• freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I mean, isn’t this just the most schizophrenic framing. It’s Chinese soldiers who are lunatics for being patriotic but Americans are sane for threatening world war over a Chinese island on the other side of the world.

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      1 year ago

      Suicide isn’t patriotic. And it isn’t a Chinese island; that’s the point. It’s a democratic, independent country that happens to be a US ally.

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            1 year ago

            This is true. The six assurances reaffirms that the United States doesn’t view Taiwan as a sovereign nation under either Taiwanese or Chinese rule. The main points it states is that the US will continue to supply Taiwan with weapons, it will not be involved with negotiations between the PRC and Taiwan, Taiwan is not a sovereign state and China is not recognized as having sovereignty over Taiwan.

            So the US doesn’t think China has sovereignty over Taiwan while also saying they do not support Taiwan independence.

            Basically it’s another way for the US to feed the military industrial complex while keeping the possibility of war in our back pocket without disrupting relations with our #1 trade partner.

            • SIGSEGV@waveform.social
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              1 year ago

              Yup, the military industrial complex is so screwed up.

              Taiwan presents a tricky and strange situation. All I’m saying is that I really do not think that the US would sit back and watch China invade without doing anything.

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                1 year ago

                Of course not, but they wouldn’t intervene for the good of the Taiwanese people. It would be because of all the US assets (chip investment) wrapped up in Taiwan. Not to mention war is good for business. So both the US and Chinese populations will be at the whims of their government sending them into a meat grinder all for financial interests.

              • birdcat@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Yea they would probably sacrifice the Philippines first. Then Japan.

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                  1 year ago

                  Fortunately…or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the United States would use Japan as a base of operations to attack China and the Philippines is basically considered a giant aircraft carrier by the military. So they would want to keep them around while Taiwan gets sacrificed…though the Philippines would be next. Sad state of affairs all around.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Suicide isn’t patriotic

        Tell that to literally all the European and American soldiers who say they want to die for their country, and all the bumper stickers, and all the memorials, and all of the ceremonies, and all of the rhetoric, and all of the families, and and and… Or do you not consider it suicide when Euro-centric soldiers choose to enlist and committing to fight to their death?

        And it isn’t a Chinese island; that’s the point

        It’s literally populated by almost entirely Chinese people, Chinese people who genocided the native inhabitants. It is quite literally part of the same land mass and water ways just like Manhattan, Galveston, and the Florida Keys. In all ways except one, it is a Chinese island.

        The one way that it is NOT a Chinese island is that when the losing fuedal-fascist White Army fled to the island, the imperial fascist British and Americans interceded to protect their imperial fascist interests by ensuring that the KMT was able to stay alive and that they would be further indebted to them. The KMT then proceeded to prosecute the ruthlessly brutal White Terror on the island while the North Atlantic imperial fascists maintained diplomatic and military relationships with the island as a way of holding on to their imperialist presence in China that they obtained through violence, occupation, and the forced selling of opium.

        This is the ONLY definition of “Chinese” that Taiwan is not, specifically that it is not administered by the central government of the mainland. The former central governments all administered Taiwan prior to the civil war, but this particular central government was stopped by European interventionism to advance European interests.

        You are grasping at straws in trying to construct a narrow moralistic narrative that smoothly eliminates all the parts of the narrative that would fly against your moral narrative. It’s not working. Reality is what it is.

        • SIGSEGV@waveform.social
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          1 year ago

          I would say that suicide is not patriotic to anyone. Why do Chinese supporters always resort to whataboutism, anyway? Shitty behavior is shitty behavior, regardless.

          The PRC has never owned Taiwan. Also, it doesn’t matter about the ethnicity of the population because, at the end of the day, they don’t want to be part of China.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            I would say that suicide is not patriotic to anyone.

            But you have nothing to say to about America not allowing integration with China without launching a world war? Curious.

            The PRC has never owned Taiwan

            What a fucked up imperialist framing. The PRC doesn’t own China, it is the current government of the sovereign nation of China which has included Taiwan for a very long time and still includes Taiwan. You don’t say that the Democrats don’t own Alabama, but you apply an idiosyncratic standard to argue that the US is justified in turning Taiwan into it’s military proxy and threatening to send millions to their death over reintegration of a territory that is quite literally by all standards part of the same nation as the mainland.

