Will China Invade Taiwan Next?

this video is made possible by curiosity stream and nebula watch another brand new full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that explains the entire story of america's invasion of iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation along with a dozen other exclusive episodes with more than four hours of combined content covering recent major international conflicts all of which you can access by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal for less than 15 dollars a year at curiositystream.com real life lore in february the russian armed forces initiated the largest scale invasion seen in europe since the second world war when nearly two hundred thousand of their troops invaded ukraine the event has understandably shocked the rest of the world and has completely changed the way that our globalized society was operating before in countless ways but one of the places that has been the most shocked and alarmed by the sudden invasion is a far away island halfway across the world in the pacific taiwan of course taiwan's situation is in many ways highly similar to ukraine both are smaller de facto independent states directly next door to a culturally similar but larger and much more powerful country that once historically ruled over their territory and continues to consider them to be fully within its own sphere of influence if not outright control for centuries the island of taiwan was ruled by the chinese qing dynasty in beijing and the population became majority ethnically han as in the rest of china taiwan was then conquered by the japanese in 1895 and ruled by them for half a century until it was returned at the end of world war ii in the years immediately afterwards china became engulfed in the final phase of the decades-long chinese civil war between the communists of mao zedong and the nationalists of chiang kai-shek the communists emerged victorious throughout the mainland and established the people's republic of china or prc in 1949 while the nationalists of the republic of china or roc retreated to the island of taiwan and ever since then the prc and roc have never officially signed any peace agreement and the chinese civil war between them is theoretically still ongoing at the legal level the roc on taiwan has continued officially claiming to be the sole government of all of china including the mainland which is ruled by the prc but across the many decades and generations that have passed has also discovered a new sense of independence and a separate taiwanese identity while blossoming into a highly developed globalized western-oriented democracy meanwhile the prc on the mainland has also continuously claimed ever since that they are the sole government of china and that taiwan has always been a rightful part of that china today the prc effectively considers that taiwan is merely a renegade province of their china currently in a state of rebellion and that if diplomatic efforts fail to reunify the one china peacefully beijing has legally reserved itself the right to employ force and china's current president xi jinping has made it no secret that that official position has if anything even further solidified under his administration with statements like this one from a speech of his deering 2021 that reads resolving the taiwan question and realizing china's complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the communist party of china she and the chinese communist party are determined to one day bring taiwan back under the control of beijing by one way or another and they will not change their minds since the war in ukraine has proven that a full-scale invasion of one state by a neighbor continues to be possible even in 2022 and since beijing has never renounced the right to employ force against taiwan the world has been left wondering could taiwan actually become the target of the world's next biggest invasion and could that end up sparking the next world war between china and the united states taiwan's unofficial protector the answers to those questions are complicated because while taiwan's situation is in many ways very similar to ukraine it is also very different for starters ukraine is directly connected by land to russia along a border that stretches for 2 000 kilometers across mostly flat and empty hard to defend countryside and the russian army has still struggled with invading it meanwhile taiwan is an island separated from china by the taiwan strait a body of water that at its narrowest is still approximately 130 kilometers wide a similar distance as cuba is from the u.s state of florida naturally because of this any invasion attempt of taiwan by china would be dramatically more complicated and tougher to pull off than russia's invasion of ukraine because it would necessitate the largest amphibious assault in human history with hundreds of thousands of troops landing craft and air superiority all operating in tandem with each other over the strait second of all taiwan's political situation is dramatically different from ukraine's as well taiwan is not a member of the united nations and only 15 mostly small countries officially recognize its sovereignty like haiti and nicaragua this is largely once again because the prc considers taiwan to be a rebellious province of theirs and the prc refuses all diplomatic relations with any country who sees things differently seeing as how the prc is the world's second largest economy with a population of more than 1.4 billion people and taiwan's