Reply #11: Taiwan is pretty militarized, I think if you want to label someone [View All]

fascist here, I'd go with Taiwan. While the rhetoric is hot, I really don't see where either side gains much in a war. They both lose big. The Taiwanese business class is certainly players in China's ecoomy, lots of Taiwanese factories there (and Japenese, and Korean)....I've met some real condescending Taiwanese who look at the Chinese with a lot of contempt. I've met some real gung-ho Taiwanese that remind me a lot of our Red State brethern. They believe they have the superior society and they should be formulating the vision for China's future. Remember, their military has had extremely close ties to the US for over 50 years...lots of them talk and think like our FreeRepublicans. Frankly, if I were mainland China, I'd give them Taiwan. Why would they really want to absorb their enemies in their government? The PRC's internal economy will dwarf and consume Taiwan's anyway. I think China has lots of trade leverage with Taiwan, too. There are only 22MM Taiwanese and that's equivalent to Hong Kong/Shenzhen metropolitan area.

The real issue is Taiwan's proximity (150 miles) to the major Southern China population/industrial province and their capabilities to destroy same. Taiwan can field about 5MM 'fit for service'. Compare Taiwan's $7.8BB Defense budget vs. China's $20BB. You know Taiwan has state-of-art communications/missle technology.

An independent Taiwan and a mutual security pact to defuse military build-up would need to addressed and agreed to in parallel for a real resolution to the tensions to occur, I think.