Thoughts?
Is this imperialism by China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing? Leftists are normally anti-imperialism. Wouldn’t it be better to let Taiwan democratically decide whether they want to be part of China or not?
China hasn’t exerted any political authority over Taiwan in 80 years and Taiwan declared itself a separate nation long ago, supported by the will of the people of Taiwan. Anything else is the will of a conqueror.
I wonder how many people living in Taiwan were alive back when China controlled it. Probably 90% + of the population has never known anything but independent Taiwan
That seems to be back in vogue these days.
Why NOT a confederal union?
Better look out for 500 old ladies to help over the street to get back to a neutral social credit score 😅😆
I hope the EU and nations in the Asian sphere decide to have a military alliance. Taiwan is pretty dang valuable, and also shouldn’t be bullied for the sake of some strongman’s wet dream.
So it’s all about TSMC, the west doesn’t give a shit about the people or the land.
Well, China only cares about the land. You can take TSMC from Taiwan.
That is dumb. TSMC is comprised of the world’s foremost experts in chip technology. They are people, and probably would like to stay in their homeland. Furthermore, it takes at least a decade to build the infrastructure to create microchips, which requires extremely stable geology. A power outage or an earthquake can cause lithography machines to miss their target, ruining months of work.
TSMC is intrinsically tied to the land and people.
Well Russia was allowed to try imperialism, China can’t resist being upstaged.
So was America with Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
Not to mention the 800 military bases in over 80 countries.
Pretty sure tawain ain’t interested in being absorbed back by China.
China is only nominally left; they’re deeply conservative, and don’t exactly empower the people. They are imperialist, as was the USSR.
And Taiwan did democratically decide what they want. It would be better if China also got to democratically decide what they want.
For those unfortunate enough to live in a country which doesn’t generally teach economic policy.
Economic systems are tangencial to political systems.
You can have left wing democracies or dictatorships. Same with right win. It can be a democracy or a dictatorship or anything in between.
Reunite? I thought there was already only one China?
Yes, it is imperialism. Also, China has an authoritarian state controlled by a privileged ruling class and is therefore far-right.
What do you mean? 99.99% of the chinese people are charing 0.000001% of their countrie’s wealth like true communists.
/s
I thought China followed lunar calendar??? 🤔
West Taiwan: baby let’s get back together!
Taiwan: no! you were an asshole to me!
West Taiwan: I wasn’t asking.
Taiwan: this is what I’m fucking talking about!
The break-up was a little different… Chiang Kai Shek was just as much of a monster as Mao. He was just a capitalist monster so the west supported him.
He was just as much of a monster after he was driven off of the mainland.
He and Reverend Moon directly funded literal Nazi death squads in South America.
But that fucker is dead, and Taiwan is a functional democracy, unlike the mainland.
They don’t want to “unify”, they can see what happens to places China “unifies” with.
Lol calling China Leftist isn’t quite the thing. They are technically “communist” but no more so than the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was socialist.
China isn’t technically communist. The Communist Party of China is technically communist in ideology. They have implemented a type of a mixed state that has both socialist and capitalist parts, decently described by the term - socialist market economy. Or socialism with Chinese characteristics as it’s been called in the past. Why socialism? Because the socialist part controls the capitalist part of the economy. Why socialist? Because it’s controlled by the CPC/CCP which has over 100M members and growing, which means the wider society is decently represented within the party that controls the state.
Nice deflection, as all discussion of economic policy is nothing more. Authoritarianism (coercion through power) is right wing by definition.
Isn’t any democratic structure performing coercion through power on people who comprise the minority opinion, by doing what the majority decides?
Sure, when the conservatniks are in power. Some of us still fight for progress for them and for you, even though you try endlessly to destabilize us from afar.
What the hell are you talking about? Who is “us” and who is “you” and who’s destabilizing who, and from where?
A horse can call itself a duck, but that doesn’t make it a duck; it’s still a horse.
Likewise, a country that calls itself communist while practicing capitalism under a hierarchical ruling party isn’t communist. Even if every member of the CCP had equal say in the country’s policies and direction, 8% of the total population is far from representing the working class, let alone being led by them.
