Donât know whatâs worse, West Taiwan or Hong Kong (UK)
First Australia, then the US, and now the UK.
China had this to say about Australia:
At a daily briefing in Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused Australia of engaging in âpolitical posturingâ.
âWhether they [government officials] come or not, nobody cares,â he added.
love it
China had this to say about the US:
At a media briefing on Tuesday, Mr Zhao accused the US of violating âpolitical neutrality in sportâ and said the proposed boycott was âbased on lies and rumoursâ.
Mr Zhao said China would take âresolute counter-measuresâ but did not give further details.
China had this to say about the UK:
Who?
Impossible to know if Iâm even joking 
Diplomatic boycott is meaningless. If you want to take a stand, boycott the games itself.
That has been rethought as a useful strategy since 1980. It punishes the athletes and paradoxically gives the home country a free pass to some propaganda. Yes, there will always be an asterisk next to the medal table in 1980 but it still didnât stop the Sovietsâ dominance being treated as a geopolitical win.
No. As you say, they do in fact have a strong case concerning Taiwan and since most every state on earth viewâs Taiwan to be part of China, no one would ever risk a cataclysmic war to keep China out of it. The cost is much, much too high and China can and have shown in the past (just ask Norwegian politicians after the Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident ), that they will retaliate very strongly if they posses the capability to do so. China is also preparing for war, meaning that they recently have built up their nuclear forces in such a way that the US cannot resort to nuclear blackmail, which is a problem of course for the US, since a conventional war against China right outside the Chinese mainland is totally bonkers from a military perspective.
I donât think a Chinese invasion is planned (well, it is of course planned, but they have not decided that is their coarse of action), but if there is a very large escalation in Ukraine (meaning one of the worst case scenarios in Ukraine where Russia actually invades properly), I think the Chinese would be tempted to do so. Even so, I am not sure they would and they are arguably not yet ready. They really want to wait 2-3 years for more landing ships and amphibious assault ships (which they are building now).
But make no mistake, Taiwan is not part of NATO and the US refuses to guarantee their security for a reason.
But really, it is as much up to Taiwan as anyone else right now. If Nationalists in Taiwan increases their power, seeks to assert independence, then the risk of an invasion will be much higher. China will never allow their independence and if they assert it, I am almost certain China would invade in response.
Which would be arguably very hypocritical and exposed world wide as so, after the world failed to boycott the football world cup. The propaganda apparatuses of Russia and China would have a field day exposing that hypocrisy, since it would be clear that the West only ever targets geopolitical rivals.
I am not in favour of it for that reason. Hypocrisy is a weak foundation to build on.
If however, we had boycotted the World Cup, then we could have used Human Rights as the reason to boycott the Olympics and it would then have been a worthy cause. Now, not so much.
They just donât have the stomach to irritate China or Russia, thatâs all 
Diplomatic boycott, whatâs it ever going to achieve 
It certainly wonât do a lot, but it does do something at times I would argue (soft power is not meaningless). But if itâs hypocritical it can backfire, and recoil is never good to take in the face.
Oh, never mind, I thought you were talking about boycotting the Olympics (that would not be meaningless as such). I agree that political boycott is absolutely meaningless.
Iâm not even considering a lot. Whatâs it going to achieve? Any ideas?
I donât have any good ones. It is far easier to point at which ones wonât work very well I am afraid. Tackling a Great Power on its way to Superpower-dom is not exactly easy. It requires a lot of care, some perhaps unsavory compromises and maybe even some walk backs. War is really the worst option in this case.
Personally, I am in favour of Finlandisation of Taiwan. It is the only way I see that they can retain autonomy in the long term. Any attempts of asserting themselves more strongly are more than likely to backfire terribly in the long run.
But of course, I do not know as I am not an oracle.
Will the EU stand up to Chinese bullying?
I very much doubt it. The world has become too dependent on China, manufacturing etc. Nearly everything we buy now, is made in there.
True, but there are plenty of other countries that could step up to manufacture stuff (and no doubt would be happy too), so I say fuck 'em.
If all countries and major industries decided to fuck them off for India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Philipines ect that would leave China standing around holding their dick in their hand.
It certainly feels that way, but Iâm not sure how true that is. Iâve seen figures of close to 30% of worlds manufacturing coming from China. However, in 2019 China accounted for 6.8% of UK imports, making it our fourth largest (was 15th largest in 1999) - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7379/
In recent years, there have been some manufacturing that has gone to other countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Bangladesh instead because costs in China have increased (and perhaps because of other concerns too).
Its not just what you import from China, China is also the 2nd largest export partner with EU behind the US. So the relationship is not so straightforward as sanctioning each other. Its a great breakthrough for Taiwan in terms of their diplomatic relationships to have a ally in Lithuania in the EU. But Lithuania should have also expected this retaliation from China.
Iâm all for that,100%.
No doubt itâs a calculated move by Lithuania. Donât forget, they are used to standing up to superpowers.