be, what are we doing about all that Taiwanese manufacturing we rely on? Because if the answer isn’t “move it all back to Western countries where it can fuel Western economies no matter the cost” then you’re making a hell of a gamble on China staying friendly with us in the future.

Telodzrum,

Time to play psyop or tankie!

The answer is Seventh Fleet goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

anarchy79,
@anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

I just hodl

Harbinger01173430,

Can’t they make haste please? I wanna see live action fallout irl /s

Paragone,

It isn’t intended to stop at smashing Taiwan.

All of Asia’s the target.

Global-domination’s the goal.

“the destruction of the West is the midwife of Chinese dominion” or something like that, from a few decades ago, a general’s words.

I don’t know of ANY government on this planet that is stratically-altruistic, and most are openly machiavellian/sociopathic-psychopathic/nihilist(globally, re ClimatePunctuation).

The more people are investing-in dealing-with making-believing, because that’s more comforting than actuality,

the LESS actuality evolves to match the making-believing, because of useless wasting-of-opportunity.

Objectivity’s the most-effective traction humankind’s got, and making-believing just throws opportunity down the sewer.

Short-term-ism’s going to butcher nearly-all lives on this planet, this century.

It’s setting-up “nicely”, what with

  • the ClimatePunctuation still accelerating,
  • the food-chains ( both terrestrial & marine ) being butchered as quickly/efficiently as possible, by money’s lack of care,
  • the political-tantrum/pogrom,
  • the religious-tantrum/pogrom,
  • the aggressive sabotage-of-governing of both left & right’s Leninism/Murdochism, with their “proletariat dictatorship”/“populist dictatorship” rule
  • the nationalism-religions providing identity-“security”, by displacing reason’s anxiety…

It really is too bad that only “journalism”, … which treats gaslighting as equally-valid to fact, … remains, in the for-profit-“journalism” world…

Actual journalism, which stuck to objectivity, called gaslighters gaslighters ( locally & other governments, both ), etc, wasn’t allowed to live, by money, so it’s gone.

And, when actual-journalism’s gone, then you’re “driving the runaway bus while hallucinating/on-drugs”, and the disconnect keeps getting more & more profound/complete…

“business is booming!” while underemployment & homelessness skyrocket, & businesses keep going bankrupt, because the supply-chain’s disintegrating…

I remember that screencap someone did, early-Covid, which showed 2 headlines in the same image:

  • 1 was in the “stock markets climb drastically” vein,
  • the other was in the “unemployment & homelessness reach new heights” vein,

& they were both run by the same company as headlines??

Gaslighting’s the only industry dominant in our world, now, it looks like…

Russian dictatorship intends to butcher all of Eastern Europe that it can, because possession is the ONLY part of the law that it feels valid.

China’s committed to doing something similar through all of Asia, & Modi’s Hindutva India’s in China’s sights, just as Tibet was, just as Nepal, Bangladesh, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, ALL of them are.

Give it another decade, & see what’s left, outside of the 3-ish major empires that will be butchering-all-who-are-in-their-way.

Our nature hasn’t changed in the last 12 millenia, so why would our actual-behavior?

Our unconscious-toddler’s committed to enforcing its “greatness”, and some politicians embody that current, & win on that embodying-our-unconscious-toddler, because much of humankind would rather be identifying-with the ruling-toddler than tolerate others to live, so it’s an identity thing, not rational.

Also, ask yourself this:

IF China can’t possess all of Asia, does it make sense to permit the West to make any use of the un-possessed portions of Asia?

XOR does it make more Chinese Dominion sense to smash/butcher them all, who won’t be the possessed-property of CCP?

Which would gut the West’s dominion more?

When you understand the answer to that question, then you begin understanding what the world’s going to be looking-like, 1 decade+ on…

Welcome to The Great Filter.

_ /\ _

Firipu,
@Firipu@startrek.website avatar

Time to go touch some grass mate :)

appel,

The current Chinese state did not exist before WW2, so I think that comparison is a bit odd

remus989,

I believe they’re comparing the scale seen before WW2 in general, not China itself.

TokenBoomer,

Maybe one day they can attain the freedom status of the exceptional USA.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0858ea51-1946-46ca-a527-5672a4b19e85.jpeg

Siegfried,

I’m all against populist and authoritarian regimes, but taking them out of the table, fuck USA.

fuckingkangaroos,

How dare they defend Taiwanese freedom, disgusting.

Siegfried,

They also funded and supported Juntas all over my continent

somethingchameleon, (edited )

Errr, Taiwan people should fight their own battles.

Just like Haitians and Africans.

Or, let me guess: it’s okay for the West to defend Whites. It’s okay for the West to defend Asians. But it’s not okay for the West to defend Blacks.

Actions do speak louder than words, after all. Better to fight China’s armies than Haiti’s gangs.

