Thoughts?
Is this imperialism by China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing? Leftists are normally anti-imperialism. Wouldn’t it be better to let Taiwan democratically decide whether they want to be part of China or not?
That’s a bold statement, China has unproven capabilities to invade Taiwan.
Does this mean Lai Ching-te is gonna to be the president of One China?
Leftists are normally anti-imperialism
You’ve apparently never spoken to a Marxist-Leninist though some would argue they are not Leftists.
WW3 all the imperialists are acting at once
Isn’t it just such a fucking coincidence you have all these assholes coming to the same conclusions at the same time?
Putin invaded Ukraine and would love to Hitler his way across Europe in the name of “unity.”
Trump invades Venezuela, yet pretends to be an antiwar isolationist only taking necessary action to protect the U.S. from the flow of fentanyl (which has never been coming from Venezuela, but why let facts get in the way of a shitty narrative).
Now China will invade Taiwan and the U.S. will refuse to get involved because Trump is totally an “isolationist.” (At least when it comes to other continents).
Yep. Totally a coincidence and not a shared strategy for a global fascist takeover by a new axis of evil.
maybe fix your population crisis, and your HCOL, and the oversaturated degrees leading to low job prospects in your country before trying to distract the populace with “invading taiwan”
We still posting “news” like it’s 1921.
IMO china is making a mistake here. there’s one way to poison yourself and that is to eat something that does not want to be eaten. and the same is the case here. china is a successful country and they could just call that a win and leave it at that. instead, they (think they) have to swallow taiwan, and they will poison themselves. they will get a lot of people into their country that do not want to become a part of china, and they will seek to destroy china from the inside, which is much easier to do than from the outside, and this could become a real danger to china. china should not seek to conquer taiwan against the will of its people.
IMO china is making a mistake here.
Are they going to conquer or are they just pretending?
The USA has killed the USSR by forcing them into an arms race. China already has the bigger production capabilities. All the bases and aircraft carriers cost resources that cannot be used elsewhere while China still has several hundred million people who seek employment.
China has some really big domestic issues right now with record unemployment rates so naturally their drumming up nationalism to distract people. Though AI boom is carrying China through and I really hope they back down.
From what I see on Tiktok right now the propaganda machine is in full swing. Every video on Taiwan is spammed by bots saying “Taiwan is China”. With Taiwan’s opposition blocking defense budget it 100% seems like China will go through political offense first before invading.
I understand your point, but they seem to have subjugated Hong Kong pretty successfully. I would agree with you more if that hadn’t recently happened.
Well the PLA has barracks inside HK since the handover from the UK. On the other hand, blockading or invading Taiwan would be the largest amphibious invasion in human history
Hong Kong is a small tax haven - Taiwan is a full independent country. I really think we’ve past the point where physical annexation can work with guerilla warfare and sabotage being so easily accessible in this day and age. I think CCP agrees that’s why it’ll take a decade to wear Taiwan down still
Now is the perfect time for them to do it, I can see why! America may not even respond.
Yes, I know we are an ally and we’re supposed to immediately go to war. So what? We promised to defend Ukraine from Russia, too. Look what happened.
The perfect time is in 10 years when China is so technological advanced and culturally leading that the majority wants to join voluntarily.
I’d be amazed if China didn’t take advantage of the current inept and corrupt American government.
The USA accepted One China since Jimmy Carter.
The US’s One China interpretation is that it “acknowledges” China’s position, not passing judgement about that position.
Anyways, One China One Taiwan, two countries across the Strait
And does not challenge that position either.
There is an expression in science that needs to be used more in polysci 'all models are wrong" The right wing vs left wing political spectrum is a model of political ideologies and a very simplistic one at that. It is also used interchangeably for fundamentally different political tenants. Large government-small government, authoritarian - libertarian, capitalist - socialist. Models are only as good as their ability to predict reality and they are always wrong, they are just simplified models of reality. The moment you are confused saying “but if this country is X-wing, why are they Y” You are either misunderstanding the model, misapplying the model, or are misunderstanding the actual value of a model.
The full expression is “all models are wrong, but some are useful”
The expression is often expanded to that, it is not an incomplete expression without though.
China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing
Uhh, citation needed? Communism by name only does not a left wing country make
So it’s never left unless things work perfectly fine? It’s always fake left? China’s government control of the economy is very very lefty.
I’m left myself, but this easy escape by some left people really annoys me. Things can only improve if one acknowledges the mistakes and flaws.
