https://apnews.com/article/china-el...cb1cd0c44?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=shareA Chinese national was arrested Thursday on charges of acting as an illegal agent for Beijing when serving as the campaign manager for an unnamed politician elected to a city council in Southern California two years ago.
The arrest of Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 64, came at a time of rising concerns that the Chinese government has cultivated a network of operatives to influence local elections in the U.S. to install politicians who are friendly to Beijing and can help promote Chinese interests.
China criticised new U.S. military aid to Taiwan on Sunday, saying the $571 million package seriously violates the "one China principle" and provisions of joint communiques between China and the U.S.
China will take "all necessary measures" to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity, a foreign ministry spokesperson said, calling Taiwan "a red line that must not be crossed" in China-U.S. relations, according to a statement released by the ministry.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...icises-new-us-military-aid-island-2024-12-22/Beijing considers democratically governed Taiwan its own territory, a claim the government in Taipei rejects.
Taiwan's Presidential Office held its first "tabletop" exercise involving government agencies beyond the armed forces on Thursday, simulating a military escalation with China amid renewed threats from Beijing, officials said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...ar-games-simulate-china-emergency-2024-12-26/Dozens of central and local government agencies as well as civil groups participated in the three-hour exercise, the sources said, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
I think Trump's current stance on Taiwan is just a negotiation tactic. All the posturing is setting the stage for a deal where Taiwan is leveraged.
Here's my logic: In 3-4 years, once the mainland inevitably catches up on semiconductor production, Taiwan's strategic value to the U.S. will decline. From there, the calculus might shift towards appeasing Beijing for other economic or political gains.
It's basically what Vivek posited during the primaries.
That’s a fair point—replicating ASML’s EUV technology is crazy hard and making cutting-edge chips (especially at 3nm and below) is insanely complex. Still, China has a track record of closing tech gaps faster than most people expect, especially when they throw a ton of state funding and human capital at it.
SMC and Samsung are way ahead right now and have solid roadmaps for next-gen lithography, but it’d be risky to just assume China stays stuck at 7nm. Even if they don’t hit 3nm or 2nm anytime soon, having the ability to crank out workable 7nm or 5nm chips could still chip away (no pun intended!) at Taiwan’s leverage.
If China can supply a good chunk of its own needs—even if the chips aren’t at the absolute cutting edge—the U.S. might start seeing less reason to go all-out to protect TSMC’s position. Taiwan’s “essential” status mainly depends on how heavily the world relies on its top-tier chipmaking. If that reliance goes down, even a little, Taiwan’s geopolitical value could drop. And from a U.S. perspective, if the cost of a head-on collision with Beijing gets too high, they might be more open to negotiating. Even with today’s big tech gap, Taiwan could still end up being used as a bargaining chip if the U.S. decides there are bigger strategic prizes to chase than semiconductor dominance.
You're looking far too much at a factor (chips) when it's just a very small piece of the puzzle.
US has always protected Taiwan, three times since WWII, and in all three occassions parked Carrier Groups in the region to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
All three were well before Taiwan had any gains in industry in chipmaking.
Simply put, any president that allows China to take control of Taiwan will go down as the worst president in US history. It's like the equivalent of France letting Germany take Belgium in 1914 and not doing anything about it.
Xi, 32, eventually joined Ukraine’s International Legion following Russia’s invasion of the country, becoming one of a handful of Taiwanese fighters to join the international volunteer force.
Now back in Taipei, he said his wartime experience shows him that Taiwan is unprepared for a potential invasion by China, given that its troops lack training and its military is stuck in the past. Years of peace have given the country a false sense of security, he warned.
“We need a wake-up call or some kind of incident to prepare us, as Ukraine faced in Donbas in 2014,” said Xi, referring to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the covert armed campaign that it subsequently unleashed in eastern Ukraine.
https://www.politico.eu/article/taiwan-unprepared-war-soldier-fight-ukraine-russia-china/If war did break out, Taiwan would likely be cut off by air and sea. The only strategy is to “hold ourselves long enough for the Americans to come in,” Xi said.
‘Taiwan unprepared for war,’ says soldier who fought in Ukraine
https://www.politico.eu/article/taiwan-unprepared-war-soldier-fight-ukraine-russia-china/
https://www.barrons.com/news/us-tre...tions-hacked-in-cyberattack-by-china-fc51e5faThe incident happened earlier this month, when the actor compromised a third-party cybersecurity service provider and was able to remotely access the Treasury workstations and some unclassified documents, a Treasury spokesperson added.
No one can stop China's "reunification" with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's speech on Tuesday, laying down a clear warning to what Beijing regards as pro-independence forces within and outside of the island of 23 million people.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china...-chinas-reunification-with-taiwan-2024-12-31/"The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification," Xi said in a speech televised on China's state broadcaster CCTV.
The focus on Guam and West Coast targets suggested to many senior national-security officials across several Biden administration agencies that the hackers were focused on Taiwan, and doing everything they could to slow a U.S. response in a potential Chinese invasion, buying Beijing precious days to complete a takeover even before U.S. support could arrive.
https://www.politico.eu/article/tai...k-international-telecom-cargo-ship-eu-russia/According to Taiwanese media reports, the Shunxin-39, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship, was intercepted by the country's coast guard about 13 kilometers off the north coast of Taiwan late Friday afternoon and ordered to return closer to shore for an investigation. Rough weather prevented them from boarding the vessel, however, and the Shunxin-39 was able to continue en route to a port in South Korea.
German prosecutors on Thursday said that three people had been indicted on suspicion of spying for China by obtaining information about military technology. The information gathering was allegedly done on behalf of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) spy agency.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-three...71257247?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=emailAt the time of their arrest German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had said that the government was monitoring a significant threat posed by Chinese espionage in business, industry and science. China has not yet responded to the latest developments but at the time of the arrests, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin issued a statement rejecting accusations it was spying in Germany.
China announced on Monday that its trade surplus reached almost $1 trillion last year as its exports swamped the globe, while the country’s own businesses and households spent cautiously on imports.
When adjusted for inflation, China’s trade surplus last year far exceeded any in the world in the past century, even those of export powerhouses like Germany, Japan or the United States. Chinese factories are dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II.
China’s exports of everything from cars to solar panels have been an economic bonanza for the country. Exports have created millions of jobs not just for factory workers, whose inflation-adjusted wages have about doubled in the past decade but also for high-earning engineers, designers and research scientists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/business/china-trade-surplus.htmlChina now produces about a third of the world’s manufactured goods, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. That is more than the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Britain combined.
Taiwanese charged with suspicion of spying on behalf of China rose by a third to 64 people last year, the island's National Security Bureau said, adding most were current or retired soldiers. The increase in the number of Taiwanese charged with attempted espionage for China represented a "significant rise" from 48 and 10 people in 2023 and 2022, respectively, according to a report by the National Security Bureau on Sunday.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...-rise-suspected-chinese-espionage-2025-01-13/Among those who were charged last year, two-thirds were current or retired members of the armed forces, the report said, adding these demographics were the "main target" of China's infiltration of Taiwan.
