We Need Taiwan

https://alethios.substack.com/p/why-we-need-taiwan

by jseliger • 3 years ago

55 72 3 years ago

alethios.substack.com

myspy• 3 years ago

Are there any articles out there that show how advanced the UX of online services in Russia is?

konart3• 3 years ago

I don't think I will be able to write a good article (tough task in you don't really have anything to compare with) but I can make some screenshot\videos, just name a feature.

But honestly - yeah, our online banking apps and app for state frovided services are pretty good.

dkcj77• 3 years ago

Michael Hudson, of super imperialism fame, has a good take - get others to keep your biggest rivals occupied - https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...

sgu9996• 3 years ago

I wish western political leaders would spend a bit more time learning from Taiwan instead of arguing about whether it is part of China, without even having set foot in any of the two.

Having lived a couple months in Taipei, my only complain really is the bloody ICE scooters. It boggles my mind that they didn't solve this problem yet. The air quality is absolutely horrendous, and you'll have trouble sleeping anywhere near a main road. It is even more shocking when we realise how convenient and efficient their electric counterparts are, Gogoro in particular is doing an amazing job [1]. It made me realise that we're doing something wrong in Europe by not including them as part of the solution for climate-friendly transportation.

The main thing I keep on raving about in Taiwan is the lack of urban sprawl: it's very difficult to find suburb-style detached homes even in the countryside, single-family homes exist but they are usually packed together in hamlets. It means that shops are always close because the settlements are dense enough for them to be viable businesses...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpOQpwKeSnI

jonatron• 3 years ago

A few weeks ago, standing at an incredibly busy pedestrian crossing in Shenzhen, China, I noticed how strangely quiet it was for somewhere so busy. Then I noticed, every car, bus, and scooter was electric. I went to Taipei after, and the constant roar from mostly scooters was unexpectedly loud. I hope we speed up the shift to electric vehicles.

actionfromafar3• 3 years ago

It will resolve itself sooner or later, especially ICE scooters will soon not be attractive.

csomar3• 3 years ago

China is running light speed toward electrification and renewable because they are concerned of a conflict with the West. Europeans think they are doing it to take advantage over their car manufacturers but they are really thinking inward on this.

csomar3• 3 years ago

The Chinese were always dense and so had to contend with little space. When the Chinese came to Taiwan they obviously copied what their ancestors did. Americans, on the other hand, were a few and had massive lands.

It’s wrong to think one is better than the other, it’s really about density.

sgu9996• 3 years ago

I don't think there is a unique reason for this but the availability of space is definitely a factor.

French cities for instance have sprawled outward since the 60s, due to the prevalence of cars and influence of the "american dream" through media. There wasn't an abundance of space to start with...

It’s wrong to think one is better than the other, it’s really about density.

One is definitely better than the other if you look at sustainability. American suburbs need cheap and abundant energy to operate, which they may not have in a not-so-distant future.

defrost• 3 years ago

Thanks for that, I'm impressed by the smart battery swap banks with a pull in, pull out, one minute turn around.

true_religion• 3 years ago

You experienced urban sprawl and smog. What does any part of your experiences have to do with geo politics and the rights of a people to be a sovereign nation?

quelsolaar2• 3 years ago

Sure we could all use more positive visions for the future, but...

The most immediate need we have to Taiwan is TSMC. Without them Nvidia, AMD and Apple are effectively dead, along with any car company, and a good deal of the products and services we use. A war with China would make 2008, 9/11 and the Internet bubble look, like tiny blips in terms of economic upheaval.

What bothers me most are three misconceptions about the ramifications of an invasion:

The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is, and how much its hardware powers.

The second is that people think US/European firms could just do the same. The skills, effort, time and money that TSMC has put in to be where they are is not easily replicated and we would happy if we could do it in 10 years, but that is doubtful.

The third is that China could just take over and run TSMC. You cant build chips in a warzone. And even if Chine would take over swiftly, and the infrastructure would be largely intact, each fab has thousands of employees, and all it takes for one of them to sabotage a fab is to cough in the wrong place, and it may never run again, and it would need to be abandoned. You do not need to smuggle in a bomb to disrupt a fab. Even if they did keep some fabs running, they wouldn't sell the output to the west.

