Summary
Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.
Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.
Reading up a bit on the history of China, it looks like the Communists won the war for power in the nation and those who were supported by the West fled to Taiwan.
A better comparison would be if the Confederates fled to an island and retained their independence after losing the American civil war.
You need to keep in mind, the capitalists lost. You can live in la-la land thinking they “should have” won, but that’s simply not what happened.
Keep reading, because you haven’t gotten it yet. The communists rebelled against the KMT government and pushed them out to Taiwan. The American analogy would be if the south had won the civil war and pushed the north back to, let’s say, Long Island.
K, I don’t use all caps a lot, but I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR.
I will not be a slave to history. My defense of Taiwan is entirely based on the here and now.
K I need to qualify that statement somewhat. History is useful for explaining why the world is the way it is today, and serves as a guide into the future, but it is useless as some kind of long term score sheet.
Well, if that’s how you want to see it then the idea of “rightful owner” doesn’t matter much.
It’s really just who you like more at that point.
It’s not that the rightful owner doesn’t matter. It’s that it is hard to quantify on this scale, and it is especially hard to quantify using history.
And yeah, it is in fact more about who I like more. I like the Taiwanese government because the Taiwanese people are in control of it, and I believe in every human’s right to choose their own government. I hate the Chinese government for exactly the same reason, along with the fact that they’re a bunch of land grabbing imperialist bastards.
I’m glad you can admit your bias and that your idea of who China belongs to is based on personal preference.
I’m glad you can admit that you consider human rights as a form of personal preference.
But my, uh, “preference” for human rights isn’t actually the highest principle at play here. The highest principle here is that of internationally-agreed-upon borders. A country may not violate these borders. Period. For example, even though I like Taiwan’s government more, I do not believe they deserve one square metre of mainland China.
That’s a lazy and inaccurate take. The Chinese Civil War wasn’t some simplistic ‘capitalists vs. communists’ fight. The KMT was corrupt but not purely capitalist, and the CCP’s victory came from exploiting peasant dissatisfaction and the KMT’s failures, not some inherent ideological supremacy. Comparing the KMT to the Confederacy is absurd—they weren’t separatists but nationalists fighting for control of all China. If you’re going to push historical narratives, at least try for accuracy instead of ideological grandstanding.
personally, if the confederates f off to their own island, I would let them stay on that island, as long as they don’t influence back.
That’s weird, I thought China has currency and all sorts of other capitalist systems.