China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan on Monday to showcase Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict, testing Taipei’s resolve to defend itself and its arsenal of U.S.-made weapons.
The Eastern Theatre Command said it had deployed troops, warships, fighter jets and artillery for its “Justice Mission 2025” exercises to encircle the democratically governed island, conduct live fire and simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade Taiwan’s main ports.
The live-firing exercises will continue on Tuesday across a record seven zones designated by China’s Maritime Safety Administration, making the drills the largest to date by total coverage and in areas closer to Taiwan than previous exercises. The military had initially said artillery firing would be confined to five zones.
Let’s gooo, cheaper electronics if they win.
Unobtainable computers if the americant’s mess this up
War doesn’t usually improve output of civilian goods
The USA routinely does military exercises in the Taiwan strait. China has a right to defend itself from US+Taiwan aggression.
You do know that the world isn’t black and white, right? Both sides can be bad …
Both sides can be bad, doesn’t mean both sides are equally bad. China hasn’t carried out a military action in 4 decades.
Another three days special operation is underway.
another distraction from chinas intenral problems, by threatening taiwan again.
It isn’t a distraction, it’s live exercises to test and refine their capabilities.
What internal problems?
Genuine question, I am woefully unaware of most things china.
From friends that are thinking or have recently emigrated, stagnant economy and no future prospects for young people, masters degree holders lining up hoping for tobacco packing jobs in Henan.
Talked to a couple Zoomer guys on XHS from Guizhou and they said theyre considering joining the army cause there’s not much other work for them.
Fuck the CCP and PLA. Free West Taiwan.
Lets say tomorrow, the US manages to occupy the entirety of mainland China, and schedules elections for next week. Who do you think the people of mainland China elect? A business-friendly lib who promises American companies will invest in resource extraction and privatization or reelect the guys who brought a billion people from poverty and regular famine to first world living standards within living memory?
and regular famine
Elected by who? You’re definitely going to see very different opinions by different ethnicities
Do you think they’d prefer getting fucked by capitalism like the former SSRs were in the 90s, or autonomy within China, like they have now?
Former SSRs are doing much better now than when they were vassal states and resource producers for Moscow.
Oppressed minorities tend to avoid authoritarian states
Authoritarian how? In that capitalists aren’t free to control the government?
I’d agree China’s lack of free speech makes them more authoritarian, if I hadn’t watched cops kick the shit out of and/or arrest people protesting against genocide in the US and europe for the last 2 years.
Hong Kong oppression against dissidents…
That proven color revolution? Should they just allow US backed students to take over and give the reins to western puppets…?
“Democratically controlled” just means controlled by capitalists. I’m tired of the trope.
They can be both - and they can be great, sorry about your seething.
I’m sure China is a Marxist-Leninist utopia (lmao people actually believe this)
What? Many European countries are not really capitalistic dystopias
Example?
And they also cant defend themselves
Yeah, that’s a thing to consider. It’s funny how the world has changed. Europe used to be the baddies, now it’s mostly Russia and China.
Capitalism eventually turns into a capitalist controlled dystopia. Europe just doesn’t have big industries who would turn into monopolies and want to control the government.
You’re moving the blame from bad governance to the system itself being completely faulty/bad. Do you think poorly governed socialistic country would be more successful?
From the article:
The exercises began 11 days after the U.S. announced $11.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, the largest ever weapons package for the island
Surely Trump is just being a good guy selling weapons to heckin wholesome Republic of China (which not only claims officially the entirety of the Mainland, but also the entire country of Mongolia and many lands in Bhutan, Pakistan, India or even Japan). Come on, surely this US involvement in war is the correct one!
Taiwan does not claim Mainland China (source: Executive Yuan - Territory)
I can’t read Chinese, care to provide information on your source?
Because, per the Wikipedia article on territorial disputes:
If I state a nation claims territories, I tend to prioritise first hand sources from the nation in question, rather than second-hand, crowdsourced statements. After a quick translation:
The Republic of China was established in 1912, becoming Asia’s first democratic republic. On December 7, 1949, the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taiwan, administering the main island of Taiwan and its affiliated islands, the Penghu Islands, the Kinmen Islands, the Matsu Islands, the Dongsha Islands, the Zhongsha Islands, and the Nansha Islands. The total area under its effective jurisdiction is 36,197.3371 square kilometers.
Your source is talking about de-facto control, not de-jure claims, and doesn’t contradict my previous comment on territorial claims at all. It specifically says “under its effective jurisdiction”, i.e. de-facto control.