population is only 23.5 million most of the world including the united states publicly side with beijing on this issue and do not recognize taiwan's independence but at the same time the united states is a major unofficial ally of taiwan taiwan is publicly considered a major non-nato ally of america along with japan south korea and the philippines the united states has sold tens of billions of dollars worth of military weapons and hardware to taiwan including things like advanced fighter jets helicopters missiles and submarines american naval vessels routinely patrol the taiwan strait between taiwan and the prc at least once a month and u.s president joe biden has even gone so far as to publicly state that america would defend taiwan in the event of a prc invasion just last october america recognizes taiwan as independent in all but name and will most likely come to the island's defense in the event of an invasion from china unlike ukraine and the reason is because simply put taiwan has become the most valuable and strategic island in the 21st century world to control and it is at the epicenter of the brewing cold war between america and china the same way that berlin and germany was at the center of the last one whichever side controls taiwan or has taiwan on their side will quite literally win the entire 21st century and there are many reasons why let's begin first with the geographic realities making up the board of east asia and the western pacific and start off from beijing's perspective the prc controls the world's 10th longest coastline with more than 14 000 kilometers of shore with the pacific ocean and half of china's 1.4 billion people live nearby to it many of the largest port cities in the world like hong kong shenzhen ningbo shanghai qingdao and tianjin lie directly on this coastline and connect china's heavily export driven economy to the rest of the world's global supply chains however access to the greater world ocean from this long shoreline is confined by thousands of islands both large and small stretching down from the japanese archipelago the ryukyu islands taiwan the philippines and the islands of borneo and sumatra which naturally separate the yellow east china and south china seas from the greater pacific ocean through a series of dozens of chokepoints zigzagging in between them and unfortunately for beijing this entire island chain directly off their coastline and all the chokepoints in between are almost all entirely allied to or under the influence of their greatest geopolitical opponent the united states every possible route that the chinese navy or chinese merchant ships can take right now out into the greater pacific leads directly through or near a major u.s allied controlled choke point and it's very intentionally designed that way with an american foreign policy this strategy is well known as the first island chain and it was initially developed back in the 1950s after the communists first took over the chinese mainland by maintaining close military alliances with japan south korea taiwan and the philippines all directly off of the chinese coast the united states can effectively control all of these choke points contain the prc navy within her immediate territorial seas while also simultaneously guaranteeing american power projection into the far east from dozens of naval and air bases and then there's the implicit threat that were there to ever be some kind of conflict the american navy and friends can easily blockade all of these choke points and strangle the chinese economy into submission from both washington and beijing's perspectives taiwan is the most vital piece on this board to control because it is at the geographic center of the entire first island chain if beijing could ever seize control of taiwan it would eliminate a major u.s allied outpost nearby to china's major coastal population centers and trade routes it would sever the u.s island alliance in half break the american strategic encirclement of their coastline and enable prc naval forces including nuclear armed submarines to finally enter the greater pacific ocean relatively undetected which would dramatically improve beijing's deterrence capabilities naturally the united states would like to prevent this from happening and thus taiwan is geographically a core interest to both parties but this is really only the beginning of why taiwan matters so much to both sides because the significantly larger and more pressing issue as it nearly always is is over economics money and resources for starters the taiwanese economy is massive and punches well beyond its weight which is another huge difference between itself and ukraine the ukrainian gdp pre-war was only about 155 billion dollars while taiwan's gdp is roughly five times larger at 786 billion dollars putting it on a par with turkey despite having far less people and the single most important thing to understand about taiwan today that explains everything from their huge economy to their position as the world's most valuable island of the 21st century is that they absolutely dominate the entire advanced semiconductor in chip industry that powers nearly every advanced civilian and military technology around the world from smartphones and computers to advanced jet fighters and missile defense systems semiconductor chips of 10 nanometers or less in size are currently considered to be the most advanced tiny devices that pack billions of electronic components within just a few square millimeters of space so thoroughly does taiwan dominate