by dulan drift 
, (145 days ago)
Another incremental ante-upping? Or does it presage a new launchpad phase?
(Taiwan News) – The Coast Guard Administration intercepted a Cameroon-registered container ship with a Chinese name after it was suspected of damaging an undersea cable north of Taiwan on Friday.
This seems to be an occurrence increasing in frequency. It happened around the same time across the globe.
Accident or sabotage? American and European officials disagree as key undersea cables are cut
by dulan drift , (128 days ago) @ dan
There are many vulnerable, yet civilization-crippling targets, out there - that can all be played out in the secret wars theatre - at least until the curtain is finally drawn.
Secrecy is the problem - never benefits normal people - always ends up as corruption.
Sea-cable severing by merchant ships is a classic example of how far you can push the secret war without actual shooting.
Apart from internet/electricity, water is another big, vulnerable one. I guess if you shut off electricity, you shut off water, but it could also be disabled with a targeted computer hack (or a few well-placed explosives at key dams). How's Taipei (or anywhere) gonna go for a week without water? What happens to all those daily shits?
Hard to see that happening on a global level using the 'those in power have too much to lose' theory, but like Dan's limited nuclear war scenario, all of the above could get a theatre-release somewhere, Taiwan maybe.
On another note, as drones/cyberwarfare will feature heavily in any future war, in terms of training soldiers, you're gonna need at least as many computer nerds as traditional soldiers. I wonder if that's reflected in the current training.
Apart from internet/electricity, water is another big, vulnerable one. I guess if you shut off electricity, you shut off water, but it could also be disabled with a targeted computer hack (or a few well-placed explosives at key dams). How's Taipei (or anywhere) gonna go for a week without water? What happens to all those daily shits?
I've been growing more sensitive to this, and scared shitless (no pun intended) at our vulnerability. By 'our' I mean all of us living in places 100% dependent on electricity, because that's at the core -- electricity. Without that, we're fucked. And it can be shut down so easily by natural disasters or, perhaps more effectively, people wanting to do harm.
Covid demonstrated how quickly things can fall apart. Remember the shipping woes? Supply problems? And that was just a virus, and not a very bad one, really. Can you imagine a major volcano, like the Yellowstone Super Volcano? A big ass meteor? A major solar storm?
by dulan drift , (94 days ago) @ dan
Some MSM site: At 9.58am, the Virgin pilot notified Australian air traffic control that he had picked up a Chinese transmission on an international guard (warning) channel, stating that live ammunition was being used in his vicinity.
That would have been an interesting cockpit announcement for the passengers to hear.
The backstory is that CCP war ships have navigated their way though international waters, which are as thin as the Taiwan Strait in terms of closeness to Australian land at some northern points - then dwelt around 70km off of the coast of Sydney. They're now conducting live-fire drills between NZ & Aus.
That's provocative, but legal according to international practice. They're all doing it. I'm sure CCP has no trouble justifying that as a retaliatory tactic.
The strange bit is though, no-one appears to have been notified that firing had commenced - in a busy flight route. Not by Aus Gov anyway - first they heard was from a Chinese transmission.
The Albo gov are terrified to say anything that might be even vaguely offensive to Totalitarianism. Either they're covering up for the CCP again so as not to harm our shameful dependence on them, for everything ... or they really don't have any idea what's going on. Being treated by CCP with the disdain they deserve.
Australia is a long way from Taiwan, but a lot closer than America. At the very least it would be a critical supply chain inflection point.
It's, as with all CCP globo-positioning, an incremental brewing story.
by dulan drift , (83 days ago) @ dulan drift
It's hard to think of a better window for the invasion of Taiwan than right now.
1. Trump has blown-up traditional ally relationships mitigating against a united response - in fact China will be seen as a better, more reliable partner by many countries.
2. He has no political morality - so he's unlikely to care if Taiwan is invaded - in fact he may prefer it. He (& other leaders) actually likes dealing with totalitarian regimes - less moving parts, meaning they (Xi, Putin, Trump/Musk, Kim Jong-un) can play their grand theatre performance without disruption from smaller (democratic) actors.
3. CCP's blockade tactics have been rehearsed & are ready to roll.
4. It's not typhoon season - doubt they'd undertake a massive operation if a typhoon could ruin all their planning.
5. If not now, when? China currently holds all the best economic cards - enough to cripple countries that oppose it. That may not last forever.
US defence in the Pacific being downgraded
USS Carl Vinson Ordered to Join Carrier in Middle East, Delaying Return to San Diego
And Hegseth has ordered the USS Carl Vinson, which has been operating in the Pacific, to begin steaming toward the Middle East, which will extend the carrier’s scheduled deployment by three months.
So they're taking a carrier out of the Pacific. When the cat is away...
by dulan drift , (23 days ago) @ dan
You've almost gotta wonder what's holding CCP back? Unless they think they're onto a game-changing new war tech that they're working on, but haven't quite got ready to roll yet. That's quite possible.
On a different note, the naming of 5 new public holidays appears to have a bit of niggle-factor to it. It sounds mundane enough - good idea - as a ex-market guy in Dulan, long weekends are a terrific boost for small businesses in regional areas. It shares the spending love around. Which is good for the overall economy.
The occasions chosen to celebrate though, are interesting.
