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Chinese soldiers pledge to sacrifice their lives in documentary on Taiwan invasion
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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I mean, isn't this just the most schizophrenic framing. It's Chinese soldiers who are lunatics for being patriotic but Americans are sane for threatening world war over a Chinese island on the other side of the world.
Suicide isn't patriotic. And it isn't a Chinese island; that's the point. It's a democratic, independent country that happens to be a US ally.
Tell that to literally all the European and American soldiers who say they want to die for their country, and all the bumper stickers, and all the memorials, and all of the ceremonies, and all of the rhetoric, and all of the families, and and and... Or do you not consider it suicide when Euro-centric soldiers choose to enlist and committing to fight to their death?
It's literally populated by almost entirely Chinese people, Chinese people who genocided the native inhabitants. It is quite literally part of the same land mass and water ways just like Manhattan, Galveston, and the Florida Keys. In all ways except one, it is a Chinese island.
The one way that it is NOT a Chinese island is that when the losing fuedal-fascist White Army fled to the island, the imperial fascist British and Americans interceded to protect their imperial fascist interests by ensuring that the KMT was able to stay alive and that they would be further indebted to them. The KMT then proceeded to prosecute the ruthlessly brutal White Terror on the island while the North Atlantic imperial fascists maintained diplomatic and military relationships with the island as a way of holding on to their imperialist presence in China that they obtained through violence, occupation, and the forced selling of opium.
This is the ONLY definition of "Chinese" that Taiwan is not, specifically that it is not administered by the central government of the mainland. The former central governments all administered Taiwan prior to the civil war, but this particular central government was stopped by European interventionism to advance European interests.
You are grasping at straws in trying to construct a narrow moralistic narrative that smoothly eliminates all the parts of the narrative that would fly against your moral narrative. It's not working. Reality is what it is.
I would say that suicide is not patriotic to anyone. Why do Chinese supporters always resort to whataboutism, anyway? Shitty behavior is shitty behavior, regardless.
The PRC has never owned Taiwan. Also, it doesn't matter about the ethnicity of the population because, at the end of the day, they don't want to be part of China.
But you have nothing to say to about America not allowing integration with China without launching a world war? Curious.
What a fucked up imperialist framing. The PRC doesn't own China, it is the current government of the sovereign nation of China which has included Taiwan for a very long time and still includes Taiwan. You don't say that the Democrats don't own Alabama, but you apply an idiosyncratic standard to argue that the US is justified in turning Taiwan into it's military proxy and threatening to send millions to their death over reintegration of a territory that is quite literally by all standards part of the same nation as the mainland.
You are talking about people who suffered under the White Terror for 40 years, which included torture and murder of anyone who disagrees with the KMT. The individual beliefs of the residents is a direct result not only of the indoctrination from that White Terror but from the heavy indoctrination by European propaganda for many many decades.
What matters is that there is no way from Taiwan to be independent. It will either be part of the imperial bloc and therefore a military threat to China and a base for Western imperial power projection and containment, or it will be administered as a province of China and the Europeans will be kicked out of their foot hold. This is why the conflict exists, not because the people in Taiwan care one way or the other, but because independent Taiwan is a strategic position for the European imperial order. China will integrate it because it is required for Chinese national security, which serves not merely the people of the mainland but also the people of the island. It would be tragic for the US to turn Taiwan into another meat grinder in its bid to use proxies to maintain its global oppression.
Why are you mad at me? It isn't my choice. You make some good points/observations, but I won't respond to each of them because the fact of the matter is that the US will not sit by and watch Taiwan be "reintegrated" (again, not my choice; just a fact).
It's also not the US's choice. The European empire, which the US inherited and evolved, is slowly but surely ending. The integration will happen, and the US won't launch a world war to stop it, because China won't launch a war to integrate, because China isn't the belligerent that the West has been trying to invent through propaganda for 2 centuries. Instead, China will continue to assert its position, demonstrate it's ability to protect Taiwan from further imperial manipulation, and wait until Taiwan is ready to experiment with "one country, two systems". China, unlike the West, can wait for a long time.
Sometimes it is worthwhile to be mindful of users’ instances… dude you’re replying to is from one of those instances.
Aaaahh, gotcha. Good advice, thanks. 👍
What does this even mean? You're comparing cats and dogs in an attempt to justify PRC's warrantless claim to an island they've never owned in modern history.
Countries don't OWN their land, they are sovereign over their territory. Quite literally no government of China EVER owned Taiwan, but all governments, including this one, have been sovereign over Taiwan. It's just that Taiwan was illegally occupied by separatists and European imperial powers. The sovereignty does not inhere to the party in charge any more than the Democratic party can own Alabama or the Republican party can own the Florida Keys.
I think almost every independence movement is a bit like a Rorschach Test; people see in them what they want (or can).
In this discussion here you learn basically almost nothing about Taiwan, its history, or why and what its people want, but you sure learn a lot about the political worldviews of everyone who participated. Your comment here is an excellent example of that, even better than the one I replied to first.
