Well it was mostly meant as a joke. But here are my probabilities. - China occupies Taiwan 90% - this is clearly a mid term goal of the current Chinese government. - The USA defend Taiwan 30% (maybe 50% if the invasion happens in the near future). The USA may or may not hold their defense agreement—I think the later the invasion happens, the more likely it is that the USA just let Taiwan be invaded.
The war could be a quick win for China (they have home advantage). If it keep going for a few years, I still think China will win (the coronavirus crisis is strong evidence that western democracies in general would not be able to adapt quickly to an existential crisis). But a long wars would mean heavy destruction of infrastructure, and would surely increase dramatically the chances of a nuclear war. I’d say something like 30% chances of a nuclear war, conditional on a drawn out war between the two superpower ?
Does the chinese government have a 90% success record at achieving their mid term goals? Do you have a 100% success record at judging what the chinese government thinks is a mid-term goal?
Neither of those seem to me like the right questions to be asking (though for what it’s worth the answer to the first question has been pretty clearly “yes” if by “Chinese government” we’re referring specifically to post-2001 China).
Having said that, I don’t think outside-viewing these scenarios using coarse-grained reference classes like “the set of mid-term goals China has set for itself in the past” leads to anything useful. Well-functioning countries in general (and China in particular) tend to set goals for themselves they view as achievable, so if they’re well-calibrated it’s necessarily the case that they’ll end up achieving (a large proportion of) the goals they set for themselves. This being the case, you don’t learn much from finding out China manages to consistently meet its own goals, other than that they’ve historically done a pretty decent job at assessing their own capabilities. Nor does this allow you to draw conclusions about a specific goal they have, which may be easier or more difficult to achieve than their average goal.
In the case of Taiwan: by default, China is capable of taking Taiwan by force. What I mean by this is that China’s maritime capabilities well exceed Taiwan’s defensive capacity, such that Taiwan’s continued sovereignty in the face of a Chinese invasion is entirely reliant on the threat of external intervention (principally from the United States, but also by allies in the region). Absent that threat, China could invade Taiwan tomorrow and have a roughly ~100% chance of taking the island. Even if allies get involved, there’s a non-negligible probability China wins anyway, and the trend going forward only favors China even more.
Of course, that doesn’t mean China will invade Taiwan in the near future. As long as its victory isn’t assured, it stands to lose substantially more than from a failed invasion than it stands to gain from a successful one. At least for the near future, so long as the United States doesn’t send a clear signal about whether it will defend Taiwan, I expect China to mostly play it safe. But there’s definitely a growing confidence within China that they’ll retake Taiwan eventually, so the prospect of an invasion is almost certainly on the horizon unless current trends w.r.t. the respective strengths of the U.S. and Chinese militaries reverse for some reason. That’s not out of the question (the future is unpredictable), but there’s also no particular reason to expect said trends to reverse, so assuming they don’t, China will almost certainly try to occupy Taiwan at some point, regardless of what stance the U.S. takes on the issue.
(Separately, there’s the question of whether the U.S. will take a positive stance; I’m not optimistic that it will, given its historical reluctance to do so, as well as the fact that all of the risks and incentives responsible for said reluctance will likely only increase as time goes on.)
Well it was mostly meant as a joke. But here are my probabilities.
- China occupies Taiwan 90% - this is clearly a mid term goal of the current Chinese government.
- The USA defend Taiwan 30% (maybe 50% if the invasion happens in the near future). The USA may or may not hold their defense agreement—I think the later the invasion happens, the more likely it is that the USA just let Taiwan be invaded.
The war could be a quick win for China (they have home advantage). If it keep going for a few years, I still think China will win (the coronavirus crisis is strong evidence that western democracies in general would not be able to adapt quickly to an existential crisis). But a long wars would mean heavy destruction of infrastructure, and would surely increase dramatically the chances of a nuclear war.
I’d say something like 30% chances of a nuclear war, conditional on a drawn out war between the two superpower ?
Does the chinese government have a 90% success record at achieving their mid term goals? Do you have a 100% success record at judging what the chinese government thinks is a mid-term goal?
Neither of those seem to me like the right questions to be asking (though for what it’s worth the answer to the first question has been pretty clearly “yes” if by “Chinese government” we’re referring specifically to post-2001 China).
Having said that, I don’t think outside-viewing these scenarios using coarse-grained reference classes like “the set of mid-term goals China has set for itself in the past” leads to anything useful. Well-functioning countries in general (and China in particular) tend to set goals for themselves they view as achievable, so if they’re well-calibrated it’s necessarily the case that they’ll end up achieving (a large proportion of) the goals they set for themselves. This being the case, you don’t learn much from finding out China manages to consistently meet its own goals, other than that they’ve historically done a pretty decent job at assessing their own capabilities. Nor does this allow you to draw conclusions about a specific goal they have, which may be easier or more difficult to achieve than their average goal.
In the case of Taiwan: by default, China is capable of taking Taiwan by force. What I mean by this is that China’s maritime capabilities well exceed Taiwan’s defensive capacity, such that Taiwan’s continued sovereignty in the face of a Chinese invasion is entirely reliant on the threat of external intervention (principally from the United States, but also by allies in the region). Absent that threat, China could invade Taiwan tomorrow and have a roughly ~100% chance of taking the island. Even if allies get involved, there’s a non-negligible probability China wins anyway, and the trend going forward only favors China even more.
Of course, that doesn’t mean China will invade Taiwan in the near future. As long as its victory isn’t assured, it stands to lose substantially more than from a failed invasion than it stands to gain from a successful one. At least for the near future, so long as the United States doesn’t send a clear signal about whether it will defend Taiwan, I expect China to mostly play it safe. But there’s definitely a growing confidence within China that they’ll retake Taiwan eventually, so the prospect of an invasion is almost certainly on the horizon unless current trends w.r.t. the respective strengths of the U.S. and Chinese militaries reverse for some reason. That’s not out of the question (the future is unpredictable), but there’s also no particular reason to expect said trends to reverse, so assuming they don’t, China will almost certainly try to occupy Taiwan at some point, regardless of what stance the U.S. takes on the issue.
(Separately, there’s the question of whether the U.S. will take a positive stance; I’m not optimistic that it will, given its historical reluctance to do so, as well as the fact that all of the risks and incentives responsible for said reluctance will likely only increase as time goes on.)