Thread: Taiwan , the next Domino?

Originally Posted by 39TG

might respond with some targeted economic sanctions if the Chinese grab a few atolls.

China has been sanctioned by NaGastan for a long time.

Originally Posted by OhOh

China has been sanctioned by NaGastan for a long time.

Not enough, clearly.

While I believe that Xi seriously intends to cement his place in Chinese history by 'reunifying' Taiwan during his tenure, there are challenges for him and there is also a wild card.
That wildcard is Haishenwai (海參崴 Sea Cucumber Bay), better known to us as Vladivostok.
This part of what is currently Russia was Chinese until the Russians assumed control in 1860. (I had to look up some of the dates, I don't remember the details, I was very young at the time.) It later became Russian as a result of, you can guess, an 'unequal treaty'. There have long been tensions along China's border with the Russian Far East and there was shooting in 1969, things didn't really settle until a number of border agreements, the last as recently as 2008. Everything then was peachy until the Russians celebrated Vladivostok's 160th anniversary in 2020 and, inevitably, the fragile pinks whined about it.
Now I see Xi as an opportunist and here we have another ancient piece of China's 'shame' that could be rectified. Who would stop China? Can the Russians take on that fight at the moment? Would the US intervene? A lot easier than Taiwan?
Just a thought.

Sabang and OhOh; who would you be cheering for if China took on Russia?

Originally Posted by Shutree

Vladivostok

Yup, mentioned that a while ago, anyone who thinks Russia and China are blood brothers is sorely mistaken. The distrust and animosity is obvious.

Originally Posted by Shutree

Sabang and OhOh; who would you be cheering for if China took on Russia?

North Korea or Iran

Originally Posted by Shutree

who would you be cheering for if China took on Russia?

It won't happen. IMHO.

Originally Posted by OhOh

IMHO.

No-one gives a flying fuck about your opinion, though, mainly because it isn't yours. Your little mate here also didn't believe Russia would attack Ukraine . . . I'd suggest you read up abit on Russo-Sino border conflicts

Originally Posted by Shutree

That wildcard is Haishenwai (海參崴 Sea Cucumber Bay), better known to us as Vladivostok.

This to me is the most likely scenario. To add further context, most of the 72,000 Russians who have died in the far away land of Ukraine are from the Russian far east. So the fighting age men in the area have already been cleaned out and are currently under the sunflowers in the dirt fields of Europe. The Chinese know this.

If the Chinese do attack anywhere, it will be in the Russian far east and if they do Putin will be able to do fuck all to stop it.

Originally Posted by bsnub

If the Chinese do attack anywhere, it will be in the Russian far east and if they do Putin will be able to do fuck all to stop it.

I don't doubt that this is why Putin was so anxious to get that 'best mates' agreement with China. Just like Hitler, ironically', with Russia before WWII, to avoud a war on two fronts. If history teaches Xi anything it is that he will never get a better chance than now to 'reclaim' Vladivostok and I am sure that there are some hawkish advisers telling him so. No moderates left to advise him against it.

Originally Posted by david44

I doubt many have visited

It was a closed city for a long time. When was it opened up to foreigners? I only remember one Crown Counsel from Hong Kong who went there to bring back the woman he had fallen in love with. He never came back. Interesting how smart people can also be incredibly stupid.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is tarnished as a result of Russia’s unprovoked invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Xi has been distancing China from Putin’s predations gradually — out of deference to his two biggest customers, the United States and European Union.

But on Sept. 15 his displeasure about the war became public. Putin himself admitted at a press conference following a meeting with Xi that China had “concerns” about his war in Ukraine. So did India.

But there is one more elephant in the room: Siberia, a region bigger and richer than any place on Earth, with resources that underpin Putin’s economy. It is Asian, not European, and one day will mostly fall into China’s hands. Xi knows this and needn’t lift a finger to speed along this outcome. To some, a Chinese takeover of Siberia may seem preposterous. But Putin’s flailing war against the West increases the odds that the Russian Federation itself may atomize.

Putin may eventually be removed, freeing Russia from a dictatorship but also liberating revolutionary and secessionist movements across the vast Federation. Moscow’s militarized center, with a military that’s been humiliated, will not hold. There are dozens of active secessionist movements across Russia: Chechnya, Tatarstan, Kaliningrad, Sakha Republic and others in Siberia.