            Also, it doesn’t matter about the ethnicity of the population because, at the end of the day, they don’t want to be part of China.

            You are talking about people who suffered under the White Terror for 40 years, which included torture and murder of anyone who disagrees with the KMT. The individual beliefs of the residents is a direct result not only of the indoctrination from that White Terror but from the heavy indoctrination by European propaganda for many many decades.

            What matters is that there is no way from Taiwan to be independent. It will either be part of the imperial bloc and therefore a military threat to China and a base for Western imperial power projection and containment, or it will be administered as a province of China and the Europeans will be kicked out of their foot hold. This is why the conflict exists, not because the people in Taiwan care one way or the other, but because independent Taiwan is a strategic position for the European imperial order. China will integrate it because it is required for Chinese national security, which serves not merely the people of the mainland but also the people of the island. It would be tragic for the US to turn Taiwan into another meat grinder in its bid to use proxies to maintain its global oppression.

            • SIGSEGV@waveform.social
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              1 year ago

              Why are you mad at me? It isn’t my choice. You make some good points/observations, but I won’t respond to each of them because the fact of the matter is that the US will not sit by and watch Taiwan be “reintegrated” (again, not my choice; just a fact).

              • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
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                1 year ago

                Sometimes it is worthwhile to be mindful of users’ instances… dude you’re replying to is from one of those instances.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                It’s also not the US’s choice. The European empire, which the US inherited and evolved, is slowly but surely ending. The integration will happen, and the US won’t launch a world war to stop it, because China won’t launch a war to integrate, because China isn’t the belligerent that the West has been trying to invent through propaganda for 2 centuries. Instead, China will continue to assert its position, demonstrate it’s ability to protect Taiwan from further imperial manipulation, and wait until Taiwan is ready to experiment with “one country, two systems”. China, unlike the West, can wait for a long time.

        • jcit878@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Chinese soldiers can go ahead and be suicidal if it makes you feel better. wars aren’t won by dying for your country. it’s about making the other guy die for theirs. sounds like China got an army full of dead guys

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        1 year ago

        And it isn’t a Chinese island; that’s the point. It’s a democratic, independent country that happens to be a US ally. 😍

        And it isn’t a Ukrainian province; that’s the point. It’s a democratic, independent country that happens to be a Russian ally. 😡

        • SIGSEGV@waveform.social
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          1 year ago

          What does this even mean? You’re comparing cats and dogs in an attempt to justify PRC’s warrantless claim to an island they’ve never owned in modern history.

          • lmaozedong [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Taiwan and the Donbass Republics are both breakaway states supported by foreign rival governments. The similarity in the situations is why China doesn’t actually recognise them or the Crimean occupation; it’d weaken their position on Taiwan.

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            1 year ago

            I think almost every independence movement is a bit like a Rorschach Test; people see in them what they want (or can).

            In this discussion here you learn basically almost nothing about Taiwan, its history, or why and what its people want, but you sure learn a lot about the political worldviews of everyone who participated. Your comment here is an excellent example of that, even better than the one I replied to first.

            And btw, I don’t justify any claim. I’d rather support Taiwans de jure sovereignty (over the island, not over all of that 😅) if that’s what its population want. And I doubt that this CCTV documentary is gonna change my mind, but still plan to watch it cuz I’m still trying to understand why most Chinese propaganda is so lame 😂

            • SIGSEGV@waveform.social
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              1 year ago

              All propaganda is not good, but I’d say that Chinese-brand propaganda is fierce. I make an attempt to get news from sources outside the States because our propaganda is pretty lame as well. I should learn more about Taiwan history, though. Can anyone recommend a good book about it?

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                1 year ago

                Fierce or not, it just seems weird. The relations between prc and roc cannot be that bad, and think of all the trading! There are so many ways to improve relations while still aiming for an official reunification. But hey, you know what, great idea! Let’s publish some video-statements of soldiers who say they will sacrifice their lives to get back the island that we officially already hold sovereignty over! – nono, much better idea! Let’s make it an eight-part series, that will make us even more popular over there!

