I don’t know about any fancy theories or terminology, but I do hang out with a bunch of Chinese Americans, all of whom were part of the Tiananmen demonstration and are in varying degrees of reconciliation with the CCP, the current stats ranging from revulsion to grudging admiration.
It is telling that for none of them Taiwan as an independent country is conceivable. In fact the dream of reclaiming [“outer”] Mongolia, a huge chunk of the Russian Northeast and at least parts of Vietnam and Korea is not considered batshit insane, just not practical in the current circumstances.
Although I’d sooner see a Trump or Cruz wanting the territory we “lost” to those evil Canadians during the 1700s & 1800s through those despicable treaties we were forced to sign.
We will unite with our long lost Northern brothers the Russian way: by killing most of them and destroying their cities. But by golly, the survivors will be proud to be 'Murricans again as GAWD intended all along!
Not sure I accept that statement at face value. Plenty of humans and cultures have existed, and exist who did not / do not “move heaven and earth to make the world fit with our story.”
I assume everybody else is too young to remember Cuba.
Cuba was never “ours” - meaning belonging to the U.S. - but we installed and encouraged friendly dictators. We owned most of the industry, the sugar plantations, and also the vice market, run by mobsters who earned millions of dollars from enterprises illegal and unwanted almost everywhere in the U.S. We looked the other way while right-wing autocrats stole from their people and terrorized opposition. Cuba was a subsidized American hellhole.
When Castro launched his revolution and showed he would no longer play that game, we went batshit crazy. The Bay or Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis and the CIA assassination attempts and all the other superpower gamesmanship that went on in the 60s should never be forgotten.
Now impose that mentality on China. Ninety miles away there’s an alien ideology opposed to everything you stand for, armed with missiles, and recognized as a nation state de jure by many countries and de facto by almost all the others. Every moment of its existence is an affront. You know you’re far more powerful yet you are constrained solely by the world opinion. The wound keeps festering…
If Cuba isn’t sufficient, imagine that Russia as our ally occupied Alaska during WWII and decided to keep it after the war, and everybody in the world said, fine, since you won the war for us. Now there was a communist Alaska just miles away from Seattle.
I won’t condone communism for a second, and I think everybody in the world should have recognized Taiwan 70 years ago. Democracy is better than authoritarianism of any species.
But if anybody thinks the U.S. wouldn’t have reacted exactly the same way as China over the years, they lack self-examination. We would have. We did. We always will.
Above all in the Chinese mind is legitimate governance. That cannot be stressed enough. The Mandate of Heaven isn’t necessarily a religious thing, it’s also pragmatic and this entire culture accepts it as an antecedent and it doesn’t come from the will of the people.
Taiwan isn’t just an island with a different polity, it is the refuge of The Kuomintang, the government of China before the CCP. It’s existence is a national insult and an internal threat. THEY have stood against the Communist party, perhaps they inspire others in this populous and massive nation to decide too as well. I don’t think the Communist party is unreasonable in being afraid to lose power in an instant when the populace decides all at once to say, ‘naw’ and slit political throats. It has happened many times in their past and everyone in their country knows it.
The Chinese language is different from ours in that people from neighboring counties may not be able to understand each other verbally but nearly everyone in China can read 4,000 year old text like we read the newspaper. That makes them all the more cognizant of history and that scares the government shitless. As it should.
@Sitnam with all due respect, I think you are competely off base. Although to be fair, you’re parroting the China History 1 course verbatim. Maybe we have to agree to disagree about “The Chinese”. I lived in both Taiwan (3 years in the 1980’s when it was under martial law) and China for about 13 years. I speak daily with employees, staff and partners in both countries. I literally have hundreds of Shanghaiese relatives. I also literally worked for a KMT presidential candidate (but for his company and not for the campaign).
Mandate of Heaven is a crock used by those in power to legitimize themselves. The average Chinese doesn’t buy that. If you want to stereotype “The Chinese” then picture the order goes something like this: me first >> family >> clan >> those who speak my dialect >> who can do me favors and/or has power over my life locally (think mafia Don or a powerful bureaucrat) >> local government I can bribe >> national government. I know every Chinese history book lists it as: Emperor - Subject >> Father - Son.
