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.
Also, an increasingly large group of people there consider themselves Taiwanese first, Chinese second (or not even Chinese at all). Support for unification is very, very low. It is in fact a popular opinion to favour independence or to believe they are already independent (Huadu).
Strawman argument, I never claimed anything of the sort. History matters up to a point. The right to self-determination also matters however.
The actions of the US regarding black people are abhorrent. They also matter, because their effects are felt by people alive today. But those events are in a wildly different category than matters regarding territorial claims.
For example, I think the zionist claim towards Israel is imo basically bunk; maybe some ancestors have lived in that area 2000 years ago, but in my opinion that does not trump the rights of people who live there today, and whose parents and grandparents lived there. Basically, if you’re forcing someone to move somewhere else, or are forcibly assimilating them into your country without any form of proper democratic input, I think it’s wrong. I think that the rights of people who live in Taiwan trump some claim based on territorial borders from over a century ago. Unless the people there vote to become a part of the PRC, the PRC has no right to annex them. Similarly, the old ROC claim to mainland China is equally bunk. I don’t give a hoot about what people 100 years ago wanted to be a part of, I care about what people want today.
And just to clear this up in case you were wondering: I am not an American.
Supporting independence does not inherently make a nationality. There are clear economic reasons for independence. There are also clear violent reasons for independence (remember the KMT tortured and killed thousands of people who supported reunification, which obviously had a psychological and social effect on the island’s population)
Again Taiwanese isn’t a nationality. Believing it is doesn’t make it so. Just like white people thinking they’re indigenous or mixed race Mexicans inventing Chicanismo. These things are historically constructed, not merely cynical fiat declarations.
The right to self-determination is not a blanket “right”. The self-determination as an individual is a thing. The right to self-determination as a group is sort of a thing. But the right to self-determination as a nation is a very particular thing with very difficult to reason about limits. It’s not just something you can apply based on feelings. And this is because the definition of a nation is very difficult to establish and it’s different than the definition of a state. The right to self determination as a nation is not the same as the right to self determination as a state.
Taiwan is not a nation, it does not qualify for the right to self-determination as a nation.
There is no right to self-determination for a state or a government. The Taiwanese government does not have a right to self determination any more than the government of NYC or Paris or Yorkshire County or the province of Alberta.
And again, as usual, rights are tricky in themselves, because they have to be balanced against competing rights. Does any nation’s right to self-determination include invading and subjugating another? No. Similarly, I would argue that ina MAD world, no one has the right to undermine MAD. Taiwan is militarily strategic asset to the US. It is very difficult to disentangle independence of Taiwan with vassalage to the USA. Were Taiwan to become “independent” and then sign a “defense pact” with the US that saw the US station nuclear capabilities on the island, this would not be self determination but submission to the empire for the purpose of subjugating others. No, that is not included in the right to self-determination as a nation. And again, Taiwan is not a nation.
The history of slavery in America actually gives rise to a legitimate claim of a new nation being formed, that of black African diaspora in America. Despite having come from various nations historically, the manner by which they came to their current culture fully severed them from their national identity by stripping them of their culture, their language, their religion, and their connection with everything in their past.
The history of Taiwan does not give rise to a legitimate claim of nationhood but instead reinforces the idea that Han living on Taiwan are part of the Chinese nation and always have been.
Words mean things. You have to stop starting from your assumptions and then arriving at your assumptions as though they are conclusions. You can’t say history matters here but not there and conveniently keep carving our rhetorical space through special pleading for your preferred conclusion.
Look, I didn’t understand any of this before I started researching it. It thought Taiwan was an independent nation and country. I thought Chicano was a real national identity. Hell, I thought the US was a nation. I have had to give up all my assumptions and follow the research, the literature, and the history.
Your example of Israel is great. It’s a settler colony. It doesn’t have a right to exist. There is no nation of Israelites. The majority of Israelis come from Europe. There were Jews living in Palestine long before the Balfour declaration.
Taiwan is a settler colony too. The Han Chinese displaced and assimilated the indigenous inhabitants of the island. But those settlers are the people who you are claiming make up their own nation. Your disdain for the Zionist claim is incongruous with your support of the claim of independence for Taiwan. You are making exceptions for your preselect conclusion. You are begging the question.
The CPC agrees with you, which is why they have been committed to peaceful reunification for 50 years and why they want nothing more than for the US to stop militarizing the island so that the Chinese people can engage in dialog without the constant presence of US military and military intelligence making everything so much more complicated and dangerous. The CPC is convinced that the people on Taiwan will, over time, come to regard reunification as a positive force for good. They have no desire to force assimilation. Again, unlike every other country you are comparing China to, China is the only country with a concept of One Country Two Systems that currently functions incredibly well in giving literal nations self-determination within that multi-national state of China.