This de-jure claim is based on a constitution written in 1947 by an irredentist fascist that occupied Taiwan and placed it under martial law, against the will of it’s people. As I said in other comments, any attempts made by Taiwan since democratisation to move away from that constitution are seen as seditious, and, by PRC law, must be intervened with militarily.
You’re conflating an attempt with changing the constitutional claim of continuity over the Chinese empire, with territorial claims over lands outside de-facto PRC. Taiwan could easily simply give up claims over those lands, but it doesn’t
The main argument of the PRC is there is one China, the ROC was the government of that China, the PRC succeeded the ROC as the sole legitimate government of all Chinese territory in 1949. Taiwan was part of the Japanese empire (sovereignty given to Japan by Qing China) for the entirety of the ROC’s lifetime in China, the ROC given administrative rights to Taiwan at the Treaty of San Francisco.
Taiwan giving up those de-jure territorial claims implies Taiwan is a separate entity, the civil war framework dissolves, since there’s no longer a competing government claiming to represent China, just two separate countries, and the succession of states logic breaks.
The moment Taiwan says “we don’t claim the mainland anymore, we just claim Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, …,” it’s a de facto independence declaration.
This is seen by the PRC as sedition and, again, by law, the PRC must intervene militarily to prevent that.
I feel like anyone who says “Republic of China” is a CCP troll. The comment itself is unhinged. No, Taiwan does not want to conquer most of the Asia, this is simply about stopping another invasion. You’re the baddies, leave others alone, no one wants to invade you.
The picture is from Wikipedia, famous CCP troll organization?
It’s from a constitution written by a warmonger that called himself Generalissimo, in 1947, and imposed the longest (at the time) martial law. Since Taiwan’s democratisation, any move to change even minor parts of the constitution are seen by China as reason for military intervention. The only way the PRC has claim to Taiwan is through a “succession of states”, and that’s why preventing Taiwan from rewriting a constitution written by a coloniser (the Republic of China) is important to them
I agree with everything you said, I just tend not to support the continued states that stem from fascism and don’t have institutional purges in the state apparatus and in the economic powers.
don’t have institutional purges in the state apparatus and economic powers
If we’re talking fascism in terms of: belief in the need for a national rebirth (振興中華明民族), militarism, authoritarianism, political purges, the PRC scores much closer to a inter-war fascist European state. Talk to any Chinese and ask them what they think the state’s view on “class struggle” is today.
From your link:
The commission’s main aims include: making political archives more readily available, removing authoritarian symbols, redressing judicial injustice, and producing a report on the history of the period which delineates steps to further promote transitional justice.
Nothing about removing the people in power from the institutions or the economic powers. It’s about redeeming the victims, but not about transforming the system and putting new people in power.
What you’re looking for was tried by the progressive administrations following democratisation, but faced opposition in the Legislative Yuan, mainly from the opposition KMT party, including rewording of “paying reparations” to “paying compensations” to the victims
It’s absurd to claim Taiwan today is moulded by the White Terror era, or that the administration or political entities have fascist policies.
Again, if we look at the framework of fascism, the PRC is much closer to a fascist definition than Taiwan
Taiwan keeps those claims and this official name because otherwise it would be perceived as declaring Taiwan as a sovereign state, and that would anger China. Such symbolic moves are not seen as worth the risk of Chinese agression by most, or a large part of the Taiwanese population.
Is the government of Taiwan a CCP troll? That’s the official name of Taiwan - The Republic of CHINA.
I just don’t get why America obsesses over this little Island, over say Madagascar.
Madagascar got the same kind of attention from Europe during the colonial era. As a result the people there speak French, and Americans absolutely can’t deal with that.
WHHHAAAATTTTTT??!??!!!?
But all Lemmy.ml dwellers said China is not an imperialist country!!!
This must be some shitty western propaganda!!!
Does this make Estonia an imperialist country in your opinion?
Estonia in this case is comparable to Taiwan. I.e. a small country trying to increase their capabilities to defend against tyrant Russia.
Oh, so you support North Korea’s military expenditure to protect itself from the USA? Should Cuba buy $11bn in military armament to defend itself from tyrant USA? You also rightfully support Hamas in its defense against Israel?
Wasn’t aware that the US was trying to annex North Korea and Cuba lmao
The USA has carried out a massive military deployment next to Venezuela, which has Caribbean waters, and has started murdering civilians and even attacks on mainland Venezuela. Do you really think Cuba or North Korea have fewer reasons to be afraid of USA invasion than Taiwan does of China, the latter not having participated in armed conflict in over 3 decades? The USA is actively carrying out military exercises in the Korean Peninsula.
