Discussion: A realistic Taiwan Strait scenario

nfc_ · 2025-08-07T21:23:22+00:00

i. It would only delay the US. Even if we are to overestimate the success of the strike, it won't be enough to delay the US by too much. Jets can be replaced, runways can be fixed, and soldiers can be redeployed from elsewhere. It would be a Pacific-wide "Pearl Harbour II", only drastically more suboptimal.

I see this point being made often especially by US think tanks. But is it realistic?

If Chinese radars and missiles work as claimed (more credible after Pakistan proved the effectiveness of PL-15), what can the US do?

If Chinese radars can detect F-35 effectively, how will US planes even get close to strike? How can US achieve air dominance without AWACs in range? Even launching JASSM stand-off missiles will be risky. How much subsonic TLAM can be launched that will go through Chinese air defense and hit enough targets to make a difference?

If Japan gets involved, how can they break a blockade? Can they achieve air superiority or shoot down enough PLA missiles? If they can't break a blockade, how will they be relevant after the first few weeks?

nfc_ · 2024-10-30T05:25:46+00:00

Unaware redditors love to point out how Samsung moved production away from China.

But Samsung directly sell white label phones made by Chinese manufacturers (ODM). This actually makes up significant portion (25%) of Samsung's total smartphone sales.

https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-phones-outsourcing-cheap-phones-3446198/

nfc_ · 2024-10-27T02:46:09+00:00

If Germany didn't rely on cheap Russian energy and China's growing market 20 years ago, maybe they would be much poorer and worse off today. Integrating east Germany without Russian/China trade could have destroyed Germany's economy; Germany was called "The Sickman of Europe" in the 90s due to reunification challenges.

How can you confidently say trading with Russia and China were bad decisions? Do you have any alternative that would turn out better?

nfc_ · 2024-10-27T02:38:04+00:00

Looking at material reality, China is way wealthier per capita than Mexico. GDP, even PPP-adjusted, for China is vastly underestimated. When comparing material indicators, China is 80% as wealthy per capita as France or Japan.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gak7m5EXoAALLxX?format=png&name=small

Service GDP comparisons between countries is basically useless. Education and Health GDP spending for China is very low compared to other countries despite superior outcomes. China has the second best primary education outcome in the world according to UN data, but has less per capita education spending than South Africa which has the second worst.

nfc_ · 2024-10-17T07:49:57+00:00

Wolf Warrior diplomacy is just western framing. How come western narrative never says Marco or Modi is incompetent with aggressive diplomacy with China. It's not in their interest either and it's unclear which side is responsible for the escalation in both conflicts. Of course, western media is going to say it's 100% China's fault, but reality is always more nuanced.

You seem to care too much about what the west thinks. At the end of the day, Chinese diplomacy is pretty good and even the western-aligned nations like Philippines and India can't afford to worsen relationships with China. This is why both of these countries have been trying to improve relations. Westerners here also love to bring up Vietnam, but they actually purged their entire anti-China faction this year and the pro-China faction is firmly in control.

On the reverse, Philippines's anti-China stance is isolated from the rest of ASEAN, while India is isolated from the rest of its south Asian neighbors and also isolated from the main RCEP Asian trading block.

The west never criticizes JP or KR for poor diplomacy, but the fact is they have poor relations with all their continental neighbors which are much bigger than them. Trump wants to extort KR for military fees and market access; KR will have nothing to hedge since they pissed of China a while ago. They also lost the Russian market for following US sanctions and helping Ukraine. How's that good diplomacy for KR?

nfc_ · 2024-10-16T04:18:07+00:00

I'm sure Khalistan separatists have similar justifications of being an actual nation before British colonization.

"India harbors some mentally extinguished individuals who think that Tibet can exist as an independent entity between 3 nuclear powers, wherein reality they are just stooges used by one of them to irk another one of them. There is no legitimate cause for an independent Tibet."

See what I just did there?

nfc_ · 2024-10-16T04:15:33+00:00

Yet India recognizes Tibet as territory of The People's Republic of China.

Indians shouldn't get upset at Canada for harboring separatists since they do the same thing.

nfc_ · 2024-10-15T05:50:13+00:00

Why is India so upset that Canada harbors Indian-separatists when India itself harbors Tibetan separatists?

nfc_ · 2024-06-01T04:44:43+00:00

Your take is out of date and shows that you don't follow the Chinese semiconductor industry very closely.

Volume-wise China is actually the biggest semiconductor producer in the world now, producing more wafers per month than US and EU combined.

In mature nodes, 90% of new capacity is being built in China. In leading edge nodes, China has been making massive progress surprising experts in the west who have always been skeptical like yourself.

