freagle

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.

What you call historical awareness I call ideological fiction. The USSR was not an imperialist power, especially not in the period we are talking about. The Russia, China, and Korea are neighbors. They all have an interest in what happens with each other one. Korea was subdivided into two occupational zones because Korea was occupied fully by Japan and then occupied again by the US. The North was NEVER occupied by the USSR nor by China. The USSR had just survived the most brutal war in the history of the world and they had borne the brunt of the onslaught. The US, however, was fresh and ready to fight and firmly ideologically committed to their psychotic rapacious mass murderous program.

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.

It’s none of the USA’s business what the fuck is happening on the Korean peninsula. The fact that China lent support to one faction of the Korean civil war, which was happening because the Japanese occupiers had been defeated, is not relevant and does not give the US any standing to do anything ESPECIALLY nuke another country.

Later, when the war did not go so well for NK anymore they sent even more troops.

You gotta stop reifying this shit. There was only Korea. Japan occupied all of it. The US came in and the Chinese and Soviets said that Korea should be allowed to resolve their own issues and as neighbors they’ll support whoever is anti-imperialist, which they did. The US said “hells no” because they thought they should have a say over the spread of communism. Because they are actual imperialists. I know it’s confusing, but China and the USSR were not imperialists at the time of this conflict. China has never been an imperialist since the civil war. The USSR could be argued as imperialist during Kruschev’s tenure, but the Korean situation was entirely created by two imperialist powers - Japan and the US.

The North-Korean government was installed by the Soviet Union in the Soviet occupation zone

The Soviet Union created a provisional government in the power vacuum that was to exist upon the Japanese surrendering. The problem emerged when the US thought that because they nuked Japan that the USA should occupy Korea, so the USSR needed to actually garrison the area with military force to prevent its supposed ally from building a military base on its Eastern border.

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.

Sure, the legitimate elections that resulted in military dictators for 40 years. Very legitimate.

Just to disabuse you of your total fantasy - the people of Korea in both the Northern and Southern administrative zones participated in the creation of their governments. The Soviets provided a ready-built structure for that government, and the US provided a ready-built structure for that government. In both cases, there were to be leaders. Under the Soviet model, leaders were selected in a more parliamentary way, that is to say that representatives selected the leader. Under the US model, the electorate has a direct election for the president. Both models are democratic in different ways. But to imagine that because the South elected their president that the USA didn’t fully impose that entire bureaucratic structure on them is willful ignorance, and to imagine that the Soviet system, which consisted of democratic workers councils in every workplace and in every village was somehow imposed on the Korean people without their participation is just more Manichean fantasy bullshit that keeps your psyche safe from reality.

We’re done here.

Good riddance.

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.

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.

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

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 think that the rights of people who live in Taiwan trump some claim based on territorial borders from over a century ago

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:

Unless the people there vote to become a part of the PRC, the PRC has no right to annex them.

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.

And just to clear this up in case you were wondering: I am not an American.

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.

Sorry, “who” considers themselves a nation? The Han Chinese living on the island of Taiwan. No. I don’t think you’ll find that opinion to be very popular nor very defensible. You wouldn’t say New Yorkers consider themselves a nation just because they have developed an identity called “New Yorker”. The Hong Konger identity is not a national one. Nor is the Taiwanese identity.

The right to self-determination suggests that the CPC should give nations the right to secede through a popular voting mechanism. That would be the nation of Tibet and the nation of Xinjiang. Taiwan, not being a nation, does not have a special status that would allow it to secede. Further, as a protectorate of the US and Britain, it would not be independent and self-determined much like Iran was not independent self-determined after the US overthrew their democratically elected government.

How it came about is precisely as relevant as the discussion of Israel’s claim to the land, why Palestine isn’t considered a nation-state today, why the US prison system incarcerated black people at higher rates than white people, why wealth is distributed the way it is, etc.

