Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Wendover Productions" channel.

And considering that the United States is the world's third most populace country…,
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The U.S. policy vis-a-vis Taiwan has been intentional ambiguity for several decades. The U.S. goal in the region has been to avoid a war at all costs. Because of this, the United States has consistently pressured Taiwan against any declaration of independence, something the PRC has stated that it will not tolerate. Chinese investment in air and sea power make American defense of the island more costly and less likely to succeed with every passing year and American military experts are aware of this. Whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan during a Chinese invasion would probably depend today on what other global obligations America was dealing with but over time that will matter less and less. I think that Taiwan is going to be reunited into the mainland whether they like it or not but China is not going to invade in the short term unless the government in Taipei blatantly disregards American instructions, at which point America might well be unwilling to shed blood to defend them. If there is no short term invasion then eventually the military balance of power in the region between the U.S. and China will move towards equalization. Once that occurs China will probably enforce its claim and the United States will limit it's defense of Taiwan to angry rhetoric and possible economic sanctions.
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Jeffrey Hsu, that's a really good point. I wish I'd have thought of that.
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Apparently you didn't listen to the last sentence of the presentation.
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@pseudotatsuya Are you saying they stole the track-laying technology too? Even with "stolen" technology, you still need the mobilization, and that's investment as well as resource management and allocation. There's nothing stolen about that.
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@pseudotatsuya My point is that the Chinese are succeeding with this because they are focusing on it and allocating resources towards it. I don't doubt that they got some of their tech through espionage but there is still a lot of credit due to vision and execution.
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@battledroid224 "…educate the people of China. China wouldn't last." How is that in the interest of the Chinese people? Why would an educated population destroy itself?
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@haidicheng5142 It'll be a great day for China but probably scary for Hong Kongers. Not necessarily because of potential repression but because that level of change always brings uncertainty in many forms.
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At some point someone's going to realize that lighter-than-air airships with dorsal solar arrays and electric engines could do long-haul trips with practically no fuel costs.
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