Country / state / nation. These words have meaning. England is both a country and a nation but not an independent state. Taiwan meets the definition of a country in that it is defined territory, but it is not a nation. It is not an independent state, as it claims to be the government of China, not the government of Taiwan. It makes trade agreements as the government of China. And the reason other countries play along with this is because the US and UK decided that they would make Taiwan into a comprador proxy and invested tons of money into it, while they embargoed the shit out of China and no one was allowed to trade with both China and the USA. The evidence you are using for Taiwan being independent is actually evidence that they are dependent entirely on the USA. Without the USA, the KMT would have been stopped in their reign of terror long before 40 years were up and the province would have been reintegrated into China after 75 years of national trauma.
It is not an independent state, as it claims to be the government of China, not the government of Taiwan.
… which it only does because the PRC threatens with war if Taiwan would drop it.
As it stands now, the majority of the Taiwanese no longer consider themselves Chinese, but the PRC wants to keep that illusion alive for their annexation goals to seem justified. This is solely on the PRC.
Yeah, and most Americans, Canadians, and Australians don’t consider themselves European colonizers, but they don’t get to decide to that, because history matters. The Han Chinese living in the province of Taiwan are Han Chinese. They are of the Chinese nation, and they have never been otherwise. They have never seceded from China.
Are you saying that the people of Taiwan have a right to secession? From where does that right derive? The Confederates didn’t have a right to secession. Texas doesn’t have a right to secession. Quebec doesn’t have a right to secession. In pretty much every context you can think of, a secession would cause a civil war.
But imagine this: a secession with a geopolitical enemy providing massive military support. Do you think that if China came to Canada and built up a military presence in Quebec to protect their secession that this would be a totally valid thing to do and Canada should let them? Do you think the Chinese navy is allowed to encircle Hawaii and help them secede from the US and that if the US tried to stop them that would be beligerence?
No. Of course you don’t think those things. You only see the narrative of Taiwan from the West. You don’t see the military reality of 70 years of US military intervention and support for fascist dictatorship. You don’t think through the implications of what 40 years (3+ generations) of violent mass murdering fascist political persecution for desiring reunification did to the population of Taiwan (hint, it skewed public opinion pretty dramatically for their own self preservation).
You don’t even realize that Hong Kong and Taiwan were transitioned to liberal democracies at almost the exact same time, and only a few years after South Korea was beginning its transition, coinciding with the clear signs that the USSR was collapsing and the threat of global communism was coming to end. The US and UK administrators of these territories decided that they didn’t need to worry about communism anymore so they allowed the transition to liberal democracy to occur. If it was going to be too dangerous, they would have kept supporting the dictatorship and colonial administration and supported the violent repression of protests, like they had been doing for decades.
The people of Taiwan province do not have a right to secession and the US does not have a right to militarily defend their secession. Taiwan has never stopped being a province of China and just because the world’s most psychotic, beligerent, genocidal military is trying to tug at your heart strings with stories of resistance and democracy, the reality is that you wouldn’t support this configuration in literally any other context.
Yeah, and most Americans, Canadians, and Australians don’t consider themselves European colonizers, but they don’t get to decide to that, because history matters.
So? Are you arguing that there is neither America, Canada nor Australia but only British Empire?
They have never seceded from China.
Because the PRC said that the moment Taiwan does so, there will be war. Taiwan is forced by the PRC to keep the ‘China’ label.
Quebec doesn’t have a right to secession.
How is it of relevance how Quebec handles its affairs? Canada is exerting control over Quebec. The PRC never did over Taiwan. Not now, not ten, not 50 years ago. Never.
In pretty much every context you can think of, a secession would cause a civil war.
There was civil war and the PRC tried to conquer Taiwan but failed. It never established control over these parts. So there you go. De facto, Taiwan is not part of the PRC. De facto, Taiwan doesn’t even want to be China anymore. It is only the PRC getting sore over an island they never controlled as they cannot accept Chinese culture beyond their control. But that’s not a problem of the world, but a PRC problem.
Austrians are of German origin. Are you arguing there is no Austria but only Germany? What about the Swiss? Should they be divided by Germany, France and Italy? Belgium?
And on the contrary, are you therefore arguing that the PRC should piss off from the regions they’ve annexed in the past and where they enforce Han culture since? Tibet, Shinjang? All the other parts of the PRC where the Han colonised? Let me guess…
Are you arguing that there is neither America, Canada nor Australia but only British Empire?
By America we will mean the USA. Don’t mix the concepts of country, nation, and state. There is no nation of USians, Canadians, nor Australians. The state of the USA is a breakaway state from essentially all of the Western European empires (except Portugal I guess). Canada and Australia are still part of the Commonwealth. If that’s not neocolonialism, I don’t know what is. Literally Canada and Australia still recognize the British Crown. Canada, the US, and Australia are full of European national people occupying the territory of and displacing the indigenous nations of those countries.
They have never seceded from China.
