China and the Biden Administration

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RF
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China and the Biden Administration

Post by RF »

With the new US administration settling in and Red China seeking to increase its influence and economic power in the world, and in Asia in particular, I was wondering at the prospects of a major, deliberate challenge to the USA by China in the form of an invasion of Taiwan.

Previous US administrations made it clear that the US would oppose such an invasion, but what about now or the next few years? Would such a Chinese invasion produce a military response from the US or would the scenario be more like the invasion of Portuguese Goa by India in the early 1960's where Portugal, although a member of NATO, was left on its own and humiliatingly removed from its colonial territory?

If the US does contest an invasion of Taiwan then what impact would it have in Korea? If China invades successfully does North Korea, with Chinese military support, invade South Korea?
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Hi RF,
Yes, it could be a very tricky situation, possibly almost WW3, but I think Biden is a bit of a 'dove', Trump would probably go in and nuke them!
I think that China is starting to flex its military muscles and will eventually take over Taiwan. Whether Kim Jon would then invade South Korea is
debatable, North Korea relies very heavily on China for almost everything and I'm sure had a calming influence on Kim when he was starting to get aggressive because they knew Trump was unpredictable and would not hesitate to take action against them if he was pushed too far.
I think China is biding its time as it values the trade that it does with the rest of the world and is not yet ready to take on the USA and it's allies (which almost certainly include GB), but in time it will start to push out in an attempt to increase its power, but the interesting question will be what will Russia do as it has borders by China and no doubt keeps keeps a very suspicious eye on what China is up to and must be worried about China's increasing military strength?
China and North Korea versus the US, Russia and a few other countries from the rest of the world (I don't include the EU as it could not organize itself for the proverbial P up in a brewery!), Oh dear, WW3?
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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You would also possibly have to add India to the equation, which in turn drags in Pakistan.....
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Don't forget Japan. The whole reason Japan was in Korea and Manchuria 100+ years ago was because what happens in Korea finds its way across the strait to Kyushu and then to Honshu. Since the war, Japan and South Korea, and Taiwan, have been protected by the US nuclear umbrella. It has brought a stability that we take for granted.

With this bunch of idiots we are on the edge of an abyss.
Yes, it could be a very tricky situation, possibly almost WW3, but I think Biden is a bit of a 'dove',
You are being far too kind. It doesn't matter, though, about Dementia Joe's dysfunctional cognitive capabilities, because he's just a puppet on a string. And who are the puppet masters of the Zou Bai-den illegitimacy? Why the people who bought and paid for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq0_AC3En_0

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chin ... -krqxhk9rd
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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I keep coming back to this board because it mostly seems to stay away from the really nasty posts one sees on some of the other boards. I really hope that doesn't happen here.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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What has occurred and continues to occur is absolutely unacceptable. Not only is it just about a monumentally stupid policy agenda. Not only was the coup d eta unacceptable, but also the trampling of US Constitution in its wake. Unless there is free speech for all, including unpolite speech, there is no free speech. To fight back, it now more important than ever to use impolite speech when describing these scoundrels who occupy the halls of a illegitimate government. These scoundrels deserve no honor or respect and they will get none from me.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

Post by paul.mercer »

Hi Dave,
Thanks for your reply to my post, although I'm a bit puzzled about your last one, to whom are you referring?
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Dave Saxton wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:45 am Don't forget Japan. The whole reason Japan was in Korea and Manchuria 100+ years ago was because what happens in Korea finds its way across the strait to Kyushu and then to Honshu. Since the war, Japan and South Korea, and Taiwan, have been protected by the US nuclear umbrella. It has brought a stability that we take for granted.

With this bunch of idiots we are on the edge of an abyss.
And possibly a re-militarisation of Japan......
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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paul.mercer wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:37 am Hi Dave,
Thanks for your reply to my post, although I'm a bit puzzled about your last one, to whom are you referring?
Zhou Bai-den and company.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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RF wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:35 am
Dave Saxton wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:45 am Don't forget Japan. The whole reason Japan was in Korea and Manchuria 100+ years ago was because what happens in Korea finds its way across the strait to Kyushu and then to Honshu. Since the war, Japan and South Korea, and Taiwan, have been protected by the US nuclear umbrella. It has brought a stability that we take for granted.

With this bunch of idiots we are on the edge of an abyss.
And possibly a re-militarisation of Japan......
Nobody can depend on our new banana republic.

Maybe this has been addressed, In May when the bumbling idiot was in Tokyo the Chinese sent a squadron of warships circling the Japanese home Islands within territorial waters. Pretty brazen. :shock: This was followed by similar posturing in Okinawa waters, and particularly the waters of the island chain between Okinawa and Taiwan which are Japanese territory. There was also the unvieled threat to Japan delivered last November to not lend any support to Taiwan.

Then the assassination of Abe. No evidence of any connection. Probably just coincidence.

Then the Pelosi stunt, most probably due to domestic politics.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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I'm not sure how many people are fully familiar with the historical scores many Chinese see as still unsettled between China and the Western powers ..... going back to the first half of the 19th century.

Byron
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Even more so with Japan.......
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Byron Angel wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:40 am I'm not sure how many people are fully familiar with the historical scores many Chinese see as still unsettled between China and the Western powers ..... going back to the first half of the 19th century.

Byron
You are referring of course to the Opium Wars and the Unequal Treaties era going back to the early 19th century. The unequal treaties refers to the treaties between European imperial powers and the Qing dynasty monarchy which allowed the European powers the legal pretext to colonize portions of China.

Many Europeans were getting rich shipping drugs, mostly opium, into China. China had a huge drug addiction problem. An early 20th century study by Cambridge estimated that as much as 1 in 3 of the Chinese population was addicted to opiates. It wasn’t just Europeans, but several prominent New England merchant families were getting in on the action too.

