Hacker News Reader

Comment by rfoo | Hacker News Reader

China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).

So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?

View on HN

They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.

It may not be far fetched but it would absolutely be a self inflicted wound to the PRC. Galvanizing global concern towards china.

That did not stop russia.

The CCP takes a long view of things. They know the diplomatic fallout from the invasion will subside eventually, so they're less worried about "global concern" than you might think. It's likely they would have done the invasion already but for the fact that invasions over water are really difficult and they're not sure it would succeed.

Don't most people maintain the view that Tibet is part of PRC China? They might think further autonomy or independence for it would be a good thing, like the Basque Country, but the control isn't really disputed right now. And nobody really seems to think it should be part of India.

In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places are part of the same country, and the international community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises one government, but de facto everyone trades with both countries and deals with both governments.

Sure, Tibet is part of China now. But the country was independent from 1912 until China annexed it in 1951. I'm pretty sure most Tibetans would rather be independent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands

Islands that were stolen from China during the Imperial Japanese occupation?

Okay it belongs to Taiwan, and they actually claim it, period.

> Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs.

Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones of actual control, and India turned them down.

North Korea is a buffer zone. That's the reason.

isn't that the same clever argument that Comrade Vladimir uses in Ukraine?

Bingo

It's literally the same argument that every king, dictator, or president used to justify invasions in Europe (and presumably most of the world) since the end of feudalism. Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.

> Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.

Interestingly enough, there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.

> there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.

There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in Scandinavia, not Finland.

> Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus.

I'm not sure you have a good grasp on the meaning of the word "recent". A recent theory, by definition, must differ from the consensus.

> There is no credible theory to that effect.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.13.584607v2

Granted, they don't say "Finland". They say "the northeast along the Baltic coastline".

Yes, I’m afraid that you are still misunderstanding the research. Your linked article speaks about gene flow associated with the movement of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers to Scandinavia, but later Proto-Germanic formed in southern Scandinavia according to the longstanding consensus. This is clearly spelled out in the abstract: “Following the disintegration of Proto-Germanic, we find by 1650 BP a southward push from Southern Scandinavia.”

There’s no new theory here at all, just some nice archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am constantly reading Germanic–Finnic and Baltic–Finnic contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat stuff.

Do you think I'm misunderstanding something other than that I'm not drawing the same distinction between proto-Germanic and "paleo-Germanic" that that paper appeals to?

You've quoted something that says after proto-Germanic had diversified, daughter lineages left southern Scandinavia to establish themselves elsewhere in the world.

But I pointed out a completely different idea in the paper, that before proto-Germanic diversified, about 2000 years before the time you mention, its speakers arrived in Scandinavia from "the northeast coast of the Baltic".

Your post above wrote “the location of the proto-Germanic speakers”. Terminology matters; Proto-Germanic is something strictly defined as to what it was, with a longstanding consensus about where and when it was. If you wanted to talk about pre-Proto-Germanic speakers (or “Paleo-Germanic” speakers as this paper does, though I suspect some would quibble with that term used for a very early date), then you could have done so.

Moreover, you posted about a “new theory”, but the paper here only gives new evidence for an old theory.

> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good

Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s Prime Minister), on the day that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can always be said but here’s a 2 minute video that explains the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek

You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun? That wasn’t a metaphor. That is PRC policy since 1949.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com