And btw, I don't justify any claim. I'd rather support Taiwans de jure sovereignty (over the island, not over all of that 😅) if that's what its population want. And I doubt that this CCTV documentary is gonna change my mind, but still plan to watch it cuz I'm still trying to understand why most Chinese propaganda is so lame 😂
All propaganda is not good, but I'd say that Chinese-brand propaganda is fierce. I make an attempt to get news from sources outside the States because our propaganda is pretty lame as well. I should learn more about Taiwan history, though. Can anyone recommend a good book about it?
Fierce or not, it just seems weird. The relations between prc and roc cannot be that bad, and think of all the trading! There are so many ways to improve relations while still aiming for an official reunification. But hey, you know what, great idea! Let's publish some video-statements of soldiers who say they will sacrifice their lives to get back the island that we officially already hold sovereignty over! – nono, much better idea! Let's make it an eight-part series, that will make us even more popular over there!
It's like in the meme where the one guy who says something reasonable gets thrown out of the office window. (have not watched it, maybe it's also much better than I assume)
Meanwhile American propaganda is obviously much better, for example, no one questioned what happened before the stuff that happens in the black hawk down movie, or what happened after the pearl harbor movie. Comparing cats and dogs, yes, but from a simple propaganda perspective, that is just good framing, something China is really bad at, constantly.
And the US knows how to use that advantage. Americans (and most people in the West) care and know more about what probably happened to probably thousands of peaceful Chinese democracy-lovers (NSFL!), rather than why the US government bombed a whole city block in Philadelphia 2 years prior 🤷♂️
And yea, its always good to learn more! Have fun learning about the history of Taiwan, White Terror and all that. It became too much for me very quickly, so I cannot recommend anything.
Not according to the US state department:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China
Officially. That's just political framing to keep China from going ape-shit. Unofficially, though... see the Six Assurances.
This is true. The six assurances reaffirms that the United States doesn’t view Taiwan as a sovereign nation under either Taiwanese or Chinese rule. The main points it states is that the US will continue to supply Taiwan with weapons, it will not be involved with negotiations between the PRC and Taiwan, Taiwan is not a sovereign state and China is not recognized as having sovereignty over Taiwan.
So the US doesn’t think China has sovereignty over Taiwan while also saying they do not support Taiwan independence.
Basically it’s another way for the US to feed the military industrial complex while keeping the possibility of war in our back pocket without disrupting relations with our #1 trade partner.
Yup, the military industrial complex is so screwed up.
Taiwan presents a tricky and strange situation. All I'm saying is that I really do not think that the US would sit back and watch China invade without doing anything.
Yea they would probably sacrifice the Philippines first. Then Japan.
Of course not, but they wouldn’t intervene for the good of the Taiwanese people. It would be because of all the US assets (chip investment) wrapped up in Taiwan. Not to mention war is good for business. So both the US and Chinese populations will be at the whims of their government sending them into a meat grinder all for financial interests.
This is because when the losing fuedal-fascist White Army fled to the island, the imperial fascist British and Americans interceded to protect their imperial fascist interests by ensuring that the KMT was able to stay alive and that they would be further indebted to them. The KMT then proceeded to prosecute the ruthlessly brutal White Terror on the island while the North Atlantic imperial fascists maintained diplomatic and military relationships with the island as a way of holding on to their imperialist presence in China that they obtained through violence, occupation, and the forced selling of opium.
Specifically that it is not administered by this particular central government of the mainland is irrelevant. The former central governments all administered Taiwan prior to the civil war, but this particular central government was stopped by European interventionism to advance European interests.
Always funny to see people validating expensionism in the 21st century, really brings a colonialist bloodlust vibe.
Btw by funny I meant fucking depressing*
LOL, "expansionism". Like what NATO does? Or do you mean the reintegration of formerly centrally administered provinces after imperialist interventionism that occupied, divided, and oppressed? Because lest you forget, all the people on Taiwan, except for the very small number of natives who survived the genocidal KMT, they're all part of China. They seceded and the Europeans protected them, not because they had a right to seceded, but because Europe wanted to maintain military and economic dominance over the region. Taiwan is a proxy in this case. Reintegrating the proxy is not expansionism.
Expansionism is 600 military bases around the world. Expansionism is establishing Ukraine as a new proxy and attempting to install net new nuclear capabilities on its border with Russia. Expansionism is literally what China has been fighting against for centuries. And now, because they want to continue pushing out European interests from their corner of the world, you're crying "expansionism"! It's ridiculous. Was it expansionism when Hong Kong was returned to China from the British? Was it expansionism when the British could no longer have complete immunity from Chinese law in Shanghai? Was it expansionism when the North Koreans tried to push out the Japanese from the peninsula?
Europe has been expanding for 600 years and you're going to cry foul when someone tries to push out European interests from where they never should have been in the first place?
The problem, of course, is that you've come wading into an argument with absolutely no evidence. Here are the actual opinions of the citizens of the Republic of China:
As you can see, the most popular options are "Decide later" and "Decide never". "Independence now!" as a choice has never quite beaten "No response".