Are you trying to portray Trump foreign policy as the norm for the US while also comparing it to Russia/China’s consistent imperialism over decades?
What an absolutely uneducated take. China hasn’t taken military action since more than 3 decades ago, whereas the USA in the 21st century alone has warred in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria and many more. Please tell me one single event of “Chinese imperialism” in the last 30 years that remotely compares to the USA invasion of Iraq.
Laughably incomparable.
Yeah, Estonia are ‘The Good White Guys™’ whereas China are ‘Le Evil Asiatic Empire’
Are you mentally ill or something? That was a defensive exercise and this has nothing to do with race.
Are you mentally ill or something?
No need to go to ableism. I’m aware you don’t consciously think that Chinese people are bad, but in your worldview, any military exercise or defense expenditure done by non-west-aligned nations is intrinsically evil. This is rooted, again subconsciously, on white supremacism (or its less explicit brands: eurocentrism and american exceptionalism).
So, China’s military exercise done, according to the article, in response to an $11bn purchase of weapons to the USA by Taiwan, is not defensive in nature?
Why is it that talkies are having a very hard time understanding a difference between training to invade vs training to defend?
From the article itself:
The exercises began 11 days after the U.S. announced $11.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan
How is China the aggressor here? Imagine if Cuba suddenly imported $11bn in weapons from Russia, do you think that would warrant no reaction from the US administration?
“I had to kill him, officer, he was attending self defence classes with the intent to hit me.”
/s
Who has China killed exactly by doing military training exercises?
Do you believe Taiwan is going to invade the PRC?
No, but in the likely case of a USA-started miltary conflict or economic blockade of China in the region, Taiwan is essentially an unsinkable USA aircraft carrier full of military bases, and is likely to collaborate with USA aggression. After all, Taiwan routinely carries out similar military drills with the USA.
“No, you see, my side is the good one and the defensive one in the upcoming war”
-Every nation in every single war in history
Whoever is trying to capture territory from the other side is the invader by definition, putting the other side on the defence, as per definition.
Are you saying Estonia wants to invade Russia? Dude’s clown costume’s made from diamonds
Oh, sorry, I forgot, when did China invade Taiwan? Or anyone for that matter, since China hasn’t participated in a single war in 40 years.
Expansionism can happen without official war declaration, but still a conflict. See: Tibet, Honk Kong, parts of Mongolia
You mean the Taiwanese claim over such territories? I agree, it’s disgusting
Thank God the PRC liberated Hong Kong from British colonial rule!
You don’t invade something that’s already yours.
CCP never had a claim on Taiwan
deleted by creator
Taiwan was never a separate country from the rest of China. It’s only being separated because America wants it separated. A divided China is a weaker China.
A divided China is a weaker China
This honestly feels like mental illness. Imagine rapist screaming at the victim “I can’t get stronger unless we unite” while threatening to kill her.
Dude, get over it, Taiwan has moved on, they have their separate lives and don’t want anything to do with China, just like Ukraine (who was part of Soviet union) does not want Russia and will likely result in a long and costly war. I too would go guerilla of someone tried to invade my country.
CCP didn’t take it when the current Taiwan gov moved there, they only took the mainland.
That’s literally the definition of how countries split in two
The countries have not split into two. It’s still one country.
Both ROC and PROC agree on this.
Only America wants to break them apart because they can make Taiwan a vassal state similar to how they broke Korea apart and make South Korea a vassal state of the American empire.
Did you read the fine print?
.ml: “China is not imperialist*”
"*because all of Asia, all islands, all African countries and all South American countries already belong to China"
More CIA propaganda
Prove it.
You just made a falsifiable statement.
Don’t just spread tankie shit. Prove it.
Removed by mod
chinas stance towards the south china sea and taiwan is what this exaggeration for the purposes of comedy is based on
Better than America claiming they own all of South America’s oil and resources
No, actually exactly as bad as that.
Let us repeat this: China is as shitty as USA right now is. And in fact this is a recent development: USA used to be much better than China before Trump fucked everything up.
If China was good, they would suggest in UN that Taiwan’s independence is ratified. That they consistently fail to do so, and in fact actively block anyone else from doing it, is a clear display of their malevolence on this planet.
Another proof of their evil is of course their consistent support on Russia’s imperialist aggression on Ukraine.
I just want to point out that this is not like for example Italy invading Africa. ROC was the government of mainland China before the revolution, they fled to Taiwan which used to be a part of China. Both ROC and the PRC think they are the true rulers of all of China, meaning both Taiwan and Mainland. If ROC would be militarily stronger, it would probably plan to invade the PRC.