I know Americans like to argue that history doesn’t matter, but let me tell you about how that came about - America was founded by genocidaires who literally prayed thanksgivings to their God after slaughtering entire villages of the native inhabitants of the land, then built the entire country through mass slave labor, which was not merely kidnapping but also forced breeding programs. As late as 1980 they were forcibly removing the culture from indigenous children in brutal boarding schools. As late as 1970 they were forcibly sterilizing black and brown women by removing their uteruses. They are so misogynistic that a doctor invented a way to lobotomize women with an ice pick through their eye socket which “didn’t mar their pretty faces” so they would stop resisting their husbands.

I know you want to say history doesn’t matter, but it does. You can keep saying it, but it won’t make it true. And you don’t live like it’s true either. Your claims to what you own, the lands you walk on, the freedom of movement you have and where you have, those are all historical in nature. You don’t imagine that you have to reassert your claims to the public park system in your city every few years, do you?

It is this enforced unification of people that is not a very socialist viewpoint, people should want to unify on their own accord.

Yes, and it is this enforced unification that Lenin specifically addressed in the socialist context. The Catalan are a nation. The Bretons and Alsatians are nations.

The Han Chinese of Taiwan are not a nation unto themselves. The concept of Taiwanese identity was manufactured around the same time the Hong Konger identity was manufactured. Both were manufactured around the time the Brits and Americans realized that they couldn’t keep running the world with direct subjugation. Hong Kong and Taiwan got democracy within a year of each other. Would seem like an interesting connection until you realize they’re both under the deep influence of the UK and US. Taiwanese is not a nationality nor is it an ethnicity. There is a nation on the island of Taiwan. They are indigenous to the island. There is no conversation about that nation claiming sovereignty over the island.

You missed my point. Regarding the HRE, the point wasn’t that it’s sole histotical original location was the Holy See but rather that it is one of the few remaining city-states in the world. Regarding the Ottoman empire, the people were Turks but they were organized into various tribes, many of whom were nomadic or being displaced by conflict with e.g. the Mongols. A specific tribe which had settled down for about a century was not the entire Turkic nation, and no one would call their 150-year settlement a nation-state. They became the Ottoman Empire around the time they took Constantinople, and did not establish a Westphalian nation-state, so the idea that the modern nation-state of Turkey would be the same state as The Ottoman Empire doesn’t make sense. I agree that saying the Ottoman empire is equivalent with the a city-state located in Instanbul is not correct. My point was that your questions have answers that can be distilled from analyzing history. Should the nature of society collapse back to city-states, along with all the conquest-driven empire building, I think a city-state in Instanbul could claim inheritance to the Ottoman Empire, given a bunch of other conditions, and I think other city-states and their empires would likely recognize them.

Regarding China - you are correct, it is not a nation-state in the narrowest definition of the word as used by the Westphalian system as it was originally articulated. But by the same standard the US is not nation-state, nor is Canada, nor is any country in the Western hemisphere except maybe Haiti. So while you are technically correct about a very specific narrow definition of China’s status as a nation-state, you are fundamentally incorrect that it does not participate in the social construction of nation-statehood. It is a nation-state in the same way the the US, Russia, and India are nation states, despite them not actually meeting the exact criteria of a nation-state in the strictest sense of the word. This is important because international “law” and relations does not see a mechnical difference between a nation-state and a civilization-state, nor between a nation-state and a settler colonial state, nor between a nation-state and a plurinational-state. Maybe one day the world will operate differently regarding these things, and if it does I would assume the claims of China as a civilization state would carry significantly more international weight than the claims of the settler colonies in the US, Canada, Australia, etc.

Interestingly it’s a perspective the CPC is keen to avoid (since it’s not very “socialist” after all).

Hmm. This is a tangled mess of a sentence. Nation-states are quite socialist. Lenin’s work on the national question is very socialist. The idea of national self-determination, that is the self-determination of a nation of people not of a nation-state, is quite foundational to socialist politics. Nation-states are a clear mechanism for national self-determination in the current global order.

