• FunkyCheese@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    5411·
    19 days ago

    Chinas military stays in and around china as far as i know…

    But the us is everywhere interfering in everyones business

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
    5314·
    19 days ago

    B-b-b-b-b-but China might, possibly, at some point in the future, try to reclaim Taiwan! Both sides! Two things true at once! Me speculating about something possibly happening is the exact same as the thing actually happening!

    • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      19 days ago

      Also Taiwan is a staging ground for a US invasion, claims sovereignty over China, has it’s airspace go far over mainland China, and so much more. Somehow China not being a fan of this is the same as when the United States coups another country because it elected someone that doesn’t align 100% with us policy.

      Is it possible for more than two things being true at once? Is it in fact possible that reducing everything to “both sides bad” isn’t some supreme insight, but instead just a mantra that allows libs to support the status quo of us imperialism? thonk

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
        381·
        19 days ago

        Is it possible for more than two things being true at once?

        Scientists recently managed to get three things to be true at once, but it only lasted for a couple seconds. It may be possible for as many as four, even five things to be true at the same time, but that’s purely theoretical at this point.

    • cheesybuddha@lemmy.world
      167·
      18 days ago

      Hasn’t China stated that they intend to reclaim Taiwan? Don’t they claim Taiwan as part of their country right now?

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
        302·
        18 days ago

        Yes, as they have since the war, just as Taiwan claims China. Your point?

        Peace with Taiwan has been maintained for nearly a hundred years, with a mutual understanding that nobody would try to force the issue too hard (look up “strategic ambiguity”). In recent years, the US has been recklessly deviating from that understanding and now people treat the status quo as “Chinese aggression,” because of propaganda.

      • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
        237·
        18 days ago

        There is no “claim” to be made and there is no “reclaim” to be had against such a claim.

        Taiwan is and always has been recognized as part of the country of China. That’s why the losing army in the civil war went there - because it was part of the country they were a party of.

        China has stated for 70 years that the island province of Taiwan will be integrated into the rest of the governance of the country. For 50 years it has explicitly stated it will be integrated peacefully, because the CPC recognizes that doing it forcefully would actually be contradictory and create a constant guerilla warfare situation as well as invite the world’s militaries to intervene. The CPC has no intention of forcing Taiwan to integrate except if Taiwan works with foreign governments to establish a substantial and real threat to the security of the mainland.

        If China waits long enough, the Western economies will collapse and Taiwan will very quickly and easily realize that the West just can’t support them anymore and when they look to see who they depend on for nearly everything, and who their relatives are and who their dominant trading partner and who can protect them militarily, it’s going to be an easy process of integrating the provincial government of Taiwan into the government of the mainland - especially since the CPC is committed to One Country Two System meaning the provincial government of Taiwan can continue operating with the same structure and same politicians and same processes as it has now.

          • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
            171·
            18 days ago

            Yes. Integration means less conflict, more collaboration, less redundancy, more dynamism, less wasteful military build up, fewer threats from the US.

            One country two systems means that China provides for national defense of the entire space while Taiwan maintains a substantial amount of governing autonomy.

            Think of it like Greenland choosing to be a part of Denmark to keep itself safe from the US military, except in this example Greenland would be historically part of Denmark for centuries and have a population of 99% Danes and have some parts of Greenland only 4 miles off the coast of Denmark with US troops already stationed on it training Danes on Greenland to fight the mainland.

      • Oppopity@lemmy.ml
        126·
        18 days ago

        China seeks to reclaim Taiwan as part of China for the same reason Taiwan seeks to reclaim the mainland as part of China.

    • observes_depths@aussie.zone
      518·
      18 days ago

      Speculation? China has set a deadline for this to happen! And they’ve already taken territory of several other countries by force, including all of Tibet.

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
        181·
        18 days ago

        several other countries by force, including all of Tibet.

