Long tweet, starts here...
I
have been doing interviews & research on the question of “when
would Beijing decide to pull the trigger on Taiwan, and why then?”
The
most convincing argument I encountered for “not for a very long time”
was essentially “they can’t afford to be cut out of chip supply chain.
They
will wait until they have finished building up a semiconductor complex
that can survive being cut off from the West. They will not trade a
century of technological dominance for the sake of an early war with
Taiwan, unless forced into it.”
A lot of pages that were supposed to go into that piece have been overtaken by events.
I
cannot foresee what the ultimate effect of this decision will be.
we’ve just crossed a threshold, the kind historians decades from now
will point to as one of those points of no return.
There
were a few pieces from a bit back that argued “China thinks we are in
decline—and we need to show them we are not!” I always thought this was
faulty logic.
A China
that thinks time is on its side, that American decline is not just
eventually inevitable but clearly happening *now* is a China with no
incentive to take desperate measures.
Men and women die when leaders think there is no wait out but a gamble. They have died this way in their millions and millions.
We
have crossed a rubicon. The reaction from the Chinese side is muted
because the Congress is around the corner and they haven’t had time to
develop a policy or propaganda response yet. It will come.
I don’t see a future now where the US-China relationship is not as dark as the Cold War rivalry.
Protecting
Taiwan has always put as at ends with their national aspiration, the
reason of being for the Party—but there was always the hope that the
issue could be deferred, that a compromise solution could be found, that
legal fictions could preserve the facade peace needed.
And
of course there was always the possibility we would not actually defend
the Taiwanese at all. Or on the reverse side, that the Chinese would
never risk their achievements in other fields for the gamble of victory
here.
This is different.
Here
we are not declaring our intent to probably stop the Party from
achieving its historical mission, in some faraway future where they
might take the worst path for doing so.
No,
we are *actually* stopping the Party in its tracks, today. This isn’t
hypothetical, it isn’t ambiguous, it isn’t about something they might
do one day.
They have the
goal to make China the leader in 21st century technology, the cutting
edge of science and industry. They view this aim as both central to the
historical mission of “making China great again” and to preserving the
security and safety of their people.
It
is at the center of all their plans and dreams—military, economic, even
demographic and political, really (though it would take a separate
thread to explain why).
That
cross linkage is of course why we made the decision to clamp down on
the first place. They were the first to fuse it all together.
So
we have followed the thread back to its center and declared war on the
future of China—its future military capacity, technological advance, and
economic dynamism. We are now officially, openly, in the business of
making sure China will not rise higher.
they will understand our move in exactly these terms.
If
this must be done, better to do it sooner than later. Perhaps we are
too late in doing it. But that is what we are doing. Doors were closed
this week, doors that may not open again for decades.
Update: some people are using this thread to claim I think we have a war just around the corner.
I did not write that.
My
position is this: the CPC has long seen America as a threat to its
historical mission—we have now unequivocally confirmed that this is
true.