Chinese “D-Day style” barges have been spotted practising what appear to be amphibious landings in the South China Sea.

  • DragonTypeWyvern
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    17 hours ago

    No one spends trillions to build a fleet they don’t intend to use.

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    Good luck Taiwan! There won’t be any US support for you unfortunately

    • petersr@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      If not, then wave buy buy to pretty much all modern computer chips for years to come. Devastating global supply chain disruptions.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      18 hours ago

      ✨that was one of the points of the international foreign influence campaign to disrupt our elections✨

  • lennee@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    China should just accept taiwan sovereignty and strengthen economic and political ties with Europe. Doing nothing and winning has been working so well.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      17 hours ago

      Taiwan was never unified with mainland China to begin with, anyway. They have no claim over it. Not that that stops the CCP from claiming everything in the Pacific.

      • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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        50 minutes ago

        Eh, precedent is severely overrated. China doesn’t have any right to Taiwan because all people have a right to self determination. China invading Taiwan would be just as terrible as Spain forcing Catalonia to remain, or the US using violence to keep California from seceding.

        • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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          49 minutes ago

          Exactly. If California voted to leace the US tomorrow then they would have every right to be free. Same for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Catalonia, and Südtirol.

    • truthfultemporarily@feddit.org
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      18 hours ago

      Its a bit more complicated, basically the Chinese civil war was interrupted by the second world war and resumed afterwards. One side was the communists and the other side the republic of China. This war was never resolved, the ROC government fled to Taiwan and the communists took over the mainland, declaring the PRC. Until 1991 both the ROC and the PRC claimed to be the sole legitimate representatives of China. Meaning all of China, mainland and Taiwan. Until 1971 Chinas representative in the UN was from the ROC.

      So its a bit like the American civil war never ended, and the Confederate government just fled to Florida. From the viewpoint of China Taiwan has been occupied Chinese land since 1949.

      • Drusas@fedia.io
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        17 hours ago

        It’s more like if the American Civil War never ended and the union government fled to Puerto Rico.

          • Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca
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            5 hours ago

            Actually I’m fairly certain the other person had it right. Puerto Rico is essentially occupied and has its own native people (although even that has been replaced technically) similar to Taiwan. Taiwan is not core Chinese, it’s technically core Austronesian.

            • truthfultemporarily@feddit.org
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              5 hours ago

              It depends on the perspective. People in the US don’t really care (sorry) about Puerto Rico the same way they care about Florida. They don’t perceive it as a core part of themselves.

              But to understand other cultures reasoning, one has to see things from their perspective.

              • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
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                4 hours ago

                Puerto Rico is an island

                Taiwan is an island

                Why are you so obsessed with making an anology with Florida?

                You know what it would be like they fled to glorious Cuba. Cuba 🇨🇺 is exactly like Florida and I will not be explaining why.

      • lennee@lemm.ee
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        18 hours ago

        Yes. But now there is gonna be a big butt (hehe) coming. Taking Taiwan would be immensely damaging to chinas reputation internationally and I do not believe in the whole blood and soil thing so if the taiwanese want to be independent I support them. So while you are right and historically there is much more to it I believe it would be very beneficial for china to just roll with it and use a western backed taiwan and hong kong to their advantage. We are all seeing how damaging similar rhetoric is to the russian people and even the americans right now. If any country takes any land by force it wont have friends on the international stage and reliable trading partners which china massively profits from.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          While this may have been true decades ago. It really isn’t anymore.

          Israel is doing very well on the world stage, given it’s destruction of Gaza…

          Russia’s installation of a puppet leader in the US could turn its outlook around in the next three or four years.

          I have no doubt that China is looking at its own success with destroying the autonomy of Hong Kong and thinking the time is right to take over Taiwan…

          • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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            21 minutes ago

            People hate Israel. They see Israel as being one of the greatest evils of our time.

            People also hate Russia for invading Ukraine.

            If China invades Taiwan then they will lose all the goodwill they have worked so hard to build over the last 20 years.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          That would be the smart thing to do, sure. The problem is that narcissists and megalomaniacs are reckless and dangerous.

  • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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    16 hours ago

    I’m not NCD certified but those aren’t warships. The big one in the back has seven stacks?! Easy to defeat with even WWII munitions.

    China’s version could also be vulnerable to high winds and seas and – in the case of an invasion of Taiwan – an easy target to destroy, according to Timothy R. Heath, a senior international defence researcher at RAND.

    “The slow moving barges are easily targeted so they are unlikely to survive in the middle of a battle on the beaches,” he told The Telegraph.

    He added: “The PLA has many better suited military-grade amphibious assault ships that could carry out similar tasks of unloading armoured vehicles.”

    Mr Heath argued the barges are more likely to be used to deliver humanitarian supplies to disaster-struck regions with poor port infrastructure.

    So, either humanitarian or long-term occupation supplies. No one is going to put an invasion force on ships with fucking smokestacks. Could be prototypes rigged to existing boats though.