Nor is that really surprising - independence as a political project only appeared in the mainstream in any capacity with the founding of the DPP (Democratic Prograssive Party) in 1986. For the first 37 years, the island was controlled exclusively by the KMT (Kuomintang) as a one-party military dictatorship that not only considered itself part of China, but the rightful rulers of the whole of China! Here's the insignia of the RoC Marine Corps, showing the full extent of the territories claimed by the Republic of China:
As you can see, it not only includes the mainland but large areas of several neighbouring states including almost the whole of Mongolia. The KMT old guard, as much as remain in politics anyway, are actually furious about the idea of claiming independence, because it would mean renouncing the whole rest of China!
Firstly, there is only a question of 'unify or declare independence' because of continuous pressure from the US Empire for the last half century. Continuing the status quo benefits all parties because the RoC's largest trading partner is the PRC (obviously, because it's a country of 1.8 billion people that is literally right offshore) and gradually increasing integration was the obvious natural course.
Until the US, which still maintains an official One-China policy, decided it needed another way to attack China. But maybe, China really might just smash its way in by force... any day now!
If events had unfolded based on normal political and economic trends, Taipei would probably have ended up as an autonomous province under the PRC, similar to Hong Kong or Macau, because the Chinese central government is comparatively hands-off and local governments are mostly allowed to do their own thing - a policy started under Mao called (I love Chinese policy names) Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let One Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.
Oh, but of course you thought the entire Chinese population was controlled directly by Xi Jinping like units in an RTS, didn't you? Because you're a know-nothing racist fuckwit - or not, after all, it's okay to say that asian people are yellow-skinned and beady-eyed if they're enemies of the US! Xi is going to finish his third term, see out the opening stages of the Belt and Road Initiative, then retire like every other Chinese President and foreigners with full bellies and too much time on their hands will cope and seethe that the next one is also a horrible dictator (until that one retires too).
Firstly,
You're an ignorant westerner whose entire knowledge consists of fifteen seconds a day of headlines drip-fed by your state-controlled media, and the link you sling at me is from fucking Wikipedia.
In short: you are wrong. The Empire's media lies. The '1 million' number is based on eight (8) interviews conducted by virulent German christofascist shitstain Adrian Zenz.
Here's a vlog by a guy who actually went to Xinjiang and talked to people there. Plenty of other videos on his channel too.
The program in question, which took place in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was a deradicalization campaign against islamic extremists funded by the west, who had been committing multiple terror attacks every year. People taken in were given education and warned about the dangers of Islamic extremism, especially the (foreign to Xinjiang) Wahabbi form of Islam exported by Saudi Arabia with the help of the US. Who, by the way, deradicalizes Uyghurs by blowing them up. After conducting the most humane and effective deradicalization program ever, the western backed extremists are gone and even western media has to grudgingly admit the whole thing is over (in the most loaded language possible):
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the most successful proletarian revolution ever, and resulted in near-totally equal distribution of land among the peasantry. Life expectancy under Mao increased at a rate of more than one year per year, to double from around thirty to over sixty. It is the most rapid sustained increase in life expectancy anywhere, ever. China's two thousand year food problem was solved.
Luckily your totally unbiased and free press can report such improvements in an impartial manner.
Dare you read anything I've linked? Can you get past your unearned smug arrogance? Or is the parasite attached to your forebrain just too strong?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=hj9oynrrkcA
https://piped.video/watch?v=9RK5Me8maG4
https://piped.video/watch?v=6XNskWbzGEE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
If you actually had any love for the people of China, you'd respect their political autonomy and drop this paternal white savior act.
74 years is a single lifetime. The US has lasted longer than that and it will eventually be completely removed from the world map through decolonial struggle. 74 years for a small separatist movement to be protected by European powers who dominated China for centuries does not suddenly grant new moral, ethical, political, nor legal standing. They are not a firmly established democratic nation of their own, they are a Western vassal and proxy, and as the world financial system dedollarizes Taiwan will slowly shift its stance back towards China. China has every intent in creating the incentive structures for integration to be the correct choice for the people of Taiwan. Given that when it started support for integration was met with death, the current state of integration polling is a good sign that things are slowly moving in the direction China wants them to. And the people of Taiwan are not blind to nor ignorant of what the US does to its proxies.
Integration will eventually happen.
Most of taiwanese people consider themselves taiwanese and do not want to be part of china again. No matter what happened before people now DO NOT want it or if they so they are now a minority. In case you din't know ujraine was invaded, and without western help it would've been swalloded by russia. You are trying to justify killings and rubles by citing the pastand ignoring the present.
With this kind of mentally everything can be justified. The core of rhe probleme now is much much more simple :
People want to go in someone else home and take it.
This is it, that's all. And if you're for that you need to ask yourself what you're really behind.
I'm personnaly fully against america emperialism and all the shit they do in south america, africa, etc... Their egemony on ecomy that is hurting all the planet, their lazyness torward climate change etc egc I'm agaisnt CCP repression of those they do not consider worthy, and their policy on privacy and their effort to control south asia. Etc etc...
Once you start to look closely everybody is an asshole because they are BUT this does not EVER justify senseless killing over patriotism, sovereignty, or wtv the fuck.