Have you tried living with the US?
The US doesn't even hide it. They tear apart Canadian industries (see: Bombardier), they rip up trade agreements (see: NAFTA), they fund right-wing extremists in Canada (see: Freedom convoy), they dump millions of dollars into "independent Canadian think tanks" (see: MLI and the Fraser Institute), they bribe Canadian officials with cushy jobs after public service (see: Stephen Harper and the IDU), and they're overall a massive contributor to the decline of Canada as an independent nation with independent policy. Oh, and they constantly push for free trade that seeks to displace Canadian corporations with American ones so that they can offshore all the profits.
The DPP has literally already asserted this claim. You cannot allow the US to conduct FONOPS through the Taiwan Strait without declaring independence because under UNCLOS, if Taiwan was Chinese then the Taiwan Strait would be territorial waters.
Where's the invasion?
KMT policy is literally that they are represent the government of all of the Chinese territories. Come on, man.
Have you... Read the official KMT policy?
Taiwan is not the DPP and the DPP is not Taiwan. The fact that everyone in the West seems to think this is the case is a product of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in "speaker fees" to US politicians and influential people visiting Taiwan.
It's important to remember that in the US, political aims are achieved by funding think tanks and political parties and "independent protests" rather than on funding the government at large. So, I'm attributing the actions of the decision makers in the US (Republican officials, key Republican decision makers) to American policy at large. After all, in a two-party system, the Republicans will eventually regain power and they will follow the policy of these key decision makers. It's rather odd that the decision makers in American politics aren't government officials, but I guess that's the wonders of a two-party democracy. You can say that Koch (for example) isn't an American government official, but then I'd ask you what defines a government official if not a high degree of influence over government policy.
On the Freedom Convoy protest bullshit:
How American right-wing funding for Canadian trucker protests could sway U.S. politics
U.S. Republicans vow to probe GoFundMe decision halting Canada trucker donations
On funding for Canadian "independent think tanks"
How a conservative US network undermined Indigenous energy rights in Canada
U.S. Republican Koch oil billionaires help fund the Fraser Institute. Why the Fraser Institute?
On direct funding to politicians ("bribes" or what have you)
The US funds the International Democrat Union, who directly gave Stephen Harper a cushy job after he was ousted as PM in 2015.
On blatant economic favoritism by the DOJ to crush Canadian businesses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Boeing
Maybe the Democrats are better, but from what I've seen all they do is not actively make things substantially worse.
I'm saying that the DPP is primarily responsible for destabilizing cross-Strait relations. I'm really not sure why you're arguing with this: it's the same reasoning used to justify the attempts to overthrow Castro in Cuba as well as the actual coups of multiple South American countries. They became ideologically unaligned with a global superpower and had to go. Geopolitics has not tangibly changed since then, except for China supplanting the ex-USSR as the "big bad" in the West.
The fact that there's been no KMT coup, despite KMT officials basically controlling the entire military, is a testament to the restraint of all parties.
The US is literally funding the right-wing party in Canada to be more conservative, more extreme, less secular, and more friendly to US interests.
We can't do ANYTHING about it. We're already America's removed.
I mean, I agree in theory but in practice that's not how the world works. We don't live in an ideal world.
The US would never allow Canada to align with Russia against the US. Russia would never allow Ukraine to align with the US against Russia. China would never allow Taiwan to align with the US against China.
Same shit, different shitter.
The US gets to dictate what Canada does, though. We've had to put up with American bullshit for decades.
2008-2016.
Guess who was in power in 2005? That's right, the DPP.
The US is constrained by capitalism and globalization... And years of mismanagement at Intel under Krzanich... and the lack of profitability of Global Foundries.
Intel only recently adopted a foundry model: previously, their fabs were only used to manufacture Intel chips... I'm sure you can imagine some of the issues there, but it helps that Intel is a massive company. Intel really bit off more than they could chew with 10nm and started to lag behind.
GloFo used to be AMD (until it was spun off for profit because AMD needed money... GloFo gave up on 7nm because it was seen as too expensive.
As for Samsung? Nobody really knows why Samsung's technology sucks, but it sucks. Something wrong with their FinFET process in general I guess.
TSMC isn't a decade ahead. They're maybe 5 years ahead of SMIC and maybe 2 years ahead of Intel/Samsung. They're only so far ahead of SMIC because SMIC isn't allowed to import EUV machines from ASML since the US decided that China was getting too close to toppling American dominance in semiconductors and AI.
The main thing limiting SMIC is the lack of EUV machines, but Huawei is expected to pop one out soon based on the rumours being spread on Chinese forums. That's the story. TSMC doesn't have some magic sauce, they have scale, billions of dollars in government support, and a slight technological edge. If anything, TSMC's magic sauce is that the most desirable job in STEM in Taiwan is to become an engineer at TSMC: they attract top talent in a way that Intel doesn't.
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.
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.
It's tankie to... Want to avoid war? Damn.
Anyone seriously contemplating whether China would invade Taiwan needs to look at a map of Taiwan. There is no feasible invasion of Taiwan without millions of casualties: it would be a fight infinitely worse than Vietnam. Taiwan is the perfect fortress, with urban combat surrounded by densely-forested mountains and decades of buildup explicitly designed by the KMT to block a Chinese invasion. It's also an island separated by more than a hundred kilometers of open ocean. The KMT understands this, as does the CPC.
The only practical military option available to the CPC is a naval blockade like the US did to Cuba, but the KMT was actively trying to stimulate trade with China in the 2008-2016 period to make a blockade economically infeasible. Today, China imports more goods from Taiwan than from any other country in the world.
All this talk of war is fearmongering and posturing to justify increased defense spending at the cost of a lasting and sustainable peace.
Russia's red lines were primarily "no foreign intervention into Ukraine." Considering that the US 4th Psychological Operations Group literally posted a video claiming that they organized and supported and "pulled the strings of" Euromaidan...
Considering Russia's red lines were made very clear (and were crossed), I'm not sure why anyone is surprised.
China's red lines were also very clear, but then Pelosi decided to stomp right over them anyway.
It's rather concerning how today we're more concerned about protecting ideology than we are about maintaining world peace.
Did anyone say that?
The relationship between the CPC and the KMT was, if not warm, at least warming rapidly. Denying that is to deny recent history.
Do you understand history at all? Jesus Christ it's like Westerners forget that history doesn't start when the new government takes power.
The CPC and KMT were moving towards peace. That's undeniable.
Then, the DPP comes in from what's certainly not a coup and takes power. This is the same DPP that has changed Taiwan's focus from economic development (under the KMT) towards "national security issues and China's threat to Taiwan in local elections."
These are issues that were directly provoked by DPP hostility in relations. The DPP has categorically set back peace in the region by at least a decade.