China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict, testing Taipei’s resolve to defend itself and its arsenal of U.S.-made weapons.
The Eastern Theatre Command said it had deployed troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its “Justice Mission 2025” exercises to encircle the democratically governed island, conduct live fire and simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade Taiwan’s main ports.
The live-firing exercises will continue on Tuesday across a record seven zones designated by China’s Maritime Safety Administration, making the drills the largest to date by total coverage and in areas closer to Taiwan than previous exercises. The military had initially said artillery firing would be confined to five zones.
Fuck the CCP and PLA. Free West Taiwan.
Lets say tomorrow, the US manages to occupy the entirety of mainland China, and schedules elections for next week. Who do you think the people of mainland China elect? A business-friendly lib who promises American companies will invest in resource extraction and privatization or reelect the guys who brought a billion people from poverty and regular famine to first world living standards within living memory?
WHHHAAAATTTTTT??!??!!!?
But all Lemmy.ml dwellers said China is not an imperialist country!!!
This must be some shitty western propaganda!!!
Did you read the fine print?
.ml: “China is not imperialist*”
"*because all of Asia, all islands, all African countries and all South American countries already belong to China"
More CIA propaganda
Prove it.
You just made a falsifiable statement.
Don’t just spread tankie shit. Prove it.
What you said is made up retarded shit. There is nothing to prove or disprove here. Just be amused and laugh at it
chinas stance towards the south china sea and taiwan is what this exaggeration for the purposes of comedy is based on
Interesting that would consider it imperialism when a country does a military exercise on the coast of their own country near an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists when the military exercise is specifically to confirm readiness for the thing that the imperialists keep saying they are going to do - establish greater and greater military presence in the region.
Remember, you likely already agree that the US is an imperialist force, the largest in the world. Does the US deploy its military for good reasons or is it an abusive bully? If China says that it hears the US threats to build up military surrounding China and in particular in Taiwan, is it consistent for us to believe the US is telling the truth this time?
The CPC never controlled Taiwan so it’s inaccurate to say it was stripped from them.
US being imperialistic doesn’t make encirclement and threats towards an autonomous island any less imperialistic. That’s just whataboutism.
If the CPC only cared about the security of their coastline then this aggressive military strategy makes little sense because it’s only likely to increase the risk of conflict. Pursuing peace and closer ties with Taiwan would disarm the whole reason they have for working with the US. But of course that would require the CPC to respect their autonomy, which imperialists will never do.
Political parties don’t control territory. Nation states do. The island of Taiwan is a province of the nation state of China - it was ceded to the Japanese imperialist who invaded China and took Taiwan from China making it part of Japan (not part of a specific party in Japan) and then the nation state of China, collaboratively amongst its political factions, liberated the island and restored it as territory of the nation state of China.
This talking point about the CPC never owning it is a category error and you would never imagine making such claims about Labor or Conservatives owning this or that part of England, or Texas being the rightful property of Republicans or New York being the rightful property of Democrats. This use of language is double speak.
As for defending against US aggression being whataboutism, that’s not even close to being n accurate use of the phrase. For example, when Russia stationed nuclear weapons in Cuba, the US threatened total nuclear annihilation because it was threatened by what was a consensual agreement between two independent nations. The US making it very clear that they were going to bring their military might to Asia, while expanding their drone war and demolishing a half dozen countries is a far greater threat than the USSR ever was to the USA, but for some reason you bootlickers want to pretend that the US moving 2/3rds of their naval assets to the Pacific theater and constantly writing strategic assessments about whether the US could win a nuclear war if it encircled its opponents with sufficient offensive and defensive capabilities. The US’s interest in Taiwan is nothing more than as an unsinkable aircraft carrier that produces computer chips (which, btw it has been trying desperately to bring into the US so that it can use Taiwan exclusively as a war zone).
Whataboutism would be saying that China is allowed to kill 500K Taiwanese children because the US killed 500K Iraqi children. Realpolitik is recognizing that China has a requirement to be hyper vigilant regarding everything on its coastline and nearby waterways and islands because the US and UK have been abundantly clear that they are not happy that China has recovered from the Opium War and the subjugation that followed and that the imperialists have no problem with killing people anywhere in the world if it means advancing the interests of their ruling class.