Frankly, a part of me suspects that whole AI RAM and SSD hoarding rush into “data centers” that aren’t even plugged to a power plant is a manufactured market push to begin hoarding electronic components before China invades Taiwan. I suspect a lot of oligarchs would be less willing to feed the AI bubble if they didn’t have a post-Taiwan invasion world to compensate their investments if it doesn’t work out. You think there’s scarcity now, just wait until the invasion happens. China invading Taiwan is going to make China lose a lot of support, one has to wonder what they think they will get out of it.
Taiwan would not have such a big target on its back if it weren’t for TSMC. TSMC should have diversified throughout the world yesterday, but because of wealth and power, Taiwan has to pay the price. The politics and arguments are gaslighting; China isn’t interested in Taiwan, they are interested in controlling the market necessary for even basic modern warfare - advanced microchips. I don’t know if its due to the greed that they are blind to it or perhaps they are perfectly aware of it, but attacking Taiwan will be treated as an attack against the world by many countries. It will provoke a reaction several times worse than what Russia attacking Ukraine did. By driving down their viability as a trading partner, they will make a lot of countries consider other options that are way outside of the contemporary political landscape today.
they are interested in controlling the market necessary for even basic modern warfare - advanced microchips.
china already has the capability to produce advanced microchips themselves (it was in the news literally 3 days ago, i’m too lazy to search it out rn) and they’ve been heavily investing in research into microchips the last year so it makes sense they made significant progress.
on the other hand, the us is already building chip capabilities in its own country to become independent from taiwan and so taiwan doesn’t have the significance internationally anymore that it used to have.
i’m even inclined to say that china waited deliberately for taiwan to lose its international status before attacking, so other countries wouldn’t rush to its aid so much.
They don’t, they are approaching it but don’t have the scale. The people smuggling NVIDIA chips instead of using Huawei for AI would be laughing at these claims.
The US is and would be if they were preparing to back out of a conflict between the US and Taiwan. It would take several decades for TSMC capability to be distributed across different countries, even the US isn’t going to reach it. I don’t know where you are getting the notion that Taiwan is “losing its international status” when the first multitrillion company in the world and its customers is so dependent on it. Taiwan’s “international status” isn’t conditioned on the companies they can bully to keep from recognizing criticism coming from over there regarding mainland China, it’s industrial, technological, and military.
I can agree with some of the things you’ve said elsewhere. China is a successful country, and given time it will surpass Taiwan in terms of advanced microchip manufacture. It could even decide a fast one by not invading one and essentially causing the bursting of the AI bubble to be that much worse for US investors that have gone all in on it.
The problem with China is that it is also facing economic problems itself, which usually causes the more deranged and desperate notions to be the deciding factor. The enemies it is making internationally and their attempts to impose their will over other countries and their industrial sectors in its rise to power also isn’t helping it out, and they aren’t even trying or capable of winning a cultural war when part of it requires a great amount more censorship than the societies they want to impose on. It is under an authoritarian government that still has a lot of its founding military mindset. If China was forward thinking and was capable of using PR to control their messaging instead of suppression, they would be a lot more successful and a lot less prone to the internal corruption they now have to deal with, often severely in place of effectively.
For the first time ever in my life, I see someone claiming that China is left-wing. Left and authoritarian are usually at the opposite spectrums.
Communism is supposed to be a left-wing position right? But I’m saying I’m not sure I would see China as properly leftist given their behaviour. Wanting to take external territory potentially by force seems imperialist to me, and I would see imperialism as a right-wing behaviour.
Communism does not exist. I consider myself a leftie but I don’t believe in communism, it has never worked and will never work.
What lefties actually believe in (including those who think communism can work) are social systems (part of socialism, which looks like communism, but that’s the difference - balance versus extremity). China’s social systems are supposedly very good, but they’re still capitalists (which isn’t necessarily bad if the government does it’s job like in most of EU and according to many - China)
I think you need to have a clearer idea of what left wing and communism are, how the CCP, PRC, and China are different, and know the CCP’s argument for Taiwain is. Relately, it would be important to know the ROC’s claim as well.
Once you know what communism is, you’ll have to ask yourself is the PRC communism? Can a single nation state be communist? How can a single party be legitimately move a government to communism through authoritarian means? How would it work otherwise? Is the CCP position on Taiwain imperialism? Does that argument hold water?