                It’s like in the meme where the one guy who says something reasonable gets thrown out of the office window. (have not watched it, maybe it’s also much better than I assume)

                Meanwhile American propaganda is obviously much better, for example, no one questioned what happened before the stuff that happens in the black hawk down movie, or what happened after the pearl harbor movie. Comparing cats and dogs, yes, but from a simple propaganda perspective, that is just good framing, something China is really bad at, constantly. 

                And the US knows how to use that advantage. Americans (and most people in the West) care and know more about what probably happened to probably thousands of peaceful Chinese democracy-lovers (NSFL!), rather than why the US government bombed a whole city block in Philadelphia  2 years prior 🤷‍♂️

                And yea, its always good to learn more! Have fun learning about the history of Taiwan, White Terror and all that. It became too much for me very quickly, so I cannot recommend anything.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Countries don’t OWN their land, they are sovereign over their territory. Quite literally no government of China EVER owned Taiwan, but all governments, including this one, have been sovereign over Taiwan. It’s just that Taiwan was illegally occupied by separatists and European imperial powers. The sovereignty does not inhere to the party in charge any more than the Democratic party can own Alabama or the Republican party can own the Florida Keys.

    • vegai@suppo.fi
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      1 year ago

      It’s an island that communist China hasn’t ruled over even one second during all of their existence. To claim that PRC should rule over them is about as sensible as claiming that Taiwan should rule over mainland China.

      Their independence should be made official.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        This is because when the losing fuedal-fascist White Army fled to the island, the imperial fascist British and Americans interceded to protect their imperial fascist interests by ensuring that the KMT was able to stay alive and that they would be further indebted to them. The KMT then proceeded to prosecute the ruthlessly brutal White Terror on the island while the North Atlantic imperial fascists maintained diplomatic and military relationships with the island as a way of holding on to their imperialist presence in China that they obtained through violence, occupation, and the forced selling of opium.

        Specifically that it is not administered by this particular central government of the mainland is irrelevant. The former central governments all administered Taiwan prior to the civil war, but this particular central government was stopped by European interventionism to advance European interests.

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          1 year ago

          They’re so ignorant they think you’re talking about Han born there in the last 75 years.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        It’s literally an island close off the coast of China, like Galveston, the Florida Keys, or Long Island. It’s literally inhabited by Chinese people. It’s literally been part of Chinese territory for centuries. Just like Hong Kong, if you bring an enemy military into the region from the other side of the world and they enforce a separation of the land from its historical roots, that doesn’t make it legitimate.

        Eventually Alaska will need to go back to the people who originally lived there. The European colonies that became new nations do not have legitimate claim to those lands. Just because they killled everyone who disagreed with them and then filled the land with people who agreed with them doesn’t mean the claim is legitimate.

        Similarly, just because the KMT killed everyone who disagreed with them and brutally indoctrinated the entire island through the White Terror and just because the imperialist Europeans provided support and military protection while it happened so that the Europeans could still plunder Asia, doesn’t mean that the claim is legitimate.

        Reintegration is the only sustainable outcome and China will wait for as long as it takes, knowing that once the US empire declines far enough, Taiwan will have less and less incentive to remain belligerent and will eventually vote for a one country, two systems arrangement.

        • vegai@suppo.fi
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          1 year ago

          It’s literally an island close off the coast of China, like Galveston, the Florida Keys, or Long Island.

          … and Cuba. USA actually has more presence on Cuba (thanks to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base) than PRC has ever had on Taiwan.