Au contraire, Taiwan is much worse than the detrius of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalists. It is the home of a Taiwanese identity separate from that of China. The anti-communist bent died with President Chiang Ching-Kuo, son of Generallismo Cash My Check. Also died with Chiang Ching-kuo was the fantasy of the KMT taking back the mainland. Martial law lifted in 1987, and the first direct presidential election did not take place until 1996. Independance moves by Taiwan is far worse than octogenarian KMT anti commie refugees (to be an adult in 1949, one would have had to have been born in the 1920’s).
The first directly elected President ever in Chinese history was Lee Teng-Hui, who was ethnically Taiwanese and educated in Japan and considered himself bi-lingual and bi-cultural. Fun fact, he held is first press conference as President elect solely in Taiwanese dialect. Incredibly ground breaking and his first shot across the bows to China that things had changed. Actually, Lee Teng-hui’s mandarin was probably is 4th least proficient language (Taiwanese >> Japanese >> English (Cornell PhD) >> Mandarin).
The modern KMT is a far cry from the refugees that fled China in 1949. They have been the minority party for decades, do not have an anti-communist platform, harbor no fantasies about retaking the mainland, although they are for closer ties with China vs independance.
The majority of Taiwan citizens are kinda ok with don’t ask don’t tell independence. Or maybe more accurately subscribe to “don’t poke a bear with a stick.” The Beijing government has drawn a red line for decades that a declaration of independence would not be tolerated. And those in Taiwan have spent decades preparing for an invasion that has to come by sea. If China takes Taiwan, it will by a Phyrric victory.
Careful. We might want the thirteen colonies back (though the Dutch might have something to say about Manhattan). And then there’s the French to consider…
There is almost certainly no piece of inhabited dirt today that’s been under the same or legitimate predecessor government since before there were governments. IOW, every bit of inhabited land has changed hands badly at least once and in someone’s eyes the current occupants can be considered illegitimate squatters.
All that differs is how long ago the dirt last changed hands illegitimately and how much the former occupants have labored diligently to keep that grudge alive across the ages.
Because the full name of Taiwan is the Republic of China. If China is used by most people to define the mainland region of this country, it deprives tens of millions of people in Taiwan of the right to claim this region. In fact, Taiwan and China are completely different from Ukraine and Russia, they are just confused for political purposes. They are more like East Germany and West Germany, or North Korea and South Korea. Please note that South Korea still harbors the vision of reunifying with the North.
China doesn’t need Taiwan. The latter has little by way of resources. Instead, the former buys and invests heavily in various countries.
Taiwan is, ironically, not a “sovereign nation” for most countries. Even the U.S. doesn’t recognize it as such.
As for examples of offshore sovereign nations, look up “Cuba”.
There is no “Manchu dynasty” or similar.
It has not been prone to fragmentation. If any, it’s been the complete opposite.
Not only Russia but other countries dominated neighbors. However, one wants to dominate the world, and it’s neither Russia nor China. The Gulf of Mexico’s chump change.
China has no ageing dictator.
Taiwan became liberal only starting in the 1980s. Before that, it industrialized through four decades of martial law.
Taiwan doesn’t represent a challenge to China via liberalism. Rather, Asia represents a challenge to liberalism, which is why the KMT appears to be gaining once more, and the present regime seen as U.S. stooges.
China watches the war in Ukraine closely also because it involved aggression via NATO expansion. Similarly, 400 military installations encircle it in Asia.
Ironically, the nine-dash line claim originated from Taiwan.
The countries that consider China as a “direct threat” have it as a major trading partner, even countries like the U.S. and Australia. That’s why AUKUS and other arrangements have been wavering. Even Taiwan has both China and the U.S. as major trading partners.
Hoping that China won’t invade and so forth appear to be projection from neocons and neolibs who are counting on China to attack others. How else can the U.S., which is the most warlike country in the world (according to Carter) and the No. 1 arms dealer, profit, let alone keep the petrodollar propped up?