The CPC has been keen to avoid the narrative of being a nation-state, that’s true, because they are working on a narrative that is older than most of the systems that invented the nation-state system. But Europeans conquered the globe and this is the system China finds itself in. It has very few claims if it is not recognized as a nation-state (however inaccurate) by the majority of the world’s governments. From the lens of the European governments and the UN, China is a nation, and it is a nation-state, and they deal with it on those terms. The Han on the island of Taiwan are not a distinct nation from China and the government of the island of Taiwan claims to be the same nation-state that the government of the mainland claims to be. There is only one nation-state, from the perspective of the North Atlantic world order, that is being claimed by both parties. There are not claims of the existence of 2 distinct nation-states (again, of the form understood by the current North Atlantic world order) except by Western chauvinistic citizens with no power except to rage at the immorality of others to avoid the immorality they are a part of.

If nation-state talks sounds nationalistic and imperialist, it’s because it comes from the European nationalistic imperialism that has been subjugating the world for the last 600 years and subjugated 80% of the world’s population at its height. We’re still coming down from that. Decolonizing, as it were. Part of that is refusing to play into the hands of the imperialist North Atlantic on the topic of Taiwan. And not for nothing, it seems clear that both the leaders in Beijing and the leaders in Taipei understand this which is why they are using the language they are and why they are making the claims they are and why they are NOT doing many of the things Westerners think they are doing or should be doing.

The Quebecois as a faction currently do not govern Canada at all

That’s not the point. I guess you could argue that’s the point, but the point of the counterfactual was to demonstrate how, if partitioning states with puppet governments could produce new states then the US would be doing it to contiguous land masses. Taiwan feels different because it’s an island, but it’s not really that different from doing it on contiguous land.

the Canadian government does

Sigh. I’m so tired of explaining category errors to you. The Canadian government is a role. The role is currently played by the parties involved in governing Canada. There is a Quebecois faction in those parties. So because of your category error, you are wrong. The Quebecois, by participating in the government of Canada DO in fact govern Canada. But that’s not as relevant to my point as you make it out to be.

Similar to how the CPC did not govern China

Again, not relevant to my point. Because for whatever reason, you think that it’s relevant to discuss whether the CPC had a claim to the seat of the government for this discussion. It’s not. New parties form all the time. Just because they didn’t exist before doesn’t mean they cannot become the government after. I swear it’s like playing Calvinball with you (and not just you, everyone who wriggles about on this topic does the same thing). The reason the CPC did not govern is because they were violently purged by the KMT, which is what caused the civil war in the first place. Again, would you say that Democratic Socialists of America cannot govern the US if they take power (either by election or otherwise) simply because socialists were purged from the US (twice)? I wouldn’t say so.

Revolution is a valid form of seizing power within a state.

The CPC, as mentioned, understands it differently from you, as they by their own words founded a new state.

Yeah. Unfortunately we’re just going to have to disagree on this. The CPC didn’t even have the power to do such a thing. What they founded was a new republic. That’s different than a new state. Again, there is not precedent for a revolutionary struggle creating a net new state without secession, except in the case of the USSR, but it did not eliminate the prior state of Russia. Russia remained a state and joined a net new state called the USSR.

You really can just read the literature. “China became communist”. “China became a one-party state”. Etc, etc. All of the literature establishes that there is this state called China and it transformed through various transitions while still maintaining its existence as the state of China. It did not dissolve. It did not splinter. It did not seceded. It did not divest. It did not merge. It remained the state of China. You’re doing to have to bring a lot more than “this English translation of the words of the CPC prove that its a new state”.

Coups are different than civil wars, as with a coup a faction seizes control of an existing governmental structure. A civil war is a more fundamental break. And there’s plenty of precedent in this. Take the American Civil War

They aren’t as different as you think. China certainly follows the model of a coup far more than it follows the model of the American Civil War. I’ll reiterate, the CSA seceded from the Union. No such thing happened in China. Instead, the CPC fought the KMT for the existing governmental structure.

the CSA can’t really be considered the same state as the United States

Because it seceded, formally.