In one party states there is no distinction between the party and the state. If labor used its control of the government to outlaw, imprison, and murder everyone who tried to organize against them for 70 years then it would be reasonable to make a similar statement about their possession of say, Ireland. Not that they were ever entitled to Ireland, nor was China ever entitled to Taiwan.
I don’t acknowledge the territorial claims of nation-states since they’re made up anyway. There’s no moral justification for the idea that because some other political group that also called itself China once controlled Taiwan that it now belongs to the party that fought a war against the controllers of the island and exiled them there. Do you not see how crazy that is?
The only people who have a claim to Taiwan are the people who live there and they do not seem interested in being subjugated by the CPC.
For the record, the Cuban missile crisis was also created by a failed, imperialist foreign policy. If they had established peaceful relations with Cuba, there never would have been such a crisis. Just as I’m saying with Taiwan. Furthermore, the arms furnished to Taiwan are extremely different and less destructive than nuclear weapons. If the US decided to offer those to Taiwan, I imagine the reaction would be far more extreme than war games. It’s simply not comparable. I personally don’t think the US is much of a threat to China but perhaps that can be debated.
By the way, it’s incredibly ironic to call me a bootlicker as you apologize for imperial aggression against Taiwan… while I’ve done no such thing. I’ll openly acknowledge that the US gov is a destabilizing malevolent force in the pacific. Something you’ll never admit about the CPC despite abundant evidence.
Ok, now you’re just making shit up.
In one party states there is no distinction between the party and the state
Yes, there absolutely is. They are fundamentally different concepts. They always have been and always will be. You are confusing poetry with reasoning.
nor was China ever entitled to Taiwan.
It’s literally been part of the nation-state of China since the 1600s. You can argue that the indigenous people should have their own independent state on the island of Taiwan, but you’d have to have a revolution (peaceful or otherwise) on the island first to overturn the entire government and it would need to secede from China. The idea that China did not include Taiwan is ridiculous and ahistorical.
I don’t acknowledge the territorial claims of nation-states since they’re made up anyway.
Now you’re just being petulant. Of course you acknowledge the claims. That’s why you have a passport. It’s why you pay your speeding tickets to the correct jurisdictions. It’s why you pay tariffs.
There’s no moral justification for the idea that because some other political group that also called itself China once controlled Taiwan that it now belongs to the party that fought a war against the controllers of the island and exiled them there. Do you not see how crazy that is?
Please understand how you sound to me. You’re saying that political groups have territory not 4 sentences after you said political groups don’t have claims to territory. POLITICAL GROUPS DO NOT HAVE CLAIM TO TERRITORY. States do. The CPC does not claim Taiwan is the territory of the CPC. They claim Taiwan is the territory of China which is EXACTLY what their political opponents, the KMT explicitly stated as their official policy for literally decades. You are trying to force a square peg into a round hole. How you don’t see this as a complete contradiction just boggles my mind.
The only people who have a claim to Taiwan are the people who live there and they do not seem interested in being subjugated by the CPC.
None of the concepts in this sentence are rational or coherent. The CPC does not wish to subjugate the people of Taiwan. They consider them family, because they are predominantly Han Chinese nationals, just like the Union considered the Confederacy to be family, because in many cases they literally were. The CPC has stated for 50 years that it is not in anyone’s interest, their own included, to integrate Taiwan by force. You do not heal relationships through killing and subjugation. You heal relationships through patience, mutual understanding, and dialog. Literally the CPC has been the only country in the world to have a One Country Two Systems form of government. They have demonstrated that they walk their talk. They are saying the same thing they’ve been saying for 50 fucking years. The fact that you fundamentally believe the CPC wishes to subjugate the people of Taiwan is an artifact of your propaganda sphere, not reality.
And further, the people who live in Taiwan do not have a claim to Taiwan simply by virtue of living there. That’s why you can’t just go to England and build a cottage and say it’s now LizardLand and they should respect you as sovereign. Sovereignty is a historically and socially constructed phenomena. Existing in a place, after a civil war, and after imperialist intervention, is not a generally accepted foundation of sovereignty. Further, all of the generally accepted foundations of sovereignty, except indigeneity, support the claim that the island of Taiwan is the territory of the nation-state of China and has been for 400 years except for the period of Japanese imperialist occupation, which is NOT considered a foundation for claims of sovereignty, except of course in America and Canada where the law of the land literally relies on the Doctrine of Discovery for its existence.