Because the PRC said that the moment Taiwan does so, there will be war. Taiwan is forced by the PRC to keep the ‘China’ label.
They have had 70 years to secede. They spent 42 of those years murdering everyone who talked about secession, both in Taiwan province and abroad. The PRC didn’t force them to do that. That’s what the Han Chinese local government of the province chose of their own free will.
But still, no other country in the world would tolerate a secessionary movement either. The US wouldn’t accept California seceding. Canada wouldn’t accept Quebec seceding. Mexico didn’t accept Texas seceding. Secession is always met with violence. Doubly so if the territory that is seceding is currently occupied by a geopolitical rival military that spends years talking openly about building a Pacific Kill Chain, Kill Web, and Hellscape infrastructure in the territory, as the US does regarding Taiwan.
How is it of relevance how Quebec handles its affairs? Canada is exerting control over Quebec. The PRC never did over Taiwan. Not now, not ten, not 50 years ago. Never.
This is a favorite line of the imperialist propaganda. The PRC is a government of the nation-state of China. China has included Taiwan as a province for over 400 years, even when it was illegitimately occupied by Japan. Ming China and Qing China are just China. The PRC is just China. China is a continuous concept that is not determined by which government it has.
In pretty much every context you can think of, a secession would cause a civil war.
There was civil war
Yes, but not because of secession, as we’ve established pretty thoroughly.
the PRC tried to conquer Taiwan but failed
This is more equivocation and weasel language to advance imperialist propaganda. The PRC did not try to conquer Taiwan. The PRC attempted to force the KMT to surrender. The KMT were occupying the Chinese province of Taiwan, much like the Texas National Guard and the US National Guard had a stand off, the US National Guard was not trying to conquer Texas, it was attempting to enforce the law and get the Texas National Guard to stand down.
And it’s very convenient to tell the story that the PLA failed to get the KMT to surrender while conveniently leaving out that the US turned the KMT into a protectorate and proxy 6 months after the PLA won civil war. Do you really think the KMT would have been able to even maintain military readiness as an isolated island? Absolutely not. The PLA’s failure was in not being able to get the KMT to surrender before the Americans decided they wanted a proxy in the region to threaten China with.
So there you go. De facto, Taiwan is not part of the PRC
Again, things are part of the PRC, they are part of China. The PRC is the government of China. The parts of the PRC are the parts of the government. The parts of China are the parts of the nation-state, and Taiwan is very much part of the nation-state of China, while not being part of the government of China. These are very distinct things. And the reason that Taiwan is not part of the government of China is literally the force of illegitimate military intervention by an imperialist super power whose goal is the subjugation of China, and who’s mechanism is to carve off territory from China and use it for military violence.
De facto, Taiwan doesn’t even want to be China anymore
Well, the Han Chinese in Taiwan don’t really get to choose to not be Chinese anymore than Washington could choose not be English. If you advocate for relocating the Han Chinese in Taiwan to the mainland and establishing a state for the Austronesian nations to self-govern, that would be legitimate. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, we have a genocidal military imperialist spending billions on creating a political crisis in a country on the other side of the world to advance its global spanning imperialist ambitions while it maintains the cultural genocide and occupation of many nations.
Austrians are of German origin. Are you arguing there is no Austria but only Germany?
There are three distinct nations in Austria - Germans, Slovenian Slavs, and Croat Slavs. The Germans in Austria became Austrians by the military force of Western imperialists (France, UK, and US). There never would have been distinct identity of “Austrian” without it being forced on them. The Germans in Austria even tried to resist the forced split. So, what we have in Austria is another example of imperialism forcing people to adopt new identities in order to express imperialist dominance over them.
What about the Swiss? Should they be divided by Germany, France and Italy? Belgium
The Swiss proactively chose to form a new nation, not a new state, a new nation, over 700 years ago. Nation, the word, refers to the concept and context of birth. Belgium is the opposite. It is a bi-national state of French and Dutch people. They are incredibly distinct people and they have not merged their nations through a multi-generational process. The French, German, and Italian tribes living in Switzerland physically separated themselves from their nations of birth and then mutually agreed to integrate their tribes into a single tribe, and included everything in that choice from language to cuisine to marriage… everything became a subject of mutual agreement for the establishment of a distinct nation. Had a group if Italians just decided to do this as Italians, they would just be Italians, but by integrating multiple nations, the Swiss created a new nation. This is how nations have come about throughout human history and why we aren’t all just part of the “human nation”.
are you therefore arguing that the PRC should piss off from the regions they’ve annexed in the past and where they enforce Han culture since? Tibet, Shinjang? All the other parts of the PRC where the Han colonised?
Chinese colonization of the region is necessarily a distinct process from European colonization. The European concept of nation-states emerged from their distinct geography which was shot through with many many physical barriers that kept people isolated. This is why Belgium and Austria are different cases than Switzerland. Belgium and Austria are geographically contiguous with their historical forebears and the borders are politically drawn, whereas Switzerland was a physically isolated territory that could hold people as they became a nation.
