Item — HN Reader

Ah geez, again this China invading Taiwan nonsense, China ain't USA, Israel or Russia attacking sovereign countries, they just use money to take over, they will do exactly same with Taiwan. Eventually Taiwanese people will figure out that siding with agressive country run by crazy old men is worse option than siding with China.

China has all time in the world not being run by crazies with 5 year election terms rushing to keep their mark in the history, not necessarily positive...

3 comments

Yeah pretty much Americans are projecting themselves when they talk about China invading other countries.

Who’s been invading and bombing other nations so far lol.

The Taiwanese while being proud Taiwanese (rather than Chinese) are culturally Chinese. After all they came from the mainland after having lost the civil war.

What you said about them siding with China against a common aggressor makes sense. In fact they already did this against the Japanese and took a pause from their onw conflict to fight the Japanese together during WW2.

And it's also true that this "China aggression" is pure Western propaganda.

Which country has been bombing and waging a war somewhere since the inauguration. The same country that has over 700 military bases over the world. (China has 0)

"...rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air.."

The majority of Taiwanese are the descendants of the people who lived there before 1949, not the descendants of the Chinese Nationalists who fled there at the end of the civil war. In fact, the Taiwanese were, uniquely among East Asian nationalities, relatively happy being part of the Japanese Empire and have maintained good relations with Japan ever since.

You're correct. But in practice the native people have been assimilated and the predominant culture is that of "Chinese'

Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese during the WW2 and just like everywhere else the Japanese were hated for their criminal actions. Taiwan was no exception. Today there also disputes for example the Senkaku islands.

It's a bit more complicated than I implied because many or most Taiwanese prior to the beginning of KMT rule were still ethnically Chinese; they just hadn't been part of "China" for 50 years (a period when there wasn't a stable, unified "China" anyway). "Occupation" is a controversial term for the period of Japanese rule and the Japanese weren't "hated" in Taiwan to the same degree they were in other occupied territories. The period of Japanese rule from 1895-1945 was a colonial government, but it was probably better than what was going on on the mainland at the time--domination by Western powers, the warlord era, the civil war, and a much more brutal Japanese occupation. The difference between Japan's treatment of Taiwan and mainland China is a big part of the difference in perspective towards the Japanese between the mainlanders and the Taiwanese.

Some of the main proponents of the "Japanese occupation" narrative are the KMT, who committed plenty of atrocities of their own after taking over Taiwan and, among many Taiwanese, ended up more hated than the Japanese. The KMT was also serious about their lost cause of retaking the mainland, at which point they expected Taiwan and China to remain unified under their rule, with the famous "One China Principle" representing not just the CCP's desire to control Taiwan, but the principle shared by the KMT that Taiwan is part of China and should be under the same government. In recent years, the KMT has pivoted towards cooperation with the CCP with an aim towards peaceful reunification, while the DPP favors explicit Taiwanese independence (Taiwan's official constitutional stance still being that it is the legitimate Republic of China).

To be fair to the KMT, they also ushered in Taiwanese democracy. When Chiang Kai-shek died, his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo ended martial law, promised to be the last Chiang to rule Taiwan, and began the transition to democracy. His successor, Lee Teng-hui, was Taiwanese-born and finished the transition to democracy, winning the first democratic Taiwanese presidential election in 1996 before stepping down at the end of his term limit in 2000, at which point power transitioned to the DPP. Lee was also controversial with the hardliners in his own party for, among other things, his more sympathetic attitude towards Japan.

I suppose the Tibetan people would have a different opinion. But it's true that China has not fought as many war as the US, UK or France in the past decades.

Which is actually part of the enigma : if China decided to use a window of opportunity to invade a neighbor (and they have claims on Taiwan, they keep telling the world they have claims on Taiwan, and they keep preparing their navy to invade Taiwan, so it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that country would be Taiwan), would they have an inexperienced army making rookie mistakes and miscalculations, or would they catch everyone of guard with a a crazily autonomous army of robots that don't care about the weather or war crimes ?

I would not ask the same question about any other country in the world, but, if Russia and the US surprised us by failing at what they were supposed to be great at, and Ukraine surprised us by being good at one no one expected, I expect a surprise from china, but I don't know which one !!!

Tibet is part of China for hundreds of years (1720–1912) with short period exemption (1912–1951), people who think China just suddenly invaded Tibet in 1951 out of blue are delusional or should learn history

btw. just because you hear loud minority (?) of Tibetan people unhappy with China's rule doesn't mean there is not big part of them who have no problem with benefitting from being part of China rather than let's say India/Nepal