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> 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"

> 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.
- komali2 2y ago
  > ethnically, linguistically and culturally Chinese Again I ask - where is this impression coming from? And for what definition of "Chinese?" Can you please write the specific term you're thinking of in Mandarin to be more clear? In English "Chinese" means too many things, especially with the CPC changing the definition over the last 50 years or so. To be fair, the same thing is happening in Mandarin, so it would help if you could clarify. Regardless, for most of the definitions of "Chinese," the theory doesn't seem to match reality, nor is the framing correct. First of all, regarding an ethnological and linguistic concept of "Chinese" (translated many ways), we should reject efforts by the CPC to claim to speak for people that have this identity - which is exactly what they're trying to do. Reject CPC cultural imperialism. Such a claim to Taiwan (and Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, etc places containing many "Chinese" people) should be rejected out of hand. Second of all, Taiwan is not ethnically or culturally "Chinese" for basically all definitions of "Chinese." It so happens that Mandarin is the language written on government documents, true, though... that's not really "Chinese," is it? It's the language of the Empires of Beijing. There are many other languages that existed in the history of Chinese empires. And throughout that whole time, Empires would choose, based on their convenience, who is "Chinese" and who isn't. Sometimes a lot of languages would get amalgamated into that convenient descriptor to serve imperial purposes. The CPC are the latest to do this, this time in the name of "global Chinese communism." Regarding culturally, Taiwan really isn't culturally "Chinese," in fact over the last few decades Taiwan has engaged in that process by which a culture develops itself in opposition to another one. See masculine and feminine cultures over the years, the Greeks and the Turks, the Brits and the French, etc. Much of Taiwanese culturally identity specifically forms around rejecting whatever the CPC claims, or riffing on whatever cultural heritage was imported by the Qing or KMT. Sure, some of the same holidays are celebrated, but are all cultures that celebrate Christmas, British? (or, white?) (or..... arabian? considering the origin of christianity) Not to mention the history of Taiwan as a colonized place has injected a wide diversity of cultures. Portuguese, Japanese, etc. There's also indigenous culture which is actively uplifted and many Taiwanese celebrate these holidays, eat indigenous food, etc. Indigenous art emblazons basically every single retaining wall in the country. Ethnically, there isn't necessarily a "Chinese" ethnicity, again a term invented to describe all the people ruled by a given empire. Of course there's "Han" but that is "Han," not "Han Chinese," a new word used to engage in ethnonationalism. And, it really doesn't describe Taiwan all that well, since again, it is a wildly colonized and immigrated place. The CPC is attempting to soft-power claim Taiwan through Han ethnonationalism and so I'm quite prickly about this subject.
deleted 2y ago
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af78 2y ago
Taiwan and democracy are two of the CPC's Five Poisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons#Chinese_Communist_Party_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons#Chinese_Communist... Authoritarian regimes, the CPC among them, regularly claim that democracy is a western concept that cannot function in other cultures. The existence of successful Asian democracies like Taiwan, Japan or South Korea undermines this claim.

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.

komali2 2y ago
> ethnically, linguistically and culturally Chinese Again I ask - where is this impression coming from? And for what definition of "Chinese?" Can you please write the specific term you're thinking of in Mandarin to be more clear? In English "Chinese" means too many things, especially with the CPC changing the definition over the last 50 years or so. To be fair, the same thing is happening in Mandarin, so it would help if you could clarify. Regardless, for most of the definitions of "Chinese," the theory doesn't seem to match reality, nor is the framing correct. First of all, regarding an ethnological and linguistic concept of "Chinese" (translated many ways), we should reject efforts by the CPC to claim to speak for people that have this identity - which is exactly what they're trying to do. Reject CPC cultural imperialism. Such a claim to Taiwan (and Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, etc places containing many "Chinese" people) should be rejected out of hand. Second of all, Taiwan is not ethnically or culturally "Chinese" for basically all definitions of "Chinese." It so happens that Mandarin is the language written on government documents, true, though... that's not really "Chinese," is it? It's the language of the Empires of Beijing. There are many other languages that existed in the history of Chinese empires. And throughout that whole time, Empires would choose, based on their convenience, who is "Chinese" and who isn't. Sometimes a lot of languages would get amalgamated into that convenient descriptor to serve imperial purposes. The CPC are the latest to do this, this time in the name of "global Chinese communism." Regarding culturally, Taiwan really isn't culturally "Chinese," in fact over the last few decades Taiwan has engaged in that process by which a culture develops itself in opposition to another one. See masculine and feminine cultures over the years, the Greeks and the Turks, the Brits and the French, etc. Much of Taiwanese culturally identity specifically forms around rejecting whatever the CPC claims, or riffing on whatever cultural heritage was imported by the Qing or KMT. Sure, some of the same holidays are celebrated, but are all cultures that celebrate Christmas, British? (or, white?) (or..... arabian? considering the origin of christianity) Not to mention the history of Taiwan as a colonized place has injected a wide diversity of cultures. Portuguese, Japanese, etc. There's also indigenous culture which is actively uplifted and many Taiwanese celebrate these holidays, eat indigenous food, etc. Indigenous art emblazons basically every single retaining wall in the country. Ethnically, there isn't necessarily a "Chinese" ethnicity, again a term invented to describe all the people ruled by a given empire. Of course there's "Han" but that is "Han," not "Han Chinese," a new word used to engage in ethnonationalism. And, it really doesn't describe Taiwan all that well, since again, it is a wildly colonized and immigrated place. The CPC is attempting to soft-power claim Taiwan through Han ethnonationalism and so I'm quite prickly about this subject.

deleted 2y ago

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af78 2y ago

Taiwan and democracy are two of the CPC's Five Poisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons#Chinese_Communist_Party_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons#Chinese_Communist... Authoritarian regimes, the CPC among them, regularly claim that democracy is a western concept that cannot function in other cultures. The existence of successful Asian democracies like Taiwan, Japan or South Korea undermines this claim.