Taiwan is not a “huge warning” to China but the other way round, i.e., given the presence of authoritarianism not only in Taiwan but in other Asian countries.
The Communist Party isn’t operating based on something like a Manifest Destiny but to do business. That’s why after 1979 it effectively lifted 800 million people out of poverty in two decades, something that astounds even Westerners who know.
I won’t bother with the rest of the posts because they contain the same hokey views of the issue.
Everybody needs Taiwan because of the chip industry there. “Need” doesn’t mean “conquer”, but if China took over at this point they’d have a monopoly on advanced chips, assuming the factories survived the takeover.
That may change in a few years if other nations are smart enough to set up their own factories, but who knows if they will or not? The US is supposedly doing this, but it’s at the earliest stages, will take years, and who knows if after our next national elections there will continue to be support for doing this?
I don’t know what you find “ironic” about the situation.
The prior poster’s comparison to East and West Germany, or North and South Korea, is actually reasonably apt. All three were split due to wars. A difference between mainland China and Taiwan and the others is that the territory was less evenly divided.
Perhaps if China had handled re-assimilating Hong Kong differently the Taiwanese would be more open to actual reunification.
Correction, the US has dominated the world. After Europe was finished bombing and murdering each other at the end of WWII and China was melting down into communism the US was left with the least damage and an intact industrial and agricultural base. The US didn’t have to conquer to dominate, they just had to have money. There were some military adventures but the US doesn’t really want more territory and the bother of administrating it, just more influence and even more so more money and goods. Which it is willing to pay for rather than simply take.
On the other hand, Russia at present is showing a very disturbing tendency to actually conquer, with a side of genocide, while internally very public statements discussing taking over more other nations is going on. China seems OK with investing on other continents like Africa and South American, but in regards to its neighbors it seems to have irrendentist urges to re-take anything that was ever, at any time, controlled by China. Just ask Tibet. Sure, they’ve made some improvements in Tibet, just as the British made improvements in India when they ruled there, but in neither case does that excuse cruelty and oppression.
At present, there is no nation that wants to “dominate the world” as prior empires did. Dominating through trade and economics is actually easier and less trouble than trying to conquer or colonize, even if it’s not without pitfalls, too. And dominating through trade and economics is actually something China does quite well these days. If they’re “only” the second largest economy these days it’s only because the US had a head start of several decades after WWII when China was making some serious missteps. They learned from them.
Ah, you say that like it’s a bad thing…
There’s more than one way to run a country. While I have a bias towards the system I was born and raised under (as do most people) as an adult I’ve come to see that it’s not the only way. This post is too short to delve into the why of Taiwanese martial law, but right now it’s run democratically, and has been for 30 years. For present day discussions its political system in, oh, 1957 is irrelevant.
This is false. The war in Ukraine was started solely by Russia asserting an irredentist claim to a nation that has been independent of any other since December 8, 1991 and whose borders Russia agreed to respect. It is a war of conquest. It had nothing to do with “NATO expansion” or “NATO aggression” unless you consider self-defense against a hostile neighbor to be “aggression”. Yes, NATO has expanded in response to Russia’s actions, prior to the invasion NATO was actually starting to crack. It might have dissolved with a second Trump term and Russia staying home, but once Russia became aggressive everyone decided that NATO was a great idea after all.
Likewise, if China were willing to leave the status quo, with all it’s ambiguities and irritations, as the status quo the nations around it wouldn’t be so eager to make alliances in response to China’s actions. Maintaining polite fictions and arguments limited to words about whether or not the PRC or ROC is the “real” China, or who does or doesn’t own Taiwan, would allow the spice to flow chips to be made and sold, everyone to enjoy technology, peace, and a some profit. But no, China has to be greedy.
So? Trading with “direct threats” is far from unknown in history. Nations are always potentially in conflict, the major and superpowers are no exception. We didn’t start trading with China in the 20th Century because we were friends, we were very much the opposite of that when Nixon made his historic visit. We started trading because we weren’t friends but hoped that trade might change that and make war less likely. By and large, that seems to have worked. Most (not all, but most) international conflict since 1945 has been in the economic and trade areas. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a trade war over a shooting war any day.