For the record, the Cuban missile crisis was also created by a failed, imperialist foreign policy. If they had established peaceful relations with Cuba, there never would have been such a crisis.
I assume by this you mean the failed imperialist foreign policy of the USA. Which is funny that you try to compare the situations because the USA also created the Taiwan crisis (along with the British. I keep having to repeat myself but remember that the loser of the civil war, the loser of popular support, and the retreating army of the KMT was protected by the USA and British Navy as they retreated to Taiwan and the US and British intervened in the civil war to ensure that it could not end and protected the KMT while they proceeded to mass murder every single person on the island that was pro-CPC and pro-integration. After 40 years of that, are you really going to tell me that public sentiment regarding the CPC is organic and believable. That’s like saying indigenous people don’t really care about their language and that’s why it’s dying instead of pointing out that the Americans tortured and even killed children for speaking their native tongue. You are apologizing for the fascists here and you don’t even realize that the Cuban missile crisis and the Taiwan crisis are both created by the same empire for the same reasons and with similar results. It is not, as you imagine, that China is making the same mistake the US did. China is responding to the same ideology that has remained a consistent part of the US since its founding.
Furthermore, the arms furnished to Taiwan are extremely different and less destructive than nuclear weapons.
Correct. Which is why China has not invaded.
If the US decided to offer those to Taiwan, I imagine the reaction would be far more extreme than war games. It’s simply not comparable.
Correct, which is why China is maintaining a position of vigilance, readiness, reconnaissance, and zone control. Because the US has not triggered the national security threat that China is anticipating.
I personally don’t think the US is much of a threat to China but perhaps that can be debated.
Really? Like when the US trained, armed, and airlifted terrorists into Tibet? Like how the CIA funds anti-China groups? Like how the US has 700 foreign military basis and has a clear strategy of encirclement with China as a clear target? Like how literally the largest military budget in the world, that has destroyed dozens of countries, has 4 consecutive presidents and war generals moving their assets in the “Pivot to Asia”? Do you understand how lethal the USA is? Do you understand that the USA has been seeking to undermine MAD and win a nuclear war for decades now? Do you understand what the US did to any of the countries surrounding China? I mean, sure it can be debated, but really? You have very very strong opinions about sovereignty but you’re meh about the USA being a lethal threat? What world do you live on?
By the way, it’s incredibly ironic to call me a bootlicker as you apologize for imperial aggression against Taiwan
There is no imperial aggression against Taiwan!!! There have been no conflicts, there has been no occupation, there have been no skirmishes, no incursions, no fire fights, no bombs dropped. You are just redefining words to mean whatever fits your feeling about the situation. You want to know what imperial aggression looks like? 30 fucking fishing boats sunk around Venezuela. Oil stolen from tankers. Multiple coup attempts against government leaders. Funneling arms and logistical support to rebels.
You want to know what it doesn’t look like? 50 years of pursuit of peaceful reunification. 35 years of never dropping a single bomb in a conflict. Defending against imperial aggression wherever it shows up.
I called you a bootlicker and then you doubled down by saying “personally don’t think the US is much of a threat to China” like are you fucking kidding me? This is bootlicking. This. Right here. The US isn’t much of a threat to the country it has been threatening since Obama. The US training and arming East Turkistan terrorists isn’t a threat to China. The US building a network of bases to encircle China isn’t a threat to China. The US that bombed North Korea to the stone age while it looked for a way to nuke China only 70 years ago is not a threat to China.
That’s why I called you a bootlicker. You can’t tell the difference between imperial aggression and national unity.
I’ll openly acknowledge that the US gov is a destabilizing malevolent force in the pacific. Something you’ll never admit about the CPC despite abundant evidence.
Oh my god. Show me the fucking evidence, please. I beg you. How many coups has China supported in the Pacific. How many civil wars did it foment and then choose to arm only one side of and then invade for humanitarian reasons? How many international drug growing and smuggling operations did it setup in the Pacific to fund its black ops? Please, just read a book or something. Stop consuming whatever it is you’re consuming. It’s obviously rotting your brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia#Secrets_as_of_1998
https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/the-secret-war-that-transformed-the-cia/
Remember that we tend to only declassify things that are 50 years old, minimum. If you look at everything that we’ve declassified so far about the region, the US has been a destabilizing force up until the present moment of declassification (1975). We don’t know what’s happened after that but there is no indication in any of the declassified documents that the US has stopped being a destabilizing force and the US is still refusing to declassify documents for this region. Meanwhile, the Secretary of War is literally out in Asia saying “Those who want peace must prepare for war” and calling on all the US allies to spend more on their military to counter China.