When the Qing tried to shut down the trade, European Governments went to war to keep the lucrative exploitation going. These were the Opium Wars.

One of the reasons why China was easy to exploit by western drug cartels, and western governments, was because Qing Dynasty China was never a cohesive nation state in the Westphalen model. It was still a feudal system consisting of several vassal kingdoms who paid tribute to the Qing rulers. The Qing maintained power over the vassal kingdoms through the use of military power and economic coercion. Takashi Hara who was an important Japanese Prime Minister during the early 20th century (before he was assassinated), and who had previously served as the Japanese consul in Tianjin, wrote a series of articles in an Osaka newspaper around 1900 titled: On China. “ Hara described a China that really consisted of 18 different nations each with its own separate governments. The Qing rulers maintained a loose confederacy through arranged marriages, familial ties, military power brokering, and various forms of economic and employment coercion. China was still a feudal society with ridged social ranking and no economic mobility. Robber bands roamed the wilderness areas. All manner of illicit trafficking prevailed; including drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and human (including child) slave trafficking. Hara lamented pessimistically that it remained unlikely that a unified government with constitutional rule of law protecting basic rights and liberties of individuals could be established in China.” (quoting myself)

Hara also lamented that the Qing administrative state/government class were really in control of the monarchy and were hopelessly corrupt, interested mostly in maintaining their privileged status.

The Qing were from Manchuria, so among the Han Chinese were considered foreigners, and that the Qing represented an illegitimate government. It is not surprising, therefore, that the peasants united behind a religious cult leader and began the Taiping Rebellion in 1850 to overthrow the corrupt Qing monarchy.

The Taiping Rebellion resulted in 14 years long civil war that consumed 30 million lives. More lives were consumed in that civil war than were lost on all sides of WW1. It represented a significant fraction of the world population of the mid 19th century.

The Taiping rebels were also collectivists and proposed a command economic system similar to Marxism. The TR started just a few years after the Communist Manifesto was published but it is not known if it was influenced by Marx or if they arrived at a socialist ideology independently. Marx himself was aware of the TR and their socialist ideals, but was at first critical of the Taiping Rebels in opinion articles he published in European and American newspapers. Marx condemned the rebellion because it undermined the power of the central state, and therefore, socialism if it was established, could not be enforced by the power of the state. Later he began to lend moral support to the rebels. When Mao came to power in 1949, he stated that the Taiping rebels had started a revolution which had taken 100 years to complete.

The Qing prevailed in the civil war but were essentially bankrupted by it and were much weakened.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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RF wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 7:46 am Even more so with Japan.......
Yes, and it was mixed up in the China problem and western meddling in China and East Asia. Japan’s return to the Korean peninsula (the Yayoi immigration originated from Southern Korea, although the Japanese speaking peoples were probably not native to Korea, and the Japanese had a kingdom that spanned the Tsushima Straits until the 8th century AD, when the northern Korean Kingdom pushed them off the peninsula) was caused when the Qing attempted to make Korea part of their empire during the late 19th century.

The Qing had gained control of the Korean monarchy through an arranged marriage. But during 1894 a Christian minority rebelled against Chinese control and were well on their way to overthrowing the Korean puppet monarchy. The Qing sent in troops to quell the rebellion, but the Japanese could not allow the Chinese to occupy Korea for obvious reasons. Previously, the Japanese had reached an agreement with the Qing to not send in troops into Korea with out first notifying the other. This the Qing did not do. Japan sent in troops to stop the advance of the Chinese troops. Japan’s military was modern, and who had built their army on Prussian model and their navy on the model of the British Royal Navy, so the Japanese easily routed the Chinese. When Japanese troops began to march on Peking, the Qing sued for peace.

In the settlement Japan was granted leases for Manchuria (which it was questionable about if Manchuria was part of China proper or a separate nation) and Taiwan, and the Liaotung Peninsula. Japan was also recognized as a legal protectorate of Korea.

This did not sit well with some European powers who had or coveted colonies in East Asia. Russia, who claimed that Manchuria was part of Siberia and who wanted to annex the Liaotung Peninsula and Korea as well, formed a coalition with France and Germany to kick the Japanese out of Continental Asia. This is known as the Triple Intervention or the Tri Powers Intervention. Japan had to give in because of the strength of the coalition. Japan withdrew, but only partially, remaining in Korea and Taiwan.

The American Secretary of State, John Hay, formulated the “Open Door Policy” which was to make agreements which allowed continued western nations free access (exploitation in many cases) to China at the expense of the Japanese. Essentially, they told the Japanese they were of inferior status to westerners. The Open Door Policy was still the official US policy 35 years later. It and the Triple Intervention still rankled the Japanese 40 plus years later.

Germany established a colony in the Shandong region of China during 1897. In 1900, Russia invaded and occupied Manchuria, the Liaotung Peninsula, and began preparing to take control of Korea. This resulted in the Russo/Japanese war of 1904. The Japanese defeated the Russians on both land and sea.

The next American SoS in the Teddy Roosevelt Administration, Elihu Root, recognized Japan’s position in East Asia and agreed that Japan needed to institute and enforce a Monroe Doctrine for East Asia. Then the Americans under Wilson back tracked and instituted a general hostile to Japan policy which continued right up to WW2.
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Re: China and the Biden Administration

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Dave Saxton wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 4:47 pm

Then the Americans under Wilson back tracked and instituted a general hostile to Japan policy which continued right up to WW2.
This was around the start of WW1 when Japan honoured its alliance with Great Britain by declaring war on Germany. Japan followed up in 1915 by issuing its ''21 Demands'' on China which would have made China a Japanese colony - my understanding is that it was the ''21 Demands'' that changed US policy towards Japan because it threatened US interests in China.
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