Ask Lemmy

The lithography machines could easily be reverse engineered.... Mechanically..... Only to find out just how complex the rest of the system is just to get it to even work making crap level chips much less anything respectable near the 3nm level. That would be hilarious. Like when the US left a bunch of helicopters and one of the revel factions got a hold of them...yey! We got the helicopters! Only to find out the helicopters aren't the thing that holds power. Barking up the wrong tree.

Stopping american influence

The gamble just doesn’t really seem worth it.

China is not invading Taiwan. However if it comes to a war with the US, then it really has to take out Taiwan. It is just too close to the mainland, allowing for easy bombing and missile attacks, while als being able to cut off shipping from the mainland. Obviously the US likes that a lot, as it makes war against the US much more costly for China.

At the same time leaders often make horrible decisions. Just look at the US invading Iraq and Afghanistan or Russia invading Ukraine. Clearly not good wars for the countries invading, but they still did it.

china is a bit like Yugoslavia before the end: lots of different ethnicities being forced to be together. letting a country made up of Chinese people exist in parallel to china keeps a flame of hope alight for those 51 non-Han Chinese ethnicities that were forced to be part of continental china. and China has struggled immensely with multitudes of local kingdoms and warlords throughout its history so it is afraid as its people are very aware of this past through historical dramas

Even if taiwans technology manufacturing gets destroyed in the invasion, it's still major part of western world's component infrastructure. They can also just rebuild. China gaining control over that or even just denying it to west would make china internationally more powerful no matter how it goes.

Most likely that isnt the only reason they want taiwan, but i dont believe it isnt one of them.

lemmitors: They hate Taiwan for their freedom!

Extreme disdain for democracy. Some psychopaths want to bring us back before the age of enlightement, while using enlightement or (especially in case of China) post-enlightement ideas to do so, because we citizens are all like badly behaving 12 year olds, who need 24 hour supervision on every day on the week, every month of the year, or we might "go insane" from doing something a psychopathic madman does not want us.

it's like Spain wanting Catalonia to be under control. Why would Spain want to lose control of a part of their own country?

Same thing they gained from invading Hong Kong, they think it belongs to them.

Or as one of my old friends told me while playing Final Fantasy 12; the only legitimate reason to wage war against another country - land.

Hong Kong is already part of the Chinese mainland and was already kinda part of China, but Taiwan is a geographically strategic location that puts both Koreas, the Philippines, & Japan in a tougher position. Even without war it would make trade and travel in the Pacific much harder.

Lots of good points, but one aspect that people haven't mentioned yet is that Taiwan is part of the "first island chain"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy

If the PRC conquers Taiwan, then it makes it much harder for the west to blockade the PRC in future conflicts.

Though technically, it is much more important to control the strait of Malacca than Taiwan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma

You are approaching this from the perspective of a rational peaceful person from the west, where usually the economy is number one in everything.

Xi has achieved unrivaled rule over the party. He has successfully established a police state that ensures that any domestic dissent is immediately crushed with brutal efficiency. He has subjugated the provinces that dared to think about self rule and cultural differences, and is in the process of ethnic cleansing without any significant opposition or consequences. He has gained colonial influence all over Africa through economic means. He has taken over Hong Kong. He has significantly modernized and expanded the military, including nuclear weapons. He had made China into a global economic superpower, which other countries, including rivals, depend on for a significant amount of manufactured goods and resources.

So what is left for him? Surely he is not a man who can be content with what he has.

The obvious next step is to make China into a military superpower. For that you need to exert power abroad. What better place to begin with than that small island just off your coast that has been a challenge to Chinese supremacy for decades?

Of course, Taiwan is kind of protected by the US, the dominant superpower of the time. But they are struggling, looking weak. If China manages to take Taiwan, they will not only have removed that thorn in their side, they will also have punched the biggest, meanest kid on the block on the nose and gotten away with it.

Taiwan is a fantastic launching point for an invasion of China and Taiwan has decent relations with the US and other capitalist states who have an interest in opposing China. Yk how people say Israel is an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle east? Taiwan could be like that for China if the western powers decided to use it as such. There is already a US military base there. Imagine how the US would react if Cuba had a Chinese military base? This is the main material reason.

Chip manufacturing could also play a role but it is a minor one compared to this.

What does China achieve

The typical bully's satisfaction.