Taiwan's Divine Winds: China's strike window is now or never

In 1950, Time magazine depicted Taiwan as the key to holding sway in the Asia-Pacific region - Nikkei Asia

The Pentagon's 2024 China Report isn’t out yet, but the 2023 Report took pains to go over how much better the Chinese were becoming in skill and quality while doubling down on quantity, too.

The 2023 report revealed exercises in 2022 were the first time the Chinese were able to move whole Army Groups by amphibious transport.

Trump is going to inherit an economy held together with rubber bands and bits of string. - Philip Pilkington

The U.S. is entering a very contentious and destabilizing election with the likely Victor set to face a major economic crisis almost as soon as he gets in. If Philip can see this, the Chinese can, and indeed, we see pretty firm evidence they are acting accordingly:

Further, in the next four years the retirement cycle of the USN is going to leave the US and it’s allies particularly vulnerable in the immediate term to the PLAN; no longer will the threat be the Chinese *just* doing what the US did in the 1940s, given that PLAN strength will grow in both absolute and relative numbers.

🇺🇸🇮🇳🇯🇵🇦🇺QUAD navies+🇰🇷ROKN vs 🇨🇳PLAN added VLS count 2023-2026.->QUAD+ROKN out-commissioned PLAN in terms of VLS cells by 25% (1736 vs 1392)->Tico decommissioning negates all VLS growth and left QUAD+ROKN 110 VLS less in 4 years->PLAN has a net growth of 1392 - SomePLAOSINT

The Panama Canal is still restricted due to drought and the Houthis are keeping the Red Sea effectively limited. This will make it much harder for the U.S. to focus its fleets and any major transfers to the Indo-Pacific will require passing around South Africa, where Chinese influence is strong nowadays. If you’ve ever read about the Russo-Japanese War, the similarities to the fate of the Baltic Fleet are there.

Further goading China is that the current strategy isn’t working. Beijing could exercise restraint when it appeared things on Taiwan were going in their favor, but that seems increasingly unclear, and Taiwanese actions are extremely provocative against the status quo.

I don’t condone China’s military drills around Taiwan. But walk in Beijing’s shoes for a moment. Lai completely ignored “One China” in his inauguration speech—not even a nod to 1992 Consensus like his predecessor. He speaks of Taiwan as already independent. China must react. - Derek J. Grossman

Per IMF, there is evidence of an ongoing decoupling of global trade and global financial flows where countries in the China sphere of influence are increasingly transacting in RMB and accumulating gold as foreign reserves.

Finally, China has a very favorable moment to strike and clear reasons to do so in short. Their demographics are going to start being a drag in the 2030s, so it’s increasingly now or never.

Taiwan's Divine Winds: China's strike window is now or never

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