1/ Articles like this should tell planners that Taiwan's army might surrender en masse when the actual fighting comes defence-blog.com/news/army/taiw…
2/ Like, imagine you are Sergeant Drun in the ROCArF. "Sgt Drun hide your tank platoon in this parking garage. Do not move until ordered to"
3/ When T-day comes, you sit tight, while PLA choppers fly overhead and explosions happen all around you. Your comms are dead. You can't move because there's a 5km traffic jam both ways right outside the main exit of your parking garage.
1/ I think Chinese liberals will never be relevant to the majority of Chinese people
(as for whether that's a good thing or not, I'll leave that up to you) @timeswang
2/ Chinese 'liberals' believe (to varying levels) China should allow free speech, press, and religion, multiparty democracy, less military spending, and allowing some level of regional self-determination twitter.com/i/lists/132831…
3/ These issues do not resonate with the majority of Chinese people. If China had an election today, Chinese 'liberals' would lose in a landslide.
When will Chinese 'liberals' learn that no amount of caping for Western principles can override how their identity is perceived in the Western system?
h/t @OBukowsky
1/ The Overton window on China is ruthlessly enforced with donor cash... the majority of 'China Watchers' are barely above water while they pay down NoVa / DC mortgages or rent
2/ It's also enforced via access to current and former officials, which help a great deal in maintaining DC blyat. There is large and tensely wound web that drives the conversation
3/ In addition to be ruthlessly enforced, the window is narrow because the main funders of that ecosystem - Taiwan, Japan, Big Tech, defense cos, Pentagon - are all on the same page, especially re tech (except Wall St but their influence is much weaker with near-constant QE)
1/ A new Biden admin should take the opportunity to stabilize US-China relations before Trump's policies push it into a new Cold War. The foremost policy to change is America's sanctions on Huawei.
2/There's a lot of noise from industry lobbies and the IC resisting such a move, but in truth, the Huawei sanctions at best harm America's long-term interests for a purported and unclear short-term benefit, and at worst risk generational conflict.
3/ With that being said, let's begin by looking at how the sanctions got started. SIGINT + 5G was the major driver of the Huawei sanctions: smh.com.au/business/compa…