(This is why I never take popular sentiment seriously anymore. Too many useful idiots incapable of critical thinking.)

TokenBoomer,

Downvoted? The people don’t like it when you remind them that the capitalist class only interferes in geopolitics when it serves their interests. There’s 2 genocides going on in Africa. Crickets. But Palestine? We must defend Israel. The hypocrisy is obvious.

maynarkh,

To be honest, that graph is a bit worrying especially if you look at PPP. I’m not saying “China will build more aircraft carriers than the US” or some such nonsense. I’m saying there is no point going to 300 bil if you don’t want to fight the US. India is their other closest rival.

I’m not sure they would succeed, but I’m worried they might try.

ferralcat,

I think they’re probably more worried about the us invading them. We’re the ones who’ve been invading countries most in the past 100 years, not china.

maynarkh,

Their own rhetoric says otherwise. The whole saber-rattling thing brings people closer to war, not peace.

jacksilver,

The thing that’s always so misleading about these numbers is that everything costs more in the US to begin with. A lot of that expense is just for US labor, which costs more per person than at least most countries. The graph is a lot more reasonable when you do [% of gdp] (statista.com/…/military-expenditure-as-percentage…)

anarchy79,
@anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

USA should invade USA and spread democracy there.

TokenBoomer,

It will on April 12.

mlg,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

KSA being on this chart is an imposter because they can’t even defeat the Houthis by themselves lmao.

All that funding is to buy and bribe the US military to maintain their own bases in the country to keep themselves secure.

Moonrise2473,

The graph says “expenditure”, not “quality”

Which seems appropriate

Like they are doing for the sports, spend billions to be still irrelevant

somethingchameleon, (edited )

All that money isn’t going to mean much without experience to back it up.

The US military could crumble once people start dying and plans/equipment start failing.

We could find out that the US has just been taken for a ride by military contractors. Western equipment certainly didn’t turn the tides in the Ukraine war like people on these forums thought it would.

FarceOfWill,

The us military is constantly experiencing warfare.
If anyone in that pic turns out to have been swimming naked it’ll be the chinese

TokenBoomer, (edited )

Korea. Afghanistan. Vietnam. The USA military is having difficulties recruiting. Million dollar equipment is useless when the people operating it aren’t there, or undertrained.

somethingchameleon,

The us military is constantly experiencing warfare.

Bombing brown people who can’t fight back isn’t “warfare.” It’s bullying.

AdolfSchmitler,

Idk why ppl are hating on this. We haven’t seen a large scale war in quite a while. And it’s not unheard of that companies cut corners in the US in the name of profits. Or that someone gives a bid to their friend/relative instead of the best company.

Jaderick,

How much is this fearmongering to justify increased military spending and how much is this true? This is the second article I’ve seen in 2 days about “unprecedented” military buildup in Russia and China.

War is fucking stupid. Anyone who wants war is fucking stupid. China and Russia’s autocrats are evil stupid, but are they stupid enough to create another great conflict that we all have to suffer through? Why the sudden change now? Russia tried the quick takeover and that’s failed miserably, drawing them into a prolonged conflict with high casualties.

With all that said, I also recognize the US is a declining world power (from the absolute top to now in competition with others) and stories like this are excellent for drumming up movements to try and maintain that absolute power position.

So how much is this article (and other recent ones) US propaganda?

FreudianCafe,

Do you belive mainstream media does non-propaganda journalism?

aniki, (edited )

Mainstream media sells commercials. However you want to look at that to make it fit your world view - have at it, but they are not agents of truth. They are agents of capitalism and all the hell that unbridled greed entails.

Jaderick,

I agree with the other guy. The media made sound bytes of Trump during his first presidential run because it was popular and directly contributed to him winning, which is now a problem for all of us.

My skepticism arises from similar articles saying the same thing about Russia, though those had more analysis about the transition to a wartime economy, that come at the same time as this article.

I’m concerned media article like this are primers for accepting conflicts down the line as there seems to be a looming threat of greater conflict that’s being highlighted here. I’m an advocate of working together and see war as an incredibly stupid objective so part of this may be just not wanting to believe humans are this stupid.

FreudianCafe,

You shouldnt be naive to the point you belive this is a mistake or product of stupidity. Those people know very well what they are doing

Jaderick, (edited )

If they know what they’re doing and we know what they’re doing, but we actually do nothing to stop it before it come to a head, how much are we culpable for the outcome? This goes for Russians, Chinese, and Americans.

All that to say, I’m not gung-ho about ramping up war productions just yet

FreudianCafe,

Its not really fair to say we (the peope) do nothing. The rulling classes have the armed forces, the media, the educational system, most politicians etc etc. When we do something we are met with censorship and violence

TokenBoomer,

97%

w2tpmf, (edited )

outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, urged Washington to accelerate military development.

