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> Taiwan is Chinese territory. Taiwan can be a Chinese territory only according to the law "might is right". For millenia, Taiwan has not been a Chinese terr

> Taiwan is Chinese territory. Taiwan can be a Chinese territory only according to the law "might is right". For millenia, Taiwan has not been a Chinese territory. Only during the last few centuries there has been a massive migration of Fujian Chinese into Taiwan that has altered its population. Then after WWII Taiwan has been invaded by the Kuomintang, which has altered again the population of the island, so that now the non-Chinese native inhabitants have remained just a small minority. Taiwan has been officially a territory belonging to mainland China only between 1683 and 1895, which is a rather weak basis for claiming that Taiwan is a Chinese territory, not much better than claiming that Alaska is a Russian territory.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
How long does a territory has to be part of a country for you to recognise it? If I look at a world map from "millenia" ago, or even just 1683 then by your logic most of the world's countries are built on a "weak basis", often even weaker than that... We all now the tricky political situation of Taiwan but sometimes some people seem to lose all sense of basic reality and facts about it.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  You have missed my point. This is not the case of a territory that a country controls now, even if it has occupied it only recently (e.g. like Tibet), when nobody can contest that they are not the owners of the territory, unless they would be willing to attack them, to change the current ownership of the territory by force. This is the case of a territory that is not controlled by the country that desires to be its owner, and it has not been controlled by it since 1895. Despite that, they want to change the de facto ownership of the territory, which can be done only by force. The fact that some corrupt politicians from many countries have decided that de jure Taiwan should belong to China, without any grounds for this, so that they have given to China what was not theirs to give, is something as valid as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, where Hitler, despite not being the owner of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, has nonetheless given them to Russia, or the Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin accords, where Churchill and Roosevelt, despite not being the owners of Eastern Europe, have given it to Stalin. There are other such cases where a country desires to become the owner of some territory, but they at least can justify their claims by the fact that the desired territory has actually belonged to them for a long time and it had been taken from them by force, so that it would be right for the territory to have its ownership reverted. In this case such historical claims have little value, because Taiwan has become Chinese only recently and only by force, first during the Qing dynasty and then due to the Kuomintang invasion.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Japan only controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. It was Chinese territory before and it reverted to China in 1945 and has been under Chinese control ever since. It's always fascinating the mental gymnastics people are able to do to build a fictional world that somehow fits a narrative.
msabalau 3y ago
Very good points. If anything, this overstates the connection. Yes, there were ethnic Chinese settlers heading over to get paid by the Dutch, or to leave mainland China for a variety of reasons. With vague, intermittent interest/claims/activity from the court in response to fears about foreigners and internal enemies at a remote place near/in/at the frontier. But as late as the Rover incident of 1867, where aboriginal people in Taiwan killed some US sailors, the Qing dynasty said to the US "Nope, that part of Taiwan, at least, has nothing to do was us, it's not our territory, take it up with them. Any de jure claim that Taiwan as a whole was effectively administered by mainland China would have to fall somewhere between 1867 and Taiwan being ceded to Japan in 1895.
- maxglute 3y ago
  From OPs: >only according to the law "might is right". And your: >Any de jure claim that Taiwan as a whole was effectively administered by mainland China would have to fall somewhere between 1867 and Taiwan being ceded to Japan in 1895 Historic association has little bearing on "settled" international law and is useful justification in so much as determining whether something feels right or not according to whichever end of propaganda you subscribe to. TW is recognized as Chinese territory of the "One" China at UN according to UN (and vice versa with PRC as Chinese territory) post Resolution 2758... actual "international law" rule based order types like to wank about. This alone supercedes all the insipid recent rationales trying to delegitimize via historic association because it quite literally doesn't matter when in terms of international law, TW as Chinese (though not necessarily CCP) territory is legally clear, hence various pro-TW countries tries to square the circle of their foreign policy by adopting their domestic "One" China policies. But at the end of the day, UN is the international law framework most of the world operates around, and at UN there is One China represented by PRC post Resolution 2758, while also no ratification exist for armistic of the ongoing Chinese Civil War that either side can resume at any time. Actual international law is why US has far flung territories they spent a few years on during WW2, and then became US possessions in the post war order. "History" has nothing to do with it. Being legally recognized at UN does, which is why US tried so hard to spike the deliberations with a US draft that tried to add ambiguities by enabling ROC to continue occupy UN functions to present ambiguity of 2 Chinas, but was ultimately rejected for the Albanian draft that kicked all ROC representation out. It's also why all the latest (failed) efforts by US think tanks trying to get TW UN representation is based off attacking Resolution 2758 instead of the equally DOA previous attacks on historic grounds. TW is Chinese territory because the international law already states it is. All online TW seperate country hur hur is strawman wanking pretending TW is not already legally Chinese territory according to international law and how it shouldn't be because history, when... it already is irregardless of history.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