On the upside, I get the feeling someone in the know has given the right presentation at the white house, because Biden looks like he understands this and takes this seriously, unlike many others.

aa-jv• 3 years ago

The third thing is, what if there is no need to invade?

Taiwan is a liability, on the grand scheme of things. We need to not have a concentration of such vital capability in a single source.

The cost of an invasion or the cost of booting up fabs in more Western nations - or even in the global south? This is the real question.

War will only happen when the decision is made that its cheaper to steal a factory than build another new one. This is not always the focus of the conversation when it comes to the hegemonic power of China's ability to make things... but it should.

Especially when The Western Empire™ makes decisions about the values of other states ..

actionfromafar3• 3 years ago

Do you really think the The Chinese Empire™ cares about TSMC? Generations have now been told Taiwan is and forevermore is a part of China, to be reunited. The existence of TSMC matters little.

Once you connect a regime's domestic prestige to a project, external motivations matter little. Once not attacking Taiwan is seen as a "being weak" at home, you will have a war.

Throwfi442• 3 years ago

I don't really understand why China would even invade Taiwan. They would be killing "their own" people, and destroying "their own" infrastructure (by their perception).

Much better option is some sort of economic war, sanctions, naval blockade... US is importing a lot from China, even factories in Mexico are just assembling Chinese parts.

I do not think support for Taiwan would survive for very long.

actionfromafar3• 3 years ago

People had the same arguments for not invading Ukraine.

android521• 3 years ago

just look at chinese history (or the history of most nations), you would find tons and tons of examples of chinese rulers killing tens of thousands of other chinese people in pointless wars for pointless reasons.

Lio• 3 years ago

You only have to go back to the Guangxi Massacre[1] during the Cultural Revolution to see that historically the CCP has not had a problem with killing its own people. They used some pretty inventive ways to do it too.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre

justin66• 3 years ago

economic war, sanctions, naval blockade... US is importing a lot from China

China’s navy is capable of disrupting things around China, and could prevent exports from Taiwan from reaching other countries. The US Navy is capable of disrupting things everywhere, and could prevent ships carrying food and oil from reaching China.

I do not think support for Taiwan would survive for very long.

I don’t know how to predict that, but the US would tangibly be giving up a lot by letting Taiwan fall. That alone is motivation that might have seemed somewhat lacking when comparing a confrontation with China over Taiwan with some of the other conflicts the US has recently taken part in.

_hao3• 3 years ago

The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is, and how much its hardware powers.

TSMC might be the the best and ahead of everyone in technological sense, but there are enough semiconductor companies worldwide to handle a potential TSMC demise. So what if our hardware stops improving at breakneck speeds (which might happen anyway in the near future..)?

I can argue that would be a good kick in the ass for every software dev that writes shitty bloated code. People like that won't be able to "just add more CPUs" to their problem and they'll have to do some actual engineering again. The state of software dev and performance today is abysmal given the amazing hardware we have.

quelsolaar2• 3 years ago

TSMC is dominant in technology AND volume. It chip shortage would be massive. Redesigning everything that has a TSMC chip in it to use something else would be a massive undertaking. What do you think the stock market would say if Apple announced that they could not make a iPhone/Mac until they redesign they hardware to use intel chips, because the only other manufacturer of chips good enough is Samsung, and they wont sell chips to their competitor?

_ph_2• 3 years ago

The problem is, just having TSMC not provide ICs for a couple of months would probably rip world economy apart. Yes, I think the west can absolutely pick up where TSMC right now is. The machines come from the Netherlands anyway. Intel has some good fab technology too. But just imagine Apple not being able to sell any phone or computer for several years, what consequences this would have. And this would affect most companies relying on the TSMC technology.

rat872• 3 years ago

People don't realize how little TSMC matters when it comes to the invasion of Taiwan. Sadly economics and free trade rarely stop nationalist wars. If anything stops it it will be the inherent difficulty in invading an army and the risk of failure (especially risk to the regime if it fails, it has seen how Russia and Putin have been weakened by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine)

dkjaudyeqooe• 3 years ago

The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is

I think the US government understands this very clearly, that's why it's prepared to defend Taiwan. There is some strategic ambiguity, but the relevant parties understand that the US would protect Taiwan with its own military.

yodsanklai2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, I don't think we need Taiwan. I agree with the first part of the conclusion.

