This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 18th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Just why hasn't Taiwan been fully absorbed by China?

One reason may be the ongoing dysfunction been fully absorbed by China.

One reason may be the ongoing dysfunction inside China's military.

Cato's Eric Gomez says the situation ought to create space for Taiwan to arm up.

But it's not clear the U.S. policymakers or Taiwan's leadership

wants to do it. We spoke last week. It is no secret that China views Taiwan as China.

Yeah.

It is also no secret that Beijing would like to fully subsume Taiwan into China. The United States and other countries have made

unclear promises to Taiwan to stand up for them, but it seems that the best ally that Taiwan has right now is

dysfunction within the Chinese military.

Correct. Is that, is a fair to say? function within the Chinese military.

Correct.

Is that, is a fair to say?

I think so.

And so the, on January 6, 2024,

the business, no, sorry, Bloomberg had this really interesting article about corruption within the PLA and some of the examples of it were very lurid and quite frankly amusing.

Two of them being that missiles were filled with water instead of the proper fuel and before being sent out to units and that silo fields, newly constructed silos,

the doors weren't built right and so they couldn't open the silos to launch the missile. I found this very funny.

I made a joke when the silo fields were discovered or when the, not when this fields were discovered,

but when the commanders of the PLA rocket force,

...