Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles has called on China to explain why it needs to have “such an extraordinary military build-up”.
On Sunday morning, Marles asserted that “what we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and build up in conventional sense, by any country since the end of the Second World War”.
It is not just the size of the military build-up that concerns other countries, he told reporters.
“It’s the fact that it is happening without strategic reassurance. It’s happening without a clear strategic intent on the part of China… what we want to see is strategic transparency and strategic reassurance be provided by China, and an understanding of why it is needed to have such an extraordinary military build-up.”
Australian navy keeps fucking around in the South China, deliberately trying to antagonise China because the US told them to. No Western news coverage of this at all.
The US keeps trying to use the Taiwan situation as a wedge issue, keeping dozens of warships stationed in the area, because they desperately want another proxy war. No Western news coverage of this.
China does anything at all in response to all this deliberate antagonisation, even if it’s something as minor as, telling an Australian ship to go away, or moving PLA troops around in response to the Americans. Western news media makes a huge amount of noise about how China is doing all these for no reason and in response to nothing, and how they must be stopped with a military intervention.
“fucking around in the South China” = sailing in international waters as defined by the UNCLOS, to which China is a signatory
“US keeps trying to use the Taiwan situation as a wedge issue” = maintaining the status quo in the face of repeated, overt invasion threats
“desperately want a proxy war” = can’t allow an oligo-fascist state to seize control of the single-path source of chips that enable modern life
“no western news coverage of this” = I don’t look at the news
I’ll tell you why, they see how close Russia is to being defeated and they’re going to move in to take the territories in the East pretty much like Japan did with French Indochina once France was defeated in WW2
Isn’t it obvious? President Xi publicly ordered the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2026.
They’re…asking a country about this? What, do they expect China to say “we’re preparing to invade Taiwan in 2026”? This is just fishing for bullshit answers so politicians can pretend like they buy it and ignore actually dealing with the military buildup by taking action.
Maybe step one of the protest is to stop buying from China
Don’t be silly. Big corporations would lose profits. We can’t have that! /s
Even without Taiwan. broadly gestures at everything
Russia has proved to be unreliable. USA are proving to be unreliable. Europe is building up its own armies. India is fighting Pakistan. Who knows how big Israel wants to be, they are already attacking neighbours.
No idea what’s happening in Africa. I think most of them are still stuck fighting amongst themselves.
Maybe Australia is just asking the question so that they have an excuse to build up as well.
“what we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and build up in conventional sense, by any country since the end of the Second World War”
WTF? The USA alone outspends most of the world combined in this area but somehow China is the threat? This guy should at least remove the american balls he’s gargling before spouting something like that
America overthrew the Australian government last time they did that. The balls remain firmly in place.
For all you folk who aren’t big history nerds and didn’t know that the US overthrew the government of AUSTRALIA, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis
It’s really interesting
I had no idea. Thanks for sharing
I wouldn’t be surprised if a near-peer could outscale the US with maybe a quarter of the investment since most of that is going straight into the pockets of the arms industry.
Every government is uncomfortable. News stories about “defence” spending are commonplace.
WWIII has already begun. The only questions now are how many will die and who will be the victors.
I would like to be wrong. If the world can be pulled back from the brink of the existing skirmishes, then what’s happening right now won’t get the WWIII label, but we sure have a lot of hard-headed megalomaniacs running world-affecting countries these days, don’t we? That’s never a good sign.
What makes you so sure it’s WWIII scale already?
If the world can be pulled back from the brink of the existing skirmishes, then what’s happening right now won’t get the WWIII label
“Only thing we’ve ever learned from history is that we can’t learn from history”
Either delusional thinking or a serious misunderstanding of historical events
It’s quite simple the US is seen as politically willed at the moment so it’s time to take a bite and see how much they can swallow.
Why is there any mystery here. They said they intend on ending their civil war and have shown no indication whatsoever that such a statement is only rhetorical or posturing. Taiwan has never tried to be independent of China. It still claims sovereignty over all of China.