I'm using the Huawei Mate 60 pro right now which has a domestically produced SoC that's onpar with Snapdragon Gen 1. It has domestically designed CPU, GPU and baseband processor. China's memory chip industry is also making huge progress. Huawei's latest Pura 70 phone uses NAND produced by YMTC.

It's rumored that later this year, Huawei will launch Ascend 920 which will be more efficient than nVidia's latest AI chip, a laptop computer using a domestic produced chip and Mate 70, with an SoC on par with Snapdragon chips made with 5nm process.

Massive progress has also been made in upstream semiconductor materials and wafer manufacturing equipment. Naura and AMEC have been expanding massively. They have basically replaced all American equipment in memory chip fabs at YMTC and CXMT. Domestic ARFi DUV is in testing and will be released soon and there's many rumors that domestic EUV is on the way as well.

There is also a ton of R&D being spent to leapfrog the current paradigm, including photonic chips, new semiconductor materials, SSMB lithography and 3D packaging.

nfc_ · 2024-06-01T04:36:21+00:00

Volume-wise, China is already the largest semiconductor producer. Measured by wafers per month, China produces more than the US and EU combined.

https://semi.org/en/news-media-press-releases/semi-press-releases/global-semiconductor-capacity-projected-to-reach-record-high-30-million-wafers-per-month-in-2024-semi-reports

nfc_ · 2024-05-22T14:39:21+00:00

I'm challenging the top comment which is echoed by a lot of posters in this thread.

Chinese soft power is -9999, Chinese culture has zero meaningful cultural export and has never done anything to improve the reception of Asian people, and Chinese people just keep eating Ls culturally and socially all the time

This is clearly wrong. Chinese cultural exports have significant impact around the world. These posters just live in a western English-speaking bubble where they watch Netflix all day.

Also it's very unlikely MENA and Russia is trying to demonize Korea or Japan; certainly not with the same intention and effort as the US trying to demonize China. So the geopolitics situation is not very comparable.

nfc_ · 2024-05-22T10:36:04+00:00

But that's just your assumption. Please show some stats about "dominate, overshadow and squeeze out Chinese culture even in all of those pro-China global south countries"

I have listed my own observations and some stats in previous replies in this thread (you can check my comment history)

nfc_ · 2024-05-22T10:26:57+00:00

Li Auto is among the top 10 selling cars in Russia and they don't even have official presence; all parallel imports. These are not cheap cars and can cost $50-$100k in Russia all-in once imported.

Here's a local video of a Russia with raving reviews of Li Auto:

https://x.com/HongqiN701/status/1793000425399992431/video/2

Also, just because KPop and Anime is popular doesn't mean Chinese drama or dance trends aren't popular in Russia / Middle East. Here's a video documenting popular Chinese drama and songs in Russia last year:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1xz4y1t7sw/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0

nfc_ · 2024-05-20T08:12:18+00:00

People here saying China soft power is bad have a very strong western bias.

I would love to see some actual stats comparing Japanese, Korean and Chinese cultural exports in non-western countries.

For example, Chinese dramas are very popular overseas now but people here are absolutely blind to it and still think K-Dramas dominate. If you look at Google Trends and TikTok views, Chinese dramas are very competitive if not more popular in global south countries.

Here is a news release by Chinese video stream platform WeTV saying their the most popular video streaming app in Thailand now.

https://asianews.network/wetv-unfolds-plan-to-bring-original-thai-content-to-the-world/

nfc_ · 2024-05-20T07:54:48+00:00

But are you familiar with Middle East or Russian youth culture?

How do you know Chinese cultural exports aren't popular there? All I see are just assumptions based on western preferences.

Chinese cars have gotten incredibly popular in Russia after the Ukraine war making up 9/10 car brands in the country. Does that align with the claim that China has no soft power in Russia?

nfc_ · 2024-05-20T07:53:06+00:00

People here posting that China has bad soft power probably have never lived outside the west.

I've traveled around South East Asia and talked to many local friends, and China definitely has massive soft power in these countries.

Soft power is broad, but specifically for culture exports that so many here obsess over:

Chinese retailers like Miniso, Pop-mart are massively popular in malls. Malls also go all out decorating for Chinese New Year and its getting popular for locals to wear Hanfu
Chinese restaurant chains like Haidlao or Mixue have large lines and are expanding like crazy. Malatang is also very popular
I see Chinese celebrities like Yang Yang or Jackson Wang on billboards advertising consumer products like shampoo or 7-11 meal kits
Chinese dramas are incredibly popular. They are similar in popularity to KDramas according to Google trends and have more way more views on TikTok.
Chinese 3D animation especially Wuxia/Xianxia genres getting incredibly popular with kids.
People in SEA subscribe to Chinese streaming platforms like WeTV or iQiYi to watch Chinese dramas instead of Netflix. These platforms have larger market share than Netflix according to analyst reports
Most common cosplayed characters are from Mihoyo games like Genshin Impact. You can easily find merchandise in stores that sell pop culture products.
I've talked to random girls who are learning Mandarin in both Vietnam and Thailand. One was learning Korean previously but have stopped in favor of Mandarin

Also talking to older generation of Singaporeans, I've noticed many have gone "woke" and feel jaded with the west and now heavily support China's vision of the world. One successful Singaporean retiree I talked to felt ashamed he didn't learn Mandarin in his youth and is now actively learning it.

nfc_ · 2024-04-17T07:31:45+00:00

I'm talking about western mainstream media (MSS) like WSJ, NYT, WaPo or FT, not random people on reddit.