this industry that 92 of the entire worldwide manufacturing of these advanced ships takes place on their island alone within only a handful of enormously expensive complicated and highly specialized fabrication plants or fabs most of which are owned by just a single company the taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company or tsmc tsmc is likely the most powerful corporation in the world that you've never heard of and it's really more of an institution at this point than a company they operate 10 major fabs on the island itself that act as the world's foundries for advanced chips and ranked by market cap tsmc is the 10th largest corporation in the world with a valuation exceeding 504 billion dollars larger than the annual gdp of most of the world's countries with such an absolute monopoly on the production of the world's most advanced ships that everybody needs taiwan has created for itself a decisive masterstroke in the art of defense it has made itself invaluable to both washington and beijing giant american semiconductor companies like intel nvidia amd apple and dozens of others still perform the research development and design of their own ships but beginning in the 1980s they gradually outsourced the entire manufacturing process of these chips to mostly tsmc's fabs on taiwan in order to cut down on costs and become more competitive then over the span of decades tsmc has essentially become the global foundry and manufacturer for advanced chips designed by almost every semiconductor company in the world and while this strategy was immensely beneficial and profitable to the private companies like nvidia or apple it has also led to a massive and potentially catastrophic risk to the united states government the overwhelming majority of the u.s military-industrial complexes most advanced ships that are powering their most advanced military weapon systems and technologies are pretty much all originating almost next door to america's principal geopolitical opponent of the 21st century were taiwan to ever fall into the hands of beijing it would potentially also mean the conquest of tsmc and their priceless fabs and america could suddenly find itself entirely sealed off from the production of advanced ships meaning that china would stand to gain the upper hand in advanced military technology like artificial intelligence and nearly every other facet of modern warfare at the same time beijing stands to lose a tremendous amount as well today the prc represents around 60 of the entire global demand for semiconductors and the vast majority of these are either imported or manufactured locally by foreign suppliers and despite all the animosity taiwan is one of beijing's most crucial suppliers since nearly half of taiwan's exports to the prc are entirely just semiconductors we're the prc to initiate an invasion of taiwan beijing stands to potentially pull off a master stroke by capturing the control of this entire crucial global industry and locking america and the west out from it potentially securing chinese technological and military superiority throughout the rest of the 21st century in the process but of course an invasion could also dramatically backfire on these objectives as well the priceless fabs themselves could easily become casualties of the fighting or the taiwanese may end up sabotaging them themselves out of spite if the war's outcome becomes dicey and these fabs are not easy to replicate despite everyone trying to because they're ridiculously expensive and highly specialized for their own part taiwan has closely guarded the technology of this crown jewel for decades with many referring to the fabs as the island's silicon shield tsmc has opened up some smaller scale fabs in china the united states and japan but none of these foreign plants abroad produce any of the more advanced chips under 10 nanometers they only produce larger and outdated ships while all of the smaller advanced chip manufacturing continues to remain at home closely guarded on taiwan and now both beijing and washington are desperately attempting to remove their critical over-dependencies on taiwanese ships having now recognized the tremendous historic error of outsourcing advanced chip fabrication to taiwan washington is hoping to reverse the trend by bringing fabrication back home through careful diplomacy and economic incentives like the chips act set to allocate 52 billion of government investments for us-based domestic chip manufacturing america has convinced samsung to build a 17 billion factory in texas intel to build a 20 billion dollar factory in ohio and most peculiarly tsmc themselves to build a 12 billion dollar fab in arizona about the same price as a brand new ford class aircraft carrier crucially this will become the first fab constructed outside of taiwan by the company that'll produce the more advanced 5 nanometer chips however tsmc is not about to give up their home-based taiwanese advantage while their arizona plant will be producing 5 nanometer chips it won't become operational until at least 2024 by which time the 5 nanometer process is projected to be fully replaced by tsmc's newest 3 nanometer process back within the taiwanese fabs as the latest technology and they've already initiated research and development into two nanometer chips and while the us government may be investing 52 billion dollars into domestic chip manufacturing tsmc alone will be spending roughly double that at 100 billion dollars over just the next three years on building out new fabs new