Had the civil war ended in a stalemate, they likely would have remained that way.

Because it seceded, formally.

But if the CSA had won and annexed the US, there’s a decent chance they’d consider themselves the legitimate continuation of the US (despite having declared a new constitution, like the CPC did).

They wouldn’t have because they seceded, formally. They had no interest in annexing the Union. But again, new constitutions happen within states, not between two states. That’s how revolutionary change works. There are dozens of examples of countries adopting new constitutions but not becoming net new states. Surely you understand this.

Regardless, the problem is that civil wars are messy. Take the Vietnam war. Technically French Indochina was split into two Vietnamese states, yet the Vietnam war is considered a civil war and ended with the “reunification” of the two states. You can endlessly debate definitions, but none will see definitively fit all of history.

I mean, it’s pretty clear exactly what’s going on there, right? European Imperialists arbitrarily divided a nation-state, and despite that division, the mechanisms for defining a nation-state supersede the imperialist intervention. There was in fact one Vietnamese nation-state that the French arbitrarily split apart creating two net new nation-states that the international consensus recognized (because imperialism) but when the war broke it all of the analysis agrees that it was actually a civil war within a single nation-state ending when the integrity of that nation-state was restored. You can see it for Vietnam, but you can’t see if for China. You’re arguing my points, but you just can’t give up the moral position that you don’t believe the CPC is good and because you don’t believe it’s good you can’t possibly see any argument that would promote the position it has.

Even in China the lines are blurred

Obviously

Since 1991 the ROC does not actually regard the PRC as a rebellious group, and abandoned its claim to be the sole representative of China

Yup, because it realized that it can’t maintain the international consensus. It was a conciliatory move towards the PRC.

But the PRC has not responded in kind, not acknowledging the ROC as legitimate

And this is problematic because why? Because the ROC deserves to be considered legitimate despite losing a civil war and then prosecuting the White Terror for 40 years while under imperialist protection? The PRC has not responded in kind because it has no need to. It is in the right.

De facto the war has ended

That’s a correct use of “de facto” for sure! Yes, the war has ended, de facto, but it has not ended de jure. And of course, what is the end of a war in the de jure sense? Mutual agreement. Terms of surrender. In essence - law. That has not happened yet, so the war is de facto over but not de jure over.

yet there’s no one party now in control of both the mainland and Taiwan

That’s also correct. Because, again, the war has not ended de jure because de facto Taiwan is a protectorate of the imperialists who seek to continue to exploit and subjugate China.

It’s solely diplomatic pressure from the PRC that is preventing countries from acknowledging this (even though they do have embassies and such in Taiwan, so it’s de facto accepted).

Yes, the PRC, the current government of the nation-state of China, of which Taiwan is a part, is refusing to acknowledge that there is a separate nation-state and Taiwan is not demanding that it do so. The only people demanding that it do so are internet quarterbacks. No government has asked China to recognize Taiwan as independent. There are no claims of independence for China to recognize. And, I’ll argue your side, China has stated that if Taiwan should announce secession, it will invade. It does not recognize the right of the people on the island of Taiwan to secede from China, much like the US does not recognize the right of any portion of its country to secede. The only nation-state that I am aware of that has ever established a right to secede is the USSR. As for the embassies, they are the form of diplomacy. I don’t know that it makes sense to read into it. Embassies exist for non-nation-states all over the world.

Civil wars that don’t de facto end in a reunification are typically considered to have spawned separate states (e.g. North and South Korea for example, or North and South Sudan).

