fenster_84 wrote:I wonder how the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia will change in relation to China's rise. They haven't abandon their Chinese heritage. You might see on the surface they have embraced western values but dig deeper you see all their Chinese character coming out. Indonesian and Thai Chinese have assimilated into their host cultures. Perhaps these overseas Chinese will resist encroachment as what we've seen in Hong Kong recently.
In some sense yes. They would be happy to keep themselves as "agents" on the trade route to / from China, but relatively free from direct interference from Chinese authorities.
Still, in my opinion, for the Southeast Asian countries' case, Western values like "freedom" may take a relatively minor role. Ethnically mixed countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia have their own problems to solve; while more ethnically homogeneous ones like Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam seem not very "free" to begin with.
fenster_84 wrote:Yes the occasional border/territorial skirmishes from time to time. I was comparing to a more prolonged campaign such as America's Vietnam or Soviet's Afghanistan.
It seems that Taiwan will be China's Cuba. Imagine the US trying to put nukes there and a "Taiwan Missile Crisis" will happen.
I can only say the Chinese was not very experienced in prolonged external conflicts. Apart from the Second Sino-Japanese war, no
external war with China taking part really lasted for more than a decade. All prolonged wars in China were essentially civil wars, like the unification wars of most Imperial Dynasties and the Taiping Rebellion. Even most other wars in China were rather "blitz".
Still, Taiwan missile crisis might mean the end of the world as we know it. I really don't see the current Chinese leadership as cool-headed as the Americans or even Russians, because they have made a considerable part of population quite hysterical, as seen in the following
propaganda: