Summary
Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.
Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.
Okay, West Taiwan.
Sounds like something south Canada would say.
You mean North Mexico?
Not North America?
Oh wait…
Don’t do that.
Don’t give me hope.
Get the sentiment, but just a friendly reminder that most Taiwanese people don’t love the “West Taiwan” meme as it props up the outdated idea that Taiwan wants to make a claim to China, when the vast majority are in favor of just being left alone. This isn’t two aggressors laying claim to each other, it’s one threatening the other.
Sounds rather rapey when you put it that way, doesn’t it?
Very. But I still expect to see plenty of hypocritical leninists ignoring or defending this. Telling us that Daddy Xi is only killing them for their own good. And that if they just lay back and took it that they would learn to enjoy it.
Not that it’s ever made sense that they defend certain capitalists. While denouncing capitalism and other capitalist governments.
Definitely not something an imperialist would say.
Yes. “reuninifcation”.
Just like Austria was “reunified” with Nazi germany. 🤮
I mean that was also reunification. Doesn’t make it a good thing, but it fits the definition of reunification.
Reading up a bit on the history of China, it looks like the Communists won the war for power in the nation and those who were supported by the West fled to Taiwan.
A better comparison would be if the Confederates fled to an island and retained their independence after losing the American civil war.
You need to keep in mind, the capitalists lost. You can live in la-la land thinking they “should have” won, but that’s simply not what happened.
Capitalist lost? You seen modern day China? Hardly anti-capitalist. Taiwan should get to decide if it’s part of China or not. Doesn’t seam they want undemocratic dystopia.
Going to your America example, the Brits withdrew to Canada. You with Trump with invading Canada then? A 1812 rematch?
I dont get the downvotes. China is state controlled capitalism with all the negatives of capitalism like extreme wealth disparity. China couldnt be further from a stateless, classless moneyless society that communism aspires.
There are a lot of similarities between the PRC’s economic model and the NEP, but this doesn’t mean it’s Capitalist, nor is it accurate to say it has all of the negatives of Capitalism. The PRC is in the early stages of Socialism, and this is shown through strong government control of the Private Sector, a robust and expansive Public Sector, and large-scale Central Planning. You’re correct that it is far from being Stateless, Classless, or Moneyless, but at the same time you have to acknowledge that they simply can’t push the “Communism button” and establish a global Republic of full Public Ownership and Central Planning and an established system of labor vouchers or other such non-money form of accounting.
The process of building Communism is long and drawn out after the revolution, and must be a global process as well.
Yes, all Socialist societies should work towards the eventual end of commodity production, however neither Marx nor Engels figured that it could be done away with immediately. From Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
From Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase “a free people’s state” with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.
Ultimately, it remains a contradiction that eventually the PRC will have to do away with. However, this is a gradual process that can only be accomplished through trial and error. There is a Chinese proverb often referenced in the CPC, that “one must cross the river by feeling for the stones,” and this reflects their cautious strategy. Moreover, we must understand that the USSR fell, and the CPC saw that in real time. Not wanting to repeat the Cultural Revolution nor the fall of the USSR, the CPC adjusted their practice. It remains to be seen what will happen in 10, 20, 50, 100 years, of course, but currently the CPC is behaving in a manner we can understand as Marxist.
The USSR was just as capitalist as the PRC. Because it had generalized commodity production and wage-labor. You can’t have a socialist mode of production in just one country, as the interaction with capitalist countries will infect your system.
The PRC is a highly technocratic advanced capitalist democracy, and yes, it will likely outpace the west in a number of key statistics over time, that doesn’t make it socialist, because the productive mode is capitalism.
You with Trump with invading Canada then? A 1812 rematch?
Oh no, please don’t give that bloated orange Slurm mascot any more ideas.
The official position in both countries is that there is “one China” and that they are the legitimate one.
Unlike in mainland China in Taiwan people including most of the political elite seem to be fine with the status quo though.
I think they are both best just signing mutual recognition and moving on. Neither is the same as they where when they seperated.
everyone in Taiwan would love to do that, but Beijing can’t get over being dumped.
Having markets and Private Property doesn’t mean a country isn’t dedicated to Socialism and eventual full public ownership. Rather, Marx and Engels maintained that even heavily developed countries could not immediately publicly own and plan all production, but that after the revolution this would be a gradual process. Focusing too much on Class Struggle and not on industrial development (which allows the Class Struggle to be accelerated as the more an industry develops the easier it is to plan it, a central observation about Capitalism that led Marx to predict the next mode of production to be Socialism), is a dogmatic mistake that led to the excesses in the Cultural Revolution.
Either way, back to the US, a more apt comparison would be decolonization and land-back for Indigenous Peoples, same with Canada.
Your saying it’s not capitalist and it clearly is now.
For the US example, it’s not comparable if you go back to Indigenous Peoples. That’s a whole other thing.
What do you mean by China is “clearly Capitalist?” What do you think Capitalism and Socialism are?
“Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.”
This applies to modern China.
Communism’s brief doesn’t fit modern China “a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in society based on need.”
Private Ownership isn’t the basis of the PRC’s economy, though. The PRC isn’t at Communism yet, either, rather they are Socialist. The base of their economy is in the Public Sector with strong state control over the Private Sector.
To ask this in another way, are you of the belief that a “single drop” of Capitalism makes the system Capitalist? The natural conclusion to that is that neither “Capitalism” nor “Socialism” has ever existed. This is obviously wrong, of course, the answer is that the system is determined by the sector with power over the economy.
Keep reading, because you haven’t gotten it yet. The communists rebelled against the KMT government and pushed them out to Taiwan. The American analogy would be if the south had won the civil war and pushed the north back to, let’s say, Long Island.
personally, if the confederates f off to their own island, I would let them stay on that island, as long as they don’t influence back.
K, I don’t use all caps a lot, but I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR.
I will not be a slave to history. My defense of Taiwan is entirely based on the here and now.
K I need to qualify that statement somewhat. History is useful for explaining why the world is the way it is today, and serves as a guide into the future, but it is useless as some kind of long term score sheet.
Well, if that’s how you want to see it then the idea of “rightful owner” doesn’t matter much.
It’s really just who you like more at that point.
It’s not that the rightful owner doesn’t matter. It’s that it is hard to quantify on this scale, and it is especially hard to quantify using history.
And yeah, it is in fact more about who I like more. I like the Taiwanese government because the Taiwanese people are in control of it, and I believe in every human’s right to choose their own government. I hate the Chinese government for exactly the same reason, along with the fact that they’re a bunch of land grabbing imperialist bastards.
I’m glad you can admit your bias and that your idea of who China belongs to is based on personal preference.
I’m glad you can admit that you consider human rights as a form of personal preference.
But my, uh, “preference” for human rights isn’t actually the highest principle at play here. The highest principle here is that of internationally-agreed-upon borders. A country may not violate these borders. Period. For example, even though I like Taiwan’s government more, I do not believe they deserve one square metre of mainland China.
That’s a lazy and inaccurate take. The Chinese Civil War wasn’t some simplistic ‘capitalists vs. communists’ fight. The KMT was corrupt but not purely capitalist, and the CCP’s victory came from exploiting peasant dissatisfaction and the KMT’s failures, not some inherent ideological supremacy. Comparing the KMT to the Confederacy is absurd—they weren’t separatists but nationalists fighting for control of all China. If you’re going to push historical narratives, at least try for accuracy instead of ideological grandstanding.
That’s weird, I thought China has currency and all sorts of other capitalist systems.
great so that means the CCP is stepping down and letting the ROC government back into Beijing to govern a reunified China? Excellent news if true.
If Taiwan isn’t building attack marine and air drones like fucking crazy right now they are incredible idiots. I would be mass producing that shit like a motherfucker and preparing to blow up the chip factories incase shit goes south.
The chip factories are wired to pop. Taiwan is an awesome country by the way
Yep. China will get nothing of Taiwan’s true wealth. OTHO, see why America is pumping chips? CHIP Act.
They don’t build the weapons for themselves (mostly), but the US has enormous volumes of weapons (presumably including a lot of drones) already stored in Taiwan so that they can be bought and delivered instantly if they’re needed
“Expedited next day (war)shipping!”
Bit rapey.
It’s gross how they always refer to these things as “reunifying”.
I got news for you. The Republic of China also uses that same language.
Why isn’t that an appropriate term? It was part of China’s (Qing) territory from 1684 until the Japanese occupations, and is only disunified because of an unresolved civil war. Taiwan (officially the “Republic of China”) considers themself to be China. So why wouldn’t their combination be the reunification of China?
Taiwan was never part of current China though and does not want to be absorbed into that state. Reunification doesn’t sound right for what China would have to do to make it happen.
Reunification doesn’t sound right
It’s an objective term for when states join into a single state, like the unification of Italy for example. It’s not about approval or disapproval, I’m not taking a side by calling it reunification.
The re- prefix does have implications that go beyond any two states becoming one. Germany’s case is a bit different anyway because it was external forces splitting the country.
Taiwan was never part of current China though
The same was true for East and West Germany and that, err, merger is generally considered to be a reunification.
But I agree with the rest you wrote, so I guess it’s a moot point anway.
But west germany did not invade east germany…
I mean, true, but that doesn’t contradict what I wrote, does it? I objected to that particular part of kshades argument, not their argument as a whole.
It’s a fair argument, I wouldn’t call South or North Korea forcefully annexing the other reunification either though. One state would be annihilated, both in terms of its institutions and its culture. There’s no unity in that, it’s conquest.
But maybe my view of the word is colored by German history. I don’t know, it’s just that calling what would be a horrible, grueling war “reunification” doesn’t seem right, like an attempt at white-washing what would actually happen. Reminds me a bit too much of Putin’s claims about Ukraine.
Get your authoritarian ass outta here😂
Not an authoritarian, not even taking a side. I’m pointing out that unification is the term for resolving partitions to form a single state.
Uh,
From 1949 to 1987, the KMT ruled Taiwan as an authoritarian one-party state after the February 28 incident.
So its no longer an authoritarian government for 38 years now. Thanks for pointing that out!
In the mean time Xi is serving his 3rd term in PRC right now, or 4th? Ignoring the rules set up by his predecessors. And you think that’s better?
Even the UN 🇺🇳 doesn’t recognize Taiwan 🇹🇼.
Because China holds a veto power. What’s your point? China won’t allow Taiwan to join a club that China’s partially in control of. In other news, water is wet.
Interesting, the ROC doesn’t hold veto power? How can China join the club, if Taiwan is the rightful government representing all the Chinese people?
Nor does the US or Taiwan
If you want something that doesn’t want you- what do YOU call it?
What’s that got to do with anything? It’s still called a reunification even if both sides didn’t want it. There was a whole entity, it split, and if it joins back together then that’s called reunifying it.
rape
envy.
I think “invasion” would be the correct term here.
You can use both terms, there’s no contradiction.
Consider the US civil war. The Confederates were (rightfully) invaded and plenty of them still aren’t happy about it, the result was still the unification of the ‘northern’ and the ‘southern’ states.
Instance checks out
Got it, let’s help continental China adopt modern and true democracy then!
Work on your own imperialist fucking country first. Jesus fucking Christ you libs are insufferable.
Bro please move to .ml there are dozens of you there
Didn’t have Occupied China stepping down and recognizing the legitimate government in Taiwan on my 2025 bingo card
Wow, China’s propaganda in plain view in this comments section, damn!
Tankies gon’ tank.
Tankies gonna downvote too. They think they are anonymous in the votes haha
We need public downvotes
They already are
Yeah, some of 'em. Most of them are just regular Chinese people repeating what they’ve been told, though. I’ve talked with all kinds of Chinese people like that, and truly, when I’m not being a dick about it, it is amazing how quickly I can change their minds. “Quickly” here means “in a month”. Not during the first conversation. Be gentle.
And these people are willingly kissing his ass. They’re not even Chinese people who actually grew up with propaganda, but instead make the conscious choice to believe it.
Oh is the PRC going to surrender to the ROC? Because Taiwan was never part of the PRC. For there to be reunification, the PRC would have to give mainland China back to the ROC.
It all hinges upon which government you consider “legitimate.”
We can’t pretend violent rebellions aren’t eventually considered legitimate, good or bad. Look at the US.
Pooh wants his hunny
Seems more like he wants someone elses hunny.
Taiwan is China!
China will take back Taiwan!
Taiwan belongs to China!
Nothing can stop China from taking Taiwan
so which is it Poohboy? either it’s yours or it ain’t. once you make up your mind and decide to stop this weak bitch posturing come and get it. The Navy will be waiting.
If Fascist China thinks the EU and US will give up their largest producer of semiconductors then they’re severely mistaken
What do you think they would do to stop it?
The us would probably enter war to stop it, Taiwan is pretty valuable to us
Zero chance.
“Us” being? Taiwan didn’t send me a Christmas card.
Bet they made the processor you used to write that comment.
That’s not where they produce their cutting edge chips though… https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-will-spend-14-billion-on-manufacturing-chips-at-tsmc-report
War is necessary… so I can text grandma? Do ya’ll not hear yourselves?
More like: War is necessary… so a dictator can stroke his own ego
Remember who is the aggressor here.
The Kuomintang fought a civil war and lost, would we be okay if the Confederacy kept Florida and wouldn’t give it back?
How would you keep the imperialists from stealing land?
Are you talking about the White Terror?
Send the US navy to blockade the strait and finalise the sale of the billions of dollars worth of weapons already waiting on the island for exactly that purpose
…trump’s trivially manipulated: the next four years are china’s best shot and they know it…
That’s a joke, right? Taiwan is literally about 90 miles away from mainland China. The USA could park every ship we have and that still wouldn’t work. If China wants Taiwan, then they will get it even if Taiwan is largely destroyed doing it.
The USA already prevents the Chinese from getting the top processors from Taiwan, so blowing up the factory will hurt the USA much more than China. Not to mention kneecap Musk and the tech bros that have been supporting Trump.
No, it’s not a joke. And putting a small amount of thought into it makes clear that the US believes it can effectively defend Taiwan - it wouldn’t keep such volumes of weaponry there if it believed it would trivially fall into China’s hands.
The US’ Center for Strategic and International Studies has wargamed this 24 times for conventional warfare only and 15 times for consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. In both scenarios, they found they would likely be able to successfully preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.
I think you deeply underestimate just how difficult and expensive in manpower and materiel it is to perform a naval invasion, especially against a nation whose military is specialised for pretty much exclusively that purpose.
Naval superiority is naval superiority; if you can’t get your military to the other side of the strait, you can’t invade the island, regardless of distance. The actual question is whether Taiwan would be able to hold off an invasion for long enough for the US navy to reach and control the strait, which is reasonably likely given the US rents a large number of naval bases in the region for just this purpose.
I’m going to just go ahead and ignore your second paragraph, since it’s entirely unrelated to the US’s military capability wrt to Taiwan.
Haven’t both Taiwan and China both been stockpiling an essentially unlimited supply of long range anti-ship missiles for about a decade now? I can’t imagine China having a fun time even landing troops but it’d be equally hellish for any US ships attempting to exist in the general area.
The US surface ships can sit outside the Chinese medium range envelope and attack only the landing forces. They don’t need to hit Chinese mainland, that’s what the 71 submarines are for. The long range missiles are then easy to defeat because there aren’t enough to saturate the air defense.
I think you nearly overestimate the appetite of the USA government or people to engage in such a massive conflict over Taiwan. The new administration has made it clear support for Ukraine is on thin ice and a deal can be made with Russia to end the fighting. Why not with China as well?
a deal can be made with Russia to end the fighting [in Ukraine].
How do you know? My impression is that any deal without security guarantees from the West will just be violated in about two years or so by Russia, and Russia would refuse to make a deal with such security guarantees for exactly that reason.
If Russia changes its mind and says it would be willing to accept such a deal, I would change my mind. Actually I still wouldn’t because Russia are the lyingest bastards I know, but whatever. It hasn’t happened. It would never happen.
Imperialists cannot be reasoned with without credible threats of violence. If it were otherwise, they wouldn’t be imperialist.
One of the primary reasons trump wants to reduce the US’ focus on Russia and Ukraine is to prioritise their position towards China. That’s not to say Trump might not decide against direct involvement; he’s famously erratic, but the semiconductor production of Taiwan is an critical economic dependency that can’t be replaced in the short term.
That’s 5 hours in the open, with every weapon system in the Pacific Ocean firing at you. Good luck?
There has been work to replicate the capabilities in Taiwan on US soil. While it hasn’t been going great, it has been progressing. At some point it is quite possible that Taiwan will no longer be as strategic a partner with America as they are now, which doesn’t bode well for their continued assistance from America. But if there comes a time that China will take Taiwan you can be guaranteed that everything possible will be done to reduce the risk of technology transfer.
But you have to factor in deliberate effort already to eliminate the CHIPS act by Congress. I’m sure it will get the axe in the new administration.
The rush had been increased because of the efforts Western governments like the USA have made to prevent China from getting the chips from Taiwan, that encourages the Chinese to develop their own capacity but also eliminated the hit they would take if processor production in Taiwan was crippled by conflict.
The actual ace in the hole protecting Taiwan is the fact that the Chinese want the Taiwanese to join willingly, but if the Chinese economy has continued trouble than Xi will be under pressure to demonstrate strength and that is where they could make a move on Taiwan.
What do you think they would do to stop it?
How does
“Naval assets filling the sky with a stupidly impossible number of militarized drone swarms using highly classified AI-augmented coordination and cyber warfare which will dump a ton of really nasty crap into an already struggling ocean”
sound?
Because that’s the plan, apparently. =\
https://www.wired.com/story/china-taiwan-pentagon-drone-hellscape
So much Death. Just so much. For reference look at the aircraft carrier HMS United Kingdom in World War 2. The world’s only unsinkable ship, capable of producing it’s own weapons even. Now update that to 2024 with modern, missiles, torpedoes, and submarines. China would likely win a protracted, non nuclear, limited engagement. But not before significant areas in China and the entirety of Taiwan were nothing but a rubble hellscape.
So at the end of the day, the obvious price of death and destruction, even without nukes. But in the past Presidents have made clear that Taiwan is under the MAD umbrella. So non-nuclear is not a given, and of course we all lose in a nuclear scenario.
Unleash the 22
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is the 22?
The F-22 Raptor. It’s never been deployed.
Theres a single dam in China which is extremely vulnerable, if hit by a rocket the majority of Chinas food supply would be destroyed.
That’s about as likely as America performing a preemptive nuclear strike on China. The international “fallout” would be pretty much the same.
The Taiwanese know of it’s existence too, and have the capability to hit it. Furthermore we currently have a president who views war crimes as going above and beyond instead of criminal behavior. I would not bet against someone blowing it up.
Oh damn. Taiwan wouldn’t do it now, but if China invaded, they absolutely would.
I have no doubt that Trump is capable of giving the order. As it stands, there is no way the order is obeyed. Trump will of course start trying to install loyalists in military leadership, but I doubt even the generals could successfully get such an order obeyed today. The entire military culture would need to be replaced, and I think the protections against that will require more time than Trump has to do it.
Thankfully, incompetence is a core trait of fascism, and I don’t think Trump or his people have the juice.
Hitting that dam is a lot harder to disobey as an illegal order than violating Posse Comitatus. Especially if we’re on the brink of nuclear war that would create massive civilian casualties anyways. We expect a big pushback if Trump tries to deploy the military domestically. Going to war is another matter entirely.
It’s not the same at all. Ok the US would get blamed, but they wouldn’t be fired at back with nuclear weapons
That’s why TSCM now has a chip plant in Arizona, to ensure production.
They know US can be bought for cheap and EU are too coward.
The quickest way to do this is for the CCP to surrender to the ROC.