People may or may not think that that is imperialist, but at least it should be taken into consideration.
and both positions are wrong. nobody ever said that the ROC wasn’t imperialist in the exact same way
Parent comment is also wrong, and as usual things are much more complicated than made out to be. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Country_on_Each_Side plus China essentially pressuring Taiwan into adhering to the status quo so as to not lose its casus belli.
Interesting that would consider it imperialism when a country does a military exercise on the coast of their own country near an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists when the military exercise is specifically to confirm readiness for the thing that the imperialists keep saying they are going to do - establish greater and greater military presence in the region.
Remember, you likely already agree that the US is an imperialist force, the largest in the world. Does the US deploy its military for good reasons or is it an abusive bully? If China says that it hears the US threats to build up military surrounding China and in particular in Taiwan, is it consistent for us to believe the US is telling the truth this time?
The CPC never controlled Taiwan so it’s inaccurate to say it was stripped from them.
US being imperialistic doesn’t make encirclement and threats towards an autonomous island any less imperialistic. That’s just whataboutism.
If the CPC only cared about the security of their coastline then this aggressive military strategy makes little sense because it’s only likely to increase the risk of conflict. Pursuing peace and closer ties with Taiwan would disarm the whole reason they have for working with the US. But of course that would require the CPC to respect their autonomy, which imperialists will never do.
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.
In one party states there is no distinction between the party and the state. If labor used its control of the government to outlaw, imprison, and murder everyone who tried to organize against them for 70 years then it would be reasonable to make a similar statement about their possession of say, Ireland. Not that they were ever entitled to Ireland, nor was China ever entitled to Taiwan.
I don’t acknowledge the territorial claims of nation-states since they’re made up anyway. 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?
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.
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. Just as I’m saying with Taiwan. Furthermore, the arms furnished to Taiwan are extremely different and less destructive than nuclear weapons. 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. I personally don’t think the US is much of a threat to China but perhaps that can be debated.
By the way, it’s incredibly ironic to call me a bootlicker as you apologize for imperial aggression against Taiwan… while I’ve done no such thing. 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.
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.
They can’t do that because NATO imperialists are forcing their hand. Obviously.
an island that was stripped away from one’s direct control by imperialists
Can you elaborate on this? I love watching gymnastics.
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
My question was how exactly it was “stripped away from the CCP’s control”, which you didn’t address at any point in your colourful answer. You yourself admit it was always Republican territory. so which is it, then?
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.
But by this logic, China is already in control of Taiwan, no? So why is the CPC threatening an invasion?
Truth is that you can’t really consider nations going through a civil war to be truly the same entity. I mean, they were literally fighting each other over control and claimed lands, bit strange if it’s all the same China no?
China (led by the CPC) is claiming lands it never controlled that are currently in control of China (led by the KMT). They’re de facto separate nation states, and the communist one does not and has never controlled Taiwan. Its territorial claims come from it claiming to be the successor state (or continuation state) of the Republic of China (officially, Mao declared the foundation of a new People’s Republic of China).
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.
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.
You have a pretty peculiar understanding of how nation-states claim territory. Using your own logic, I take it you believe that Gaza and the West bank are rightfully Israeli territory? if not, what’s the difference?*
* “Murica bad” is not a valid answer
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.
You failed to mention the KMT did the vast the majority of fighting against Imperial Japan, while the shitbag Mao and hi CCP thugs hid in western China. After Mao took control, while murdering over 70 million Chinese, he thanked the Japanese for weakening the KMT.
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.
Poor China trying to defend itself from the boolies 😭
LOL - as though it’s not believable to think that a country that hasn’t dropped a single bomb in 35 years might be concerned about the most violent nation in the world continuing to destroy country after country announcing “the pivot to Asia” in 2008 as they expanded drone warfare beyond anything the world had ever seen as we watched video after video of double tap strikes, bombings if weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools and now we watch as that bully double taps fisherman in the Caribbean. To say that the US is not an existential threat to literally every country in the world is to allow your entire worldview to be shaped by centuries-old Yellow Peril propaganda
This is all whataboutism and has nothing to do with China threatening to invade Taiwan.
Sorry can you remind me the conditions that China has set for why it would invade? Or is just threatening generally?
No. I’m not engaging with a disingenuous person with an obvious bias. You claim to know all about this issue. I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding it yourself.
Cheepo. Not even whataboutism, because Op brought in the „boolie“. You built a strawman and are the disingenuous one here.
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.
Now Taiwan knows where to install the sea mines.
Controversial opinion: war is bad 🫢
Sounds like Taiwan should sign a contract building Sea babies and Sub Baby for Ukraine, just make sure to build a few thousand extra for “future supplies”.