Yeah, I just don’t think that’s true. Korea was partitioned by, you guessed it, American imperialists (yes the USSR agreed to it because appeasement was their best option). It wasn’t a civil war that caused a partition and didn’t end in reunification. North Korea still considered South Korea to be an occupied territory, which generally speaking is pretty true. The Japanese occupied the peninsula, the Americans occupied it. The Americans drew a line in the sand like Yosemite Sam and dareds the Koreans to cross it and then they bombed the entire northern part of the country to rubble. South Korea was occupied, then the Americans established a fascist vassal there, and is now a vassal state of the US. If reunification happens, what will result is the ORIGINAL nation-state of Korea, out from pages of history. North Korea and South Korea as states will cease to exist, but the original nation-state that the imperial Japanese, and subsequently the imperial US, stomped on will return. Just like in your Vietnam example. You understand this for the examples you’re OK with. You have cognitive dissonance for China, and I assume for the DPRK, because of your moral framing.

But even if they do the lines are blurred; is Turkey the same state as the Ottoman Empire? Or is it a successor state?

No, because the Ottoman Empire, like the Roman Empire, was formed during the time of city-states. The Ottoman Empire would be contiguous with Istanbul, like the Roman empire would be contiguous with Rome and the Holy Roman Empire would be contiguous with the Vatican. In fact, the interesting question would be whether the Holy See is in fact contiguous with the Holy Roman Empire. I think it might be. But that’s the only interesting question along these lines you’ve raise. Every example you raise fits quite well into the framework of Westphalian nation states (which Rome and Istanbul were not).

You seem to be ignorant of the fact that the CPC did proclaim a new state, the People’s Republic of China, succeeding the Republic of China

I’m not ignorant, I just understand it differently than you. You think that a national government changing which people are in charge is somehow the creation of a new state, despite there being zero other historical precedent for that. We understand that Prussia no longer exists. We understand that Iran is not Persia. But we also understand that the coup in Iran did not make a new state, it merely changed who was in charge. The same is true in China.

In their constitution, they made territorial claims regarding what parts of the world belong to it

Yes, they do. Good call out. I see that as clarifying the understanding of China, which the KMT also had, not a point of contention between the PRC and the KMT. They both claimed, before and after the civil war, that there was one China and that China included Taiwan.

You don’t see military coups making territorial claims, do you?

This is just laughable, it’s basically the first thing a military coup does, state which parts of the country it is in control of (and will soon control).

So this helps to illuminate my point. In order for the coup to have “parts of the country” something called “the country” must exist. The country exists regardless of which government is in charge. In this story that you’ve told, you are correct that military coups state which parts of the country are under their control and which will be under their control. This is a concept of control, not of integrity. The country itself remains integral. The coup has military control over parts of the country and unless the coup is stopped, it will become the government of the country. This is how coups work. Likewise, in the Chinese civil war, the country of China has a definition and the parties within the country fought to decide how the country would be governed. The KMT lost and the PLA had not yet gained military control over Taiwan, a part of the country, and then imperialists intervened to prevent the PLA from gaining military control over Taiwan, a part of the country.

You’re also seemingly confused regarding what “de facto” means

I’m not. De facto has to do with the facts of the matter regardless what the law states. In a case of possession for example, while the law de jure may say it belongs to party A, it may de facto be in possession of party B. The issue we have here is not that I don’t understand the meaning of “de facto” but that it don’t believe it applies to entire legal fictions. Nation-states are not real in any sense of the word EXCEPT de jure. Nation-states are not a natural phenomenon like possession or presence, they are completely socially constructed legal fictions. There is no “what it’s like to be a nation-state” except “officially recognized by the international community”. Without a system of official recognition, there would be no such concept as a nation-state and we wouldn’t find them naturally occurring. They only exist de jure.

It does not matter what various governments recognize to be the true China

A, you’ve introduced a new concept called “the true China” and B, in fact it’s the key thing that matters when we’re discussing whether the United States military should be allowed to patrol the seas around the island of Taiwan under the auspices of defending what is de facto its protectorate (literally a land with people being protected militarily by another land of different people). The question of sovereignty is in fact the crucial matter at hand. The idea that somehow this does not matter is preposterous.

