Taps Coogan – October 22nd, 2022

David Roche, Independent Strategy President and long-time market and geopolitical observer, recently spoke with CNBC amid China’s ongoing CCP party congress to warn that he sees a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as “baked in the cake,” albeit not imminent.

Some excerpts from David Roche:

“I don’t think there is any reversing the movement towards a greater distance between (Taiwan) and China over the next three to five years. Second of all, what we are hearing from Xi Jinping is that he doesn’t want to use military force except as a last option but he will use it as a last option, which will come within the next ten years. And the reason he will (use force) is because he’s not going to get anywhere doing anything else…”

“The reason he is not going to (use force) now, which was very clear from the speech, is the PLA has taken one look at Ukraine and said ‘we don’t like that and we don’t like the sanctions’ which could be far worse and more damaging to China and ‘we actually have to learn a lot of things before we make the same mistakes as the Russians. So I think what we’ve got going on is a learning process that might take five years militarily and after that the outlook for a conflict with Taiwan is… in my book baked in the cake.”

The best argument that China might act earlier than five-to-ten years is that the US is poised to deliver a large amount of advanced weaponry to Taiwan over the next four-to-five years: updated F-16s, Abrams tanks, harpoon missiles, HIMARs, patriot missiles, stingers, etc… and Taiwan is poised to launch its first domestically built submarines and add several missile corvettes and more amphibious assault ships to its navy. 

There is more to the interview, so enjoy it above.