• frezik@midwest.social
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      3 months ago
      • China has an old ideological incentive
      • Xi might want an invasion to hide his own failures
      • China wants TSMC ** TSMC might be rigged to explode, but China might be willing to go, anyway, in a “if we can’t have it, nobody can” strategy
      • China doesn’t want an unsinkable aircraft carrier in range of its mainland
      • China wants to extend its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone ** Which itself has implications for how the US can deploy carriers around China

      You can argue that none of the benefits add up to the cost of an invasion–I would tend to agree–but saying China has no incentive is just dumb. In particular, ideological reasons may be weighted much higher by Chinese leaders than any outsider could guess.