Hello, welcome to another episode of Real Politics.

I am your host, Fidaz Maudad.

Today we are going to talk about what happens after China invades Taiwan, but before that we'll

talk about why China should be invading Taiwan, or will be invading Taiwan, I should say, what the Americans are

trying to do to prepare for this and what will the world look like after that happens?

I kind of assume that it will probably happen in the next two, five years. I wouldn't be

surprised if it happened tomorrow, but we're going to talk about

this and we're going to talk about what the United States is trying to do and what it means for the

world. This is a live episode, so please leave your comments, leave your chats, let me know what you

think, let me know what topics you think I'm addressing well or not addressing, and ask any questions that you have. So where I want to start is with the new trade restrictions

that China has been introducing gradually over the past few years, but these have been tightening slowly.

It looks to me like the Chinese are preparing for not just an invasion of Taiwan, but also the kinds of sanctions and export restrictions that would paralyze the West.

What they're doing is they're imposing a lot of restrictions on rare earth minerals, among other

areas. These are targeting mostly defense companies, but also logistics, and now it seems

automakers. And the reasoning behind that seems to be to try to cripple Western industry and

Western manufacturing,

meaning that they're in a bit of a race against time.

Because what Trump is trying to do is to get the West to become independent of Chinese supply chains.

And anybody who's in the defense industry in manufacturing drones,

in manufacturing chips can see that this is happening. And so what the Chinese are doing is imposing

the kind of restrictions that make that transition much more difficult. But because that transition

is happening anyway, that means that the restrictions that are being imposed by China only have value for a limited period of time until the West has actually adjusted and got into a position where it is in fact autonomous of Chinese industries.

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