The Taiwanese are some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. As a free and open democratic society, they would deserve our support for that alone.

Part of my family is Taiwanese so I'm biased of course. But it's really a tragedy that these people may get attacked and invaded by China in the near future. What drives me crazy is people who try to argue that it's right for some historical reason. "Taiwan belongs to China" like if an entire population's faith could belong to some dictator. Conflicts are not always clear, but it's really a good vs evil fight in that case.

I wonder what will be the US stance on this.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

right now the US is catering to a people whose strongest talking point relies on the idea that a new national identity cant appear over the last century (unless it preexisted 2,000 years ago)

so thats going to be awkward for us to cater to a national identity that appeared over the last century, at the drop of a hat

obviously none of us actually care, but its fun to pretend to keep a couple of instagram followers and employment

soco2• 3 years ago

Ahem I think you meant "no new national identities can appear after 1776".

wombat-man3• 3 years ago

Not an expert, but PRC claims Taiwan, and interestingly the ROC also claims the mainland? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Political_and_legal_sta...

So it sorta seems like they both agree on 'One China', but not who should be running it.

I do think we need taiwan and TSMC is a big part of it. There is too much cutting edge tech in Taiwan, I think the US would go toe to toe to defend Taiwan if necessary. But we're trying to reduce that dependence by building fabs in the US, so that could change in the next 10 years.

yodsanklai2• 3 years ago

I think there's more than chips there. The US have a very strong military presence in the pacific. Giving up on Taiwan would send the messages to US allies there that they're on their own and that they need to change their allegiance.

Engineering-MD• 3 years ago

I’m not an expert either however I believe it is more nuanced. If taiwan no longer claims the rest of China officially, then China will see that as a formal declaration of independence and reason to initiate an invasion. It seems all the words, phrasing etc is very politically sensitive on all sides.

meowfly• 3 years ago

So it sorta seems like they both agree on 'One China', but not who should be running it.

"ROC claims the mainland" only exists because any change from the status quo would look like declaring independence. It's not taken seriously in Taiwan.

sgu9996• 3 years ago

What drives me crazy is people who try to argue that it's right for some historical reason. "Taiwan belongs to China" like if an entire population's faith could belong to some dictator.

Like if it could belong to anyone but the Taiwanese, who are perfectly capable of knowing what is in their interest.

I keep on stumbling across this stupid historical argument as well, and I fail to understand... I think it's in part an heritage of the colonial mindset that was prevalent in Europe not so long ago.

churchill• 3 years ago

I feel no conversation about the Taiwan situation can be complete without noting that they had an active nuclear program that was close to developing weapons before the Americans pressured them to shut it down [0].

Judging by how that gesture turned out for Ukraine, we can safely assume Taiwan won't fare better as well.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

lucubratory2• 3 years ago

I suspect most people don't want to bring it up because it doesn't really fit the modern Taiwanese independence argument. Those nukes were going to be used to nuke the PLA and invade mainland China to end the civil war, which is why the US shut it down. I think in the modern day most in the West would rather forget that it was not that long ago that the Republic of China was actively planning to invade the Chinese mainland to end the civil war, because it makes "Taiwan is an independent country that isn't Chinese and all this 'PRC invasion to end the civil war' stuff is just nonsense made up by Chinese propaganda" not seem particularly credible.

It's not very believable to be adamant about mainland China and Taiwan being the same country that you will rule after conquering the mainland when you have a significant military advantage in tech and allies, then when the mainland gains the upper hand militarily you start insisting that actually you're not both part of China, the civil war is ancient history and wasn't really a civil war anyway, and anyone who appears to be willing to breach the status quo with violence is horrible. It comes across as disingenuous, like if Taiwan was militarily significantly stronger than the PRC today then it wouldn't be "Taiwan independence" being advocated, it would be "eliminating the communists to unify China" being advocated.

dontlaugh2• 3 years ago

This is the bit that I find most annoying: westerners insisting that the government and people of Taiwan want to be their own country separate from China.

Certainly the government doesn't, they still claim the entire territory the PRC controls and more.

