Because… Conflict of interests…
Just stay out of the conflict? I mean, you’re gonna get drafted by one side…
It probably depends on which ones are the two countries, in your case it’s even more complex as you seem to support Taiwan.
I’m second generation Vietnamese, and while I like the Vietnamese language and culture, I’m still closer to the country where I was born, grew up and spent basically my whole life.
Also Vietnam being a one party state that my parents left doesn’t really encourages me to fight for it.
War is the game played by politician leaders using their populations as fuel.
Know what kind of a world you want to live in and find out which one will make the resultant world closest to what you want.Either will use (and throw) you for their game.
Neither really cares about where you were born.If you do join a service, prove your worth as a living pawn to be greater than a dead one and hope (only hope, do not expect) to not be cut-off for strategic benefit, before their game ends.
Choose a side, and be sure to evaluate whether that side is based on culture, ideology, something else, because those three may not necessarily be the same.
For example, imagine a scenario where the US ended up in a war against russia over a conflict against NATO allies. One could easily imagine that Russians in Europe or the US landing on both sides of the conflict, depending on whether they are pro Putin or not.
As for china, I can imagine a similar scenario where ethnically Chinese people may be on the US side on the basis that they’re against CCP and/or Xi. Sadly, due to how the US treated people who looked foreign during past conflicts, choosing the US side may not necessarily mean that you’re safe.
Hope you’re asking theoretically.
In the UK, they make you pledge allegiance to serve the crown at the citizenship ceremony, which symbolically establishes that your loyalties lie with the British throne and therefore the state.
In practice, if drafted or if I for some reason volunteer, I would side with whoever I actually sided with morally and ideologically.
e.g. I’d choose the West over the current Fascist Russian regime, but theoretically back a progressive Russia against a Fascist West and so on.
This could mean anything from actively serving to dodging the draft to civilian resistance in case of occupation.
Theoretically a foreign legion isn’t anything too uncommon. There were some Russians fighting alongside Ukraine against Russia last I checked. Being in that case a Ukrainian citizen would only help.
In case of service I imagine there would be the problem of inevitable racism towards me from the natives while in service if people of my nationality/ethnicity are the current enemy, especially if it’s like the Japanese internment camps in the US level of hate, so that would be a consideration, plus more practical/logistical matters like which language I can actually speak properly enough to function in critical situations etc.
This is an interesting question though, is there historical accounts of such groups like this I wonder?
I’m an Chinese-American and I oppose CCP but I just wonder if this… ahem this administration start some war shit, and if it really starts, I honestly have zero idea what to do.
Obviously I’m morally opposed to CCP so I cannot side with PRC. But I also don’t feel like siding with this rogue administration that has a history of violating the constitution.
I would hope to not die, but like if I get drafted, I have no issues shooting PLA soldiers, especially if its in defence of Taiwan. But still, kinda feel wrong to be under the command of… you know… that guy (who shall not be named).
That’s a tough. Normally I would hope there’d be an easy choice, but things have changed really quickly.
I don’t know much about real life in China but every time the current American administration violates human rights or represses science sacrifices our future to line their pockets or attack our friends and allies, it seems like I read about the Chinese government moving in the opposite direction. The direction of “good”, the direction the US always claimed to be. They seem to be making a lot of smart moves for their economic, technical and scientific future, and for larger influence as a global citizen. I have no way to evaluate the current level of repression but they’re at least saying alot of the right things
I lived in China, I hated it.
Its not really as beautiful as it seems.
Sure, its not as bad as North Korea or Taliban-controlled Afganistan, but still, not like a nice place to be.
I mean aside from the extremist politics of this administration obviously, I’m overall more ideologically alligned with the west than CCP, and the only potential issue I see is probably the racism I’d face, but its a big world, not everywhere is Texas. And hopefully this shit doesn’t go more than 4 years.
Wall of text if you wanna read it...
I mean, even just in terms of prosperity, you think the US is bad, China is worse. I still remember how much my parents were at work while I was just alone at home with my older brother (which is why we got in fights alot), and even then, we were still struggling.
Culturally, there’s a lot of patriarchy, conservatism, culturally its sort of like the American South, but Chinese Edition.
it seems like I read about the Chinese government moving in the opposite direction
I meam, their PR is good, I’ll give them that. Some aspects of their stuff might be better, but overall society is still kinda f’ed. One the outside, it looks like its crime-free, on the inside, you’ll have people warning you about 碰瓷 (broken vase), a type of scam where they pretend like its your fault for breaking something, or pretend your car hit them so they can extort payment. Not even western propaganda, my mother told me about this stuff. Warning about these incidents are like all over WeChat. Sometimes there are even official local police warnings about these scams. Also, petty theft is more common.
Even being born in 广州 (Guangzhou, a city), they still legally considers me a 台山人 (Taishan person, Taishan is rural), because of the Hukou system. I mean they basically let you be in the city until policy changes then you could theoretically be forced to leave and go back to your shitty village. (Sort of like the undocumented immigrants of America, but in China, this is internal borders) I remember the villages still had public bathrooms. Like if you need to use the bathroom at night, you walked outside of your house to the communal bathroom, no bathroom inside your house. The part of Guangzhou I lived in was also kinda like a slum, better than rural places, but still, very dirty. When I first learned of the Brazil Favelas, it kinda reminded me of the part of Guangzhou where I lived.
Labor rights suck, there no independent unions. No OHSA.
Also, internet sucks, firewall, censorship. (Domestic media is boring) Where I lived was so behind in developement that I never had internet until I came to the US.
/rant over
Basically the dilemma here is, Chinese-Americans, at least those who are westernized, never really fit in on either side.
Germany has quite the culture of draft dodging.
I remember all kinds of stories. Smoking like a chimney and getting drunk as fuck before and dressing like a tourist with a camera as you enter the mandatory meeting thing.
Of course the criteria to get drafted are different through places and time, but try to figure out the process, and what would eliminate you from getting drafted.
Also, it’s literally in one of those declassified CIA handbooks, that one of the ways to hijack an organisation from the inside is to be incompetent as fuck. Eager, but incompetent. Report any meaningless thing that technically is report worthy, to clog up the pipelines, make meetings way too long and talk about meaningless details.
Of course the criteria to get drafted are different through places and time, but try to figure out the process, and what would eliminate you from getting drafted.
I have depression. Good enough excuse?
Also my BMI is kinda um… actually by American standards they might just draft me anyways lmao.
But my vision is shit, literally can’t aim if I don’t have glasses.
May I be excused, Uncle Sam?
I was gonna joke that you could show up as a raging trigger-happy and bloodthirsty gun-fanatic. But in the current climate, that is probably a rather qualifying factor.
In all seriousness, if this is important to you there is no way around doing your own research. There are always ways.
For example, in the book “How to Win an Information War” it is mentioned that allies at some point flew flyers over Nazi troops that gave instructions on how to temporarily get symptoms of a serious illness that would potentially allow them to leave the front.
Tbf I don’t remember if that was one of those that didn’t actually work and just got nazis actually fucked up, or helped reduce their numbers and morale. But you get the gist.Why did you tell me to kill myself?
USA during WW2: concentration camp. Only for the Japanese, though, Germans were A-OK!
