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

If a war takes place China will consider the waters around Taiwan as part of China. American naval power may be such that it isn't attacked, but China will feel justified in attacking ships supplying Taiwan or ships defending blockade runners, especially within "their" waters. I think that the likelihood of involvement of the United States might be higher in the case of Taiwan than in the case of Ukraine for this reason. NATO can supply Ukraine because it shares a border with Ukraine. In a battle for Taiwan, China will consider itself to be completely surrounding Taiwan. In order to supply Taiwan ships will have to go through China, or at least what China sees as China. The United States will probably try to declare some or all of the waters around the island to be not Chinese, so if the US Navy insists on protecting the supply lines into Taiwan then there will probably be a perceived territorial incursion.
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@elmohead Yeah, that was kind of my point.
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@doujinflip China relies on imports for fuel, but not for food.
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@obsoletelobster9258 Every strong successful country has a long history of meddling with and spying on and copying other countries tech.
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13:15 if the Chinese people believed that Taiwan could be taken in a day then the pressure for the government to finish the civil war would be overwhelming. The Chinese people know that it will be a difficult achievement, but they also believe that it is a fundamental necessity. I agree with your assessment that taking Taiwan will be hard, in fact, I would probably use stronger language. But it will happen as soon as China believes that they can win with certainty, probably before 2049. Also, the only thing that China really values in Taiwan is its Chineseness. All else is subject to sacrifice.
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Big country, big problems. At least they're trying to do something about it rather than just throwing up their arms and accepting that their people will have to suffer. Thank God they controlled their population growth, and through a procreation policy rather than through a famine.
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@thetaomega7816 If you are referring to the Great Leap Forward and the famine that was at least in-part a result of those policies, that predated the one-child policy by two decades. Also, China has a history of breeding up to the limit of its food production so that even when it was the most advanced country in the world (which covers most of its history) it was perpetually plagued by famine. This time around, they've taken a more thoughtful approach, to the benefit of the world, and particularly to the benefit of the Chinese people.
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@chihyutam4913 I hope you are right. The last thing I ever want to see is a war between the United States and China, proxy or otherwise.
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@deebil8099 I do not realize that, and I do not think it is true, at least not in the vicinity of the Chinese mainland. I do believe that the U.S. Navy is more powerful than the PLA Navy, but location matters. That's not to say that China would win, but the possibility is distinct.
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@obsoletelobster9258 You're comparing apples to oranges here. If you are comparing similar tech companies to Huawei the comparison would look like this. While one company wants to know everything about you, track you, and use that information to profit on you, and the other wants to know everything about you, track you, and use that information to profit on you as well as to perhaps benefit the communist party - some might consider their motive to be much more devious.
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@omnomnom5359 The Chinese are not a race. They're not even a nationality. They're a people defined by membership in an empire, very much like Americans.
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It certainly matches Zeihan's belief that China is somehow weak and incapable of dealing with the next crisis, contrary to its history.
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Where's my violin?
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