Here’s an interesting evaluation of the likelihood of China invading Taiwan.
https://www.stimson.org/2025/rethinking-the-threat-why-china-is-unlikely-to-invade-taiwan/
I feel like their analysis is, “it would be costly and risky so they probably won’t do it,” which could be said for literally any war ever. I’m not sure I find it a particularly compelling argument.
Naval blockades don’t really work when your adversary has a limitless supply of antiship missiles
Taiwan’s military is surprisingly ramshackle, unless you mean the US? I’m not sure they can reliably be considered an adversary of China anymore. Xi could buy a few million of Trump’s crypto and all would be forgiven.
XI did give ivanka trademark registrations.
Or promise to drop the “cosplaying in red” part of their “communism”.
Ah yes, the infamous ramshackle F35
10 cent army out in force
10 cent army? I want to see Taiwan armed to the teeth. They can’t solo the CCP in their current state.
No one is soloing anyone, including China and Russia
That’s really the crux of the issue. If China finally move against Taiwan, who will help? Japan seems the most reliable ally at the moment, and perhaps Australia. The US are untrustworthy.
Sinc solo was mentioned lol.
Can you imagine China turning to a wartime economy?
China will make Japan and Taiwan look like the us made Baghdad FROM THEIR SHORES.
This whole conversation is ridiculous. China doesn’t move on Taiwan because of economic implications, not because of any threat from any outside actor. The US is on the other side of the world, Venezuela is about as big a pill as they can swallow. We failed in Korea, we failed in Vietnam. What on earth makes anyone think we can do anything in chinas civil war?
China is THE manufacturing and logistics powerhouse on this planet. That’s what wins wars and no one is even close.
Doesn’t Taiwan have well over a thousand modern ASMs in inventory, and manufacturing hundreds more annually? How would mainland China enforce an encirclement by sea for any length of time with that sort of threat?
I hope they don’t engage in a war. China can bomb all Taiwan and destroy everything and lose on the process a lot of people and resources. If China is not a fool, and I don’t think it is, the best path is to wait (and maybe push) for a second civil war in the US to have the upper hand in a possible reunification talk. And this drills would be just showing muscle before sitting to talk with Taiwan.
AFAIK they don’t have that many of the newer ASMs, and anyway a thousand isn’t really that many, especially given that Taiwan’s missiles are on the smaller end of the spectrum - we’re not talking KH-22 sizes here.
It doesn’t take too many ASMs to sink some really important assets. Size isn’t really important, if one of the mainland’s carriers is within a couple hundred KMS of Taiwan, then it’s in the kill zone. Supersonic maneuvering missiles that work in gps-denied environments and can be sea, air and land launched are just the sort of weapon that works great in an asymmetric conflict and to break naval blockades. The blocader has to defend against every single inbound, the adversary only needs to get one missile through the defenses
While this is all true, the aggressor being the largest green-water navy in the world skews the equation, plus the naval angle is of course only one of multiple avenues of attack. We can’t be complacent about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, no more than we could say for example that Finland could hold off Russia alone.
Taiwan doesn’t need to sink every PLAN ship, they just need to make the political cost of enforcing a blockade higher than the CPC can afford.
Ukraine has area-denied Russia’s most important warm water port and most of the black sea from use by the Russian surface fleet with a small handful of homebrew ASMs and some jetskis painted black with a barrel of RDX strapped to them. And Finland did hold off the red army alone once already.
Ukraine is still being actively devastated after three years by a country far inferior to China - I’m sure the Taiwanese would prefer to avoid that fate. Finland’s “victory” came at the cost of collaoration with the Nazis, which maybe was the right choice at the time, but not great in hindsight to say the least. It’s also hard to quantify the political cost when discussing a one-party state - it’s not like the CCP will lose the next election. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I’d prefer to support Taiwan to such a great extent that we don’t have to cross our fingers.
They certainly do work in a world where the naval blockade is literally only a few miles from your own shoreline and MAD is on the table
You can’t enforce a naval blockade when the adversary is flush with ASMs is all I’m saying. And you can’t enforce a naval blockade with only subs either.
I wonder why the word blockade is not in quotes. Perhaps it’s editorializing from the author and not something the PLA actually said
Well the supply isn’t limitless, so
Well neither is the PLANs supply of artificial reefs
No, but they can build faster than Taiwan. And I’m sure they have some CIWS that will reduce the number of missiles that hit, so it’s a pure numbers game.
What’s some cool stuff to visit in China that isn’t close to (or is upwind of) military installations or industrial centers? Asking for several thousand friends.
