China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict, testing Taipei’s resolve to defend itself and its arsenal of U.S.-made weapons.
The Eastern Theatre Command said it had deployed troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its “Justice Mission 2025” exercises to encircle the democratically governed island, conduct live fire and simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade Taiwan’s main ports.
The live-firing exercises will continue on Tuesday across a record seven zones designated by China’s Maritime Safety Administration, making the drills the largest to date by total coverage and in areas closer to Taiwan than previous exercises. The military had initially said artillery firing would be confined to five zones.
I need to take a shower. I thought the headline was talking about actual drills, and I could only think “what in the Dr. Evil plot could this mean?”. As if China was going to drill through the ground and dig up Taiwan.
“If I did it, here’s how I would do it”
By
OJ Simpsonthe CCPyeah and what happens when at the last moment they decide this isn’t a “drill?” oops! looks like all Taiwans allies were too busy doin fuck all, and now it’s under president poohs control
What’s some cool stuff to visit in China that isn’t close to (or is upwind of) military installations or industrial centers? Asking for several thousand friends.
“Democratically controlled” just means controlled by capitalists. I’m tired of the trope.
I’m sure China is a Marxist-Leninist utopia (lmao people actually believe this)
What? Many European countries are not really capitalistic dystopias
Capitalism eventually turns into a capitalist controlled dystopia. Europe just doesn’t have big industries who would turn into monopolies and want to control the government.
You’re moving the blame from bad governance to the system itself being completely faulty/bad. Do you think poorly governed socialistic country would be more successful?
It’s the natural progression of capitalism. There is competition among companies in the beginning but over time the companies begin to consolidate and eventually the monopolies become more powerful than the government.
It’s funny so many capitalism fans don’t realise this.
And they also cant defend themselves
Yeah, that’s a thing to consider. It’s funny how the world has changed. Europe used to be the baddies, now it’s mostly Russia and China.
Example?
They can be both - and they can be great, sorry about your seething.
Fuck the CCP and PLA. Free West Taiwan.
Lets say tomorrow, the US manages to occupy the entirety of mainland China, and schedules elections for next week. Who do you think the people of mainland China elect? A business-friendly lib who promises American companies will invest in resource extraction and privatization or reelect the guys who brought a billion people from poverty and regular famine to first world living standards within living memory?
and regular famine
Regular as in recurring.
That was a regular occurrence before, it hasn’t since.
But since the 1950s what other country has had a famine on the same scale? The USSR?
It was directly due to CCP mismanagement. It’s really not fair to credit them with ending famine when they caused the most deadly famine on earth.
Elected by who? You’re definitely going to see very different opinions by different ethnicities
Do you think they’d prefer getting fucked by capitalism like the former SSRs were in the 90s, or autonomy within China, like they have now?
Former SSRs are doing much better now than when they were vassal states and resource producers for Moscow.
Have you been to any of those states and seen the rotting public infrastructure? Talked to anyone over 50?
Am in the former Kazakhstan SSR rn.
I live in one and the infrastructure is great. Could use better train service, but it’s modern and nice.
Are there rusted tracks from a tram system that was defunded in 1992?
Like even here its faster than it was, with modern tram buses, but you can see the damage the 90s did everywhere
Oppressed minorities tend to avoid authoritarian states
Authoritarian how? In that capitalists aren’t free to control the government?
I’d agree China’s lack of free speech makes them more authoritarian, if I hadn’t watched cops kick the shit out of and/or arrest people protesting against genocide in the US and europe for the last 2 years.
Hong Kong oppression against dissidents…
That proven color revolution? Should they just allow US backed students to take over and give the reins to western puppets…?
What? Lol. This is complete nonsense
The USA routinely does military exercises in the Taiwan strait. China has a right to defend itself from US+Taiwan aggression.
You do know that the world isn’t black and white, right? Both sides can be bad …
Both sides can be bad, doesn’t mean both sides are equally bad. China hasn’t carried out a military action in 4 decades.
So they should get to annex one little country, as a treat? Lol
(Also depending how you define military action, thats false. They keep having border scuffles with India for starters.)
