It’s 2019. I think we can all admit that Taiwan is a real country, whether China likes it or not.
Certainly lefty idealism but the West has a limited window of influence to improve how China projects its power.
23m Taiwanese people depend on somebody saying no. To ignore the PRCs demands. We've already let 13m Chinese Muslims get sent to concentration camps. We broadly ignored the incorporation of Tibet. Great Firewall, political incarceration, no problem, China, just keep making our stuff and investing.
Again, out window of opportunity to do something here is closing. Strong economic sanctions have to come quickly. But we also have to use every bit of defiance to resist behaviour that is clearly wrong.
Very roughly, the Western Ideal is to win wars by strength and decisive battles. While the Eastern Ideal is to win wars by endurance and maneuvering and, if possible, avoiding battle altogether. The latter is more realistic.
(Permit me the pun: We may one day find ourselves readying for a Marathon, only to discover we've already lost the marathon.)
There is a good reason for this. There could be a thousand potential fights, all of which you would easily win.
But if you had to fight them all, you'd get worn down, and probably lose one of them.
I think a lot of historians would argue with you on this one, not least how the two world wars were both intended to be quick and decisive, but also since the invention of nuclear weapons what it actually means to "win".
There's an irony in that statement. The "limited window" is a window to project power, presumably. The current western take on Taiwan is that it's an independent country. That's not even uncontroversial in taiwan.
Regardless, the current position evolved from the earlier one: the Taiwanese regime is the legitimate Chinese regime.
It's complex and history-ridden.
... is worthless if they allow the PRC to penalise countries, companies and individuals for just recognising Taiwan as a state. Or allowing PRC to takes military control of water and air space all around Taiwan.
We can recognise Taiwan all day long, as we have recognised Palestine for some 52 years. But until you get the local power to also recognise it, you're just whistling in the wind.
Personally resist, ignoring political demands en-mass, refusing to open offices in a totalitarian state, international sanctions for actions against on neighbouring states and diplomatically agreed semi-autonomous regions (HK).
China is powerful but if they can't sell to us, all their plans are for naught.
Save an absolute travesty of human rights, China cannot avoid its swelling middle class. Economically, they have options to farm out their primary and secondary industries to their African interests but that is only a temporary stay on price.
Underwriting economic growth on a mythical endless future of exploiting consumerism seems plain absurd to me.
I know we're nowhere near post-scarcity but we have to start finding and testing better models of wealth. Globalisation isn't working.
Edit: That is not to say we cannot pre-empt the movement of China's existing industries, and do as they have, and heavily invest in the poorest parts of the planet. This is better but still not sustainable. As soon as you run out of people poor enough to make your crap for the price you need, you get massive inflation. We need to change ourselves.
It's an unsolved problem how any closed system, whether it's a nation with restricted trade, or a planet with unrestricted trade, transitions off a consumption based economy. Even in the U.S. it's 80% who live paycheck to paycheck, some live right at their means, some are massively in debt, some engage in way more conspicuous consumption because they can and the like the social reward and have no concern of the future. It wouldn't take even half of those people to bring down the current economic order if they were to instantly start saving what they should, rather than consume. And it would likewise be terrible for the whole system if there were a significant recession, because there's simply no savings slack available to tolerate it.
Whether Taiwan is a real country or not, banning references to it is just tyrranical.
Imagine if the US banned you from selling software that made reference to the lost city of Atlantis. Clearly wrong.
It is oppressive that the US government won't let free people do business with people in Iran and Cuba, but it's not the same thing as banning people from acknowledging that those places exist.
I don't think it is that obvious. Particularly if you take into account China's long history
What reasoning would support the idea that the PRC represents a legitimate government and not the ROC?
Even if you don't take a stand on whether Taiwan is a real country or not, it is wrong to ban people from selling software that purports that Taiwan is a real country. How is this not obvious?
