PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

my mom thinks that Xi Jinping is the only person who can bring Taiwan back into China's fold. I disagree because China is only going to get stronger and stronger. who ever comes after Xi Jinping will be in charge of a country vastly stronger than China today, making it easier to bring Taiwan back.

What do you guys think.

grulle said:

my mom thinks that Xi Jinping is the only person who can bring Taiwan back into China's fold. I disagree because China is only going to get stronger and stronger. who ever comes after Xi Jinping will be in charge of a country vastly stronger than China today, making it easier to bring Taiwan back.

What do you guys think.

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What made your mother to think that Xi is possibly the only leader able to bring Taiwan back to the mainland full stop?

Bellum_Romanum said:

What made your mother to think that Xi is possibly the only leader able to bring Taiwan back to the mainland full stop?

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she thinks Xi is the strongest leader in a generation. there will be no one like him in the future.

grulle said:

my mom thinks that Xi Jinping is the only person who can bring Taiwan back into China's fold. I disagree because China is only going to get stronger and stronger. who ever comes after Xi Jinping will be in charge of a country vastly stronger than China today, making it easier to bring Taiwan back.

What do you guys think.

Click to expand...

She has it twisted. Just about any functioning adult could conquer Taiwan by force, consequences be damned. Xi is the only one who has the capability to potentially create the conditions for peaceful reunification, by avoiding war and building China's technological power.

yea I agree that it does not depend on the person but on the country's military capabilities. but I think peaceful unification is an unattainable goal because there is nothing in this world that would make the Taiwanese people want to unify with the mainland.

Boltzmann said:

She has it twisted. Just about any functioning adult could conquer Taiwan by force, consequences be damned. Xi is the only one who has the capability to potentially create the conditions for peaceful reunification, by avoiding war and building China's technological power.

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I don't know if Xi is the only one who can do this. I sincerely hope not, because he's already 70 years old. I hope China will have more leaders who can match or even exceed Xi in the future.

That said, I completely agree that peaceful reunification is the harder solution by far. As Russia found out, it's always much harder to get out of a war than getting in.

grulle said:

yea I agree that it does not depend on the person but on the country's military capabilities. but I think peaceful unification is an unattainable goal because there is nothing in this world that would make the Taiwanese people want to unify with the mainland.

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I mean "Peaceful" in the sense of bloodless, not in the sense of there being no coercion. Taiwan's economy is utterly dependent on the mainland trade, however the mainland can't really leverage this because of the semiconductor dependency. If that dependency is broke then the mainland can basically dial Taiwan's economy up and down at will to gradually wrangle it back into the fold.

Boltzmann said:

I mean "Peaceful" in the sense of bloodless, not in the sense of there being no coercion. Taiwan's economy is utterly dependent on the mainland trade, however the mainland can't really leverage this because of the semiconductor dependency. If that dependency is broke then the mainland can basically dial Taiwan's economy up and down at will to gradually wrangle it back into the fold.

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hahaha I see, in that case I completely agree with you. The mainland has a lot of options for a bloodless unification. In the future I hope this works in bringing Taiwan back lol.

grulle said:

my mom thinks that Xi Jinping is the only person who can bring Taiwan back into China's fold. I disagree because China is only going to get stronger and stronger. who ever comes after Xi Jinping will be in charge of a country vastly stronger than China today, making it easier to bring Taiwan back.

What do you guys think.

Click to expand...

I would interpret your mother's words in two ways.
On the one hand, it lies in the uncertainty of the next successor, and the ONLY certainty is Xi, so there is nothing wrong with hoping he can complete the unification.
On the other hand, and this is just my guess, your mother lived through the chaos of the 90's to 10's when everyone thought China was going to be finished with this level of corruption. But Xi did contain the problem to a large extent through his hand. So in your mom's eyes, Xi is the most capable leader in modern China.

my humble opinion is that if all peaceful means are exhausted and come to a dead end, and Armed Reunification has to occur, there will be inevitable bloodshed in Taiwan no matter how Beijing minimizes it.
The local population will harbor resentment proportional to the amount of bloodshed, and the Western governments and media will all join in a loud chorus to condemn the Beijing Government and castigate the Chinese leader as the "Butcher of Tw, or other diabolical labels", with sanctions to boot.
no doubt, the Chinese leader, under the present circumstances would be President Xi, will be tried in absentia and found guilty as a "war criminal" in the western sponsored International Kangaroo Court of Justice with an international arrest warrant served on him!!
rightly so, it will take a leader like Xi who is strong-willed, determined, and even a little ruthless, and who has a strong sense of mission and history to retake TW at his personal sacrifice and suffers the "inconvenience" of international sanctions. Meaning he can never travel outside of China for the rest of his life, not that he cares......
I agree President Xi is probably the only leader in the current crop who is willing to take the plunge and face the music, not knowing or caring how he will be viewed by future historians.