1. Labor Day (May 1)
2. Little Lunar New Year’s Eve (day before Lunar New Year’s Eve)
3. Confucius' Birthday (Sept. 28)
4. Retrocession Day, Battle of Guningtou (Oct. 25)
5. Constitution Day (Dec. 25)
The last three are the most fun in terms of Taiwan's (studied) diplomatic statements. I'm thinking One China on either side of the Strait - We won't be declaring independence coz we're already independent.
On the surface it sounds like a simple statement of the state-of-play - so it's hard to attack - but it contains this reverberating concept that becomes an established lattice of thinking.
The last three holidays fit into this shrewd (to the point of smart-ass) diplomacy style.
Confucius: That's laying justifiable claim to ethnic Chinese philosophical heritage - which is right up there on the humanoid level.
If it was me making the call, i woulda gone a holiday for Zhuang-dz (contemporary of Plato & Aristotle - Confucius was Socrates era). Zhuang-dz was the Am i a human dreaming i'm a butterfly ...? Or a butterfly dreaming i'm a human ...? guy. (uncannily similar to Plato's Cave's questioning of reality)
Taiwan absolutely has a share in the wisdom of those golden-age greats. That's one thing Asians do well - they hold onto their Thought luminaries. It's drummed into them at school.
The West didn't/doesn't do that. It banned philosophy in 555 (odd) BC then usurped Roman time by enforcing AD/BC time two years later. Then viciously/religiously brainwashed everyone into glorifying their ORGS' projected image of Jesus & The Virgin Mary - for a bloody long time - The Dark Ages - 900 years.
Still going so far as i can tell - only rivaled in preparedness to lie on the grandest scale by the rise of The Science. All of it held together by a soulless capitalism.
Back to Confucius's birthday, Sep 28, re War in Taiwan - it will piss CCP off that Taiwan is tapping into that Chinese heritage - even though they arguably have way more claim. It will piss them off because they have more claim.
If you want to see some living semblance of what traditional Chinese culture was like before Mao's Mad-King reign brutalized it, go to Taiwan. In fact Mao waged a notorious Cultural War to Destroy the Four Olds - ideas, culture, customs, habits. Which included Confucius (& all philosophers).
CCP cannot be trusted to carry the flame of human endeavour. Totalitarianism extinguishes contrary flames the second they feel threatened by them. It's how they do.
But it's not only ostensible totalitarian regimes that hate ancient wisdom. In The Land Down-under, even the study of philosophy is New-Normal banned.
The course fees are so prohibitive ($100 000!)that no-one can afford to study it - same tactic they did with ciggies (which, predictably, caused a booming black-market).
So i am happy at least that one (the only one on the planet?) philosopher is being commemorated with a public holiday. Wish we could celebrate Plato like that! (which AI says was either Nov 7th or May 8th - hey, why not have two holidays?!)
by dulan drift , (22 days ago) @ dulan drift
Retrocession Day - The Battle of Guningtou - Oct 25
This one is the most provocative coz it commemorates Taiwan's successful defence of Kinmen (Jin-men) in 1949.
Having been routed in southern China, KMT finally made a stand at Guningtou bay on Kinmen to repel an amphibious invasion by the PLA. It's an interesting story - apparently the tanks won the day - combined with a series of planning bungles by over-confident PLA forces & bad luck coincidences.
The invasion fleet was actually just commandeered wooden fishing boats & it was delayed two weeks coz they couldn't round up enough. That delay allowed the hero of the battle, General Hu Lien (胡璉) & his 12th brigade of tanks to arrive, coincidentally, as the invasion was happening - then play a pivotal role in defeating it.
Another mistake was the timing of the landing. They went for full-tide, which makes sense but left it a couple of hours late & landed as the tide was turning back. This resulted in many boats getting stranded - where they were blown to bits by the tanks. That was a disaster coz they didn't have enough boats already meaning the ones they had needed to go back to ferry more soldiers/supplies over. The troops that had landed were cut off from reinforcements.
There are other stories of tanks breaking down, fortuitously, in just the right strategic locations to repel the enemy, then 'coming back to life' when they were needed for action. Like a lot of war, it's part shambles on the actual front, but mixed with acts of real bravery.
It was quite a battle - not to trivialize it but like a great football game. KMT lost then regained key positions/towns - stormed home in the second half.
There were the tanks, which the PLA didn't have, but also intense close-quarters fighting. Of the 9 000 first/only landing force, 3000+ PLA were killed, 5000+ captured. Don't know what happened to the other 1000. Taiwan forces suffered 1 200+ fatalities. (fully AI-sourced)
It's posited that Guningtou ultimately prevented the invasion of Taiwan mainland. They never tried it again, which is curious in itself.
All of which makes for a great National Holiday ... whilst trolling CCP ... annually!
We've wondered if taking an outlying island might be a first move in a modern invasion, but probably not coz it would invite a drastic reinforcement (or not) of Taiwan proper, making it that much harder to invade.
Eerily, in The Drone Age, where we've come a long way from scrambling together a fishing fleet invasion, fishing fleets will still likely play a key-role in any modern amphibious assault. Those fishing families/businesses have worked the waters for generations, know them better than anyone. They have plain-sight proximity to launch, it's documented that CCP is co-ordinating with them in war games.
There will be higher-up bungling, but it won't be some thought-bubble low-tech Guningtou invasion in Xi's-time-around. The opposite - it's all calculated. But still that nod to the old days.
Also interesting how it was a rare, glorious KMT history highlight, but it took a DPP gov to recognize it as a National Holiday. There are some smart-cookies operating in Taiwan political-science.