          Of course, that doesn’t matter: Cuba is sovereign and Taiwan is sovereign. The latter temporarily lacks official international recognition for global politics reasons unfortunately.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            The PRC and the KMT are not separate countries. You are inventing a new way of thinking that you do not apply literally anywhere else in the world. Cuba was never part of the United States. It’s not republican nor democrat nor confederate. The working families party didn’t exist before it existed, does that mean it can’t win elections now? You are confusing political movements for sovereigns. China is the sovereign. The KMT was the party in charge for a very short period of time and they didn’t operate much on Taiwan island. The PRC demonstrated that it had overwhelming popular support and won the war and it took over control of China, which includes Taiwan. The KMT and the PRC are not separate countries and that you Western beligerrents keep framing it that way is completely disingenuous with no basis in reality, history, law, or precedent.

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              The PRC and the KMT are not separate countries. You are inventing a new way of thinking that you do not apply literally anywhere else in the world.

              Well, can you think of any other two countries like PRC and Taiwan that are in a similar situation? If you cannot, then you kinda have to think about them in a new way that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

              The KMT was the party in charge for a very short period of time and they didn’t operate much on Taiwan island.

              So who operates on Taiwan now? It’s not PRC.

              Cuba was never part of the United States.

              And in the same way Taiwan was never part of PRC. Or even less, as I showed before: a tiny (but larger than 0!) portion of Cuba has been part of USA since 1903. Exactly no part of Taiwan has been part of PRC since its founding in 1912.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                And in the same way Taiwan was never part of PRC.

                NO. We’ve already established this. They are NOT the same. Cuba was part of Spain. The USA was part of England.

                Taiwan is part of China, has been for centuries. The CPC took over China from the KMT. The KMT was routed and fled to the island, that was part of China and established a separatist state. This state of affairs would have ended with the KMT being dismantled if it hadn’t been for European intervention to turn the KMT into a political proxy that allowed the Europeans to maintain military and economic hegemony over the region. There is NOTHING similar about Cuba and the USA except that they are an island and a mainland (except Cuba is 3x further away from the mainland than Taiwan is).

                So who operates on Taiwan now? It’s not PRC.

                It’s not a machine. You don’t operate islands. The question is who is sovereign over Taiwan, the answer is China. The next question is which political body currently governs Taiwan, the answer is the ROC. The final question is does the ROC have a claim to legitimacy and the answer is no.

        • AnyProgressIsGood@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If they don’t wanna be a part of China they don’t have to be. Nothing you said addresses that point. You can’t just act like history didn’t happen.

          The people that live there NOW see no value in being Chinese. That simple, everything else is playing a pointless game.

          The dinosaurs inhabited that island longer than humans. The true owner is the lizard people.

          • Bloops@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            People believe what they want. White people in Turtle Island call themselves Americans, and white people in Africa call themselves Afrikaners. But we are objectively still European :)

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            The dinosaurs inhabited that island longer than humans. The true owner is the lizard people.

            That’s not how ownership works. God you liberals are so annoying.

            You can’t just act like history didn’t happen.

            That’s literally what you’re doing.

            The people that live there NOW see no value in being Chinese

            THEY ARE CHINESE. They are literally Chinese. They even claim to be the REAL CHINA. You are ridiculous.

            That simple, everything else is playing a pointless game.

            It’s not pointless. The number of people the US, Britain, France, Netherlands, and Spain killed in Asia ever since they figured out how to sail the blue ocean is unfathomable. That genocidal regime hasn’t ended. It continues to occupy large portions of the Asia-Pacific region, it continues to extract billions of wealth from the region every year, it continues to spread militarily in the region to crush any opposition to their genocidal dominance. And part of that regime is the existence of Taiwan as a separatist region, as a military outpost for the West, and as a potential location for undermining Mutually Assured Destruction to give the US license to launch nuclear war without risk of retaliation. It’s not a pointless game. It’s but one of the fronts in the battle to finally end the 600-year genocidal reign of the West.

            • AnyProgressIsGood@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              History happened. They are now independent of mainland China stop trying to side step the argument with disingenuous deranged semantical theater

              They own that island. They live there, they take care of it, they decide how it’s run. Forcing your will on others is clearly a bad thing. The fact autonomy upsets you should be a moment of realization to self reflect on your trash values

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                History happened

                LOL. So insightful. History is constructed and exists in the present.