They’re not communist, correct. They’re capitalist.
8% of the total population is far from representing the working class, let alone being led by them.
Yup, it can and it should be much larger. I saw a chart showing membership growth of 2-3% per year. That said even at the present numbers it means every third family or so has a party member.
Again, China isn’t calling itself communist. And I don’t think they’re. That said capital is subordinate to state control, which is subordinate to an org that most people can participate in, so personally I grant them the socialist (market economy) label that they tend to use. But I do understand why not everyone does.
To be clear, if you’re not communist, it doesn’t mean you’re capitalist. There’s a lot in between and it’s often a matter of degree of one thing or another. Feudalism didn’t turn into capitalism the moment the fist capitalist firm formed. It transitioned to capitalism as more and more production became capitalist, at some point becoming the dominant mode of production.
socialism with Chinese characteristics
It’s literally the same functional mechanics as free market capitalization EXCEPT that the state owns a part of every company. The people don’t. The state does. And only uses it for authoritarian control, which is the Chinese characteristic. China is functionally a capitalist market with state owned companies.
If China controlled the 3rd party companies in the country then maybe it could be construed as socialist but they own nothing about Apple or NVidia yet billions of dollars flow through them. China is an open market that uses subsidies to offset poor management in those companies. Basically the same thing America did to failing companies in 2008 (looking at you GM).
China has a large fully state-owned sector which tends to operate key industries. They also have outsized control over private firms because the banks doling out capital are state-owned. It’s how they can effectively direct the private sector to build EVs, chips or whatever other strategic commodity is desired, in addition to having partial ownership in large private firms. Yes Apple and NVIDIA aren’t state-owned. You can read about the state owned sector and how it affects the economy. The structure is very differrnt than the US today. It resembles somewhat FDR’s US in the 1940s but with even more state control and direction.
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Alternative headline:
China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping reiterates intent to subjugate neighboring country Taiwan in New Year’s Eve speech.
It’s not a neighbouring country, it’s the same country. Ask Taiwan.
Okay, I looked at what the current President of Taiwan has to say. He says this:
Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country called the Republic of China.
That’s not the same as the PRC.
archive.is seems to be down right now.
The People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China are two different governments that both claim sovereignty over mainland China and Taiwan.
They both want to unite China, but only one of them is in the position to do it.
Internal to Taiwan, there are parties that support reunification and support independence (opposing views), but Taiwan has not yet reneged on its claim of mainland China.
Their president reneged it like 30+ years ago but that doesn’t mean much because it’s basically baked into their constitution. Changing the constitution to reflect their real borders would require triggering a vote and a bunch of formal processes that would absolutely instigate a conflict with the PRC.
Nobody wants that, including the voting population. Thus you see a milquetoast shuffling between independence and reunification parties in order to maintain the status quo (independence for all practical purposes) without being too radical for Beijing. In terms of polling:
- 48.9% are pro-[eventual]-independence
- 11.8% are pro-unification
- 26.9% want status quo
And when forced out of status quo, independence support jumps to out 60%. But for now they’re caught in a Catch-22 that allows the PRC to spit out this propaganda that people gobble up.
Good background, thanks. Ya, catch 22 is a good way to put it… It makes it tough for other countries to recognize both PRC and ROC without offending PRC.
I don’t really see how this is any different than 50 or 20 years ago, they’re just stating their geopolitical stance.
More to the point, as others have mentioned, it would be exceedingly difficult to invade Taiwan and capture their fabs intact.
Actually it wouldn’t even matter if they captured them intact because the US could just eliminate the supply line, making it unideal for production to continue for several years.
And unlike Ukraine, the US actually has a lot of interest and dependency on Taiwan, meaning they would get militarily invovled immediately.
China’s only benefit would be the elimination of the world’s primary chip manufacturing, and unrestricted access to the Pacific ocean.
I only see them doing it after they’ve achieved complete independence from Taiwan’s fabs in their own supply chain.
And pax silica will lessen the geopolitical fallout by ensuring there is fab redundancy outside of Taiwan.