I am so sick if you ignoring the imperialist interventionism that created this situation. The people on the island have been living under the protection of the US and UK because the imperialists desired to create exactly this conflict. This is not a pure example of self-determination, it is an ongoing cold military conflict between China and the US and Taiwan is being used by the US as a proxy. The US could take one very simple action of stationing nuclear missile defense on the island and hundreds of thousands of people on the island would die while American soldiers remained safe. It is definitionally a proxy. Stop acting like you can just pull the island into a completely abstract rhetorical space devoid of all context, all history, all international norms, all international laws, all relationships, etc. Yes, you are totally right about your position if we ignore literally everything except the simplistic moral framing that assumes words don’t have meaning and that China has zero legitimate claim to anything ever. But that’s not how these things work. You can’t live in your head and expect to reach reasonable conclusions about complex topics like this.
Again, I implore you to engage with reality.
Like this thing you said:
Even if the people there vote to become part of the PRC, the PRC would have no right to annex them. Words have meaning. Reunification would happen when the people on Taiwan vote to recognize that the island of Taiwan is already part of China and therefore they agree to place their local government into a One Country Two Systems arrangement with the PRC. No annexation. No colonization. No invasion. No assimilation. No subjugation.
I know, I looked up up. You’re some kind of European. Europe’s track record isn’t much better than the USA’s, considering Europe created the global white supremacist settler colonial system. The guilt and projection accusations will remain.
You are again strawmanning. As much as I dismiss the zionist claim to the Israeli lands, I do not consider Israel to have zero claim to the lands they possess. I am firmly against their expansionist tactics, but I acknowledge that Israel has existed for decades now, and that many people were born there and have lived there all their lives. Hence, I don’t support the full elimination of the Israeli state, merely its containment, and I support Palestinian statehood. This is not an incongruent position.
You also claim that Taiwan is not a nation. But there is definitely an emerging Taiwanese national identity, surrounding the island territory, their modern democratic principles and history of opposition to the PRC. So this claim of yours is based on an assumption, one shared by the PRC, but one which polls increasingly show is outdated.
Created it? The ROC fled to Taiwan without US/UK help. In fact, the PRC did make one attempt at an amphibious assault, which went so poorly due to the ROC having a fairly large navy and airforce still, which the PRC sorely lacked. It was in fact Truman’s policy to essentially “let China fall”, meaning they wouldn’t intervene.
This however changed when China hopped on to the imperialism bandwagon and started supporting their proxy in North-Korea. This solidified the PRC as a belligerent nation towards the US. The rampant McCarthyism at the time forced Truman’s hand; he now had to defend other non-communist nations against the “communist threat” in China. This only started happening because the PRC moved against the US and UN in Korea. Had they not done this, the US would likely not have defended Taiwan and followed Truman’s earlier policy.
I’m not sure why you’re mentioning the UK by the way, as far as I’m aware they’ve not threatened to militarily intervene if the PRC were to invade. The US has postured with the seventh fleet threatening to do so, but I can’t find anything on the UK doing something similar. The US has also consistently opposed the ROC attempting to return to the mainland, to the point of almost sabotaging those efforts. So thanks to those US threats, there has been very little to no fighting at all between the two sides since the flight to Taiwan.
You seem to have fallen into the trap of seeing abritrary definitions of arbitrary concepts as being legitimate reasons to inflict severe suffering and death on people, ignoring the reality on the ground. You’re free to do so, but I’m simply going to remain fundamentally opposed to this imperialist reading of history, and I don’t think furthering this discussion has any merit.
Oh Lord. Supporting North Korea made China an imperialist?! Look, I don’t have the stomach for you anymore. You have NO fucking clue what you’re talking about and you clearly don’t give a shit. The US was the imperialist force on the Korean Peninsula, having taken over the imperialist occupation from Japan. The fucking US military leadership was trying to find a way to nuke China to end the communist scourge.
And let’s just fucking clear, becoming communist is a choice that nations make as part of their self-determination. The idea that the US had any fucking grounds to be in Korea deciding how they should govern themselves is total fucking apologia.
Chinese involvement in helping it’s neighbor against a brutal genocidal invade from the other side of the planet is not grounds for the US to intervene in Taiwan. And you think I have an imperialist reading of history?!
You think Israel has a right to exist as a settler state because it managed to survive long enough to have a couple kids? You think the USA and Canada are legitimate too and have legitimate claim to the lands because they bred there?! And I’m the fucking imperialist?!
Get fucked.
Again you display a total lack of historical awareness. Korea was subdivided into two occupational zones by two imperialist powers, both intent on expanding their influence in the area. The people of neither area voted for such a division.
Moreover, it was North-Korea that invaded the South, not the other way around. China also sent huge amounts of troops to the North for this initial invasion (up to 47% of the NK army consisted of Chinese troops when war broke out). Later, when the war did not go so well for NK anymore they sent even more troops.
Plans of the US military to nuke China only came about after the Chinese helped NK invade the South, not before. It was also opposed on various levels of the military and government, so ultimately it did not happen. Again, it was Trumans policy to let China fall to the PRC, and it only changed after they started getting involved in Korea, not before.
The North-Korean government was installed by the Soviet Union in the Soviet occupation zone. It was not created by the Korean people there. It has just about as much legitimacy as the SK government, which came about through elections held by the US in the American occupation zone.
We’re done here.