palal

Look at when China-Taiwan relations deteriorated. Relations were improving at record pace under the KMT in the 2008-2016 period. The CPC had basically recognized the de facto independence of Taiwan, even having Xi Jinping meet the KMT Chairman in 2015.

That rapidly deteriorated with the election of the DPP in 2016, who immediately took an extremely hawkish view on China, invited the USN to cross through the Taiwan Strait in a FONOPS (which, prior to this, had been established as territorial waters under the status quo), started paying US politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak in Taiwan, coincidentally started seeing more aid from the US, forced TSMC to expand their US footprint (with many complaints from TSMC), and followed the US in placing export controls to China. Years of progress under the KMT unraveled.

You have to understand the context here: under the KMT, it's agreed that the two parties will disagree on who "rules" the territories of China. It's also implicitly established that neither party will seek to relinquish their claim on the other's territories. For both the CPC and the KMT, this is a matter of ideology and policy. Knowing that this ideological block isn't going anywhere, CPC-KMT discussions led to the conclusion that, fine, we won't agree, but we also won't do anything about it. Neither military intruded over the status quo median line, neither military provoked the other with missiles or fighters or whatnot, and it was established that the issue was one of minimal importance compared to economic development and peaceful codevelopment. China knows that taking Taiwan is basically impossible, and Taiwan has no aspirations to retake China.

In comes the DPP, arms swinging, with support from the US, and says that the KMT is clearly siding with the CPC on this issue and is clearly going to seek reunification with the CPC. Reunification is against KMT policy for obvious ideological reasons, but alas. So, the DPP comes in, saying they want de jure independence and to align with the US, fuck China, Taiwanese people aren't Chinese, etc. etc. Obviously, China isn't too happy about this, but things proceed as usual.

Taiwan then declares that the Taiwan Strait is international waters (since, per DPP policy, Taiwan is not China and thus the Taiwan Strait doesn't classify as territorial waters), that they want more weapons from the US, and that they don't want to trade with China. China is unhappy about this, but it exposes a key vulnerability in the concept of international waters: there's nothing stopping China from flying in international waters. So, with the justification of the US FONOPS (i.e. sailing an armed US warship) through the Strait, China starts flying sorties past the median line (which, as established, is now international airspace). China also starts shooting missiles from international airspace crossing international airspace into international airspace, using US FONOPS as justification for this being perfectly reasonable. That's how we ended up here. I'm strongly opposed to the DPP, not strongly opposed to Taiwan. I see the DPP as being intentionally provocative and throwing away a massive economic boon (trade with China) in exchange for the DPP's own ideological goals. It's coming at the cost of opportunities in Taiwan, it's destabilizing the region, and it's pushing Taiwan into the same unstable flip-flopping political situation as the US.

Based on other headlines, this should read "India says Israeli PM should be killed without trial for war crimes in Gaza"

China isn't held back by personnel. Intuitively, this makes sense even if you subscribe to the Western idea that Chinese people can only copy things: Taiwanese people can easily work in China because of trade/border agreements, China isn't a poor country, and TSMC employs a massive number of highly experienced engineers. The Taiwan/China culture war is really a Western construct and many TSMC engineers are happy to take jobs in China. SMIC has already shown 7nm DUV capability (comparable to state-of-the-art by Intel).

The only thing holding back Chinese semiconductor capability in terms of hardware is the lack of EUV machines, which are only made by ASML. There are rumours spinning around in Chinese circles that Huawei has an EUV prototype in the debugging stage with a tentative release target of 2025.

If anything, China is far more constrained in terms of software (in a market dominated by Cadence and Synopsys), but this is much more easily circumventable with enough resources. The only reason Cadence and Synopsys haven't had much competition is because it's really expensive to develop and doesn't have that much competitive edge, but that equation changes for China given how happy the US is to slap export restrictions everywhere.

Security guards, the mandatory police officer guy, and the guns that get snuggled in.

Average America isn't your big coastal elite city.

Took them long enough.

Tell me more about this "free speech" you have in the UK...

Al-Shifa lost power, what, 5 days ago? Prior to that, the MRI machine would presumably have been on. Anyone with ANY experience in a hospital should know that MRI machines and metals (like guns, ammunition) REALLY don't mix.

Iran, the same group who's been loudly shouting for weeks that they didn't know and won't provide any support?

That Iran?

According to Fiona Hill:

“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement” by last April. That outline would have seen Russia withdraw to its pre–February 24 lines.

Calling the party that literally fought against the CPC a CPC shill is something new, though. Saying that one group of people deserves self determination while another group doesn't is also... New.