The geography of China is essentially a huge flat bowl surrounded by impassable barriers. In this context, warring tribes could cross the entire region limited only by their momentum. In Europe, there were natural stopping points where tribes would dominate within their physical boundaries, and thus war-like cultures were a way of maintaining their distinct identities. In the Chinese contexts war was universally devastating.
Thus, the two phenomena developed entirely differently. European culture could afford to be as violent and belligerent as they could be because nature naturally stopped them. Chinese culture discovered that runaway violence would ultimately kill everyone and they needed a different solution - The Civilizational State. Under this model, the regions maintained their own identities, but not their own localized “monopolies” on force. The concept is contradictory in this context. In Switzerland, a monopoly on force means within the natural borders of the Alps. In China, a monopoly on force within multiple groups in the region is just not a monopoly on force but rather regional warlordism.
This is why Tibet is historically a protectorate of China and not a colony or an occupied region. The Chinese state recognizes the existence, history, validity, and culture of Tibet, but it will not permit Tibet to defend itself any longer. Once gunpowder entered the combat theater, Tibet was completely unable to defend itself. In the age of industrial war, Tibet remains completely unable to defend itself. China recognizes that this means the Tibetan territory will be protected by someone other than the Tibetans. The choices are the 600-year genocidal white supremacist monocultural Western Empire, or the Chinese civilizational state. The Chinese state could be just as genocidal and Han supremacist as the Western Empire, but it’s not.
History has demonstrated that this system has served all of the people in the region comparatively well at this point. In Western Imperial holdings, languages disappear, children are tortured and killed for speaking it, laws are created to criminalize being part of the occupied community, and settlers rape and murder without any accountability. Comparatively, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the other autonomous regions within China still maintain their culture, their language, their religion, their traditional practices, their history, their identity, etc. There are certainly tensions, and it would be much better if these tensions were not there and could be resolved more quickly, but unfortunately these tensions exist within the larger context of Western white supremacist genocidal empire and difficult choices are being made daily by everyone who is working to assert sovereignty against that empire and potentially aspire to a day when that empire falls.
So? Now they want to do it but the PRC threatens to throw a temper tantrum about it. Just let it sink in how a country of one billion is actively choosing to worsen its situation over an island of not even 25 million. The PRC could have moved on for a very long time and put its resources in its own prosperity instead of wasting the resources on a cause that will end in a war. It’s so petty.
This is more equivocation and weasel language to advance imperialist propaganda.
You can call that whatever you want. The fact still stands: the PRC wants a piece of land they never established control over.
The French, German, and Italian tribes living in Switzerland physically separated themselves from their nations of birth and then mutually agreed to integrate their tribes into a single tribe, and included everything in that choice from language to cuisine to marriage…
Just what happened in Taiwan. They don’t consider themselves Chinese, they are simply not allowed to openly say it due to the giant fragile red snowflake next door. We’re pretending something that isn’t the case just to protect the fragile feelings of a giant that cannot accept the truth.
Chinese colonization of the region is necessarily a distinct process from European colonization.
Well, isn’t that handy! :D
The European concept of nation-states emerged from their distinct geography which was shot through with many many physical barriers that kept people isolated.
Germans, Slavs, Romans might have had some rivers and mountains here and there, yet have a long history of conquering each others land. Somehow that’s colonialism, but when Hans crossed a river to dominate other cultures, it isn’t?
The geography of China is essentially a huge flat bowl surrounded by impassable barriers. In this context, warring tribes could cross the entire region limited only by their momentum.
Yea. The most successful being the Hans (if there are no Mongols or Japanese around). Somehow you don’t seem to have a lot of problems with them establishing themselves as the master humans. Talk about double standards…
This is why Tibet is historically a protectorate of China and not a colony or an occupied region.
Who says so? The Chinese? The Tibetans? The Russians also liked to consider themselves as the protectors of the various cultures they dominated during whatever they labelled their respective regimes of injustice (Tsardom, SSSR,…) during the last 200 years. Of course, the self-proclaimed master humans want to whitewash their oppression. Weird that you can only see the wrongdoings of one side, while completely whitewash the other side. :D
but the PRC threatens to throw a temper tantrum about it
The PRC is very clear that Taiwan becoming sovereign means Western empire at their doorstep. This has literally been the strategic situation for over 400 years. It’s not just a “now” thing and it’s not just a PRC. It’s a fundamental aspect of security. Security it always mutual. The US wouldn’t allow China to build a military presence in Long Island of they decided to secede, and you wouldn’t call it a tantrum. It’s obvious from your word choice that you don’t believe China is allowed to have legitimate security concerns.
Just let it sink in how a country of one billion is actively choosing to worsen its situation over an island of not even 25 million.
Are you serious right now? The US embargoed the PRC while it was the poorest country in the world, and prevented anyone in the Western world from trading with it, while the US and UK invested billions to develop the province of Taiwan under a fascist mass murdering dictatorship, and you think I need to let it sink in what China is doing?
