[Jhoffa_]

Of course, there's still the little matter of Taiwan, which the U.S. is pledged (in vague terms) to defend.

Translation: "Screw them.. I mean, this is your 401K we are talking about here!"

When the China "reunification" happens (sometimes refered to as an invasion, but never by politicians, diplomats or investors) you will see a whole bunch of people generating random excuses to just let it happen and shut up about it.

[AIG]

There's the military aspect and then there's the economic aspect. Taiwan's economic lifeblood, its hi-tech businesses, are moving to the mainland of their own free will and hurting Taiwan's economic vitality. It's doubtful these firms will ever return. It makes an invasion less necessary when all these Taiwanese businesses are moving to the mainland and hurting Taiwan itself and its ability to pay for its future defense budgets. The migration of these businesses hurts Taiwan's future economic viability as an export-based economy, which is vulnerable also because it does not have much of a self-sustained domestic market in anything.

[DoughtyOne]

I don't even like to address this issue anymore. What with the idiots that think it's great to arm China and gift them with our patent database, finance their military and their proliferation of WMDs to the planet's rogue nations, it's pointless. Why watch people who haven't got the brain power to know this is all wrong make fools of themselves. Frankly it's depressing. As for Taiwan, we haven't got the class to defend them. It's the almighty buck. Screw character and doing what's right. Our founding fathers would line us up and shoot us if they could see what we've done with the nation they gave us.