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If China wants Taiwan it should also reclaim land from Russia, says president
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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I have been wondering since this war started, what's preventing China from just taking ALL of Russia. Like, 2021? That's Russia. 2025? That's China now.
Russia would never threaten China with nukes, because 1) China ALSO has nukes, and 2) China has been the only thing keeping Russia afloat recently.
So what if something like 9,000,000 soldiers all collectively invaded Russia from one central entrypoint as far east as Chinas border is along Russias, thus splitting Russias military in a two way war.
The United States wouldn't get involved because that would mean they're helping Russia. But also, who else WOULD get involved? Putin is lucky that China doesn't have ME as it's head of state. Because from my perspective, it's free real estate that nobody wants to defend, being occupied by a tiger army, and it's land is full of resources that if China were to monopolize, would grant them a grip around the balls of the rest of the world.
But it would have to be a scorched earth kind of invasion. The kind that pisses off basically everyone, because it leaves every single Russian, military, or citizen, dead. They'd have to come in, take everything, and kill everything. Take the land. The only thing they have to make sure of, is that they DON'T fight Ukraine. They tell Ukraine "We won't invade your space, but Russia is ours". And Ukraine would probably take that deal.
But it seems China is very VERY averse to war right now. Which tells me, they aren't ready for a war.
Because the real world is not a Civ game.
Believe it or not, China isn't Russia. I can't believe I'm in the position of defending the PRC, but the PRC doesn't want the international order destroyed by reckless and unrestrained warfare. They just want to replace the West as top dog in that order. They'll bully and bluster, just as the US does when the carrot doesn't work, but, Taiwan aside, they don't have any desire to start an expensive and pointless war.
Right? Why do civilizations fight wars anyway? If not flat out colonialism and dick measuring, then It’s usually for resources, maybe protection for cultural exclaves if it serves the nation’s geopolitical interest.
All that is to say, Russians are not Chinese. And I don’t think many Eastern Russians would welcome the switch. So, China would be instigating a lot of strife for minimal gains.
Taiwan on the other hand, I can at least understand. I don’t agree with the stance, not in the least, primarily because I believe democracy is superior to communism. Nevertheless, if I had my adversaries 100 miles off my border and their existence hampered me economically and militarily, then I absolutely would subjugate them in any way possible.
Because first of all they would then have to care for all of Russia's very nationalistic citizens. Second, why would they do anything while they can just sit and watch Russia piss away their entire economy and military?
Russia is an important geopolitical ally for China. Tension between them is not advantageous at this time.
Also, Americans love dunking on the Russian army, and while it maybe wasn’t as formidable as we thought, it’s still significant. It’s not as if it would be totally free.
Uhh, they're getting dunked on by their own version of Canada.
It would be a wipe, Russia has nowhere near enough people to defend siberia, kthey can't even defend a few hundred miles south of moscow.
So how many times did the US invade another country and won within a three days "special operation" time?
Winning has never been the problem, keeping the peace has been.
But running in and clearing out opposing forces on the field? We're amazing at that.
The only forces Russians are good at beating are civilians when they're driving tanks.
What for? Russia is already drifting into becoming a China's satellite state. Besides, there's another resource-rich, sparsely populated, 99.9% Asian country right by their border, with barely any security and which would've been part of China already if not for some weeb. If they are going for conquest, Mongolia would be the second target right after Taiwan, but attacking it would tip off Russia to go all in on defense.
The problem here is the amount of them and population density. Just one bomb dropped randomly somewhere in China would probably cause more casualties than the entire Chinese nuclear arsenal targeting the most populous Russian cities. And Russia has an order of magnitude more...
Mongolia is a democracy and NATO partner there's a chance that the west would actually care. Mostly though neither China or Russia are even trying to touch it because they prefer having a buffer state in between them that is not aligned to either, but has the diplomatic wherewithal to have good relationships with both.
Also it's a fucking desert plateau. There's a reason there's so few Mongolians. Few things grow there and practically nothing grows well, and there already is quite an issue with overgrazing because animal husbandry is pretty much the only thing you can actually do on the land. And who is to say that copper is going to be cheaper after you conquer the land? It's not like Mongolia would be unwilling to export. Even if you could do it for cheaper, still probably not worth the political headache. And sanctions.
You're right, nobody wants to defend it. There's nothing there worth defending. I mean, there's Vladivostok, but it's not really worth going to war over. They could take a sliver of land at the Russia/NK border so that they could build a port, but I'm sure they have no issue with river traffic as it is, or just trucking into North Korea to use one of their ports. I'm sure China funded their construction anyway.
First of all, if you're being invaded by an army planning to genocide your entire population, then you have no reason not to use every weapon in your arsenal. If the options are A: China kills 100% of your populace or B: Launch nukes and even 1% of your populace survives whatever follows, then B is the most rational choice.
Secondly, there's no reason to assume that states will make rational decisions to begin with. I'd say the current state of affairs in Ukraine is a very good example of that in action. So even if China wasn't planning to genocide all of Russia, even if it was some kind of "benevolent" invasion where they were going to tiptoe around the flower beds, gently pry Putin out of the Kremlin, and basically leave everything the same except that now Russians pay for groceries with renminbi instead of rubles... there's still every reason to imagine that Putin and his top brass would still launch nukes on the mere principle of the thing.
So no, let's not glibly plan for a fast forward on nuclear Armageddon, thank you very much.
The only thing of value in Russian territory is mineral resources, not the territory itself. China has vast, unpopulated territories (check a population density map). If they deem the minerals not worth the conflict, why bother? They can just buy whatever shit they want.
On a less deranged take, there's definitely potential to mend the Sino-Soviet split. Their interests and capabilities dovetail quite a bit, but I suspect unification is wildly impractical for any number of cultural and historic reasons. OTOH, if they presented a Warsaw Pact-style alliance, perhaps using the cudgel of mutually assured economic destruction instead of nuclear destruction, that's a hell of an act for the West to try to follow.
The US would get involved, two advisaries attacking each other would give the US opportunities to leverage influence and destabilize. The dangerous thing is that they have nukes so there is a delicate balance when trying to destabilize while ensuring advance weaponry does not fall into the wrong hands.
I would have much more respect for China if they used that as the bargaining chip to force Puttie to cut the shit and end this thing
Russia has kinda shitty land afaik. Not a ton of resources either, iirc. I believe a decent chunk of it is tagia forests and (soon to be) swampy permafrost zone. Not that much of china's land is great for stuff like farming either. Bragging rights, I guess, but other than the people, I think most land is of little use.