Then once China convinced the West that Taiwan isn’t a thing, next is Tibet, then Nepal, then the Philippines, and so it goes.
There is no both sides, and saying there is is incredibly disingenuous.
"The position of PRC is that the ROC and PRC are two different factions in the Chinese Civil War, which never legally ended. Therefore the PRC claims that both factions belong to the same sovereign country—China. Since, as per the PRC, Taiwan's sovereignty belongs to China, the PRC's government and supporters believe that the secession of Taiwan should be agreed upon by all 1.3 billion Chinese citizens instead of just the 23 million residents of Taiwan.[15] Furthermore, the position of PRC is that UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, which states "Recognizing that the representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations", means that the PRC is recognized as having the sovereignty of all of China, including Taiwan."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan
Basically a bunch of the wealthy class fled to Taiwan, claimed the land, also claimed all of China and Mongolia (to this day), yet denied citizenship to the billions of Chinese people on the mainland (only overseas/wealthy Chinese were allowed Republic of China citizenship).
That is silly in my opinion.
The origins aren't really that special anyway. The conflict between the PRC and ROC is really a conflict between two governments over borders. The correct parallel is something like India and Pakistan or North and South Korea. The PRC (mostly...also some people in the ROC) like to act like their case is some mystical historical wrong that must be righted, but it's really not special in any way. The PRC wants to annex its neighbor and uses propaganda in an attempt to make themselves look noble. It's a standard playbook.
Let’s say in order to protect themselves the 1% decide to all move to one city (new york), and take all their wealth with them, and form a new country out of this piece of the USA.
Seems like a giant loophole because the 99% are still poor even though they’ve “won” the war for the US, but lost a crucial, albeit tiny, piece of land which contains the majority of US wealth.
You can bet the 99% would fight to take back NYC as well as all the wealth sequestered there by the 1%.
The fundamental reasoning behind China’s claim to Taiwan is not just the physical land, but also the claim of legacy wealth that was taken from China and moved there, which was why the revolution happened in the first place. A small but meaningful piece of the country cannot simply decide to setup a rogue government to avoid persecution from the law, just like how it would not be tolerated if a bunch of wealthy 1% decided to form their own country within the US (from US land they take) just to avoid being taxed.
Of course the PRC will say whatever to try to make it's claims legitimate (just as the ROC did in decades past), but none of it changes the fact that they are two separate countries and have been separate for almost 70 years.
The PRC is trying to act like it's special, but it's just following the same playbook that countries have followed for thousands of years: claim some other country as their own because "reasons" and then try to make their political and military aggression somehow seem justified. But that doesn't change the fact that the PRC is just trying to take over another country when it could easily and fruitfully co-exist fruitfully with it. It's shameful and shameful that people like you would support such nonsense.
Maybe as a summary here is my message to all those trying to argue for continued aggression between the PRC and ROC: Just stop and support an official peace treaty you power-hungry maniacs. Stop trying to pretend your support for a resumption of war between the states is justified when de facto peace has existed for so long. Just stop.
> Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for China than it does a staggeringly risky gamble.
...
> Easton estimates that Taiwanese, American, and Japanese leaders will know that the PLA is preparing for a cross-strait war more than 60 days before hostilities begin. They will know for certain that an invasion will happen more than 30 days before the first missiles are fired. This will give the Taiwanese ample time to move much of their command and control infrastructure into hardened mountain tunnels, move their fleet out of vulnerable ports, detain suspected agents and intelligence operatives, litter the ocean with sea mines, disperse and camouflage army units across the country, put the economy on war footing, and distribute weapons to Taiwan’s 2.5 million reservists.
> There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict. Long underground tunnels—complete with hardened, subterranean supply depots—crisscross the landing sites. The berm of each beach has been covered with razor-leaf plants. Chemical treatment plants are common in many beach towns—meaning that invaders must prepare for the clouds of toxic gas any indiscriminate saturation bombing on their part will release. This is how things stand in times of peace.
