Think of it more like the kid who's been bullied for years and years and when puberty hits is finally able to stand his ground. That's China, and they're not the only ones who have been bullied over the last centuries and who may be able to stand their ground soon.
Every country has been acting the same. Look at what the US control and ask why that is. The difference is that China has been on the receiving end of the stick over the last centuries while the US (for instance) has been on the giving end. There is no right and wrong, just being weak or being strong.
Just six comments deep from random coastal volcano and we are already at the Nietzschian übermensch, that escalated quickly!
In the larger picture, let us all consider the logical fallacy of tu quoque. A counter-claim that "you do it too" does not refute the original claim.
Colonial attitudes have changed. Western powers gave up their territorial maximalist doctrine a long time ago. Basically all former colonies of the West are now independent.
Meanwhile China is engaging in neo-colonialism with Belt and Road. You can handwave about "might makes right" but the reality is that by the standards of our day, China is not proving to be a force for justice or equity either at home or on the world stage and we ought to frown on that.
75 years after that was written, it was well outside the political mainstream.
Objectively, what China is doing is not worse than what the US have been doing, or than any Western powers have been doing because it's just how it goes.
Why? Your 'arguments' don't really make much sense. I mean whatever US was doing in the 19/20th centuries was no worse than what the other colonial powers did a hundred or two hundred years before that. Which was no worse than what the Mongols did during the middle ages. So according to this 'logic' everything everyone does is completely justifiable because someone did something worse at some point in the past? Absurd...
Some of the replies I get are childish and ridiculous. The US control land almost up to the Chinese coast bit China is the bully for finally being able to assert a few claims in the South China Sea... how far can hypocrisy go
As for the neighbours' input, we'll ask Mexico, Cuba, and South America...
Curious, what land is this?
Camp Casey maybe? That's something like 200mi from the Chinese border (through NK of course).
This is ahistorical. The nine dash line is a creation of the CCP, not of the ROC. It was not claimed from the ROC's time. More importantly however, it's just a claim. China went and built military bases on objects that were in other countries' already existing territory before the nine dash line was created and then committed military attacks against civilian vessels who used to use the areas to force them away.
> Look at what the US control and ask why that is.
Much of it is former territories that were taken over after WW2 defeat of the Imperial Japan, and many of those territories have over time been either been given independence, given the option of independence, or given to other countries.
That's factually incorrect. The ROC calls it the eleven dash line (PRC removed 2 dashes at the border with Vietnam) and they were the ones who created it before the PRC even existed [1]
Mainland China has taken possession because they are now strong enough to do it. It was only a claim before because they were too weak to assert their claim physically, which any large power would have done, or to make the others recognize that claim.
> other countries' already existing territory
The borders of all the countries in the areas were decided by Western colonial powers, and China was simply too weak to assert its interests and wasn't invited.
There is not right or wrong here. This is simply power and how things have always worked. It's naive to buy the "good guys bad guys" or "bully" narrative, which is only propaganda from one side against the other.
Saying that ROC and PRC have same claims doesn't say they would be same in their disregard for general order
What you're hearing is not truth, but is instead the internal propaganda that is used to defend against criticism of the national government by creating an external opponent for the populace to focus on. It's a time honored tradition of dictatorships the world over.
Among these concessions was Britain claiming Hong Kong for themselves (which was only returned in 1997). Interestingly enough this happened twice! The legality of the opium was not completely clarified in the first war. After the second war the Brits forced China to legally accept their opium. And it just gets more sordid from there, with various "Unequal Treaties" continuing onward into the 20th century.
Also, if they were so important to the Chinese people then they would still be talked about strongly in Taiwan which has a shared history going back to then and, as far as I know, they don't care nearly as much about it as the people living under the CCP.
> Among these concessions was Britain claiming Hong Kong for themselves (which was only returned in 1997).
Much to the dislike of the people actually living in Hong Kong. They would have preferred to never go back to being part of being China. This is another great example of CCP/Chinese aggression and colonialism against the world as opposed to their supposed persecution complex.
Of course the Mideast is largely unable to speak for itself because their culture, religion, and language leave them culturally isolated from the West. In many ways our treatment of the Mideast today, and their situation, is directly analogous to how we treated China in the past and the situation they were in. So I would argue what has changed has not been our behavior, but China's ability to defend itself.
Also, China will repeat the same missteps of the US in the middle east as soon as their first major interruption of fossil fuels happens. China is not immune.
It's long since time to move on.
China itself has committed many horrific crimes during that time.
I think claiming the whole south china sea is ridiculous because there's no principle behind it. A coastal EEZ is a principle, but if China can claim the south china sea why can't Vietnam?
I also struggle to formulate a strong argument against claiming and developing an uninhabited reef. China is by no means the only country participating in the spratly islands land grab, and to my knowledge no country has ever shied away from claiming uninhabited land. International Maritime law was not formulated to deal with this situation. I think China's neighbors will more likely than not be able to maintain their reasonable Maritime rights. If not, I think China will find wanton domination to be more trouble than it's worth.
The US Chinese exclusion act can not be termed "bullying of China" as it was explicitly about internal US politics rather than international politics. If that is termed bullying of a country then any anti-immigration law throughout history would be bullying of some country or another.