They effectively govern separate states with separate territories, despite claims to the contrary (which are just claims and have no bearing on reality).

The province on Taiwan has always had its own territory and its own government, that’s how federal/federated system works. So clearly it’s not a question of separateness of territories nor a question of the existence of multiple governments. It is, de facto, entirely based on claims. Bureaucratic governments are deeply abstract things, and the fundamental aspect of bureaucratic governments are the claims they make. The claim is the reality vis-a-vis sovereignty. At the level below abstraction, islands are always separate and subdivisions of contiguous lands (like North Dakota and South Dakota) don’t exist at all.

Your Canada/Quebec example falls a bit flat on its face since for it to be a proper parallel, the Quebecois declaring a new government would have to have the same role as the CPC, which is the party in China that declared a new role, not the other way around.

What? No. Please re-read what I wrote. I was saying that the Quebecois, who were the losers in the battle for control over Canada, could become a protectorate of the US, just like the KMT, who were the losers in the battle for control over China, became a protectorate of the US.

You’re very stuck in a dogmatic view regarding what nations/nation states/governments are, and are ignoring the messy reality of civil wars.

I don’t know if there’s anything other than dogma defining a Westphalian nation-state. It’s literally just orthodoxy. I love that you want to be flexible by making an exception case for Taiwan because you fundamentally believe in the absolute immorality of the CPC and therefore all rules and history must be pushed aside to make way for the correct moral position, but forgive me if I think you’re just engaging in special pleading.

Anyway, happy to keep going. I don’t think you have the right end of the stick here. I see you trying to make exceptions to rules for the Chinese question and I see you trying to conflate concepts in order to do it. I don’t think my position is even counter to the position held by the KMT 40 years, maybe even 50 years. But, if it helps to keep trying to find the little points of contention that could unravel my position, let’s do it.

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.

https://www.war.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/4202494/remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-at-the-2025-shangri-la-dialogue-in/

I would like to help you see your words the way I see them.

But by this logic, China is already in control of Taiwan, no?

Language matters. The nation-state of China isn’t really a controller of things so much as the government of China is controller of things. I would use the word “includes” here. By this logic, China, the nation-state, already includes Taiwan. This is indeed what I have been saying.

So why is the CPC threatening an invasion?

This is a great question and one I encourage everyone to examine. The CPC is very clear, and has been very clear for 50 years that it does not need to invade in order to integrate Taiwan into China, that it is confident Taiwan will peacefully integrate when the conditions are right for it. So then why is China threatening to invade Taiwan? As I’ve been saying, it’s exclusively because of national security. The US has been very clear that it is militarily focused on China, even to the exclusion of being focused on Russia. It is turning all of its power, soft and hard, overt and covert, political and military, diplomatic and subversive, directly and via proxies, towards China. And since the retreat of the KMT, the US and UK have been militarily supporting the KMT while they committed atrocities in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and many other countries. China’s demonstrations of force are explicitly a deterrent against foreign intervention, and they will invade to protect their national security. They will not invade without that imminent threat.

Truth is that you can’t really consider nations going through a civil war to be truly the same entity.

That’s just not true. It happens all the time. Again, language here matters. Your claim is that you can’t really consider “nations” going through a civil war, and to be clear, in this case, only ONE nation was going through a civil war, the Chinese nation. The reason I say this is because nation and nation-state are different concepts. For example, in Czechoslovakia there was one state with 2 nations resident - the Czech nation and the Slovak nation. When the country split it was a peaceful transition with a mutual declaration of recognition for the existence of two separate states and done with diplomatic channels to ensure international recognition. However, when Castro and Che overthrew Batista, there was not one Cuba and then another Cuba. There was one nation-state the whole time. One did not claim territorial superiority over the over, they claimed governance superiority over the nation-state. (Side note, there is also a Taino nation within Cuba, like there are many indigenous nations inside the United States. These are not nation-states, they are nations without states).

I mean, they were literally fighting each other over control and claimed lands, bit strange if it’s all the same China no?