        Tibet has historically been part of China for a long time, which is probably why Taiwan claims it along with the rest of China (in fact, Taiwan’s claims go further and include Mongolia). Tibet broke away along with a bunch of other warlord states in the chaos following the fall of the Qing dynasty, and was never internationally recognized as an independent country. Its people were freed from the tyrannical, slave owning theocracy and rejoined the country, which led to the doubling of their average life expectancy (along with the rest of China). China’s claim to Tibet is about as valid as the US claim to the Confederate States.

        All of that happened over 70 years ago under Mao, before the country shifted focus with major reforms in the 80s. Though to be fair to you, there aren’t exactly a lot of recent wars involving China for you to choose from, are there? Not your fault you have to go back 70 years.

        • observes_depths@aussie.zone
          316·
          18 days ago

          So Russia has a right to control Ukrain too by that logic?? What year exactly should we all revert world borders back to and why?

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
            18·
            18 days ago

            Hmm? I think you’ve got that backwards. Ukraine is the one trying to reclaim lost territory that’s currently under Russia’s control, is it not? What year exactly should we revert world borders back to and why?

            I wonder if you can see the problem with the naive solution of trying to “lock in” whatever the present borders are. If a country seizes territory, even without any justification, that territory is now part of the present borders, and therefore would be “locked in” by that standard, suggesting that anyone who tried to take it back is the aggressor (until they succeed in reclaiming it).

            I think that what you’re asking is a very complicated and valid question, even if you didn’t mean it in earnest. The question of what makes a country legitimate is quite complicated. I would argue that the “north star” of legitimacy is what outcome is best for the people. In the case of Taiwan, I think the best outcome is to maintain the status quo of de facto independence without rocking the boat with things like formal independence. It’s not worth starting world war 3 over a formality.

            But when you have a “country” like the Confederacy or Tibet, which keeps people in bondage under horrible conditions, then obviously the best outcome is for them to be defeated and taken over by someone else. Slavery and serfdom are automatically delegitimizing.

            There’s also another reason why reunifying Tibet was justified, which is explained very succinctly by the 1944 US War Department film, “Why We Fight: The Battle For China:” (around 8:20)

            But how could Japan, only 1/20th the size of China, and with only 1/6th it’s population, think of conquering China, much less the world?

            Modern China, in spite of its age old history, was like the broken pieces of jigsaw puzzle, each piece controlled by a different ruler, each with his own private army. In modern terms, China was a country, but not yet a nation.

            The part of China’s history where it was broken up into these warlord states was part of what they call, “The Century of Humiliation,” when Chinese people were subject to imperialism and aggression from many different countries, worst of all being Imperial Japan. Because the country was so fractured, it was difficult to mount an organized, collective defense. This was understood by basically everyone, by the US, by the communists, and by the nationalists. That’s why the communists and nationalists were willing to form a unified front against the warlord states despite their major ideological differences, because it was obvious to everyone at that time that a unified China - a “One China Policy” - was important and necessary. Even today, both the PRC and ROC formally agree on the idea of a One China Policy, and the US has (in the past at least) as well.

            But again, today, I personally believe in maintaining the status quo, where Taiwan is de facto independent. There’s significant precedent that this can maintain peace and keep everyone relatively satisfied. The same precedent did not exist in Tibet or in any of the other warlord states. Furthermore, Taiwan has significantly better human rights and conditions in general than Tibet where you’d die a serf at age 30. The whole “Free Tibet” thing is pure propaganda, only followed by people who are completely ignorant of the actual facts of what life was like there before, and of the history in general.

  • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    371·
    18 days ago

    Authoritarian is a nothing-word used to describe enemy-nations. It’s like calling their government a “regime” or their intelligence agencies “secret police” or the vice-president the “hand picked successor”.
    I’ve never seen a definition - neither academic or by some farthuffing Redditor - that wasn’t so broad as to just be describing a state or so specific it wasn’t just a longer way of spelling “China”.