How long does a territory has to be part of a country for you to recognise it? If I look at a world map from "millenia" ago, or even just 1683 then by your logic most of the world's countries are built on a "weak basis", often even weaker than that... We all now the tricky political situation of Taiwan but sometimes some people seem to lose all sense of basic reality and facts about it.

adrian_b 3y ago
You have missed my point. This is not the case of a territory that a country controls now, even if it has occupied it only recently (e.g. like Tibet), when nobody can contest that they are not the owners of the territory, unless they would be willing to attack them, to change the current ownership of the territory by force. This is the case of a territory that is not controlled by the country that desires to be its owner, and it has not been controlled by it since 1895. Despite that, they want to change the de facto ownership of the territory, which can be done only by force. The fact that some corrupt politicians from many countries have decided that de jure Taiwan should belong to China, without any grounds for this, so that they have given to China what was not theirs to give, is something as valid as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, where Hitler, despite not being the owner of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, has nonetheless given them to Russia, or the Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin accords, where Churchill and Roosevelt, despite not being the owners of Eastern Europe, have given it to Stalin. There are other such cases where a country desires to become the owner of some territory, but they at least can justify their claims by the fact that the desired territory has actually belonged to them for a long time and it had been taken from them by force, so that it would be right for the territory to have its ownership reverted. In this case such historical claims have little value, because Taiwan has become Chinese only recently and only by force, first during the Qing dynasty and then due to the Kuomintang invasion.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Japan only controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. It was Chinese territory before and it reverted to China in 1945 and has been under Chinese control ever since. It's always fascinating the mental gymnastics people are able to do to build a fictional world that somehow fits a narrative.

msabalau 3y ago

Very good points. If anything, this overstates the connection. Yes, there were ethnic Chinese settlers heading over to get paid by the Dutch, or to leave mainland China for a variety of reasons. With vague, intermittent interest/claims/activity from the court in response to fears about foreigners and internal enemies at a remote place near/in/at the frontier. But as late as the Rover incident of 1867, where aboriginal people in Taiwan killed some US sailors, the Qing dynasty said to the US "Nope, that part of Taiwan, at least, has nothing to do was us, it's not our territory, take it up with them. Any de jure claim that Taiwan as a whole was effectively administered by mainland China would have to fall somewhere between 1867 and Taiwan being ceded to Japan in 1895.

maxglute 3y ago
From OPs: >only according to the law "might is right". And your: >Any de jure claim that Taiwan as a whole was effectively administered by mainland China would have to fall somewhere between 1867 and Taiwan being ceded to Japan in 1895 Historic association has little bearing on "settled" international law and is useful justification in so much as determining whether something feels right or not according to whichever end of propaganda you subscribe to. TW is recognized as Chinese territory of the "One" China at UN according to UN (and vice versa with PRC as Chinese territory) post Resolution 2758... actual "international law" rule based order types like to wank about. This alone supercedes all the insipid recent rationales trying to delegitimize via historic association because it quite literally doesn't matter when in terms of international law, TW as Chinese (though not necessarily CCP) territory is legally clear, hence various pro-TW countries tries to square the circle of their foreign policy by adopting their domestic "One" China policies. But at the end of the day, UN is the international law framework most of the world operates around, and at UN there is One China represented by PRC post Resolution 2758, while also no ratification exist for armistic of the ongoing Chinese Civil War that either side can resume at any time. Actual international law is why US has far flung territories they spent a few years on during WW2, and then became US possessions in the post war order. "History" has nothing to do with it. Being legally recognized at UN does, which is why US tried so hard to spike the deliberations with a US draft that tried to add ambiguities by enabling ROC to continue occupy UN functions to present ambiguity of 2 Chinas, but was ultimately rejected for the Albanian draft that kicked all ROC representation out. It's also why all the latest (failed) efforts by US think tanks trying to get TW UN representation is based off attacking Resolution 2758 instead of the equally DOA previous attacks on historic grounds. TW is Chinese territory because the international law already states it is. All online TW seperate country hur hur is strawman wanking pretending TW is not already legally Chinese territory according to international law and how it shouldn't be because history, when... it already is irregardless of history.