The PRC could have moved on for a very long time and put its resources in its own prosperity instead of wasting the resources on a cause that will end in a war. It’s so petty.
This is so offensively dismissive it’s clear you have no ability to reason clearly about this. China has a literal multi-century security threat on its doorstep and it’s been spending money developing a military that is capable of defending against the world’s largest genocidal empire and you think that was “Wasting resources”. And before you go all paternalistic about China should have invested in its own prosperity, China accounts for literally all of the net poverty alleviation in the last century, while Europe and North America created more poverty than they alleviated. There are grandparents in China today that grew up subsistence farming and are now experiencing robotic self-driving vehicles. China is doing just fine developing its prosperity and also its national security posture against the world’s largest ever military threat.
The fact still stands: the PRC wants a piece of land they never established control over.
That is not, actually, what they want. They want to establish a security perimeter that is inviolable by imperialists. Again, literally the same motivation for almost 400 years. You consuming fan fic editorializing Chinese motivations doesn’t change reality.
The French, German, and Italian tribes living in Switzerland physically separated themselves from their nations of birth and then mutually agreed to integrate their tribes into a single tribe, and included everything in that choice from language to cuisine to marriage…
Just what happened in Taiwan. They don’t consider themselves Chinese, they are simply not allowed to openly say it
That’s literally not what happened. At this point, you’re clearly not even engaging in good faith. What happened in Taiwan, as I’ve stated many times, is that foreign militaries intervened in internal Chinese politics for the purpose of subjugating China militarily. That is not AT ALL like the situation in Switzerland. At all. The Han Chinese colonized Taiwan, and the dominated and oppressed the indigenous. This is far more akin to the situation in North America, where white people are still all European settlers. The Han Chinese in Taiwan are Chinese settlers and settlers don’t have a claim to a new new national identity. If they did, then genocide would be the result. We have to hold this line and you don’t get to have a double standard simply because you’re an anti-communist.
due to the giant fragile red snowflake next door. We’re pretending something that isn’t the case just to protect the fragile feelings of a giant that cannot accept the truth.
Again, it is so obvious that you can’t engage in this discussion in good faith that I the only reason I’m bothering to refute you is so that others can learn.
Chinese colonization of the region is necessarily a distinct process from European colonization.
Well, isn’t that handy! :D
If you’re entire grasp of history requires that everyone doing similar seeming things is actually part of the same historical process so that you can make false equivalencies to prove your point, you might not understand anything about history. It’s not handy, it’s reality. Of course the Chinese process is a distinct process from the European process. They were done by different people, under total different philosophies, in different geographies, with different outcomes. This statement shouldn’t be controversial. The fact you want to project all the evils of your own society onto China is a way for you to absolve yourself of supporting your empire by prioritizing opposing your empire’s mortal enemy.
Germans, Slavs, Romans might have had some rivers and mountains here and there, yet have a long history of conquering each others land. Somehow that’s colonialism, but when Hans crossed a river to dominate other cultures, it isn’t?
What? No, that’s not what I said at all. I said that Han colonization is a different historical process from European colonization. In the flat lands of Europe where there were no physical hard boundaries yes, the lands were constantly conquered and reconquered. That’s why there is a Swiss nation but no Belgian nation and no Austrian nation. These were just stretches of territory that various nations fought for control over. That wasn’t colonization. Colonization is when one group subjugated other nations in their distinct historical homelands. Europeans and Chinese did this, but they were distinct historical processes shaped by their unique geographical context which gave rise to distinct political, economic, philosophical, and technological development.
Yea. The most successful being the Hans (if there are no Mongols or Japanese around). Somehow you don’t seem to have a lot of problems with them establishing themselves as the master humans. Talk about double standards…
The concept of Han Supremacy is also not equivalent to the concept of Eurocentric Christian White Supremacy. Han Chauvinism, which is the idea that the Han were cosmically and divinely mandated to bring civilization to the world led to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass murder all over China, just like Eurocentric Christian White Supremacy did in Europe. But the result in China has ALWAYS been a multi-national multi-ethnic state, whereas in Europe the results were very often ethnostates with a single nation present.
That’s not to say one is better than the other, but it’s to show that they are different. In this context, the Hand “establishing themselves as the master humans” was absolutely problematic. But Han Supremacy died over a century ago and was replaced with Han Chauvinism, which was the belief that the Han knew better than anyone else. Han Chauvinism was endemic in the early PRC, but Han Chauvinism was deliberately ended under the administration of Deng Xiaoping when the CPC modified the constitution and specifically targeted the concept and its impact. Because the CPC came to the realization that even though chauvinism wasn’t nearly as bad as supremacy, it was still contradictory and would lead to ruin.
All you need to do is look at the One Child Policy to understand how fundamental this change was. When China established the One Child Policy, the same people who claim that China is just as evil as Europe pointed to the policy as fundamentally cruel. However, what most people never talked about was the fact that ethnic minorities were exempted from the policy. Some were unrestricted, some were restricted but to some number above one. The people who were constrained to one child were Han. Compare that to the social outcomes in Europe and their former and current colonies and it’s starkly clear that there is a fundamental difference now.