The people generally consider themselves Chinese when asked and wishing for peaceful reunification, with a small (and possibly growing) minority disagreeing.

yathaid• 3 years ago

> and anyone who appears to be willing to breach the status quo with violence is horrible.

Not commenting about the rest, but anyone who is willing to breach the status quo with violence IS IN FACT HORRIBLY HORRIBLY HORRIBLE. Start digging into history and each side will have enough justifications for war ten times over.

Barrin92• 3 years ago

"While form too often trumps function in the West, pragmatism is on clear display in Taiwan[...]The structures are all simple reinforced concrete designs without ornamentation, lengthy ramps, wide shoulders, or any other modern features."

A great goal but I don't have much hope for it because in the West you'll have to fight on two fronts for this. One is the sort of ground level activism against seemingly anything that resembles construction, and an upper echelon of people who think functional, cheap architecture is a crime against humanity because they want to cosplay as Belle Époque Europeans.

The willingness of Taiwan, and also mainland China as they're not different in this regard to just build cheap but with very decent quality and quickly is just completely lost. In most of the Western world people will rather blow 40% of their income on rent than get someone into power who will just build some decent apartment blocks.

debok• 3 years ago

I don't think there is anything wrong with spending money to make buildings look beautiful. Beauty is important, and we often overlook the impact that beauty has on our psyche.

dontlaugh2• 3 years ago

It's the same hatred towards Eastern European blocks of flats. I grew up in one, it was fine.

sgu9996• 3 years ago

than get someone into power who will just build some decent apartment blocks.

That's because they want a house, with a garden, and at least one car so that they can have a "bbq with some friends on sundays" like they've seen on countless ads and movies. Everything else is secondary in western urbanism. Have you seen the architecture of modern suburb houses? Commie blocks could pass for Art Deco in comparison.

CrzyLngPwd2• 3 years ago

If Taiwan is not careful, it will be Ukrained.

Taiwan is important and valuable until it isn't.

pjc50• 3 years ago

Ineptly invaded by its irridentist neighbour with huge losses?

CrzyLngPwd2• 3 years ago

Seems like you nailed it.

reisse• 3 years ago

Ugh, gross. Western man discovers people outside of the West are not living in huts!

The paragraph about how "wonderful" Taipei Metro is so laughably demonstrates the disconnection between Western expectations of public transit and Asian reality. I'd like author to visit Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Moscow, Dubai - wonder what his opinion will be.

mplewis• 3 years ago

This was my feeling too. “Man, this guy should check out Tokyo next.”

AlchemistCamp• 3 years ago

This makes no sense. Taipei's metro is much nicer than Tokyo's. That was true, even 20 years ago.

I lived in Beijing a decade ago, too, and its metro was also a far worse experience than Taipei's.

soco2• 3 years ago

The author is from NZ so he's possibly more eastern than any of us.

Alethios• 3 years ago

FWIW, I've lived in Thailand and Nepal. I've travelled reasonably extensively through Borneo, Vietnam, Laos, and India. Visited Hong Kong, Cambodia, Singapore. Did an exchange with a Japanese boy from Hiroshima as a kid.

All of those places are amazing in their own ways, but I maintain that Taiwan is both incredibly special, and perhaps the most underappreciated.

throwaway2990• 3 years ago

I can’t speak for Moscow or Dubai but it’s obvious you’ve never been to Taipei. It’s leaps and bounds above Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul. Especially during new years celebrations. They block off entry and only allow a portion of people go to the platform at a time. It’s so efficient and orderly. No pushing or shoving. No one gets upset or angry. Beijing at new years was absolute chaos.

wangii• 3 years ago

The Taiwanese are some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet.

this applies to everywhere. no new information.

As a free and open democratic society, they would deserve our support for that alone.

ah, so it's really about ideology?

If that’s not enough, then we should support them out of pure self-interest, as we’re all better off for having them.

rainworld• 3 years ago

No, “you” don’t “need” Taiwan. Those who run the American Empire have an interest in denying China the strategic advantage, everything else is window dressing. Doesn’t look good for them, though.

https://taiwaninsight.org/2018/02/26/cross-strait-relations-...

We Need Taiwan

Related Stories