research and new development and it will be very very difficult if not even impossible for any other country let alone company to catch up with them in their technology anytime soon and thus taiwan's semiconductor industry simultaneously dissuades beijing from ever launching an attack because they need their chips while also guaranteeing america's support even if it does ever happen because they likewise also need their chips because the global chip shortage that we've all been experiencing recently is only a foretaste of the absolute mayhem that would be unleashed were taiwan to ever come under an attack the loss of even a single year's output from the fabs on taiwan would immediately bring the entire global electronic supply chain down to its knees and everyone including beijing are acutely aware and cautious of this but that still doesn't necessarily mean that they won't attack the most critical component to understanding beijing's calculus in an attack on taiwan is china's own looming internal demographic problems china's own population is expected to peak by 2025 whereafter it will begin to decline steadily for decades as the country completes the demographic transition already seen in places like europe and japan and perhaps even more critically china's working age population already did peak more than a decade ago back in 2010 and has since been declining at nearly twice the rate of the american working age population and unlike america who welcomed more than 1.2 million new permanent residents through immigration in 2016. china has almost zero pull on foreign workers from abroad as they only welcomed 1 576 new permanent residents during that same year as america or 750 times less on top of this china has been experiencing skyrocketing household debt levels and faces a significant amount of resource insecurity with only limited oil and gas reserves to rely upon within their own borders and with an ever more energy-hungry economy china is by far the world's largest single importer of petroleum at more than 10.8 million barrels a day which is three-fourths of their total oil consumption and one set of projections from cinqua reasonably calculates that china's oil and gas imports primarily coming in from the middle east will peak between 2030 and 2035. china's economy and relative power are therefore both going to peak at some point this decade and that means that its most likely chance to successfully accomplish decades-long held goals like the control of taiwan is within the narrow window available to them between now and 2030 if they wait any longer beyond then they'll only continue growing weaker while america will most likely only continue getting stronger or at least remain about the same and thus this is why china has been acting increasingly aggressive in suppressing places like hong kong xinjiang and the south china sea and it's why several american admirals and foreign policy experts have suggested that there is a relatively high chance of beijing acting on taiwan in some way or another by 2027 within just the next five years and thus even before the russian invasion of ukraine the 2020s were already expected to be the most dangerous decade of the 21st century so far and in many ways the struggle for taiwan is already ongoing like many other countries taiwan maintains what's called an air defense identification zone or aid is over their territory an airspace over land and sea in which all aircraft must be identified and located within the interests of national security beijing has been steadily probing taiwan's defenses and testing their resolve by repeatedly flying military jets across this ada's in 2020 they flew 380 of these military flights across taiwan's aides and then in 2021 they dramatically increased this to 961 flights performing an average of almost three per day throughout the entire year taiwan's air force has had to almost continuously scramble their own planes to ward off these chinese jets and the sheer frequency of them has been causing qualified and highly trained pilots on the island to be stretched dangerously thin and if the time ever comes that beijing finally concludes that diplomacy has failed it has multiple military options to select from in dealing with taiwan that are short of a risky full-scale invasion the republic of china controls more territory than just the island of taiwan there are the unpopulated patras and taiping islands in the south china sea that are home to roc air bases that beijing could seek to eliminate or occupy in a more limited show of force there are the small matsu islands that are only about nine kilometers off the coast of china's fujian province home to about 13 and a half thousand taiwanese citizens that beijing could opt to blockade or occupy while using them as a bargaining ship towards full unification with the taiwanese mainland there's also kin men another group of islands that the roc controls just off the chinese mainland a mere six kilometers from the prc port city of shia men however kin men is home to 140 000 roc civilians so while it would be a more audacious move than occupying the matsu islands an invasion and occupation of kin men would be substantially easier to pull off than an invasion of the taiwanese mainland and like the matsus could be used as a bargaining chip towards the bigger goal of full unification if these limited invasions failed to deliver results beijing could still utilize their navy to implement some form of blockade over taiwan in order to attempt to pressure them before resulting