You must have .ml blocked
That is what Animal Farm was talking about - that authoritarianism can take over any political ideology. It isn’t a anti-communism book, but anti-authoritarianism.
from what i’ve learned (through experience, not through books), left-wing people don’t like oppression and control as long as they’re the ones being controlled.
as soon as they’re the one controlling others, however, the tide changes. you can see this in germany where self-described leftists want to tell other people that they can’t drive fossil fuels driven cars anymore (“gegen die Technologieoffenheit”) or that everybody has to install a heat pump in their homes. the complete opposite of letting other people live their lifes un-interfered. all of this is justified with the supposed “higher good” (mitigating climate change). you can see where this is going … authoritarianism, unfortunately.
But utilitarian measures are there to protect and improve lives. Banning fossil fuels would piss off a minority group, while saving orders of magnitude more human lives. Similar groups have whined about seatbelts, airbags, gas vs. electric/induction ranges, even the amount of water flowing in the toilet bowl.
It’s not like there aren’t alternatives to ICE vehicles, nor are people being limited in travel or told they can’t drive. It will really only take one or two generations for the butthurt whining “authoritarianism” to become a footnote in history. By then, burning gasoline for basic travel will seem as ridiculous as keeping a horse and buggy at the ready does now.
Tell that to Mao and Stalin’s victims.
Mainland China now is but communist only in name. So-called “Xi Jinping Thought” is the current setting.
That’s why hardline National Democrats (NatDems), which the Maoist far left in my country call themselves, see Mainland China as an enemy as much as the United States.
Is this imperialism by China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing? Leftists are normally anti-imperialism.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1974/04/10.htm
Deng once said of his denouncement of what he then called “social imperialism”. Unfortunately prosperity brought in part by Western industry seeking for cheap labor is what partly pushed for the reversal of roles, whereupon Mainland China now gets more exceptionalism than its rivals, and is looking to complete its own “manifest destiny”.
They never claimed to have a communist system to begin with. That is a western label placed upon them. Communist parties do not implement communist systems any more than green parties implement “green systems.” They implement socialist systems.
Comparing this conflict to “manifest destiny” is just complete brainrot and doesn’t make it seem like you are that interested in understanding the actual historical circumstances. This is an unresolved civil war due to the USA’s invasion to protect one side of the civil war, which in China is viewed naturally as a major attack to their sovereignty so allowing a foreign power to just cut a piece of them off is viewed negatively due to the Century of Humiliation of them being carved up by foreign powers.
Both sides also agreed to the reunification of China and this “one-china policy” became internationally recognized by almost the entire world, and it was not until the year 2000 that Taiwan de facto stopped agreeing with this policy. You can make an argument that Taiwan’s fairly recent desire for sovereignty should be respected without resorting to bizarre comparisons like Manifest Destiny, as this is obviously not what is going on for anyone who is intellectually honest about the situation at all.
This is not even an economic dispute and so trying to use Marxian analysis and throwing around buzzwords like “imperialism” is irrelevant. One of the biggest reasons the PRC hasn’t invaded Taiwan is because they would be harmed from the destruction of TSMC, so if anything economic reasons are discouraging the PRC form acting than encouraging it. The desire for China to reunify with Taiwan is a cultural and historical disagreement, it is more of an ego thing. They view the splitting off of Hong Kong by the British, Macau by the Portuguese, and Taiwan by the USA as attacks on their national sovereignty and thus to their national pride, and have vowed to bring them all back into the fold for decades now, and Taiwan is the only one left.
It is really an ego thing more about national pride. Again, you can indeed argue that they their national pride shouldn’t override Taiwan’s right to self-determination, but it is not as deep as you make it out to be. If you read some of those Marxian books you would find that invasions for “imperialism” is supposed to have the goal of expanding to new markets, but China is already Taiwan’s biggest trading partner by miles, they already dominate their market.
You are trying to make this way deeper than it actually is.
Taiwan wasn’t even part of the civil war you use as the basis of your argument. It wasn’t even part of the ROC until the allies gave it to be under the administration of the ROC, sovereignty to be decided at a later date peacefully, following the UN Charter.
Framing this as a frozen civil war is ridiculous, but it’s the only way the PRC has some claim to Taiwan.
I read the first sentence and stopped. Not worth reading the rest and does not deserve an actual reply.
When did the Chinese Civil War start? When did the Chinese Civil War end (/you believe was frozen)? Between those two points in time, who had sovereignty over Taiwan?