They can’t do that because NATO imperialists are forcing their hand. Obviously.
an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists
Can you elaborate on this? I love watching gymnastics.
During the Chinese civil war, the PLA defeated the KMT and the KMT fled to the island province of Taiwan, a part of the nation state of China.
The US and British navies protected the KMT during their retreat and afterward, essentially creating a protectorate out of the island while the KMT prosecuted the fascist White Terror, with mass killings and political repression for the next 40 years, only adopting a liberal democratic formation once the Brits established a similar one in Hong Kong, which was another imperialist holding stripped away from China.
That you don’t know this about the history of the island you claim as your cause is unsurprising
My question was how exactly it was “stripped away from the CCP’s control”, which you didn’t address at any point in your colourful answer. You yourself admit it was always Republican territory. so which is it, then?
I love repeating myself in these threads. It’s so fun. Political parties do not control territories. That’s not how anything works. When Japan took Korea, it was not a party within Japan that took it. It was the nation state that took it. When Japan took Taiwan it was not a party within Japan that took Taiwan, it was the nation state that took it. When the US took Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc same thing. You would never say that it was Democratic-Republicans that own the Louisiana Purchase even though they were in power when the purchase took place.
The nation state of China, with its competing factions, reclaimed the island of Taiwan by pushing out the Japanese. The retreating army of the KMT fled to the island as refuge and the British and American warships protected them, setting up the island and the party to be a fascist vassal of the North Atlantic imperial regime. At no time did the retreating army secede nor declare independence. It claimed that despite having lost the war and despite having lost popular support that it was still the rightful government of China. Never mind that it had to kill tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who disagreed. Never mind that it spent 40 years violently and brutally crushing all forms of dissent against its position. And never mind that the imperialists never stopped supporting the KMT with warships, intelligence, arms, foreign direct investment, and diplomacy despite it being about as legitimate of a government as Juan Guaido.
Saying that the island belongs to the KMT is a category error. Parties don’t own territory. Nation states do. This is why the UN doesn’t have separate delegations for Labor, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Greens, AFD, etc.
You have a pretty peculiar understanding of how nation-states claim territory. Using your own logic, I take it you believe that Gaza and the West bank are rightfully Israeli territory? if not, what’s the difference?*
* “Murica bad” is not a valid answer
All of Palestine was declared Terra Nullus by the imperialist. It is they who setup the system of Westphalian nation-states. This is, as they call it, the rules-based order. The reality is that Palestine should have been granted nation-state status by the entire world decades ago, but racism prevented that from happening, and now we have the situation we have. Some nation states have officially recognized Palestine’s status as a nation-state, but it has not been enough and it is far too late to have immediate impacts.
As for whether my understanding is strange, I would ask you to consider why the KMT itself did not claim Taiwan to be an independent nation state for the 50 years where it was a one-party fascist dictatorship on the island. Why did they find it so important to establish that they were still a faction within China and not a secessionary movement away from China? I didn’t decide that that’s what they would do. My understanding is fully inline with the understanding of the KMT and the CPC and the rest of official governments of the world. It’s really only the uninformed and the politically biased that have a strange understanding whereby the rules don’t matter, the never matter, and only what they believe is the correct moral answer, given their limited understanding, could ever be the right answer.
You failed to mention the KMT did the vast the majority of fighting against Imperial Japan, while the shitbag Mao and hi CCP thugs hid in western China. After Mao took control, while murdering over 70 million Chinese, he thanked the Japanese for weakening the KMT.
Sure. I also didn’t mention how the KMT soldiers were defecting in droves to the PLA because they were much better treated as prisoners of the PLA then they were as soldiers of the KMT and because the KMT was a brutal fascistic force and the soldiers saw the PLA as way more benevolent to the people. I don’t have to mention every single aspect of the conflict to get at the heart of the matter of the discussion at hand.
Or said another way - sucks to suck.
