China sent dozens of warplanes towards Taiwan, said the island’s defense ministry on Saturday.
The Chinese military planes entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone days before Taiwan is set to conduct anti-invasion military exercises.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent a forceful flight of 37 aircrafts and seven navy vessels between Friday and Saturday, the Taiwanese defense ministry said in a statement.
Among these were J-10 and J-16 fighter jets as well as H-6 bombers.
The Taiwan defense ministry detected that 22 of these warplanes had entered the island’s air defense identification zone and had crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait which is an unofficial boundary between China and Taiwan.
Taiwan is due to hold the annual Han Kaung exercise next week, during which the country will conduct military exercises aimed at defending itself against a possible invasion. A deepening divide
Deep divisions between China and Taiwan date back to the civil war in 1949 which ended with the ruling Communist Party taking control of the mainland.
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of mainland territory.
In recent years, China has shown its displeasure at several political activities in Taiwan by sending military planes towards the island.
Beijing stepped up its efforts to isolate Taiwan after former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
In April, in response to a meeting between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the PLA held large-scale military drills around the island’s sea and air.
Given focused effort? Other nations could “catch up” in a couple years, at the fastest. People very much underestimate just how hard it is to build fabs that can operate at the scale (both volume and tiny ass processes) Taiwan does as well as just how many disciplines need to be at the top of their game. This isn’t a case where you need to have one or two experts and the rest follow. This is a case where you need experts in a ridiculous number of disciplines.
Focused effort over time is not something governments do well. It just takes a couple politicians to question “why are we wasting money on this?” or to not play ball when the corporate entities try to play them and they are set back… possibly forever.
And that all assumes Taiwan is not making improvements.
A common metaphor is “rebuilding a plane in flight”. That is what we are doing when we are trying to catch our fabs up to Taiwan. Except they are ALSO rebuilding their planes at the same time and are a lot smarter and more experienced at doing so.
Which is the other reason why the “strategic efforts” are more or less bound to fail. Because “We need to build up infrastructure so that we only get set back a decade as opposed to a hundred years” is REALLY hard to sell. Whereas “We want to be the new big dogs” is what gets funding and bills passed… and becomes the kind of failure that youtubers vlog about for decades.
Don’t expect anything to change for at least a decade.
It’s not like the US industry has no experience with this, there is a long history doing it and expertise. Where do you think TSMC got the ball from? I don’t know exactly how many cycles ago Intel stopped. It’s just cheaper and maybe slightly better to get TSMC at the moment. So it’s not like the US is starting from scratch.
And this will be private, govt will seed it a bit. Companies see their own risk and want to mitigate it.
TSMC last I heard is setting up a plant in the us.
When I say momentary I’m talking 5-10 years, that’s why I said in the grand scheme of things. Long time horizon if you prefer. Taiwan will not have an unceasing advantage for decades to come.
Who cares? The industry was killed. Everyone involved in it in the US moved on to other projects. Even if you could round them all up and they remembered perfectly they are all a decade behind the ball.