In 2021, Kazimierz Wujcicki, a lecturer in Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw, posited six scenarios for Russia: “the fall of Russia under the influence of China”; “balkanization”; “territorial disintegration”; a “gradual but peaceful disintegration”; an “imperial” boom resulting from high oil and gas prices for years; and “modernization” in cooperation with the West.

Cooperation is not in Putin’s DNA, and his illegal invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that. Now his army is in retreat, and he may be heading toward Gotterdammerung, or the type of complete collapse that happened in 1991-92 after the Soviet Union withdrew ignominiously from Afghanistan. And Alexei Navalny and other Putin critics were stilled last year in a crackdown but remain, and their release would unleash balkanization.

Each restive region outside Siberia has chomped for decades to become independent and are in jurisdictions that were cohesive, autonomous political or cultural entities for centuries. But Siberia was nomadic until the 19th century, when Russia moved in militarily.

In ancient times, it was populated by nomadic Turkic and Mongol tribes then governed by the Mongols in the 13th century until fur traders came in the 16th century. A hundred years later, Russia extended its reach by building forts to defend migrants and as a buffer from China.

Then in 1860, the czar grabbed Chinese territory in the Far East, annexing 350,000 square miles of Manchurian China (roughly the size of Nigeria) with its verdant climate and strategic Pacific coastline, including Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. It did so by capitalizing on a series of unjust treaties that became known as the Amur Annexation, which was foisted on the Qing Dynasty by the West to settle the hideous Opium Wars. (These treaties also handed over Hong Kong to the British.) They are still resented by China today.

Today, about 34 million out of 144 million Russians live in Siberia, but Russia’s economy is disproportionately dependent on Siberian resources. About 80 percent of its oil resources, 85 percent of its natural gas, 80 percent of its coal and similar amounts of precious metals and diamonds, and about 40 percent of the nation’s timber resources are scattered across this vast territory.

Despite this endowment, Russia’s economy remains peanut-sized compared to America’s and China’s. Its GDP (and living standards) have fallen since 2014 sanctions were imposed, and today its GDP is smaller than New York City’s or China’s industrialized province of Guangdong.

This is because Putin’s reign has looted the wealth of the Russian people through a combination of costly military misadventures and control of the country’s corporations and assets by his oligarchy.

Russia’s real “existential threat” is Vladimir Putin – not America or NATO or China – because his war now orphans Russia from Europe, where 75 percent of its exports go.

Europe is de-coupling from Russia, more or less permanently, and Central Asia builds infrastructure, with Chinese funding, that will carry its energy, minerals, metals and manufactured goods directly to China or Europe, bypassing Russia.

Russia’s DNA is flawed and based on human rights abuses of its own people and others, oligarchy greed, total dictatorship and a delusional aim to recreate the Soviet Union.

Russia’s rotten dictator and his elite will destroy its federation. China’s Xi knows this and so should the West and its Asian allies. It’s all about shoveling weapons and money to the Ukrainians to defeat Russia’s hapless military and let the Kremlin implode, fully removing the most toxic nation-state on the planet.

https://thehill.com/opinion/internat...ns-on-siberia/

Found a link of a unique Russian withdrawal I previously poste don or now seemingly unsearchable database?

Russian Diplomats Return Home from North Korea on Hand-pushed Rail Trolley. Here'''s Why

To hell in a handcart eh, for the defenders of Kherson it may mean a dip in the nippier and deeper Dnieper, Note twin gauges as they trudge N towards Siberia, my Mrs likes a taxi from Prom Pong to Soi 22 a mere hop skip and jump and only muggins here would be seen "pushing" a trolley

Originally Posted by david44

Those young people will have a great story to tell to their grandchildren. Quite an adventure.

Originally Posted by david44

To hell in a handcart eh, for the defenders of Kherson it may mean a dip in the nippier and deeper Dnieper,

The Russians are not defending anything. They are the occupiers of Kherson oblast. Soon, the liberating Ukrainians will take back their land. Kherson is Ukraine!

Originally Posted by bsnub

Russia’s rotten dictator and his elite will destroy its federation. China’s Xi knows this and so should the West and its Asian allies. It’s all about shoveling weapons and money to the Ukrainians to defeat Russia’s hapless military and let the Kremlin implode

Quite sure the West and allies are well aware.
Your next domino David.

Originally Posted by Bonecollector

China actually has little to no real modern war experience.

The last time they went to war, they got their asses kicked by the Viets.

Originally Posted by Bonecollector

If the CCP invaded Taiwan, it could very easily lead to their downfall

Invading Taiwan would be the end of the CCP. Period.