But China has not annexed Taiwan, you’re talking in hypotheticals. If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, maybe we can discuss that, but as of now China hasn’t done anything like that.
Why TF would they do exercises about how to blockade the island, then?
Because, as the article itself that OP linked says, Taiwan just purchased $11bn in US weapons?
Gee. I wonder why you’d suddenly buy weapons…maybe because you’re being threatened by the neighboring country?
“I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
“I’m just commenting the letter N. I don’t know what the next commenter might reply!”
“No, of course our reactor needs pure uranium. But it’s for peaceful purposes.”
By your logic, really you shouldn’t complain no matter how close our vastly superior stealth bombers fly to that shitty dam.
China is literally doing this in response to Taiwan escalating by purchasing $11bn in US weapons, it’s specified on the article itself. China did not start this
And to defend myself I simulate how to invade my neighbor country… Sure… “Defense”…
The post literally says:
China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict
Cutting Taiwan from US support in case of conflict is famously NOT invasion, it’s defense against US attacks.
Oh, so like when the USA does the same to Venezuela and Cuba it’s just self defense like Trump says?
The difference being that the USA actively murders hundreds of thousands of people in both countries through economic sanctioning, whereas China has enacted no economic blockade and is in fact Taiwan’s largest economic partner.
Yes, that is good of China to not act like the USA. Which is why it is concerning when they start to act like a more competent version of the USA.
To cut off the island from outside support in a conflict with…who?
Conflict =/= invasion, though?
So we’re in agreement with the obvious fact that China is running drills to cut off Taiwan from external aid in case it has a conflict with Taiwan, right?
In response to Taiwan buying $11bn in US weapons, China carries out a military exercise in which it simulates a Taiwan encirclement to prevent it from US military involvement, yes
US military involvement in case of what?
We gotta make sure this passes the clown captcha test. Otherwise it has the same energy as “the American civil war was just for states rights”
Sure, buddy… And Russia is also just defending themselves from NATO by invading Ukraine.
Even Xi said, he wants to rule Taiwan, if necessary, with military force, so please quit the bullshit… Thanks.
Even Xi said, he wants to rule Taiwan, if necessary, with military force
Can you provide a source for this? I’m very interested
Honestly it’s a reading between the lines. Xi says:
We will uphold the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus, and advance peaceful national reunification. All of us, compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must come together and move forward in unison. We must take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward “Taiwan independence,” and work together to create a bright future for national rejuvenation. No one should underestimate the resolve, the will, and the ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-xi-jinpings-major-speech-means-taiwan
The “peaceful reunification” is aspirational, not practical. The practical is “take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward ‘Taiwan independence’” and we see that with this military action. Consensus among CCP members is that peaceful reunification is unlikely to happen and that military force will be required (see the book “Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers” by a member of the CCP).
So, he absolutely did NOT say that, huh, whaddya know!
The literal words of Xi Jinping: “advance peaceful national reunification”
Lemmy libs: “[he] said he wants to rule Taiwan, if necessary, with military force”
Like I said, I recommend reading literature on the matter from CCP members to get more context on the matter. It won’t help you shit post for karma but it does help one make sense of things.
The amount of anti-China programming in this comments section is crazy. Thanks for setting the record straight
Yeah, there is the aggressor and the defender and they are equally bad!!!1111111
The replies to this post are a goldmine for tankie accounts to block
Wanted to comment the same. Love it, keep the whining tankies coming, I’m getting an accurate blocklist with zero effort
Christ. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel with this thread.
Controversial opinion: war is bad 🫢
Naval blockades don’t really work when your adversary has a limitless supply of antiship missiles
Well the supply isn’t limitless, so
Well neither is the PLANs supply of artificial reefs
No, but they can build faster than Taiwan. And I’m sure they have some CIWS that will reduce the number of missiles that hit, so it’s a pure numbers game.
They certainly do work in a world where the naval blockade is literally only a few miles from your own shoreline and MAD is on the table
You can’t enforce a naval blockade when the adversary is flush with ASMs is all I’m saying. And you can’t enforce a naval blockade with only subs either.