I don’t have to defend Han Supremacy, nor their genocides, nor their settler colonialism. It’s all bad, and the harm needs to be repaired. I’m happy to be consistent on that front.
This is why Tibet is historically a protectorate of China and not a colony or an occupied region.
Who says so? The Chinese? The Tibetans?
Historians, politicians, the UN, international law. I get that it doesn’t fit your narrative, but there’s a real difference between a protectorate and a colony. Tibet could not have been a resource colony when it first became a protectorate because no one was able to access the natural resources and build logistics to exploit them until after the PRC was established and finally industrialized. Meanwhile, the indigenous population of Tibet has more than doubled in the last 70 years. That’s not indicative of a colony. That’s indicative of an active colonial project. That’s indicative of a thriving autonomous region under the military protection of a larger regional hegemon.
Of course, the self-proclaimed master humans want to whitewash their oppression. Weird that you can only see the wrongdoings of one side, while completely whitewash the other side.
It’s not weird at all. I just operate with a different set of facts than you. China has over 250 indigenous languages with over 1000 living speakers, whereas in all of North America it’s less than 100. That’s a fundamentally different outcome. Of the many indigenous ethnicities in China, most of them maintain their cultural customs, celebrations, holidays, cuisines, and histories. The Chinese government actively funds the preservation of these cultures, practices, and histories. Meanwhile, indigenous folks in North America are so traumatized by European colonization that the older generations are literally disowning their own kids for abandoning Christianity. The US and Canadian governments continue genocidal programs of blood quantum, water rights, toxic dumping, and cultural erasure.
Country / state / nation. These words have meaning. England is both a country and a nation but not an independent state. Taiwan meets the definition of a country in that it is defined territory, but it is not a nation. It is not an independent state, as it claims to be the government of China, not the government of Taiwan. It makes trade agreements as the government of China. And the reason other countries play along with this is because the US and UK decided that they would make Taiwan into a comprador proxy and invested tons of money into it, while they embargoed the shit out of China and no one was allowed to trade with both China and the USA. The evidence you are using for Taiwan being independent is actually evidence that they are dependent entirely on the USA. Without the USA, the KMT would have been stopped in their reign of terror long before 40 years were up and the province would have been reintegrated into China after 75 years of national trauma.
… which it only does because the PRC threatens with war if Taiwan would drop it.
As it stands now, the majority of the Taiwanese no longer consider themselves Chinese, but the PRC wants to keep that illusion alive for their annexation goals to seem justified. This is solely on the PRC.
Yeah, and most Americans, Canadians, and Australians don’t consider themselves European colonizers, but they don’t get to decide to that, because history matters. The Han Chinese living in the province of Taiwan are Han Chinese. They are of the Chinese nation, and they have never been otherwise. They have never seceded from China.
Are you saying that the people of Taiwan have a right to secession? From where does that right derive? The Confederates didn’t have a right to secession. Texas doesn’t have a right to secession. Quebec doesn’t have a right to secession. In pretty much every context you can think of, a secession would cause a civil war.
But imagine this: a secession with a geopolitical enemy providing massive military support. Do you think that if China came to Canada and built up a military presence in Quebec to protect their secession that this would be a totally valid thing to do and Canada should let them? Do you think the Chinese navy is allowed to encircle Hawaii and help them secede from the US and that if the US tried to stop them that would be beligerence?
No. Of course you don’t think those things. You only see the narrative of Taiwan from the West. You don’t see the military reality of 70 years of US military intervention and support for fascist dictatorship. You don’t think through the implications of what 40 years (3+ generations) of violent mass murdering fascist political persecution for desiring reunification did to the population of Taiwan (hint, it skewed public opinion pretty dramatically for their own self preservation).
You don’t even realize that Hong Kong and Taiwan were transitioned to liberal democracies at almost the exact same time, and only a few years after South Korea was beginning its transition, coinciding with the clear signs that the USSR was collapsing and the threat of global communism was coming to end. The US and UK administrators of these territories decided that they didn’t need to worry about communism anymore so they allowed the transition to liberal democracy to occur. If it was going to be too dangerous, they would have kept supporting the dictatorship and colonial administration and supported the violent repression of protests, like they had been doing for decades.
The people of Taiwan province do not have a right to secession and the US does not have a right to militarily defend their secession. Taiwan has never stopped being a province of China and just because the world’s most psychotic, beligerent, genocidal military is trying to tug at your heart strings with stories of resistance and democracy, the reality is that you wouldn’t support this configuration in literally any other context.
So? Are you arguing that there is neither America, Canada nor Australia but only British Empire?
Because the PRC said that the moment Taiwan does so, there will be war. Taiwan is forced by the PRC to keep the ‘China’ label.
How is it of relevance how Quebec handles its affairs? Canada is exerting control over Quebec. The PRC never did over Taiwan. Not now, not ten, not 50 years ago. Never.
