China’s economy is slowing down long-term. This means that there is likely no longer sufficient constant increase in standards of living to keep the populace happy with the Party. A natural alternative for authoritarian regimes to keep their people in check is to nurture strong nationalism. This nationalism eventually tends to eat its own creators by pushing the leaders to declare war.
Not coincidentally:<p>TSMC in talks with suppliers over first European plant: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-talks-with-suppliers-over-first-european-plant-ft-2022-12-23/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-talks-with-suppliers...</a><p>TSMC ups its Arizona chipmaking investment to $40 billion: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/business/tsmc-arizona-investment/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/business/tsmc-arizona-investm...</a>
China is thrashing while the rest of East Asia is starting to feel confident<p>Look at Japanese Bonds, Look at Taiwanese resolve, look at Korean growth - Chinese citizens are starting to recognize that the only thing the CCP has left is fear and domination and they aren't going to support it anymore<p>So the CCP are going to freak out and start acting crazy, in a (hopefully) futile attempt to get people to react so they can mobilize domestically around national pride.<p>I trust that the Taiwanese people have the resolve, and the US has the resolve to support them in their resistance to these tantrums without overreacting.
How can you cite provocation to hold a drill, unless the "drill" is an attempt at intimidation? Drills are done by the military, in secret, to prepare for war, not blasted with a PR pitch to a sympathetic news organization willing to repeat the demands of terrorists and totalitarians.<p>The PRC's aggressive disregard for the exclusive economic zones of it's neighbors, paired with backing Russia's travesties in the Ukraine have has erased any goodwill that their refusal to participate in the Iraq War may have generated over ten years ago. It is now utterly transparent that their goal is to greedily gobble up the foundries of those who invent their own technology rather than steal it and invest those R&D savings in weapons they can then leverage to further coerce the smaller and more vulnerable.
China's current state<p>- Complete shutdown of all businesses not related to pharmacy or hospital, probably until April 2023. This includes factories. Check out on the ground videos by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@xiaorenwu/videos">https://www.youtube.com/@xiaorenwu/videos</a>, you will see completely empty malls, subways, and streets. Not only that, you will note all the anger from normal citizens, which is only really publicly visible this year. EDIT: the shutdown is either mandated by city, or voluntarily by the merchant, since nobody is traveling out to shop in fear of contracting covid.<p>- Few hundred thousand small and mid size business closures/bankruptcies. China does not provide small business relief like US did, so these closures are permanent.<p>- 37 million covid infections per day <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-est...</a>, millions of death per day that overwhelms the morgue. Keep in mind their vaccine is ineffective, and re-infection likely to last throughout 2023<p>- Market laggards like Apple finally moving out of China, and the rest of manufacturing laggards to follow<p>- Multinational consumer product companies moving out of China or reducing footprint<p>- Real estate collapse still unresolved<p>- Demographics collapse still unresolved<p>- Total debt still unresolved<p>- Closer alliance with Russia, and alienation from democratic countries. QUAD, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Europe all are aligning against China and Russia now.<p>So China's only card it can play is, being as sick as it is for at least a year more, is to be a paper tiger. and threatens with empty promise.
Worth noting that these drills aren't really newsworthy. They occur in international waters, have been ongoing since 2019, and are smaller than the drills the US has conducted in the South China Sea.