They were not fighting each other over control and claimed lands, and thus, it’s not strange at all. In fact, any attempt at revolutionary change makes no mention of specific territories that they believe are theirs. You don’t see military coups making territorial claims, do you? All those times the US couped other nation-states, you think they made entirely new nation-states by doing that? Not at all. It’s never been talked about that way, you’ve never talked about it that way, you weren’t educated that way. There’s nothing supporting this position except that you are trying to rationalize your assumption that of course I’m wrong and China is wrong and the narrative you believe about Taiwan is correct. But this is where that leads to, entirely new concepts you’ve never thought of for all the dozens of circumstances you’ve studied, heard about, or watched unfold live. This is what gymnastics looks like.

China (led by the CPC) is claiming lands it never controlled that are currently in control of China (led by the KMT).

Again, no. There is only one China. The CPC says this. The KMT says this. The US says this. The UN says this. The EU says this. There are not two Chinas. There is one China that is territorially inclusive of the mainland, the island of Taiwan, and the islands of Hong Kong. Both the island of Taiwan and the islands of Hong Kong were separated from the governance of China by British gunboats, albeit at different times. Neither the governments of the island of Taiwan nor of the island of Hong Kong ever declared independence or seceded from China.

The island of Taiwan was indeed under the control of the KMT, a now disgraced political faction of the nation-state of China. But it remained that way because the British and US interfered to prevent the PLA and the KMT from negotiating an end to the war by blockading the island with their gunboats. The KMT never said “thanks Britain, we’re so excited to start own country and do it our way on this wonderful island we call home”. They said “We are still relevant and we are still the only legitimate government of the nation-state of China which absolutely definitely continues to territorially include the island we retreated to because it was literally part of the nation-state we claim to rule over.”

They’re de facto separate nation states

No. They’re not. First, they’re de facto both comprising the Chinese nation. It is the Han nation that inhabits both the mainland and the island of Taiwan. There is another nation on Taiwan, an indigenous one, but they are not who we’re discussing. When the Dutch settled New Amsterdam, they were WAY far away from the mainland, they had their own government and all, but they were both one nation and one nation-state. When the English eventually took over the American colonies, the territory of New Amsterdam was no longer part of the Dutch nation nor the nation-state of The Netherlands - it was now part of the English nation and the British nation-state. When the English colonizers revolted and seceded from the nation-state of Britain, they created a new state, the USA, but they did not create a new nation, as they were still all English (of course, with varied social histories).

You could argue that Taiwan is a de facto separate state, but you’d have to describe what you mean in specific details because not a single official body claims that Taiwan is a separate state and certainly not a separate nation-state. Everything you could use to describe Taiwan as a de facto state would reduce down to being a vassal of the European empire that intervened in the civil war to create a protectorate, not a state.

the communist one does not and has never controlled Taiwan

Again, changing of the guard has NEVER created a distinct state that somehow has to reassert all of the prior state’s territorial claims. Never. So why are you insisting that it must be true for China?

Its territorial claims come from it claiming to be the successor state (or continuation state) of the Republic of China

It’s territorial claims come from it being the government of the nation-state of China. The CPC, as it were, took over from the previous government. They did not make a new state. They took the state that existed.

This is a wildly different situation from e.g. Labour/Conservatives in the UK. Neither make competing territorial claims nor claim to both be in power at the same time. They also all serve the same government, which the CPC/KMT do not.

Don’t confuse the liberal democratic KMT of the last 20 years with the KMT I am speaking of. The CPC and the KMT served the same state. They were all citizens of China, they were all motivated by their vision for what China should be. The fight was entirely internal to China between and among factions within China. It was not an invasion, it was not 2 separate governments, it was not 2 separate nations, and it was not 2 separate states. There was one China, there continues to be one China, and there were 2 factions and there continue to be those 2 factions. They were both in China and they both continued to be in China.