There was civil war and the PRC tried to conquer Taiwan but failed. It never established control over these parts. So there you go. De facto, Taiwan is not part of the PRC. De facto, Taiwan doesn’t even want to be China anymore. It is only the PRC getting sore over an island they never controlled as they cannot accept Chinese culture beyond their control. But that’s not a problem of the world, but a PRC problem.
Austrians are of German origin. Are you arguing there is no Austria but only Germany? What about the Swiss? Should they be divided by Germany, France and Italy? Belgium?
And on the contrary, are you therefore arguing that the PRC should piss off from the regions they’ve annexed in the past and where they enforce Han culture since? Tibet, Shinjang? All the other parts of the PRC where the Han colonised? Let me guess…
By America we will mean the USA. Don’t mix the concepts of country, nation, and state. There is no nation of USians, Canadians, nor Australians. The state of the USA is a breakaway state from essentially all of the Western European empires (except Portugal I guess). Canada and Australia are still part of the Commonwealth. If that’s not neocolonialism, I don’t know what is. Literally Canada and Australia still recognize the British Crown. Canada, the US, and Australia are full of European national people occupying the territory of and displacing the indigenous nations of those countries.
They have had 70 years to secede. They spent 42 of those years murdering everyone who talked about secession, both in Taiwan province and abroad. The PRC didn’t force them to do that. That’s what the Han Chinese local government of the province chose of their own free will.
But still, no other country in the world would tolerate a secessionary movement either. The US wouldn’t accept California seceding. Canada wouldn’t accept Quebec seceding. Mexico didn’t accept Texas seceding. Secession is always met with violence. Doubly so if the territory that is seceding is currently occupied by a geopolitical rival military that spends years talking openly about building a Pacific Kill Chain, Kill Web, and Hellscape infrastructure in the territory, as the US does regarding Taiwan.
This is a favorite line of the imperialist propaganda. The PRC is a government of the nation-state of China. China has included Taiwan as a province for over 400 years, even when it was illegitimately occupied by Japan. Ming China and Qing China are just China. The PRC is just China. China is a continuous concept that is not determined by which government it has.
Yes, but not because of secession, as we’ve established pretty thoroughly.
This is more equivocation and weasel language to advance imperialist propaganda. The PRC did not try to conquer Taiwan. The PRC attempted to force the KMT to surrender. The KMT were occupying the Chinese province of Taiwan, much like the Texas National Guard and the US National Guard had a stand off, the US National Guard was not trying to conquer Texas, it was attempting to enforce the law and get the Texas National Guard to stand down.
And it’s very convenient to tell the story that the PLA failed to get the KMT to surrender while conveniently leaving out that the US turned the KMT into a protectorate and proxy 6 months after the PLA won civil war. Do you really think the KMT would have been able to even maintain military readiness as an isolated island? Absolutely not. The PLA’s failure was in not being able to get the KMT to surrender before the Americans decided they wanted a proxy in the region to threaten China with.
Again, things are part of the PRC, they are part of China. The PRC is the government of China. The parts of the PRC are the parts of the government. The parts of China are the parts of the nation-state, and Taiwan is very much part of the nation-state of China, while not being part of the government of China. These are very distinct things. And the reason that Taiwan is not part of the government of China is literally the force of illegitimate military intervention by an imperialist super power whose goal is the subjugation of China, and who’s mechanism is to carve off territory from China and use it for military violence.
Well, the Han Chinese in Taiwan don’t really get to choose to not be Chinese anymore than Washington could choose not be English. If you advocate for relocating the Han Chinese in Taiwan to the mainland and establishing a state for the Austronesian nations to self-govern, that would be legitimate. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, we have a genocidal military imperialist spending billions on creating a political crisis in a country on the other side of the world to advance its global spanning imperialist ambitions while it maintains the cultural genocide and occupation of many nations.
There are three distinct nations in Austria - Germans, Slovenian Slavs, and Croat Slavs. The Germans in Austria became Austrians by the military force of Western imperialists (France, UK, and US). There never would have been distinct identity of “Austrian” without it being forced on them. The Germans in Austria even tried to resist the forced split. So, what we have in Austria is another example of imperialism forcing people to adopt new identities in order to express imperialist dominance over them.
The Swiss proactively chose to form a new nation, not a new state, a new nation, over 700 years ago. Nation, the word, refers to the concept and context of birth. Belgium is the opposite. It is a bi-national state of French and Dutch people. They are incredibly distinct people and they have not merged their nations through a multi-generational process. The French, German, and Italian tribes living in Switzerland physically separated themselves from their nations of birth and then mutually agreed to integrate their tribes into a single tribe, and included everything in that choice from language to cuisine to marriage… everything became a subject of mutual agreement for the establishment of a distinct nation. Had a group if Italians just decided to do this as Italians, they would just be Italians, but by integrating multiple nations, the Swiss created a new nation. This is how nations have come about throughout human history and why we aren’t all just part of the “human nation”.
