Ah, yes, the best way to react to increased authoritarianism in the US is to checks notes begin doing more business with a country that is the final word in authoritarianism.
Not that they wouldn't bomb Taiwan if they thought they could get away with it. The reason they can't, of course, is that doing so carries the risk of starting a thermonuclear war with the United States.
> causing chaos to it's [sic] allies...
Well, there's two ways to think about this.
1) China doesn't really have allies. They've a long history of pissing off their neighborhood extending back centuries.
2) They very much are causing chaos to allies, given that the Vietnamese went so far as to buy American military goods to help defend their portion of the South China Sea, which China sees as theirs.
> Not that they wouldn't bomb Taiwan if they thought they could get away with it.
There is zero evidence of this. The last time China even engaged in a direct military conflict was the 1970s. Where as even before Trump America could have invaded almost any country on the planet. and it wouldnt have been to shocking.
> The ideal success with Taiwan is to convince them with a hearts and minds play.
Which is very hard to do when you're threatening them with force projection.
"Hearts and minds" isn't a thing totalitarian governments understand. You're either in agreement with them, or you're wrong.
The conundrum is, if you don't have the force projection, then you have the possibility that the wise and correct Party isn't all-powerful and all-knowing, because they couldn't convince a relatively tiny island - one closer than Cuba is to the US - to join the mainland.
If wise and correct Party isn't all-powerful and all-knowing, well, then power and knowledge might reside elsewhere that could need consultation every once in a while, and the wise and correct Party isn't wise and correct.
That's inherently fatal to totalitarian systems of government.
You're either being willfully obtuse, have very little knowledge of the relations between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China, or are here to troll.
It's absolutely on the CCP's agenda to bring Taiwan under PRC control, by force if necessary. This has been one of their main objectives since the KMT fled to the island when the CCP captured the mainland. [0] The Strait is arguably one of the hottest geopolitical areas on Earth with major implications for pretty much everyone.
As far as "direct military conflict", depends on your definition of that. If the PLA is having one of its units regularly attack American or Western digital infrastructure, I'd very much consider that to be an attack, and there's plenty of evidence of that. There have also been border skirmishes with India.
1. Illegally occupying Tibet and cleansing the region
2. Occupying and cleansing several regions like Uyghur or Hong Kong
3. Wars with neighbors like India and conflicts with all neighbors except North Korea
4. indirectly arming Russia
5. Taiwan
If China had a fraction of American power, they would be making life miserable for a lot of countries.
It kept him out of office for four years. It could have more impact.
As bad as Trump is (and he's bad) he's still nowhere near as bad as Xi is.
Let's look at the Six Defining Characteristics of Totalitarianism (Friedrich and Brzezinski, 1956):
* An elaborate guiding ideology [typcially focused around patriotism and loyalty to the state above all else]
* A single political party, typically led by a dictator
* Use of instruments of terror such as violence and secret police to control the population
* A government monopoly on weapons
* A government monopoly on means of communication (such as state-controlled media and heavy censorship)
* A state-controlled economy
In none of those categories is the United States as far along as the PRC under Xi. At least one of those categories would require a large amount of bloodshed for the US to reach the level that China is.
The best way to handle it is indeed equidistance between the two other poles, positioning oneself as the weight that could tip dominance either way and having the other two trying to woo you.
Basically Yugoslavia's foreign policy during the Cold War, but on a much bigger scale.