                They are now independent of mainland China

                No, they aren’t. They are completely dependent on mainland China. Oh you meant politically? So was Hong Kong. You know why? Because the British colonized it. Does that give it legitimate claim to being separate? No. In Taiwan, the British and US didn’t colonize it, they propped up a puppet regime and made it a neo-colony, fully dependent on the West for military and political life, fully dependent on the West and now China for its economic life. Taiwan can, in no reasonable framing, be considered “independent” of anyone.

                They own that island

                That’s not how private property works. I would expect a capitalist bootlicker to understand the basics of private property.

                They live there, they take care of it, they decide how it’s run

                They literally ran a terror campaign for 40+ years! They committed mass murders of people who disagreed with them. And they operate the island as a proxy of Western imperialists!

                Forcing your will on others is clearly a bad thing. The fact autonomy upsets you should be a moment of realization to self reflect on your trash values.

                This is why China isn’t going to invade and occupy. Unlike the West, China understands that this is an unsustainable path towards integration. What they will do is keep pushing the imperialist powers out of the region and continue to develop their economy, their political system, and their diplomacy. They will continue to disrupt Western spy networks, Western propaganda networks, and Western influence campaigns. And through soft power, they will create the conditions for Taiwan to reintegrate.

                What you don’t understand is that failure to reintegrate means war with the West. The West wants to fight China but not directly. They will gladly create security problems for China via Taiwan and they will gladly indoctrinate Taiwan and create conditions for Taiwan to get involved in a hot war with China. The US will fight China to the last Taiwanese, just as they have done in every proxy war. China doesn’t want that. It considers the people of Taiwan to be their family. They want their family to live and thrive. And they understand that the West will kill every last one of them.

                The fact that you see nothing wrong with the continuous centuries of European imperialism creating violent strife everywhere they operate, threatening to escalate to nuclear conflagration, and operating 600 military bases around the world in order to impose their will on literally all of the world’s people should be a moment of realization to self reflect on your trash values.

    • Dreyns@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Always funny to see people validating expensionism in the 21st century, really brings a colonialist bloodlust vibe.

      Btw by funny I meant fucking depressing*

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        LOL, “expansionism”. Like what NATO does? Or do you mean the reintegration of formerly centrally administered provinces after imperialist interventionism that occupied, divided, and oppressed? Because lest you forget, all the people on Taiwan, except for the very small number of natives who survived the genocidal KMT, they’re all part of China. They seceded and the Europeans protected them, not because they had a right to seceded, but because Europe wanted to maintain military and economic dominance over the region. Taiwan is a proxy in this case. Reintegrating the proxy is not expansionism.

        Expansionism is 600 military bases around the world. Expansionism is establishing Ukraine as a new proxy and attempting to install net new nuclear capabilities on its border with Russia. Expansionism is literally what China has been fighting against for centuries. And now, because they want to continue pushing out European interests from their corner of the world, you’re crying “expansionism”! It’s ridiculous. Was it expansionism when Hong Kong was returned to China from the British? Was it expansionism when the British could no longer have complete immunity from Chinese law in Shanghai? Was it expansionism when the North Koreans tried to push out the Japanese from the peninsula?

        Europe has been expanding for 600 years and you’re going to cry foul when someone tries to push out European interests from where they never should have been in the first place?

          • CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            The problem, of course, is that you’ve come wading into an argument with absolutely no evidence. Here are the actual opinions of the citizens of the Republic of China:

            As you can see, the most popular options are “Decide later” and “Decide never”. “Independence now!” as a choice has never quite beaten “No response”.

            Nor is that really surprising - independence as a political project only appeared in the mainstream in any capacity with the founding of the DPP (Democratic Prograssive Party) in 1986. For the first 37 years, the island was controlled exclusively by the KMT (Kuomintang) as a one-party military dictatorship that not only considered itself part of China, but the rightful rulers of the whole of China! Here’s the insignia of the RoC Marine Corps, showing the full extent of the territories claimed by the Republic of China:

            As you can see, it not only includes the mainland but large areas of several neighbouring states including almost the whole of Mongolia. The KMT old guard, as much as remain in politics anyway, are actually furious about the idea of claiming independence, because it would mean renouncing the whole rest of China!

              • CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Firstly, there is only a question of ‘unify or declare independence’ because of continuous pressure from the US Empire for the last half century. Continuing the status quo benefits all parties because the RoC’s largest trading partner is the PRC (obviously, because it’s a country of 1.8 billion people that is literally right offshore) and gradually increasing integration was the obvious natural course.

                Until the US, which still maintains an official One-China policy, decided it needed another way to attack China. But maybe, China really might just smash its way in by force… any day now!

                If events had unfolded based on normal political and economic trends, Taipei would probably have ended up as an autonomous province under the PRC, similar to Hong Kong or Macau, because the Chinese central government is comparatively hands-off and local governments are mostly allowed to do their own thing - a policy started under Mao called (I love Chinese policy names) Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let One Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.

                Oh, but of course you thought the entire Chinese population was controlled directly by Xi Jinping like units in an RTS, didn’t you? Because you’re a know-nothing racist fuckwit - or not, after all, it’s okay to say that asian people are yellow-skinned and beady-eyed if they’re enemies of the US! Xi is going to finish his third term, see out the opening stages of the Belt and Road Initiative, then retire like every other Chinese President and foreigners with full bellies and too much time on their hands will cope and seethe that the next one is also a horrible dictator (until that one retires too).

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            74 years is a single lifetime. The US has lasted longer than that and it will eventually be completely removed from the world map through decolonial struggle. 74 years for a small separatist movement to be protected by European powers who dominated China for centuries does not suddenly grant new moral, ethical, political, nor legal standing. They are not a firmly established democratic nation of their own, they are a Western vassal and proxy, and as the world financial system dedollarizes Taiwan will slowly shift its stance back towards China. China has every intent in creating the incentive structures for integration to be the correct choice for the people of Taiwan. Given that when it started support for integration was met with death, the current state of integration polling is a good sign that things are slowly moving in the direction China wants them to. And the people of Taiwan are not blind to nor ignorant of what the US does to its proxies.

            Integration will eventually happen.

        • Dreyns@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Most of taiwanese people consider themselves taiwanese and do not want to be part of china again. No matter what happened before people now DO NOT want it or if they so they are now a minority. In case you din’t know ujraine was invaded, and without western help it would’ve been swalloded by russia. You are trying to justify killings and rubles by citing the pastand ignoring the present.

          With this kind of mentally everything can be justified. The core of rhe probleme now is much much more simple :

          People want to go in someone else home and take it.

          This is it, that’s all. And if you’re for that you need to ask yourself what you’re really behind.

          I’m personnaly fully against america emperialism and all the shit they do in south america, africa, etc… Their egemony on ecomy that is hurting all the planet, their lazyness torward climate change etc egc I’m agaisnt CCP repression of those they do not consider worthy, and their policy on privacy and their effort to control south asia. Etc etc…

          Once you start to look closely everybody is an asshole because they are BUT this does not EVER justify senseless killing over patriotism, sovereignty, or wtv the fuck.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            What people consider themselves is unimportant. Taiwanese is not an identity, it’s not a culture, it’s not a nation. Just like the Confederacy isn’t a separate nation and the people who identify with it aren’t a separate nation. Identity is historically and communally constructed. The history of Taiwan under the KMT is literally the history of a Chinese military executing a terror campaign for 4 decades and collaborating with imperialist powers. That’s it. That’s the history. That doesn’t make a separate culture, it makes a separate political group. There’s a big difference.

            Taiwanese IS a separate culture, but only in reference to indigenous Islanders. Calling the genocidal KMT “Taiwanese” is as bad as calling the occupying white French people in Haiti “Haitians” or occupying white English people in Jamaica “Jamaicans” or occupying white Americans in Hawaii “Hawaiian”.

