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> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideologi

• tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  But Chinese citizens know the US exists? This feels like projection. The US wants to act as if stock markets and political yard signs are the only usable system.
  • chii 2y ago
    > But Chinese citizens know the US exists? of course, but the US is not mostly composed of chinese people. It is common belief in china that the state governance by the CCP is doing good for the country, and the proof is economic progress, material wealth and geopolitical strength.
    • Log_out_ 2y ago
      Geopolitical strength ? Its a comon theme they want to emulate the british empire colonial model worldwide ,seeing it as what started the century of humiliation . Change by trade indeed.
    • shunia_huang 2y ago
      > It is common belief in china that the state governance by the CCP is doing good for the country, and the proof is economic progress, material wealth and geopolitical strength. I don't know, but how to define if a country is going towards a better path, if all the changes listed does not count? If the people there belives, is it unresonable that the people not there argue about that? I'm not saying it is not arguable, it really falls down to the North-Korea situation that almost everyone inside or outside see that place as hell, but I'm not sure if China feels alike here - a country does have significant economic progress, material wealth and 'geopolitical strength', which I don't think NK has all these.
    • NBJack 2y ago
      I can't blame them. They have become a superpower on the world stage, and they have made some super interesting moves to further that along. One very notable take is that some assert China is "exporting" parts of their population to ensure their people and culture can grow elsewhere, presumably to eventually have more influence over those places in the future.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • toast0 2y ago
    Who doesn't have stock markets? Ok, there's a list [1], and Cuba and North Korea are there, but China has several exchanges. Who doesn't have political yard signs? I'd be surprised if China doesn't have them; they just might not be so varied. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_a_stock_exchange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_a_...
    • tightbookkeeper 2y ago
      Yes, the western liberal project led by the US is a worldwide phenomenon, especially after the Cold War, world bank. Etc, But what we’ve seen over the past decades is other countries reexamine what parts are actually good for them. For example Japan has a stock market, and it was a lot like the US in the 80s. But now it looks and operates with nationalist priorities which are very different, > Who doesn't have political yard signs? Anybody really excited about democracy in the US also has to reconcile with marketing. People will literally vote because of a tv commercial. This is not a normal system you will find anywhere else. And it’s pretty obvious to outsiders that US media plays a weird state function in it as well.
• mullingitover 2y ago
  > China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. So was everything with Taiwan hunky dory when they were a murderous military dictatorship for all those decades[1]? I thought the under-mentioned beef China had with Taiwan was the fact that the ROC took (and retains to this day) all the priceless cultural artifacts. The CCP would like those back in order to tie themselves to China's history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)
  • sfmike 2y ago
    Logically speaking if they weren't taken they would have been destroyed
    • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      How do you figure that? The CCP maintained a staggering number of historical and cultural artifacts for decades. What's so special about these that they would want to destroy them? Can you explain why you would view their destruction as logical? I understand the cultural revolution did result in the destruction of history but people seem to wildly overstate its extent.
    • BartjeD 2y ago
      Because red guard destroyed them and hung the bourgeois trying to keep them safe. All the art in Beijing summer palace is fake. It got destroyed by these folk's. Same story all over China.
  • komali2 2y ago
    > I thought the under-mentioned beef China had with Taiwan was the fact that the ROC took (and retains to this day) all the priceless cultural artifacts. The CCP would like those back in order to tie themselves to China's history. In doing so the ROC saved a great many artifacts of Chinese history. Many that remained within PRC territory were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. As for the modern era, I don't believe there's "beef" about cultural artifacts. The PRC and Taiwan exchange cultural artifacts for their respective museums: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7892178.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7892178.stm Now if we want to get into the real fun nitty gritty rumors we could talk about how the KMT may have brought over a lot of gold and hid it somewhere in Taiwan...
• komali2 2y ago
  > China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Can I ask what led to you generating this idea? As someone in Taiwan it really stood out to me as an odd take. First, considering Taiwan to be a democratic society of "Chinese" people is odd. The vast majority of Taiwanese wouldn't use the English word "Chinese" to define themselves. There's interesting wordplay happening in Mandarin for a lot of words that the CPC now translates to "Chinese," such as 漢人 華人 vaguely for "ethnicity" and 中文 or 漢語 for language. There's a long conversation to be had there about the CPC engaging in cultural imperialism and Han supremacism as an alternative means of imperializing Taiwan and elsewhere, but I want to stay focused on your message. Second, the CPC of course doesn't think their model is authoritarian or bad, so what do they have to fear from Taiwan? Propagandic messaging regarding Taiwan is, depending on your level of engagement with "Communism with Chinese Characteristics," either "Taiwan separatist and bad enemy" (low engagement) or "Chinese people on the Taiwan island are enslaved by capitalist overlords and being used as western pawns" (high engagement). I really doubt that the CPC feels "challenged" by Taiwan, their language never speaks to it.
  • InkCanon 2y ago
    From the perspective of a third party and trying to understand things in a way that separates politics from reality (like PG says arguments involving identity are impossible to resolve), both Taiwanese and what might be called CCP-ese are largely political. Chinese has the rare quality of historically referring to ethnicity, language and culture to a degree not seen in most other peoples. There's also a final and most abstract concept, which is self identity. It is also the main lever of politics because it is almost impossible to change the other three. Both the citizens of the CCP and ROC are (virtually all) ancestry, linguistically and culturally Chinese. But politics has grabbed the stick of self identity and tried to steer it in different ways, leading to many contradictory results. From the CCP's destruction of culture during the cultural revolution, down to things like how (iirc) Confucianism is still taught in Taiwan as part of the curriculum but not China. Edit: changed ethnicity to ancestry to be more precise.