It doesn't consider the very plausible scenario where Taiwan chooses not to fight (or chooses not to fight for very long). Instead they choose capitulation as an ideal decision to spare the enormous destruction they'd suffer, so as to keep their relatively high standard of living intact. Among nations with at least 10m people, Taiwan ranks around #21 in GDP per capita with a very respectable $25k. They've built something nice for themselves over a long, difficult climb.
China can play a long-term game of decimation, spanning years. They don't have to invade short-term, they can flatten Taiwan with non-stop bombing, terror-inspiring hits (when is the next air raid going to go off?!?), wait them out until inevitable capitulation. It's about long-term territorial gain and the national premise of unifying greater China, they can easily spare the loss of economic output from Taiwan's devastation. Just 15 years ago Taiwan would have been a huge share of Chinese output if unified; today that's no longer true and China is increasing the gap by the day. Who's going to stop the stand-off rain of missiles and bombing that can go on indefinitely against Taiwan? The people eventually give up, China has no need to invade to win a war.
They'll approach it as a hundred plus year project as needed. The only thing that might change that style of thinking, is if Xi needs to prop up his position (through military adventure, gaining prestige from reclaiming Taiwan), which may be eroded if China's economy falters.
The 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis is illustrative in this regard: The Clinton administration sent two aircraft carriers and accompanying ships toward Taiwan. Beijing threatened a fierce response: if the U.S. Navy entered the Strait, it would face a "sea of fire." Washington turned the ships around. See [1].
China is a lot more powerful today that it was 2 decades ago.
[1] J. A. Bosco, The 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis: Three What Ifs?. https://taiwaninsight.org/2019/01/26/the-1995-96-taiwan-stra...
Either way, I suspect US involvement in a scenario like that would be less direct.
The Taiwanese are aware of what waits for those who cooperate with the PRC. Look at Hong Kong. Where’s their freedom now? Look at Xinjiang, at the treatment of Falun Dafa. Taiwan will be colonised, again. First the Dutch, then the Japanese, then Guomindang and finally the CCP.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/01/reflections-on-ch...
> After the Party seized power in 1949, Mao would systematically apply the same techniques to one group of Chinese after another: “landlords” and village leadership; gamblers, gangsters, and criminals; Christian congregations, Daoist temples and the Buddhist sangha; business circles, corporations, and stock-jobbers; universities, schools, and intellectual clubs; hospitals, aid workers, and relief organizations; minor political parties and independent political groups; workers associations and unions; clan groupings and ancestral schools; martial artists and Confucian hold-overs—any set of organized and self-governing citizens was soon a target of a struggle campaign. In time each would be destroyed or brought into a subservient relationship with the Communist Party.
...
> Today The Cause has flipped—officially—from socialist revolution to national rejuvenation. The Party works under the same schema but has shifted the “people” that Mao identified with specific economic classes to the nation at large.[6] Mass mobilization campaigns have been retired. But struggle and united front campaigns have not. Xi’s great corruption purge, the Uyghur labor camps of Xinjiang, the attack on Christians across China—these all follow the same methods for crushing and coercing “enemies” developed by Mao and the Party in the early ‘40s. “One Country, Two Systems,” interference campaigns in the Chinese diaspora, the guided, gilded tours given to Musk and his ilk—these all follow the same methods for corrupting and controlling “allies” developed by Mao and the Party that same decade. The tools have never changed. The only thing that has changed is the Party’s assessment of who is an "enemy" and who is part of the "people."
You’re quite right that if China puts conquering Taiwan above all other aims they can do it, if the US and Japan let them. If they back Taiwan up it’s not happening. The US is quite capable of defending Taiwan all by itself and if the US doesn’t back Taiwan up its credibility as an ally is dead.
only 13 beaches on Taiwan
On Crimea at least some percentage (20%, 30%,...??) really wanted to belong to Russia.
