The rattling of sabers....

[unixronin]

A senior Chinese general has threatened to launch a full-scale nuclear strike against the USA if the US gives military support to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese military re-assimilation of Taiwan.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," [Major-General Zhu Chenghu] told an official briefing for foreign journalists.

[...]

"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian.  Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese," he added.

Despite fifty years of Taiwanese independence, China still considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory.  Taiwan quite understandably disagrees rather firmly with this point of view.

Beijing considers Taiwan part of China, and has vowed to bring the self-governed democracy back into the fold.  In March, China's parliament passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" to do so.

Sounds like the Sudetenland all over again.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

In March, China's parliament passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" to do so.

And why was this not news?

I tell you what, if ever there was a National Security argument for protecting another country, Taiwan's got one. We can do without the oil, if we put our minds to it. We CANNOT do without the motherboards and the laptops, most of which are manufactured (or at least designed) there.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that argument is not lost on me. I personally more than half suspect a major reason why China is so hot to take back Taiwan is because the Taiwanese computer industry is so successful and generates so much wealth. They don't, or won't, understand, of course, as failed idealogues never can, that returning Taiwan to the Workers' Paradise will probably kill that particular golden goose....

I recently read a Stephen Bishop novel titled Titan. One of the side plots was a China with a nascent Chinese space program, still ruled by a 120-year-old Mao Zedong, who decided that the best way China had to counter resource blockades from a United States under Bishop's version of Nehemiah Scudder (in a regime so benighted that history, science and technology were "edited" to conform to a strictly Biblical cosmology, with fixed stars and planets on fixed spheres), was to drop a big rock into the North Atlantic. Shame they were an order of magnitude or so off on the size of the NEO they picked ... it was a nice planet while it lasted.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

losing tawianese 'puter parts would be a good thing. we need more american made goods.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, there are no significant American commodity-computer manufacturers any more. They're all offshoring the design and manufacturing to Asia. Even Intel doesn't make their own boards any more. What little there is, frankly, is mostly embarrassingly bad, overpriced crap... which is why Taiwan has taken over the market.

It used to be different when companies like, say, HP designed and built their own computers. But they couldn't compete on price. Like it or not, the USA has lost the commodity-computer market, and won't get it back overnight even if Taiwan quits producing computers altogether. If China takes over Taiwan and the Taiwanese computer industry dies, or China decides to embargo the US, we're going to be hurting.

On the other hand, it might be a shot in the arm for Sun Microsystems.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

my point was that we need to quit importing everything and bring jobs back to the USA. that would cut down a lot of the deficit, through all the extra tax dollars generated.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, no question of that. It's just not something we can do overnight. How to do it at all at this point, in fact, short of draconian import tariffs and trade sanctions, is a bit of a problem.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

nothin wrong with crankin the tariffs and makin sanctions.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Except that then they do the same to ours, and our foreign trade drops in the toilet. Not that the US sells, say, many cars overseas, or (thanks to stupid government policies) is ALLOWED to sell much in the way of advanced computers....

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

exactly, they need our dollars more then we need their crap.

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose that it's lost on General Zhu that Beijing is rather far east of Xian?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I doubt it. But I never underestimate the willingness of fanatics to have others die for their cause.