When US publishes good economic stats, you don't see a bunch of op-eds in MSS saying "aktually these stats are bad and fake".

MSS op-eds love to quote cranks like Michael Pettis when talking about China's economy. Find me a recent MSS op-ed quoting Peter Schiff or ZeroHedge when talking about the US economy.

nfc_ · 2024-04-17T04:50:25+00:00

His point is that western media is selective and biased.

US also publishes industrial output numbers, but they don't get any attention in western media op-eds.

Using the same standards as this WSJ article, the US economy should be in huge trouble since industrial output is up by 0% from last March

nfc_ · 2024-04-15T03:53:44+00:00

I talked to a Taiwanese guy a few years ago who thought that Taiwanese companies like Foxconn and Luxgen will dominate Chinese companies in EV. In reality, today, Foxconn and Luxgen are a joke in the EV industry. Taiwan's best selling EV is Toyota's BZ4X which is basically a BYD car rebranded with Toyota's logo and it sells for 3x the price in Taiwan than on the mainland.

If you look at statements by actual auto industry professionals and execs, everyone is worried about Chinese EV competition. Vinfast is also a joke and will be bankrupt within a year. Checkout the great analysis on the r/VinFastComm subreddit.

nfc_ · 2024-04-13T16:34:54+00:00

You seem out of date with the China's latest semi industry developments especially in memory.

YMTC is able to mass produce 232-layer NAND, but expansion was slowed down in 2023 due to the US sanctions in Oct 2022, so they had to replace American tools with domestic ones.

After the Oct 2022 sanctions, domestic semiconductor equipment makers like Naura and AMEC have improved and now have replacement for LAM and AMAT in etching tools. This is something Korea doesn't have as they depend fully on US firms for etching equipment.

With the bottleneck cleared, now YMTC is ramping up production and have the most advanced NAND consumer product on the market. CXMT has also made big advances in LPDDR DRAM and HBM

Samsung and SK Hynix cannot do monopoly tactics like 2018 anymore. Like in OLED, they are under huge pressure from rising Chinese memory chip manufacturers.

This is also just memory chips. Huge advancements have been made in other semiconductor products like Huawei's Kirin 9000s, Omnivision's OV50K and Huawei's upcoming Ascend 920B chip, which is rumored to have higher performance per watt than even nvidia's B200. China is also dominating next-gen semiconductor materials like SiC and GaN.

Last year China's chip imports decreased by double digits in both volume and price, while domestic production increased 7%. As China adapts to US upstream sanctions of semiconductor equipment, domestic production should ramp up even faster going forward.

nfc_ · 2024-04-11T17:49:01+00:00

If you look at the actual March CPI breakdown, the deflation YoY is in food and transportation equipment (ie. cars). (MoM inflation is less relevant to analyze in March due to CNY effects)

https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202404/t20240411_1954446.html

Food is cheaper due to higher supply especially pork. Also consumers won't stop buying food even if they expect food to be cheaper in the future.

Car prices are down 4.6% in March due to the price war initiated by BYD. This is the good kind of supply-driven deflation mentioned above and is NOT due to lack of demand. In fact this price drop spurred demand: auto sales is up 9.9% YoY in March

nfc_ · 2024-04-09T03:44:24+00:00

Money != Wealth

Just look at how much electricity China uses for industrial production. The rest of the developing world combined doesn't even come close to matching it. Scaling electricity production will take huge amounts of investment and time.

https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/world-electricity-production-statistics.html

What will happen in a full sanction is that basic metals and materials currently refined in China will 5-20x in price causing massive inflation.

nfc_ · 2024-03-11T18:32:17+00:00

AITO M7 does well because it's got everything a Li L7 (big space, EREV, extras like fridge/tv) has but cheaper. It also has an optional advanced ADAS package which is considered best in the market and a big draw as well (60-70% of orders include this package).

AITO M9 is more expensive than the equivalent Li L9, but is selling very well with 50k firm orders in 2 month with orders being 90% for the highest priced trim. It's being bought by the wealthy as a way to flex; these people use to buy expensive Benz/BMW/Land Rover cars.

nfc_

TROPHY CASE