If the US Confederates had retreated to Cuba and others had intervened on their behalf, while the Confederates still claimed dominion over a part of the USA, you can bet your ass the US would invade Cuba as soon as they had the opportunity. We can all decry the whole thing, but it is their conflict. If anything, we should be evacuating anyone and anything that needs to leave and capitulating without further involvement. Like if your neighbor and their spouse are arguing, stay out of it for the benefit of everyone. This is not some mate getting abused that needs help. This involves two bloody parties where all sides have done monstrous things and that needs to get resolved one way or another. Both can’t claim dominion over all. The past cannot be bowdlerized for convenience or exploitation for profit of western criminal capitalist abuse. No one needs to fight or die, but a resolution must be found.
Edit: Wow Lemmy is remarkably stupid to the point of incompetent ineptitude at basic fundamental history. Like wtf am I doing here in a room with this insane nonsense.
Taiwan has never tried to be independent of China. It still claims sovereignty over all of China.
Do you have a source for that?
This is common knowledge available anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan_(1945–present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War
Those all have sources. There are also lots of reputable YouTubers with relevant academic credentials that have coved this, Asianometry and William C Fox are two that I recall covering the subject. I think Caspian Report did as well at one point in the last few years. This is like ultra basic surface level stuff everyone should know or severely question their sources and echo chambers if they are not made aware of this fundamental information.
Expecting people to wade through 8000 word articles in the hope of finding mention of your claim is why you’re being downvoted.
Imagine someone making the claim, ‘Jesus hated gay people, it’s obvious’ and then when probed for a source, responding, ‘this is common knowledge available anywhere:
https://thekingsbible.com/’Because that’s a history question. “Taiwan” is not a country, it’s a province of the Republic of China (ROC), which was the government of China before the communist revolution. They fled to Taiwan but their constitution etc still define them as the Republic Of China, with territorial claims over all of China
Here is an article specifically on that exact topic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Area
Edit: The main “Taiwan” wikipedia article also has a map that can be selected under the label “Show map of Taiwan (dark green) with ROC Mainland Area and historical claims (light green)”
Many, many countries have ‘historical claims’ that mean nothing in current day geopolitics.
Claiming that ‘Taiwan is not a country’ is enough for me to know that this will not be a fruitful discussion.
Literally the first line of the ‘Taiwan’ Wikipedia article:
“Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia.”
Taiwan is a region of the ROC. The ROC is a country.
It’s complicated.
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia articles I found lack citations, so they probably aren’t a good source. They claim that the ROC (Taiwan) claims all of the mainland.
This reddit thread refers to the ROC constitution and interprets it as:
In the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan area and the Mainland area, the following is stated:
“Taiwan Area” refers to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and any other area under the effective control of the Government.
“Mainland Area” refers to the territory of the Republic of China outside the Taiwan Area.
“People of the Taiwan Area” refers to the people who have household registrations in the Taiwan Area.
“People of the Mainland Area” refers to the people who have household registrations in the Mainland Area.
The implication is that wherever this law applies, is what the ROC government considers to be “territory of the ROC outside of the Taiwan Area”. Currently the application of this law overlaps the entirety of the PRC, minus HK and Macau.
This the fun part. If you look at the ROC constitution, it makes […] mention to Mongolia and Tibet.
I don’t know how much of this applies beyond the KMT.
A 4th-grade history book.
Don’t be shy, drop a link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Area
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
You can check the territorial claims of the Republic of China (“Taiwan”) under the selector “Show map of Taiwan (dark green) with ROC Mainland Area and historical claims (light green)”
The map is not quite up to date as it still shows the ROC as claiming Taiwan, despite formally granting independance in 2002 (source)
Except to actually make that a proper analogy, the confederacy would gave had to take over nearly all of the US, and the union would be in Cuba. In which case, yeah fuck those confederate bitches.
Also at this point it doesn’t matter. Taiwan is more or less internationally recognized as an independent country so they can both sit the fuck down.
I don’t think there’s much of a mystery to solve here. Basically every country or territory along China’s maritime borders is forming or deepening ties with the U.S. military, buying weapons systems, and even building new bases. A full-blown war between nuclear powers is pretty unthinkable but just a blockade would seriously harm China’s economy.
Of course, everyone talks about just wanting to protect shipping lanes and their territorial sovereignty and shit like that. Peace through strength. Maybe that ultimately turns out to be how it goes. But wars have broken out over some pretty dumb shit that escalated.