Better yet. Instead of spending a trillion dollars to gear up to join WW3, how about spend that money to develope domestic manufacturing so we can completely embargo all imports from China. Stay out of conflicts between other nations.

Hit them in the economy and it will hurt them far more than hitting them with bombs, plus the bonus effect of not wasting thousands if not millions of human lives.

fuckingkangaroos,

stay out of conflicts between other nations

Exactly. There’s no way Hitler’s will try to take Poland. Even if he does, it’s not like the Nazis or Japanese would attack the US.

TokenBoomer,

Americans can’t afford housing, homelessness is increasing, healthcare is unaffordable; and you want its population to support teabagging the rest of the world like it’s 1945. When militaries spread themselves thin, without the nation taking care of its home population, that spells trouble. Ask Rome.

fuckingkangaroos,

Sounds like you’ve never visited the US.

TokenBoomer,

I’ve only lived here my whole life.

fuckingkangaroos,

I don’t believe you.

Hadriscus,

though luck

TokenBoomer,

Why? Because I’m not Blue MAGA like you? Read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States, and if you’re still gung-ho about American Exceptionalism, more power to ya.

fuckingkangaroos,

You have no idea who I am.

TokenBoomer,

Should I? I’ve never visited North Macedonia 🇲🇰

laverabe, (edited )

All of those problems are because of political corruption, not raw money in/out. The US spends 3.5% of GDP on military, a lot, but not the most. Ranked globally for military spending per GDP. Russia spends more than the US.

US is not Rome, at least not yet, or anytime in the immediate future.

ferralcat, (edited )

I don’t understand why you’d use GDP here. Is the assumption that, normalized for currency differences, all countries have the same gdp? That’s not true.

I think argued earlier that tue money goes less far in the us because the cost of living is higher, so then normalize by cost or standard of living? But even that would assume that the average wage in the country is supporting the same lifestyle in both Russia and the us. Which it isn’t. Some countries live “better” than others.

I think raw numbers are probably best here. 100 trillion in military spending is 100 trillion.

TokenBoomer,

I’ll tell this to Terry, the homeless veteran who can’t afford insulin for his untreated diabetes from agent Orange that the U.S. is only ranked 10th in military spending per GDP and ask what he thinks.

The question should not be “how much?” But “why?” If it’s to preserve our “way of life.” Whose way of life? Certainly not Terry’s.

fuckingkangaroos,

That puts the Kremlin’s war budget at 4.1%, but their 2024 budget puts military spending at 6% GDP. If they go over (like they did last year by 12%) it’ll be even higher. Some analysts think there’s even more hidden spending not being captured in these numbers.

somethingchameleon,

Your analogy is not a 1:1 representation of the situation at hand and only serves to distract people from the subject.

I think less of people who always resort to analogies, because they just reduce complicated situations into ones that are easier for their small minds to comprehend.

laverabe,

That’s all well and good, but I just don’t understand. Can you rephrase that in how it relates to an Olympic size swimming pool?

fuckingkangaroos,

Amazing.

And yeah that was my first thought too, it’s another KremlinGPT.

wintermute_oregon,

That is the thing. We funded the Chinese build up. Stupid to fund a hostile nation.

We shouldn’t do business with China, period. Not only would our economy grow like crazy, but China would decline and become less of a threat to the world.

Wanderer,

Ironically could have learnt something from China. Just said fuck you we got everything we need on this side and close the border.

vaultdweller013,

Except food, China is a net importer of food. I wonder what would happen if it stopped, would the CCP fall or would they all just starve until the population stabilized.

PRUSSIA_x86,

Porque no los dos?

aodhsishaj,

Um the thousands of human lives part? That’s why we shouldn’t do both?

Gradually_Adjusting,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.ca avatar

Why did you lowball it at thousands? That war would give COVID a run for its money

SlopppyEngineer,

The idea behind a massive build out of weapons is so nobody even dares to point a barrel in your direction.

The downside is that everybody else will try to find a way to make those weapons irrelevant, like swarms of $1.000 drones bypassing million dollars air defenses.

PRUSSIA_x86,

Would you rather the Chinese be allowed to have their way with the entirety of the Asia-Pacific region? Based on what we’ve seen in Hong Kong I don’t think that’s a good idea.

aniki,

China would be irrelevant without its purely manpower based economy.

MataVatnik,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Paradoxically, a large standing army will mean less likelihood of conflict. Deterrence works.

Wanderer,

How did ww1 begin?

MataVatnik,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Canonical

deadbeef79000, (edited )

Because that does not feed the military industrial complex.

Tooling up is cheaper for employers in $CONGRESSIONAL_DISTRICT.

Building up domestic manufacturing takes years of capital investment with no quarterly KPI RoI.

somethingchameleon,

Americans tend to support using public funds on things that don’t benefit them.

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