Chinese colonization of the region is necessarily a distinct process from European colonization. The European concept of nation-states emerged from their distinct geography which was shot through with many many physical barriers that kept people isolated. This is why Belgium and Austria are different cases than Switzerland. Belgium and Austria are geographically contiguous with their historical forebears and the borders are politically drawn, whereas Switzerland was a physically isolated territory that could hold people as they became a nation.
The geography of China is essentially a huge flat bowl surrounded by impassable barriers. In this context, warring tribes could cross the entire region limited only by their momentum. In Europe, there were natural stopping points where tribes would dominate within their physical boundaries, and thus war-like cultures were a way of maintaining their distinct identities. In the Chinese contexts war was universally devastating.
Thus, the two phenomena developed entirely differently. European culture could afford to be as violent and belligerent as they could be because nature naturally stopped them. Chinese culture discovered that runaway violence would ultimately kill everyone and they needed a different solution - The Civilizational State. Under this model, the regions maintained their own identities, but not their own localized “monopolies” on force. The concept is contradictory in this context. In Switzerland, a monopoly on force means within the natural borders of the Alps. In China, a monopoly on force within multiple groups in the region is just not a monopoly on force but rather regional warlordism.
This is why Tibet is historically a protectorate of China and not a colony or an occupied region. The Chinese state recognizes the existence, history, validity, and culture of Tibet, but it will not permit Tibet to defend itself any longer. Once gunpowder entered the combat theater, Tibet was completely unable to defend itself. In the age of industrial war, Tibet remains completely unable to defend itself. China recognizes that this means the Tibetan territory will be protected by someone other than the Tibetans. The choices are the 600-year genocidal white supremacist monocultural Western Empire, or the Chinese civilizational state. The Chinese state could be just as genocidal and Han supremacist as the Western Empire, but it’s not.
History has demonstrated that this system has served all of the people in the region comparatively well at this point. In Western Imperial holdings, languages disappear, children are tortured and killed for speaking it, laws are created to criminalize being part of the occupied community, and settlers rape and murder without any accountability. Comparatively, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the other autonomous regions within China still maintain their culture, their language, their religion, their traditional practices, their history, their identity, etc. There are certainly tensions, and it would be much better if these tensions were not there and could be resolved more quickly, but unfortunately these tensions exist within the larger context of Western white supremacist genocidal empire and difficult choices are being made daily by everyone who is working to assert sovereignty against that empire and potentially aspire to a day when that empire falls.
So? Now they want to do it but the PRC threatens to throw a temper tantrum about it. Just let it sink in how a country of one billion is actively choosing to worsen its situation over an island of not even 25 million. The PRC could have moved on for a very long time and put its resources in its own prosperity instead of wasting the resources on a cause that will end in a war. It’s so petty.
You can call that whatever you want. The fact still stands: the PRC wants a piece of land they never established control over.
Just what happened in Taiwan. They don’t consider themselves Chinese, they are simply not allowed to openly say it due to the giant fragile red snowflake next door. We’re pretending something that isn’t the case just to protect the fragile feelings of a giant that cannot accept the truth.
Well, isn’t that handy! :D
Germans, Slavs, Romans might have had some rivers and mountains here and there, yet have a long history of conquering each others land. Somehow that’s colonialism, but when Hans crossed a river to dominate other cultures, it isn’t?
Yea. The most successful being the Hans (if there are no Mongols or Japanese around). Somehow you don’t seem to have a lot of problems with them establishing themselves as the master humans. Talk about double standards…
Who says so? The Chinese? The Tibetans? The Russians also liked to consider themselves as the protectors of the various cultures they dominated during whatever they labelled their respective regimes of injustice (Tsardom, SSSR,…) during the last 200 years. Of course, the self-proclaimed master humans want to whitewash their oppression. Weird that you can only see the wrongdoings of one side, while completely whitewash the other side. :D
25% want to.
The PRC is very clear that Taiwan becoming sovereign means Western empire at their doorstep. This has literally been the strategic situation for over 400 years. It’s not just a “now” thing and it’s not just a PRC. It’s a fundamental aspect of security. Security it always mutual. The US wouldn’t allow China to build a military presence in Long Island of they decided to secede, and you wouldn’t call it a tantrum. It’s obvious from your word choice that you don’t believe China is allowed to have legitimate security concerns.
Are you serious right now? The US embargoed the PRC while it was the poorest country in the world, and prevented anyone in the Western world from trading with it, while the US and UK invested billions to develop the province of Taiwan under a fascist mass murdering dictatorship, and you think I need to let it sink in what China is doing?
This is so offensively dismissive it’s clear you have no ability to reason clearly about this. China has a literal multi-century security threat on its doorstep and it’s been spending money developing a military that is capable of defending against the world’s largest genocidal empire and you think that was “Wasting resources”. And before you go all paternalistic about China should have invested in its own prosperity, China accounts for literally all of the net poverty alleviation in the last century, while Europe and North America created more poverty than they alleviated. There are grandparents in China today that grew up subsistence farming and are now experiencing robotic self-driving vehicles. China is doing just fine developing its prosperity and also its national security posture against the world’s largest ever military threat.