Again, this is obvious pretty much everywhere else in the world. When an occupying force takes a city, we don’t say that the city is now a part of that nation-state, we say that the original nation-state is occupied. If the US were to invade Canada and garrison Quebec while the Quebecois chose not to seceded nor declare independence but instead just created new laws and claimed they were the real Canada and then killed everyone in Quebec who disagreed with them and propagandized 3 new generations of children, would you say Quebec is a totally independent nation-state and that Canada has no claim whatsoever?

I mean, maybe you would, but then we’d see the US just carving chunks off of other countries left and right. There’s a reason we have use historical processes of official consensus for these things. What the Brits and Yanks did to China was not right then, and it’s not right now, and 70 years is a very short period of time for an 8000-year-old civilization. I know 70 years is more than a full quarter of the lifetime of the USA, but just because some imperialists decided to make Chiang Kai-shek a prototype for Juan Guaido doesn’t actually change these larger scale things.

Edit: And just to be clear about the threatening invasion thing. I just saw a headline that the US has just bombed is 30th boat in its campaign against Venezuela, and I’m sitting here thinking, does anyone sit here and realize that they are utterly convinced the only reason China isn’t invading Taiwan is because the US is protecting Taiwan while also simultaneously thinking maybe the US won’t invade Venezuela because really it’s just about drugs? I just feel so crazy watching these things happen contemporaneously and people just not seeing what is reality and what is false narrative.

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.

Oooh, the double Uno reverse card! Nuh uh, you’re the narcisstic abuser, not me!! Nuh uh! Whataboutism!! Nuh uh! The US is evil but not as evil the CPC!! Bootlicker! Why can’t you just let the US military run the world like a good anarchist? Huh!

How is the historically accurate take on Palestine abhorrent? The racist white supremacist empires did not and most still have not acknowledged Palestinian statehood. That’s a fact. They should be recognized as a state, but my saying so doesn’t make it true. Is that what’s abhorrent to you? That I don’t insist that morality supervene on reality? I never said Palestine should be part of Israel nor did I say Palestinians should become Israeli citizens. Like, what do you think I said that was confusing to you that you are accusing me of positions diametrically opposed to my actual position on Palestine?

If you think it’s a bald-faced lie that Taiwan has never been a nation-state, never claimed to be a nation-state, and never been recognized as a nation-state, then source your claim. Of COUSE people recognized the KMT as the legitimate government of China (not the mainland, China. Again with the category error.) The KMT laid claim to being the legitimate government of the state of China, which includes Taiwan as a province, and many nations supported this claim. Eventually most nations changed their official stance and instead recognized the CPC as the legitimate government of China (the nation-state, not just the land, but the legal entity known as the nation-state of China).

Again, if you think that’s wrong, go find me sources of either Taiwan claiming to be a nation-state that is not China or find me examples of other governments official recognizing that Taiwan is a separate nation-state from China. I can wait.

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.

Yeah, you really can’t stop with the category error, can you?

The CPC isn’t a state. China is a state. It has had official international recognition as a state for centuries. The civil war did not change that. The civil war was for control of the state of China, the state that includes the province of Taiwan.

The majority of the world’s governments recognized the KMT as the legitimate government of the state of China, and some recognized the CPC as the legitimate government of the state of China. This split was largely along ideological lines - most countries would agree that the winner of a civil war is a legitimate government, but fascist anti-communists love supporting illegitimate governments like Juan Guaido or the recent Somaliland decision.

Nixon’s decision was to recognize the CPC as the legitimate government of the state of China. He did not recognize the CPC’s state because there was no such thing to recognize. Likewise, you are attempting to recognize the existence of a Taiwanese state when there is no such thing to recognize. It has never been a nation-state, it has never claimed to be a nation-state, and no government has ever recognized as a nation-state.

If you think history is convenient for my argument, perhaps what you mean is that my argument is supported by history.

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.

Sorry can you remind me the conditions that China has set for why it would invade? Or is just threatening generally?

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.

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.

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