    Every state is authoritarian. Reducing political analysis to wether a state does stuff and not what it does, why it does it, or with what amount of popular support, is top-tier liberal winecave apparatchik intelligentsia thought. No actual insights, but it makes you seem like you know stuff, if you don’t think about it at all. And going against the concept makes you seem like a villain because who wants to defend “authoritarianism”?

    The definition came out in the fucking 60’s while the US was busy beating the shit out every protestor it could, yet somehow that wasn’t authoritarian.[1]
    Running around with HUAC screaming about authoritarian communism. Funding death squads, secretly approving money to royal families, forcibly relocating the poor and marginalised, all the shit the west did in Africa, all the crackdowns in west Germany, the ongoing colonialism, Robert Moses and his European copycats, shit like the syphilis and LSD experiments; all this occuring in the nations decrying the USSR - and now China - for being “authoritarian”.
    Britain is a police state today; the US is a modern Prussia, but the army is replaced with 17 different types of cops; the EU is funding concentration camps for refugees abroad and I can tell you from experience the cops have pretty free reign here too. We’re all surveilled up the ass and out again, but somehow China is an authoritarian danger? I’m supposed to be afraid that TikTok tells Xi Jinping knows when It take a shit, but its completely fine that my own overlords get the same info from the billion other trackers that are everywhere? People say “two wrongs don’t make a right” in response to this, but it seems like they think one of the wrongs is pretty right, and it’s the wrong that’s hanging over our heads - while the one around the globe is something to worry about[2]

    Its the same shit as totalitarianism - incidentally both concepts popularized by Hannah Arendt - which was just a fuckass way for dumbasses to sound smart when they uniquely observed that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used state power to do stuff - What stuff they did apparently having no matter at all, what percentage of approval from the populace or involvement mattering neither. No, what was important was that both states Did Stuff and that meant they were the same.
    Now what if you pointed out that the US Did Stuff too? Well that’s whataboutism, a clever Russian ploy to make you want to have a consistent ideological throughline in your geopolitical critique.
    What if you pointed out how old colonial powers like France were still Doing Stuff?[3] Well that’s Old Stuff so it doesn’t matter. Or it doesn’t matter because they aren’t superpowers or whatever.

    Here’s someone else shitting on her better than I could https://mirror.explodie.org/Losurdo___Critique_of_Totalitarianism_(2004).pdf

    not-immune-to-propaganda

    If you’re not a commited anarchist then I will not hear you utter a word in favour of Authoritarianism as an academic concept.
    If you claim to be one then I am going to need to see some serious dissertation on leftist theory from you, as well as proof that you actually organise in the real world, because I know there’s enough larping lemmitors who don’t want to admit they’re just libs, because they can’t stand the thought of not being a special smart little kid.
    Even then I am going to shit in your mouth if you’re an anarchist and you’re more concerned or preoccupied with what china is doing rather than whatever hellhole of a nation you live in yourself.

    1. Incidentally from the early 50’s and onwards the soviet gulag system had a lower recidivism rate, lower death rate and overall higher QoL than the US system. ↩︎

    2. Did you know the “social credit system” only ever applied to businesses? Fuck i wish the yeomen farmers back home were kept half as responsible as they are in China ↩︎

    3. and are still Doing Stuff, did you know they control the monetary policy of several African nations? ↩︎

    • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
      181·
      18 days ago

      A closer analogy would be: Imagine that after losing the Civil war, the Confederates flee to Puerto Rico, kill tens of thousands of people there for being “yankee sympathizers”, and establish 40 years of martial law while claiming to be the true and rightful government of the entire continental US.

      • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
        13·
        17 days ago

        Still not a good analogy because Puerto Rico was never a state of the USA. It would be more like if Long Island had been invaded by England and occupied after England beat the US in a war, and then the US had a war to kick the English off long island and then had a civil war immediately afterward and the loser fled to Long Island and said “we are the rightful government of the USA” and then Spain came by and started arming the fuck out of them while the loser of the civil war ran a fascist dictatorship for 40 years and killed tens of thousands of its own people for ever saying “maybe we could just negotiate a final surrender?”

    • KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml
      171·
      18 days ago

      It’s more akin to the US claiming the ex confederate southern states (which it does), and other countries being “strategically ambiguous” and selling the Confederate remnants weapons and promoting their independence while officially recognizing the US/Washington

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
        81·
        18 days ago

        Greenland as strategig against Rusia and China is anyway a stupid argument, due tthat Alaska is separated by 4 km from Rusia, in cold winters you can go walking from the US to Rusia, and China has only commercial trading interests with other countries, not imperialistic ones, like this orange piece of shit.

          • Zerush@lemmy.ml
            11·
            17 days ago

            Look on the map, don’t confuse a straight line distance on a sphere, the shortest distance from Greenland to Rusia go over the EU (Norway and Sweden), while in Alaska they need a simple Zodiac or even Walking in the Winter.

              • Zerush@lemmy.ml
                2·
                17 days ago

                Even with missiles there isn’t any reason to invade Greenland, apart of a NATO member, there is already an US Base there since 50 years. No, Rusia and China are not the reason, but rare earth in Greenland are, like in Venezuela the oil, not the democracy… The next is Panama and Canada in the expansions plan “to make America great again” (and the paria for the rest of the world).

            • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
              4·
              17 days ago

              Distance from the eastern most part of Russia to Moscow is 6300 km. It is literally on the other side of the planet, the longitude seperation is almost 200 degrees.

              Do you know what that means? It is faster to go from Alaska through Canada, the Atlantic ocean, then through Europe to get to Moscow than it is to go by the eastern side of Russia.

  • Mangoholic@lemmy.ml
    2127·
    17 days ago

    China is very vocal about taiwan being theirs.

    Edit: Insane how much this this one factual statement has been interpreted.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      387·
      19 days ago

      Both the PRC and ROC (Taiwan) claim sovereignty over all of China. Neither considers the island of Taiwan to be distinct from China, the question is over which government has legitimate sovereignty over all of China, and the overwhelming consensus globally is that it’s the PRC. Taiwan’s government is made up of the ones that lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to the island, slaughtered resistance, and have been protected by the west.

    • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      242·
      19 days ago

      And Taiwan is very vocal about having airspace that goes several hundred miles over mainland China. Taiwan is also very vocal about being a part of china, so what are you gonna do?

      Also, why would I be against a full incorporation of Taiwan into China, if it has popular support? The island was occupied by the fascist Kuomintang, the party carried out a genocide on the native population and it’s only around to day because it can function as a military launching ground for the US.

      What’s the actual rational explanation for why Taiwan should become an independent nation when that’s not what Taiwan wants nor what China wants and doing so would only be in the interest of the imperialist US?

      If this is the kind of stuff you actually care about, then why not start with all the national sovereignty that whatever place you’re from doesn’t respect? You know, something you can actually influence, instead of doing something that just so happens to further imperialist interests?

      • observes_depths@aussie.zone
        111·
        18 days ago

        Popular support where? Taiwan is a healthy democracy and last I heard they will die before accepting Chinese dictatorship. And why would the US start a war with China that they’ll never win?

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          9·
          18 days ago

          Taiwan is a dictatorship of capital, not a working class democracy, and was an outright dictatorship for decades when the KMT retreated from the mainland to Taiwan and declared martial law. Taiwan considers itself to be the legitimate government over all of China, not as a distinct island from China, which is why this is a remnant of the Chinese Civil War.

          The US would rather sacrifice Taiwan to contain and damage China, because as China develops the US Empire decays. That’s why the US Empire has millitary bases all surrounding China, to keep it boxxed in.

          Further, the PRC is democratic, the vast majority of people say the government reflects the will of the people:

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          181·
          18 days ago

          Taiwan claims the mainland is theirs, the mainland claims Taiwan is theirs, because both claim to be the legitimate government of all of China, and Taiwan is a part of China.

        • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.mlEnglish
          101·
          18 days ago

          Taiwan exists only because the US intervened to stop the fascists it supported in the civil war from being wiped out, so it’s necessarily a US protectorate/puppet.

