China’s overall end-goal is specifically to annex Taiwan. Taiwanese people do not want this.

China’s overall end goal is to build a prosperous nation, safe from future re-colonization.

Taiwanese people are happy to trade with, travel between, and live amicable with their Chinese peers. And one day, their position on annexation may change. That’s the project Beijing leadership is working towards.

Americans are trying to turn Taiwan into a forward operation base for regime change. And that’s what leads to these endless naval patrol pissing contests and US fear mongering campaigns aimed at Taiwanese expats.

What data are you referring to?

Here’s an excellent write-up

in Taiwan, the average starting salary for a university graduate is around 33,713 New Taiwan dollars (about US$1,100), and even a department manager at a major corporation earns only about US$2,100.

Meanwhile, housing prices in Taipei are comparable to those in Seoul—and in some areas, they even surpass Seocho, the most expensive district in the Korean capital. Until recently, people could endure thanks to relatively low living costs. But after COVID-19, things changed: not only was home ownership already out of reach, but inflation has driven everyday expenses sharply higher.

Nothing illustrates the poverty of Taiwan’s youth more clearly than the phenomenon of the taofang. A taofang is essentially an apartment divided into multiple tiny units, often with illegal extensions that stick out like container boxes to maximize floor space. These cramped rooms, barely large enough to lie down in, rent for $290 to $360 a month in Taipei.

If you know Taiwanese Americans, this isn’t a secret. Nobody wants to go back to the island and earn a tiny fraction of their American salaries under a ruinously expensive living standard.

You’ll find more US naval drills around Okinawa, Japan and The Philippines, far from any US shoreline.

China should definitely subjugate Taiwan

Only you guys seem to think this.

You’re obsessed with global conquest and you think you’re in a race with China to do it.

who have benefitted from trillions of dollars of trade from the US.

Have they? Why is Taiwanese standard of living so low?

I must be going colorblind because those ships are flying a very red American flag…

You’re spitting distance from the coast of Fujain. I gotta wonder why you’d expect to see an American warship on the Chinese coastline.

Unless…

Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam (CG 54) and USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) are conducting a routine Taiwan Strait transit August 28 (local time) through waters where high seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.

Crazy how it’s international waters when an American warship is in them.

I really doubt that any Chinese civilian on Chinese soil is going to get so much as a dirty look from any US armed forces…

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

Total gasbag if you ask me

The date is arbitrary but the event isn’t.

It’s a bit off the mark of the Winter Solstice, which is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.

So I wouldn’t even call it arbitrary. It’s highly relevant to a person on Earth, waiting for the day when nights start growing shorter and we can look forward to a spring harvest season.

I might argue that the problem with the New Year is that we don’t also celebrate the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year) and the two Equinoxes.

Liberals will be in the middle of a bombing run on Venezuela and stop to complain about Chinese aggression

Wouldn’t be the first time

Equality is easy to accomplish. It’s the default state of nature. You have to work overtime to discriminate.

attempt define feminism clearly

You’ll want to read Panel 2

Sadly those numbers aren’t that unbelievable

They’re absurdly unbelievable.

But for the “everyone is stupid except me” crowd, they provide a certain confirmation bias.

none of them should have more than a few percent in them

Tesla makes up 2.3% of the S&P 500 and 4.5% of NASDAQ. Then you have business downstream of Tesla - Luminar Technologies sells the majority of it’s LIDAR systems to Tesla, Hertz’s EV fleet is plurality Tesla, Panasonic co-owns Gigafactory 1.

I was more speaking of the lenders who enable Musk’s bullshit like buying Twitter or fucking around with our elections.

They do it so they can be first in the door for future IPOs. JP Morgan has been a close ally of Musk’s for decades. And he’s repaid them with numerous opportunities to resell their debt. The Twitter loan was a small price to pay by comparison.

I’ve seen limited evidence to suggest the audience is material. A lot of these numbers are farmed for engagement and to inflate ad revenue. A lot are just channels that auto play when people aren’t paying attention.

There’s definitely an audience of little kids who are just strapped to pads with nothing better to do. But it can’t be overstated how fudged these audience numbers can get.

YouTube claims their Shorts channel gets 200 billion views per day. There’s only 5 billion Internet users on Earth.

😏

Guy who has never seen a world map

Except that was a peaceful process, not an invasion/annexation

The only invasion I’m seeing is US Navy vessels encircling the island and threatening their economy.

they hold a gun to the head of pretty much all of the most advanced chip fabrication in the world

That’s been the American line for going on ten years. But the real gun has always been the Pacific Fleet, threatening to repeat the crimes of Vietnam on Chinese civilians, much like they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Venezuela and Nigeria.

Scammers gonna scam

Most Bond villains are just eccentric billionaires using Sci-Fi technologies to become trillionaires through commodity speculation.

That’s what Jaime Diamon and Warren Buffett have been doing for the last fifty years.

If you can’t read that as “US are bad guys” that’s on you, brother

The long game of Beijing politics is to just be nice to Taiwan while Americans grow increasingly unhinged.