            The REASONS people don’t want to be part of mainland China are illegitimate reasons, just like the reason for the Confederacy to secede was illegitimate. The REASONS people in Taiwan don’t want to be a part of the mainland include: the KMT killed everyone who wanted to be a part of the mainland, generations of people were traumatized by the mass murders and taught their children to believe things based on that terror, Western imperilaists propagandize the island relentlessly to move public opinion towards Western interests, Western imperialists have created financial incentives for the upper class in Taiwan to adopt a pro-Western stance to support Western interests, Western imperialists have meddled in the political and cultural affairs of Taiwan since the KMT fled there to create political conditions favorable to the West.

            None of these are legitimate reasons for Chinese people in Taiwan to claim a new identity. Also, none of these are sustainable reasons, which is why China will only invade Taiwan if the West moves to create new military threats via their control of the island. Without that provocation, China will integrate Taiwan slowly, by creating incentives and decoupling Taiwan from Western interests. As the dollar collapses and US economic hegemony falters, the incentives will start to drop. As China continues its counter-intelligence against the US and continues influencing Taiwan and the region, Taiwan will move towards the mainland over time. The West must not interfere with this process.

            And you’re wrong that people want to go into Taiwan and take people’s home. China is very clear - one country, two systems. The people on Taiwan stay there, but they would no longer have Western military bases there. The Chinese military would defend Taiwan as one country. The foreign policy stances would be decided by the party and include the interests of Taiwan against the West. Laws in Taiwan would remain the same at first and through democratic processes, the people of Taiwan would slowly integrate their system and the mainland to create the best system possible.

            None of this is taking people’s home. China operates the most complex multi-ethnic multi-system country in the world. Unlike how when the US comes in and colonizes, China has demonstrated for decades what coexistence and autonomy look like.

            You imagine you have an enlightened political position that sees both China and the US as evil. You think you have any reasonable opinion on China despite being totally ignorant of the country, it’s politics, and it’s history. You think China represses those they consider less worthy while it is currently the world leader in multi-ethnic autonomy. You think China has a privacy problem despite all of the revelations about the West’s truly complete domestic spying on literally every thing including doorbells and baby monitors.

            You are ignorant, and you use that ignorance to develop an imagined political stance that literally only Westerners hold. There are no other people in the world who think your position is reasonable, let alone informed. It’s a purely western construction, emerging from systemic Western propaganda and individual Western ignorance. The more you study China, the more your position will change.

            I would know. I used to believe what you believed.

            • Dreyns@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              As much as my vision is clouded by western view yours is clouded by china’s. You speak of flawless integration, look at hong kong struggle since it’s been handed back to china. Listening to you everybody is evil but china the perfect country where everybody is happy. The situation is complicated and both sides have their pros and cons but you are delusional beyond repair it seems.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                Nah, you missed the whole point. I am American. My family is all white European anti-black settler colonialists. I went to public school. Grew up on US media. Played red scare video games.

                I don’t live in China. I don’t consume Chinese movies or TV. I don’t watch Chinese social media.

                The idea that my view is clouded by China in the same way that yours is clouded by the West is, quite frankly, ridiculous. We are both clouded by the West. I am working hard to remove the clouds.

                I study philosophy, politics, economics, and history. I started with American, because I live here. I studied European, because so much philosophy came from there. Eventually I came to these new conclusions and framings.

                I consume white, black, and indigenous media produced in the US. I am sometimes exposed to people from Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Indian, Thai, various African countries, various South American countries, and various Asian countries as they are interviewer by American white, black, and indigenous people. Sometimes I read works from international people who write in English, or I read historical works that have been translated.

                What do you do to help you see more clearly? It sounds like you have a problem here. You imagine my position as a strawman, that China can do no wrong, and that I am delusional, in order to make sense of what I am saying.

                I encourage you to read more, listen more, and challenge your indoctrination more thoroughly. I recognize both your ignorance and your indoctrination because I personally experienced the same indoctrination and the same ignorance. I held the same positions you did in my past. I critique you not because I don’t know what you’re going through but because I recognize my own experience in your words. You have not said anything I haven’t heard and analyzed before. You are repeating poorly supported positions that have been significantly written about, analyzed, and found wanting by many many people who spend their lives in research and analysis of these things. My current position is based on my reading of dozens of analyses from people in different places, different affiliations, different histories, and different perspectives.

                I encourage you to put in more work on this.