Maybe step one of the protest is to stop buying from China

They're...asking a country about this? What, do they expect China to say "we're preparing to invade Taiwan in 2026"? This is just fishing for bullshit answers so politicians can pretend like they buy it and ignore actually dealing with the military buildup by taking action.

Every government is uncomfortable. News stories about "defence" spending are commonplace.

WWIII has already begun. The only questions now are how many will die and who will be the victors.

I would like to be wrong. If the world can be pulled back from the brink of the existing skirmishes, then what's happening right now won't get the WWIII label, but we sure have a lot of hard-headed megalomaniacs running world-affecting countries these days, don't we? That's never a good sign.

Even without Taiwan. broadly gestures at everything

Russia has proved to be unreliable. USA are proving to be unreliable. Europe is building up its own armies. India is fighting Pakistan. Who knows how big Israel wants to be, they are already attacking neighbours.

No idea what's happening in Africa. I think most of them are still stuck fighting amongst themselves.

Maybe Australia is just asking the question so that they have an excuse to build up as well.

I'll tell you why, they see how close Russia is to being defeated and they're going to move in to take the territories in the East pretty much like Japan did with French Indochina once France was defeated in WW2

Why is there any mystery here. They said they intend on ending their civil war and have shown no indication whatsoever that such a statement is only rhetorical or posturing. Taiwan has never tried to be independent of China. It still claims sovereignty over all of China.

If the US Confederates had retreated to Cuba and others had intervened on their behalf, while the Confederates still claimed dominion over a part of the USA, you can bet your ass the US would invade Cuba as soon as they had the opportunity. We can all decry the whole thing, but it is their conflict. If anything, we should be evacuating anyone and anything that needs to leave and capitulating without further involvement. Like if your neighbor and their spouse are arguing, stay out of it for the benefit of everyone. This is not some mate getting abused that needs help. This involves two bloody parties where all sides have done monstrous things and that needs to get resolved one way or another. Both can't claim dominion over all. The past cannot be bowdlerized for convenience or exploitation for profit of western criminal capitalist abuse. No one needs to fight or die, but a resolution must be found.

Edit: Wow Lemmy is remarkably stupid to the point of incompetent ineptitude at basic fundamental history. Like wtf am I doing here in a room with this insane nonsense.

I don’t think there’s much of a mystery to solve here. Basically every country or territory along China’s maritime borders is forming or deepening ties with the U.S. military, buying weapons systems, and even building new bases. A full-blown war between nuclear powers is pretty unthinkable but just a blockade would seriously harm China’s economy.

Of course, everyone talks about just wanting to protect shipping lanes and their territorial sovereignty and shit like that. Peace through strength. Maybe that ultimately turns out to be how it goes. But wars have broken out over some pretty dumb shit that escalated.

It's quite simple the US is seen as politically willed at the moment so it's time to take a bite and see how much they can swallow.

“what we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and build up in conventional sense, by any country since the end of the Second World War”

WTF? The USA alone outspends most of the world combined in this area but somehow China is the threat? This guy should at least remove the american balls he's gargling before spouting something like that

Australian navy keeps fucking around in the South China, deliberately trying to antagonise China because the US told them to. No Western news coverage of this at all.

The US keeps trying to use the Taiwan situation as a wedge issue, keeping dozens of warships stationed in the area, because they desperately want another proxy war. No Western news coverage of this.

China does anything at all in response to all this deliberate antagonisation, even if it's something as minor as, telling an Australian ship to go away, or moving PLA troops around in response to the Americans. Western news media makes a huge amount of noise about how China is doing all these for no reason and in response to nothing, and how they must be stopped with a military intervention.