So - again - we did not start trading with China because they were friends but because they weren’t friends.
Which makes your puzzlement that we call them a “threat”… puzzling.
Apparently you are incapable of distinguishing a fear that China might invade from bizarre desire that an invasion occur. No one wants or “counts” on China to invade, they fear that they will.
Russia is seeing to that by making Ukraine a market for such goods. All those countries donating old gear to Ukraine are ordering new stuff from the US defense industry.
Let’s just ignore the environmental costs, oppression, genocide, and 30 million dead in a famine that didn’t have to happen that came along for the ride. Which is not to say my nation’s hands are clean - there is no nation that is clean in that regard - but let’s not pretend that economic miracle had no cost.
That last part is key. If the war in Ukraine is anything to go by, my guess is a Chinese victory would mean Taipei ending up as just another Mariupol or Bakhmut. Given that this would be the most likely outcome in the event of a Chinese victory, I can only think of one reason they would have for invading, and it’s the same one I attribute to Putin for invading Ukraine. They hate that there is a nation that has both a true democracy and people of the same / very similar heritage living in a country right next door. My guess is that their biggest concern is that it provides a “bad example” to inspire their own people to revolution at some time in the future, so they feel the need to eliminate the threat.
I don’t think that China does actually intend to militarily conquer Taiwan. They know just how costly and profitless that would be. What they want is to complain about it, and use the threat of conquest as leverage to get other things they want.
I think many of the earlier posts, and the guy that reanimated this zombie, have it right: Very few mainland Chinese see it as “taking” or “conquering” Taiwan. They see it as another Chinese province, that has been cruelly split following a century of humiliations, and that one day will be returned.
Unfortunately, most of the people I spoke to in China had little to no concept of self-determination. They wouldn’t care if 100% of Taiwanese wanted to be independent. An independent Taiwan is the kind of decision that all of China would need to approve, in their view.
I think they are waiting for a good opportunity. China is all about the long game.
Now, had Putin crushed Ukraine, and Western allies sat back and done nothing, China might have felt that a military strike could be the right approach.
Thankfully, that now looks too risky, so they are back to just doing military drills and complaining. But they’ll be looking for other opportunities, military, diplomatic and economic.
It’s not like with North Korea. China is not pretending; they really want to make a move. But they are also willing to wait 10 years, heck, 100 years, if that’s what it takes.
I’d be more cautious in this. Because this is exactly what most (if not all) of us thought Putin was doing with Ukraine. De facto control or veto over Ukraine’s actions, especially towards NATO / EU membership, via threats, until it went hot.
I suspect they do want to consolidate control over Taiwan, both for mythbuilding and to further crush any internal pushes for democratic reforms, but will probably (see my concern above) go with a straight on military clash. Try to choke them economically, sure, more of that. Possibly do a a little or a lot of skirmishing via possible near-future blockades? Less likely, but still wouldn’t be surprised. Just keep Taiwan from trading freely, or at least, restrict it enough to choke them?
But, in the way that we talk about “Sleepwalking our way into war with China” they too are taking many small steps that push the conflict, and efforts to dominate Taiwan could be one where each steps seems safe enough, until we’re all in a war no one is certain if they want.
Well, true. Let me amend what I said: Right now, the cost-benefit analysis is against them, and they know it. If the situation were to change (for instance, if international support for Taiwan were to decrease significantly), they might consider it.
I have heard many Russians claim that Alaska is still Russian and that America only got it leased or borrowed or somehow cheated.
That does not square with what is happening with the Rohingya in Myanmar/Burma. Buddhists are human too.
Fully agree, but Taiwan was not democratic 70 years ago. Still it should have been recognized as an independent country, and often was. Then the PRC has been pressuring many states to unrecognize Taiwan and to recognize them instead. Regretably, they have been very successful, I must admit.
Agree to this too.
And Florida is Spanish! California, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado too, if my memories of my old (Spanish!) history book don’t fail me…