I wonder why the word blockade is not in quotes. Perhaps it’s editorializing from the author and not something the PLA actually said
Taiwan’s military is surprisingly ramshackle, unless you mean the US? I’m not sure they can reliably be considered an adversary of China anymore. Xi could buy a few million of Trump’s crypto and all would be forgiven.
Doesn’t Taiwan have well over a thousand modern ASMs in inventory, and manufacturing hundreds more annually? How would mainland China enforce an encirclement by sea for any length of time with that sort of threat?
AFAIK they don’t have that many of the newer ASMs, and anyway a thousand isn’t really that many, especially given that Taiwan’s missiles are on the smaller end of the spectrum - we’re not talking KH-22 sizes here.
It doesn’t take too many ASMs to sink some really important assets. Size isn’t really important, if one of the mainland’s carriers is within a couple hundred KMS of Taiwan, then it’s in the kill zone. Supersonic maneuvering missiles that work in gps-denied environments and can be sea, air and land launched are just the sort of weapon that works great in an asymmetric conflict and to break naval blockades. The blocader has to defend against every single inbound, the adversary only needs to get one missile through the defenses
While this is all true, the aggressor being the largest green-water navy in the world skews the equation, plus the naval angle is of course only one of multiple avenues of attack. We can’t be complacent about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, no more than we could say for example that Finland could hold off Russia alone.
Taiwan doesn’t need to sink every PLAN ship, they just need to make the political cost of enforcing a blockade higher than the CPC can afford.
Ukraine has area-denied Russia’s most important warm water port and most of the black sea from use by the Russian surface fleet with a small handful of homebrew ASMs and some jetskis painted black with a barrel of RDX strapped to them. And Finland did hold off the red army alone once already.
Ukraine is still being actively devastated after three years by a country far inferior to China - I’m sure the Taiwanese would prefer to avoid that fate. Finland’s “victory” came at the cost of collaoration with the Nazis, which maybe was the right choice at the time, but not great in hindsight to say the least. It’s also hard to quantify the political cost when discussing a one-party state - it’s not like the CCP will lose the next election. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I’d prefer to support Taiwan to such a great extent that we don’t have to cross our fingers.
I hope they don’t engage in a war. China can bomb all Taiwan and destroy everything and lose on the process a lot of people and resources. If China is not a fool, and I don’t think it is, the best path is to wait (and maybe push) for a second civil war in the US to have the upper hand in a possible reunification talk. And this drills would be just showing muscle before sitting to talk with Taiwan.
Or promise to drop the “cosplaying in red” part of their “communism”.
XI did give ivanka trademark registrations.
Ah yes, the infamous ramshackle F35
10 cent army out in force
10 cent army? I want to see Taiwan armed to the teeth. They can’t solo the CCP in their current state.
No one is soloing anyone, including China and Russia
That’s really the crux of the issue. If China finally move against Taiwan, who will help? Japan seems the most reliable ally at the moment, and perhaps Australia. The US are untrustworthy.
Sinc solo was mentioned lol.
Can you imagine China turning to a wartime economy?
China will make Japan and Taiwan look like the us made Baghdad FROM THEIR SHORES.
This whole conversation is ridiculous. China doesn’t move on Taiwan because of economic implications, not because of any threat from any outside actor. The US is on the other side of the world, Venezuela is about as big a pill as they can swallow. We failed in Korea, we failed in Vietnam. What on earth makes anyone think we can do anything in chinas civil war?
China is THE manufacturing and logistics powerhouse on this planet. That’s what wins wars and no one is even close.
Here’s an interesting evaluation of the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
https://www.stimson.org/2025/rethinking-the-threat-why-china-is-unlikely-to-invade-taiwan/
I feel like their analysis is, “it would be costly and risky so they probably won’t do it,” which could be said for literally any war ever. I’m not sure I find it a particularly compelling argument.
Let’s gooo, cheaper electronics if they win.
Unobtainable computers if the americant’s mess this up
War doesn’t usually improve output of civilian goods
Sounds like Taiwan should sign a contract building Sea babies and Sub Baby for Ukraine, just make sure to build a few thousand extra for “future supplies”.
Another three days special operation is underway.