to the full-scale invasion option but it may not matter because any of these supposedly more limited options could still skyrocket international tensions and bring the united states into a war against them thus beijing may end up coming to the conclusion that all of these supposedly limited options are equally as risky as the full-scale invasion option is and simply choose to go full send but an actual invasion of taiwan will likely entail successfully pulling off the most complicated military operation ever in human history while successfully holding off the world's greatest military superpower and minimizing collateral damage on the island no easy feat it's been estimated before that in order to successfully occupy and subdue the territory of a hostile population an invading army needs an occupation force of roughly 20 soldiers per 1000 civilians owing to taiwan's population of more than 23 and a half million that means that in order to have any hope of success the chinese would need to commit at least four hundred thousand troops to the invasion and occupation of the island and that's not even factoring in the potential for casualties while crossing the strait or landing on the beaches in reality china would likely need to commit more like 600 000 troops into the operation which is nearly one-third of their current active duty forces of 2 million personnel to put all of these figures into perspective the allied invasion of d-day at normandy in 1944 remains the largest amphibious invasion in military history so far and it only involved 156 000 invading allied troops the chinese would require four times as many men to pull off a successful invasion of taiwan and they would need an absolute armada made up of thousands of transport and defense vessels to carry them across the strait and thousands of planes and missiles flying through the skies above to defend them and lighten up the roc defenses on the beaches building up the huge amount of supplies and logistics for such an enormous operation across the coast from xi'an men to fujo would be impossible to keep a secret from america and then there are only limited available landing positions on taiwan itself the eastern two-thirds of the island are dominated by mountains and the coastline there is almost entirely rugged cliffs that are entirely unsuitable for a landing force the western third is dominated by a low and gentle plane where most of taiwan's population resides but much of the waters in the west are shallow and hostile to the thousands of ships that would be swarming in from the mainland thus there are only a small handful of beaches across the southwestern and northern edges of the island that would make for suitable pla invasion and landing sites and taiwan has ample opportunity to build extensive fortifications across them to protect them further most of tsmc's fabs are located nearby to these beaches and would almost immediately fall directly within the line of fire and their destruction would be a massive loss to the invading chinese military and even if they do successfully land on the beaches without destroying any of the fabs a taiwanese insurgency deeper within the mountains of the island's interior would be incredibly challenging for any military to snuff out ultimately for beijing a success in taking over taiwan would sever the first island chain break out their naval containment enable china to freely project power into the pacific improve their nuclear deterrence capabilities undermine the u.s alliances with other partners in the region and potentially hand them the keys to the global advanced semiconductor industry and the tsmc corporation all but guaranteeing them the more technologically advanced military over america later on in the 21st century but there are numerous risks if america and her regional allies like japan and australia intervene against them they could all inflict massive damage on the untested and combat inexperienced chinese military a defeat in taiwan could transform into an epic embarrassment and undermine the communist party's power and legitimacy at home on the other side of the coin a chinese conquest of taiwan would be a crippling blow to america and the western alliance overnight the us's position as the leading power in asia would be completely undermined u.s allies in the region would become more susceptible to economic and military pressures coming from beijing and some might even switch over to the other side some like japan might even begin to seek to fully re-militarize themselves and seek out nuclear weapons for deterrence and worst of all america could find itself locked out from the future of advanced chip manufacturing and lose their status as the world's most advanced military to china while also suffering all of the associated economic consequences of us-based semiconductor companies losing their manufacturing hub and there's no guarantee that the american military would prevail against the increasingly more capable and powerful people's liberation army even if it did intervene and so while an eventual conflict between beijing and washington over taiwan is uncertain one thing absolutely is whoever between them is allied to or controls taiwan by the end of this decade will be all but guaranteed to be the most powerful empire for the rest of the 21st century and the reverberations of any conflict there will be felt for generations to come on both sides and based on that both sides will have to do whatever it takes to make sure that taiwan in one way or another is