Poor China trying to defend itself from the boolies 😭
LOL - as though it’s not believable to think that a country that hasn’t dropped a single bomb in 35 years might be concerned about the most violent nation in the world continuing to destroy country after country announcing “the pivot to Asia” in 2008 as they expanded drone warfare beyond anything the world had ever seen as we watched video after video of double tap strikes, bombings if weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools and now we watch as that bully double taps fisherman in the Caribbean. To say that the US is not an existential threat to literally every country in the world is to allow your entire worldview to be shaped by centuries-old Yellow Peril propaganda
This is all whataboutism and has nothing to do with China threatening to invade Taiwan.
Sorry can you remind me the conditions that China has set for why it would invade? Or is just threatening generally?
No. I’m not engaging with a disingenuous person with an obvious bias. You claim to know all about this issue. I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding it yourself.
LOL, the projection is strong with this one. You made the claim that China is threatening to invade and I asked you to clarify and backup your claim. But yes, I am disingenuous and obviously biased for … not believing the US is a trustworthy actor in the Pacific theater with respect to Chinese national security.
Controversial opinion: war is bad 🫢
Sounds like Taiwan should sign a contract building Sea babies and Sub Baby for Ukraine, just make sure to build a few thousand extra for “future supplies”.
Here’s an interesting evaluation of the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
https://www.stimson.org/2025/rethinking-the-threat-why-china-is-unlikely-to-invade-taiwan/
I feel like their analysis is, “it would be costly and risky so they probably won’t do it,” which could be said for literally any war ever. I’m not sure I find it a particularly compelling argument.
Naval blockades don’t really work when your adversary has a limitless supply of antiship missiles
Taiwan’s military is surprisingly ramshackle, unless you mean the US? I’m not sure they can reliably be considered an adversary of China anymore. Xi could buy a few million of Trump’s crypto and all would be forgiven.
Ah yes, the infamous ramshackle F35
10 cent army out in force
10 cent army? I want to see Taiwan armed to the teeth. They can’t solo the CCP in their current state.
No one is soloing anyone, including China and Russia
That’s really the crux of the issue. If China finally move against Taiwan, who will help? Japan seems the most reliable ally at the moment, and perhaps Australia. The US are untrustworthy.
Doesn’t Taiwan have well over a thousand modern ASMs in inventory, and manufacturing hundreds more annually? How would mainland China enforce an encirclement by sea for any length of time with that sort of threat?
AFAIK they don’t have that many of the newer ASMs, and anyway a thousand isn’t really that many, especially given that Taiwan’s missiles are on the smaller end of the spectrum - we’re not talking KH-22 sizes here.
It doesn’t take too many ASMs to sink some really important assets. Size isn’t really important, if one of the mainland’s carriers is within a couple hundred KMS of Taiwan, then it’s in the kill zone. Supersonic maneuvering missiles that work in gps-denied environments and can be sea, air and land launched are just the sort of weapon that works great in an asymmetric conflict and to break naval blockades. The blocader has to defend against every single inbound, the adversary only needs to get one missile through the defenses
While this is all true, the aggressor being the largest green-water navy in the world skews the equation, plus the naval angle is of course only one of multiple avenues of attack. We can’t be complacent about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, no more than we could say for example that Finland could hold off Russia alone.
Taiwan doesn’t need to sink every PLAN ship, they just need to make the political cost of enforcing a blockade higher than the CPC can afford.
Ukraine has area-denied Russia’s most important warm water port and most of the black sea from use by the Russian surface fleet with a small handful of homebrew ASMs and some jetskis painted black with a barrel of RDX strapped to them. And Finland did hold off the red army alone once already.
Ukraine is still being actively devastated after three years by a country far inferior to China - I’m sure the Taiwanese would prefer to avoid that fate. Finland’s “victory” came at the cost of collaoration with the Nazis, which maybe was the right choice at the time, but not great in hindsight to say the least. It’s also hard to quantify the political cost when discussing a one-party state - it’s not like the CCP will lose the next election. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I’d prefer to support Taiwan to such a great extent that we don’t have to cross our fingers.
They certainly do work in a world where the naval blockade is literally only a few miles from your own shoreline and MAD is on the table
You can’t enforce a naval blockade when the adversary is flush with ASMs is all I’m saying. And you can’t enforce a naval blockade with only subs either.
I wonder why the word blockade is not in quotes. Perhaps it’s editorializing from the author and not something the PLA actually said
What’s some cool stuff to visit in China that isn’t close to (or is upwind of) military installations or industrial centers? Asking for several thousand friends.