    • 2y ago
• ecshafer 2y ago
  It is ideological, but it isn't anything like China thinking that a "free, democratic society" is a threat. China has gotten incredibly rich under the CCP, the average stance is that its a great model. China thinks of Taiwan as a rogue province because of nationalism. A country of ethnic Chinese is both a reminder of the century of humiliation, and an affront to the idea of China being the nation of Chinese people. It is no different than Italy desiring Istria or South Tyrol, or Germany wanting Alsace Lorraine.
  • est 2y ago
    > China thinks of Taiwan as a rogue province because of nationalism To explain: Taiwan was like the Jerusalem of CCP. The CCP was originally founded as a Leninism crusade on May 4th 1919 because League of Nations fuck-ups
    • NBJack 2y ago
      I really want to dig into this further. Can you share any good resources (pod casts or equivalent I can listen to) that cover the history here?
      • est 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Fourth_Movement#Birth_of_Chinese_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Fourth_Movement#Birth_of_C... this is a good place to start.
• InkCanon 2y ago
  This is a somewhat shallow and more buzz phrasey explanation of it. China wanted to invade Taiwan long before it became a democracy. And China is adjacent to many prosperous democracies like Japan and South Korea. Not to mention the hundred million middle class Chinese tourists and numerous students who can see the developed democracies with their own eyes. With Occam's razor, the simple answer is really that they consider it part of China for historical and cultural reasons. Taiwan did the same for many years.
  • varjag 2y ago
    It's really no difference. Even Chang Kai Chek era Taiwan with the little freedoms its people enjoyed was an enviable place next to sparrow hunt era mainland.
  • forty 2y ago
    I think independent Taiwan greatly reduce Chinese sea ownership and access, which is annoying for both economic and military reasons
  • RobotToaster 2y ago
    > Taiwan did the same for many years. IIRC Officially the ROC still claim the entire mainland, Mongolia, and parts of Russia as their territory.
    • spwa4 2y ago
      Plus there's the whole "it doesn't make economic sense for X to attack" which doesn't seem to have worked anywhere. Ideology seems to not just trump economic rationality in war, but to literally be the only factor. X can be: * Hamas * Hezbollah * Russia * Sudan RSF or SAF * Iran * Afghanistan The list goes on. All of these suffered greatly economically due to beginning unprovoked wars (only RSF has any real claim to being attacked, and even then they could easily have halted the fighting quickly if they wanted to)
      • Wytwwww 2y ago
        > which doesn't seem to have worked anywhere Well by definition it has worked in all other cases that you have not listed. Also you can't expect terrorist organizations to behave rationally (on a state/geopolitical level) and pretty much all Middle Eastern countries (besides Iran and they aren't 100% committed either) came to terms with the fact that Israel does and will continue to exist. Did that happen due to ideological factors? I'd say that Russia is the only actual valid example and the economic outcome remains to be seen (unfortunately Russia has been doing remarkable well economically so far..).
• imadierich 2y ago
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• PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons That's absolutely not true if only for the existence of TSMC.
  • adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    if China invades Taiwan, there won't be much of TSMC left standing by the end.
    • nosianu 2y ago
      I hear that statement repeated a lot, but I'm not so sure. What is the incentive? If China invades, anyone involved in destroying that asset will have a huge problem for themselves afterwards, China won't forgive. On the other hand, see what happened in Ukraine, where in the initial invasion there was quite a bit of collaboration of some Ukrainians, for example Antonov leadership ("Antonov's leadership sabotaged defense of Hostomel airport" -- https://english.nv.ua/nation/antonov-s-leadership-sabotaged-hostomel-defense-efforts-news-50316938.html https://english.nv.ua/nation/antonov-s-leadership-sabotaged-...). If they will have to live under China's rule, the incentive for the individuals is to cooperate with them and be richly rewarded for it. Who wants to sacrifice themselves - and likely their families too - to benefit some outsiders? Who are leaving you behind to fight for yourself? Which at that point is against your own interest if you don't think you can win. Especially when the invaders are from one's own greater "tribe", so that it is not as bad as being invaded by another people (like the French or the Americans in Vietnam).
      • adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
        this is forgetting that the US exists. The US doesn't want China to invade Taiwan or to control TSMC. if China invades, is very much in the US interest to fly everyone important at TSMC and their families to the US, and to blow up the buildings. it's also in the TSMC employees interest because living in a warzone sucks. Furthermore, this policy is a dissinsentive for China to invade since it means that invading won't provide an economic benefit.
• WiSaGaN 2y ago
  This is such a ridiculous claim. China wants to unify with Taiwan well before US fully allows African American to vote, as guranteed by Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• dobin 2y ago
  Its not ideological, its to break out of the physical constraints setup by the US, to gain access to the pacific, and to the rest of asia. Simple geopolitics, just check a map.
  • bloppe 2y ago
    If there's one thing China needs, it's access to the Pacific and Asia.
  • actionfromafar 2y ago
    If only they had a coastline.
• protomolecule 2y ago
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