          And to circle back again to your question, no it couldn’t be; they killed the people who were there before they moved in.

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      211·
      19 days ago

      it is tho, it’s been a part of china since the qinq dynasty in 17th century, the people in taiwan are exactly alike the ones in mainland china. It’s also in the best interest of both to reunificate, the US just wants to turn them into chinese ukraine for their geopolitical goals.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2014·
      18 days ago
      • Tibet has been part of China for several centuries.
      • So weird that China would claim territory off its own southern coast in a sea named after it.
      • Taiwan is already part of China, as even the Taiwanese will tell you.
      • observes_depths@aussie.zone
        1017·
        18 days ago
        • Tibetans were invaded by force, displaced, hate China and want their country back.
        • The South China Sea is south of China, not part of China. Many other nations draw important food and income from the area and China is kicking them out to starve. Please do a google search at least before spreading assumptions.
        • Taiwan claims to be an independent nation ready to resist China, so I’d love to know which Taiwanese say that.

        So why the love for China anyway? What’s your background here?

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          194·
          18 days ago

          Tibetans were invaded by force, displaced, hate China and want their country back.

          Tibetans were not displaced. They’re still there. What got displaced was a feudal theocratic dynasty. Of course they want their country back: they miss ruling over desperate, illiterate feudal serfs.

          Many other nations draw important food and income from the area and China is kicking them out to starve.

          Several countries have overlapping claims, but for some reason Westerners are only interested in China’s claims, because Western media has one specific narrative it wants to tell. Maybe Westerners should mind their own business and let countries on the other side of the world sort out their own disputes.

          Taiwan claims to be an independent nation ready to resist China

          And yet only a dozen UN member states recognize it as an independent state.

          I’d love to know which Taiwanese say that.

          Pretty much all of them? It’s even in the ROC’s constitution. Both the ROC and the PRC claim all of China, including the island of Formosa.

          What’s your background here?

          My background is anti-imperialism.

          • folaht@lemmy.ml
            14·
            18 days ago

            Several countries have overlapping claims, but for some reason Westerners are only interested in China’s claims, because Western media has one specific narrative it wants to tell. Maybe Westerners should mind their own business and let countries on the other side of the world sort out their own disputes.

            You’re forgetting to tell the commenter previously, these islands were previously occupied by France and Japan,
            one colonizer kicked out of Asia and the other being the loser of world war II.

        • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
          16·
          18 days ago

          Base nation - USA bases around China

          The number of USA bases in that area maybe has something to do with that. Maybe they want to monitor the area for safety reasons but what do I know.

          • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
            217·
            18 days ago

            The American bases are there out of the hosting countries’ permission. Weird that tankies never mention what Vietnam and Philippines think of the Chinese navy bullying their fishermen, or China not leaving the shoals that is within the 200 nautical mile from Philippines, despite the International Court of Justice ruling that China’s presence in that shoal is illegal. But you know, got to keep flipping the script as an NPC…

            • Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
              19·
              18 days ago

              “The countries the US occupies militarily agreed to it voluntarily” lol right, definitely didn’t have anything to do with the extremely obvious threat of being invaded and overthrown if they don’t comply

              • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
                115·
                18 days ago

                Are you from that part of the world? Are your fishermen being driven away by Chinese navy despite having centuries long friendly relations with Chinese fishermen? Did Philippines allow China to set up base within their maritime shores? Did you guys actually ask Vietnamese and Filipinos apart reading pre-prepared script?

                • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
                  11·
                  18 days ago

                  The US has literally militarily occupied the Philippines, Japan and South Korea. As for Vietnam, the reason they had historical beef with China was due to the sino-soviet split, but that beef has been largely resolved and the Vietnamese are not as anti-china as you think they are.

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
      22·
      18 days ago

      That’s typical modern empire behavior. Claiming land entire fucking ocean accross is still colonization shit. Don’t get me started on US companies establishing literal slavery overseas.