That is not, actually, what they want. They want to establish a security perimeter that is inviolable by imperialists. Again, literally the same motivation for almost 400 years. You consuming fan fic editorializing Chinese motivations doesn’t change reality.
That’s literally not what happened. At this point, you’re clearly not even engaging in good faith. What happened in Taiwan, as I’ve stated many times, is that foreign militaries intervened in internal Chinese politics for the purpose of subjugating China militarily. That is not AT ALL like the situation in Switzerland. At all. The Han Chinese colonized Taiwan, and the dominated and oppressed the indigenous. This is far more akin to the situation in North America, where white people are still all European settlers. The Han Chinese in Taiwan are Chinese settlers and settlers don’t have a claim to a new new national identity. If they did, then genocide would be the result. We have to hold this line and you don’t get to have a double standard simply because you’re an anti-communist.
Again, it is so obvious that you can’t engage in this discussion in good faith that I the only reason I’m bothering to refute you is so that others can learn.
If you’re entire grasp of history requires that everyone doing similar seeming things is actually part of the same historical process so that you can make false equivalencies to prove your point, you might not understand anything about history. It’s not handy, it’s reality. Of course the Chinese process is a distinct process from the European process. They were done by different people, under total different philosophies, in different geographies, with different outcomes. This statement shouldn’t be controversial. The fact you want to project all the evils of your own society onto China is a way for you to absolve yourself of supporting your empire by prioritizing opposing your empire’s mortal enemy.
What? No, that’s not what I said at all. I said that Han colonization is a different historical process from European colonization. In the flat lands of Europe where there were no physical hard boundaries yes, the lands were constantly conquered and reconquered. That’s why there is a Swiss nation but no Belgian nation and no Austrian nation. These were just stretches of territory that various nations fought for control over. That wasn’t colonization. Colonization is when one group subjugated other nations in their distinct historical homelands. Europeans and Chinese did this, but they were distinct historical processes shaped by their unique geographical context which gave rise to distinct political, economic, philosophical, and technological development.
The concept of Han Supremacy is also not equivalent to the concept of Eurocentric Christian White Supremacy. Han Chauvinism, which is the idea that the Han were cosmically and divinely mandated to bring civilization to the world led to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass murder all over China, just like Eurocentric Christian White Supremacy did in Europe. But the result in China has ALWAYS been a multi-national multi-ethnic state, whereas in Europe the results were very often ethnostates with a single nation present.
That’s not to say one is better than the other, but it’s to show that they are different. In this context, the Hand “establishing themselves as the master humans” was absolutely problematic. But Han Supremacy died over a century ago and was replaced with Han Chauvinism, which was the belief that the Han knew better than anyone else. Han Chauvinism was endemic in the early PRC, but Han Chauvinism was deliberately ended under the administration of Deng Xiaoping when the CPC modified the constitution and specifically targeted the concept and its impact. Because the CPC came to the realization that even though chauvinism wasn’t nearly as bad as supremacy, it was still contradictory and would lead to ruin.
All you need to do is look at the One Child Policy to understand how fundamental this change was. When China established the One Child Policy, the same people who claim that China is just as evil as Europe pointed to the policy as fundamentally cruel. However, what most people never talked about was the fact that ethnic minorities were exempted from the policy. Some were unrestricted, some were restricted but to some number above one. The people who were constrained to one child were Han. Compare that to the social outcomes in Europe and their former and current colonies and it’s starkly clear that there is a fundamental difference now.
I don’t have to defend Han Supremacy, nor their genocides, nor their settler colonialism. It’s all bad, and the harm needs to be repaired. I’m happy to be consistent on that front.
Historians, politicians, the UN, international law. I get that it doesn’t fit your narrative, but there’s a real difference between a protectorate and a colony. Tibet could not have been a resource colony when it first became a protectorate because no one was able to access the natural resources and build logistics to exploit them until after the PRC was established and finally industrialized. Meanwhile, the indigenous population of Tibet has more than doubled in the last 70 years. That’s not indicative of a colony. That’s indicative of an active colonial project. That’s indicative of a thriving autonomous region under the military protection of a larger regional hegemon.
It’s not weird at all. I just operate with a different set of facts than you. China has over 250 indigenous languages with over 1000 living speakers, whereas in all of North America it’s less than 100. That’s a fundamentally different outcome. Of the many indigenous ethnicities in China, most of them maintain their cultural customs, celebrations, holidays, cuisines, and histories. The Chinese government actively funds the preservation of these cultures, practices, and histories. Meanwhile, indigenous folks in North America are so traumatized by European colonization that the older generations are literally disowning their own kids for abandoning Christianity. The US and Canadian governments continue genocidal programs of blood quantum, water rights, toxic dumping, and cultural erasure.