In Taiwan, the amount of Taiwanese that want to be "unified" by force is 0%.
Good luck ruling a country that hates you. (Sure, it can be done by force, but at what price?)
Tibet would like a word.
1. Amphibious invasions are hard. The Taiwan Strait is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a military with no recent experience in conducting one like the PLA/N.
2. Taiwan has a far more economic impact upon the global economy than Ukraine. Other nations would be far more disturbed by the disruption of a first world economy, than a developing one like Ukraine’s. I don’t think we’ve seen the loss of as an economy as significant as Taiwan’s in recent history.
If you go into Morocco with a map on your vehicle that shows Western Sahara as a separate country, you'll have a hell of a time with the Moroccan police/immigration. I met people that were detained for 5 hours because of it. Morocco want everyone in the world to believe Western Sahara is simply part of Morocco. I cut that part off my map before I got there.
I'm told same story for the border in the East between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt want you to believe it's a straight line, Sudan want you to believe it goes up a bit (making Sudan bigger). Again, I met people that had problems with this.
"Admitting" Taiwan is a "real country" seems kind of sensible, but it's not compatible with the narrative of either the PRC or the ROC, and it's completely understandable that you shouldn't formally recognize as a nation anyone making such a ridiculous claim.
> it's completely understandable that you shouldn't formally recognize as a nation anyone making such a ridiculous claim.
I've heard more ridiculous claims. As a matter of history, this is completely correct. It's just that the rebels have really entrenched themselves.
This position is fundamentally identical to the position of a king-in-exile. Sometimes they made it back home. Sometimes they didn't.
I don't think that's the sincerely held position of Taiwan anymore. However, maintaining it is part of their current détente with the PRC: it has threatened to attack Taiwan if it renounces it's claim to the rest of China (which would be a de-facto declaration of independence).
According to the same government in Taiwan, Mongolia is not an independent country, it is a part of "the Republic of China". See its official map here [1].
If Kosovo could be classified as a nation after a few weeks of independence it's only hypocrisy to deny the same to Taiwan.
That, from my understanding, has been the historic position of Taiwan vs. China, and why this conflict, while not causing a lot of violence now, could be less straightforward to resolve than a claim of an ethnicity to a geographic area.
In the above alternative reality, could Kosovo be recognized as a separate entity counter to USSR’s desires? Maybe but the question doesn’t make much sense in the first place, since that (being a separate territory) would be almost the opposite of what Kosovo wanted.
You might like the idea, but it's not commonly held. For one thing it encourages armed invasions against weaker nations.
This is how the United States claims to exist, by the way.
What is clear is that Crimea and Ukraine are being used as pawns in a global geopolitical conflict that has little to do with or concern for the people actually there. A significant portion of it is about power and popularity of leaders and parties inside their own state using the international conflict to bolster support.
It is hard to not have a dim view of international politics like this.
Taiwan is completely different situation. It simply does not belong to China. The rest of the world allows China to pretend differently but it is just words.
If the ROC flees from mainland China and overwhelms the people of Taiwan and then claims that Taiwan is not part of the PRC, is that justified?
Would Russia need to just wait some X number of years after it shipped in the people to force the vote such that it would then be justified?
I’d have a hard time arguing against it anyway.
At least Taiwan seems to be doing a pretty good job of self-rule and nobody has a legitimate claim over that. Any gripes about 70 years ago should be pretty muted because most of the people involved aren't alive any longer.
How do you feel about Native Americans and their claims to various land in the USA and the policies around reservations?
How about native Hawaiian's various issues? Should Mark Zuckerberg be free to erect walls of whatever size he wants around his land and to seize the ancestral land of various native hawaiian's through the courts?
How do you feel about the sovereign citizen movement?
How do you feel about the state of Israel?
I think that your position trivializes the complexities of these situations.
It looks a lot like an internal dispute and I don't think the rest of the world should be meddling in their affairs.