on their side and their side alone by the end of this decade the potential for a chinese invasion of taiwan is an incredibly complicated and naturally highly speculative subject and i didn't really have enough time to cover all of the nuances and context in just a 30-minute long video on youtube but by analyzing how the united states specifically has acted before when one country has been invaded by another under similar circumstances we can likely figure out how america may respond to this potential conflict in the future because there is a very recent modern invasion that in many ways echoes the potential future conflict between china and taiwan and that would be saddam hussein's iraqi invasion of kuwait back in 1990 as china claims with taiwan and russia claims with ukraine today saddam's regime back then claimed that all of kuwait rightfully belonged to iraq and always had and under that justification initiated a full-scale invasion and annexation of the country with a misguided belief that america would not or could not effectively retaliate in response however the united states gathered the largest international military alliance in history since the second world war and with overwhelming force initiated a massive counter-invasion of kuwait that completely destroyed the invading iraqi army and liberated the country within a matter of weeks and like a conflict over taiwan probably will be america's decision to respond with overwhelming military force like this was heavily influenced by the disruption in the flow of strategic resources that are vital for modern civilization only instead of man-made computer chips it was oil after iraq's defeat america itself more than a decade later initiated a largely unsupported and widely internationally condemned full-scale invasion of iraq under largely false pretenses in 2003 that overthrew saddam's regime led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of iraqis and sparked nearly 20 years of violent chaos and insurgency that has mired the country and the middle east forever since and so both the 1990 iraqi invasion of kuwait and the 2003 american invasion of iraq hold valuable lessons that are important to the events playing out today and the events that could play out in the future but unfortunately if i made a video about all of that on youtube the violent nature of the war would mean that it would immediately become demonetized and age restricted and as a result there's just simply no way that you would ever see it here so instead i created yet another full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the same length as this video that covers the entire course of saddam's invasion of kuwait and the subsequent 2003 u.s invasion of iraq and occupation and uploaded it directly to nebula which as you've probably heard by now is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with 12 other additional full-length episodes with more than four hours of additional combined content that you can go and watch right now like this 32-minute long video covering russia's wars against chechnya throughout the 90s and 2000s or this 25-minute long video covering the 2008 russian invasion of georgia along with plenty of other episodes covering subjects like the u.s iran conflict the ongoing cold war between greece and turkey the 2020 war between armenia and azerbaijan and many many others of course the reason why all of these videos are only available on nebula is because they just wouldn't ever work on youtube and would never be viewed here because of the way that this site works on the other hand nebula is a different platform without an algorithm and without any ads it's just a platform about great and unique content made by great and independent educational creators with plenty of other unique exclusive bonus projects from other creators you probably already know like wendover productions half as interesting neo real engineering tom scott and so many others the best way to get access to nebula and all of this incredible content is definitely through the amazing curiosity stream nebula bundle deal and with its current sales price it's less than 15 a year to get full access to both sites and curiosity stream has some phenomenal stuff that you'll definitely enjoy too like future warfare a four-part documentary series naturally focusing on the critical role the technology will play in the conflicts of the future from artificial intelligence and cyber warfare to space warfare and special operations if you want a documentary explaining precisely why the semiconductor chips coming from taiwan will be so influential to warfare in the future then this is the documentary for you to go and watch right now i really can't recommend it enough and i genuinely don't know about a better deal that exists anywhere in streaming you get two streaming sites both with content you'll actually watch and all for less than 15 dollars a year at the current sales price but what's more signing up will actually help countless independent educational creators beyond just real life lore so please make sure to do so by clicking this button that's here on screen right now which will take you directly to curiositystream.comreallifelore to sign up or by following the link that's down below in the description and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 5,702,283

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, china, taiwan, republic of china

Id: p6sCsOdqXQw

Length: 36min 12sec (2172 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022