cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49224731
China’s ambassador to Australia has urged Canberra to prepare for dealing with a “reunified China”, declaring Chinese people “will not forgive” countries that seek to obstruct Beijing’s push to bring Taiwan under its control.
In remarks that frame reunification as inevitable and resistance as unforgivable, Xiao Qian likened Taiwan’s status to that of Tasmania and warned that any attempt of “compromising or openly distorting” Beijing’s one-China principle would constitute a retreat from prior commitments and erode trust.
He said Australia could not keep reaping the benefits of trade with China while seeking to block reunification, signalling economic consequences for resisting Beijing’s aims.
[…]
Mr Xiao also lashed a recent [Australian] Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade statement that described China’s military and coast guard drills around Taiwan as “deeply concerning, destabilising and risk inflaming regional tensions”, and reiterated that Canberra opposed any unilateral attempt to change the status quo.
[…]
He also cautioned governments, including Australia’s, against pursuing dialogue on Taiwan unless they were committed to reunification.
[…]
Sorry, sabre rattling? I don’t see anything in the language here that indicates China is threatening war with Australia. It’s Australia saying “we should form a military alliance and use it to violently oppose China and Taiwan unifying their governmental and national defense structures” and China saying that even suggesting such a thing will put Australia - the white supremacist settler colony that is an extension of white supremacist British colonialism, the largest empire in the history of the world - on the diplomatic shit list of China, which will mean lack of cooperation, reduced trade, etc.
It is the same bullying we have been hearing from Chinese officials over many years now. Chinese envoys have already threatened Australian and Japanese people over its support for Taiwan as well as the current Japanese PM personally.
Chinese imperialism has a long-standing history across a wide range of territories and issues, comprising Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and the persecution of Uyghurs and suppression of Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Officially there are 55 ethnic minorities in contemporary China - all people other than Han-Chinese - that speak more than 300 languages, and these cultures and languages are suppressed by a wide range of measures including included forced labor and factory work, suppression of Uyghur and Tibetan religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception, forced abortion, mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, family separation, sexual violence, to name a few.
China’s relations with Africa have also been accused of being neo-colonial, particularly the Belt and Road Initiative.
Oh my God listen to yourself for just a second, will ya. Do you know what oppression of ethnic groups looks like? It looks like public lynchings of Italians. It looks like building ghettos for the Jews. It looks like constantly crowing about immigrants. That’s the US, not China.
Do you know what oppressing occupied territories looks like? It looks like child separation policies. It looks like laws making languages illegal and assimilation mandatory. It looks like eugenics and forced sterilization programs. That’s the US, not China.
Do you know what bullying looks like? It looks like killing fisherman by bombing them with your military. It looks like blowing up medical buildings and cultural sites while kidnapping a head of state. It looks like collective punishment killing millions of people every single year. That’s the US, not China.
China’s bullying the SCS is placid not beligerent. That should be obvious. They have never double tapped a fishing vessel.
China’s “occupation” of Tibet is anything but. The Tibetan people have always been autonomous under Chinese protection since the days the Chinese liberated them from the Mongols. Their education system teaches in the Tibetan language. Their government operates in the Tibetan language. Their culture is openly expressed and celebrated constantly. In the US, indigenous children were being separated from their families and sent to assimilation schools where they were murdered, beaten, raped, and tortured and that was occuring in the 1980s! Child separation is still a US program but now it’s managed through child protective services and the adoption system. The US is the example of what oppression looks like and you won’t find any of that in China.
Xinjiang situation is even more damning. Terrorist attacks in Xinjiang were rising every year for at least a decade. You know what they US does when there are terrorist attacks, right? It bombs multiple countries and ignores white supremacist attacks on Muslim populations. You know what China did? It invested in infrastructure, education, and industry while launching an anti-terrorism campaign that balanced fighting US-backed proxies with reintegrating terrorists into society. Representatives from over 20 countries have been on the ground observing the program. The results are very clear. The terrorist attacks have been almost eliminated, while the cultural expression of the peoples of Xinjiang remains vibrant. The region has been autonomous for decades. Like Tibet, it ran its government in its own language. It organized its society around its own historical practices. It was never subject to child separation, eugenics, or assimilation.
What you are describing as Chinese oppression is a projection of Western settler colonialism onto the Chinese reality. It is an illusion. Take for example your last sentence. The BRI has been accused of being neo-colonialism. That’s true, it has been accused of that. By whom though? Predominantly Western accusers and those aligned with the West. There are breaks in the ranks though. The Atlantic has a great essay explaining that the idea of the Chinese debt trap is a total fabrication. The Atlantic is a known imperial rag, and even it ran this article.
So yes, China has been accused of neocolonialism by neocolonialists. But it’s not doing neocolonialism in Africa.
As for the long history of Chinese imperialism dating back over 2000 years, I don’t think anyone could argue with that. Taiwan is a settler colony of the Han Chinese. The indigenous people of the island, however, are not the people being supported by the West. I doubt most Westerners who support Taiwan independence even know that there is an indigenous nation on the island separate from the Han.
But the reality is that under the CPC, China has not dropped a bomb in over 30 years. It has maintained and defended the autonomy of its protectorate. And it has been an active force of anti-imperialism and is one of the primary anchors of anti-imperialism today. There is only one empire ruling the globe right now. They have 600 military bases around the world. They have military fleets on every continent. They bomb weddings, funerals, medical facilities, and they have proxy programs that do this for them. They spend millions on individual propaganda campaigns like the anti-vax campaign in Asia aimed at making people afraid of China’s COVID vaccine. Their sanctions regime has killed over 40 million people globally. They have destroyed a dozen countries, developed large networks of drug production and distribution that kill millions every year. There is but one empire, and it is the US at the helm, with the rest of white supremacist Europe and the former and current colonies as junior partners.
We can worry about unwinding the contradictions of millenia of Han imperialism when the empire is defanged.
You forgot to thank the imperialists for the technological structure you’ve just used to spread the tankiest shit I’ve seen perhaps ever.
Thank you imperialists for bringing me this phone that spies on me and sells my data for profit at the expense of my privacy for the low low cost of genociding 100 M indigenous people in just the Americas, and 100s of millions across the rest of the world and for destroying our environment and for inventing the ice pick lobotomy so men could have permanently docile wives without ugly surgery scars and for kidnapping and enslaving millions of Africans and brutally separating them from their own historical identity to the point where their ancestors literally have no idea where they originally came from and for creating global trauma over 600 years for 80% of the world’s population.
It was worth it. I am so glad I can post on the Internet. Thanks to everyone for their sacrifices!
The fuck? You’re blowjobbing China and not using a Chnese phone or something cracked?
Are you a real, genuine revolutionary or just a dishlicker with a Che poster on the wall?
Such a fucking weak pivot.
Which is it? China stole all our IP and can’t actually develop anything themselves or China developed the technology to make all the phones in the world?
You chuds are all the same. No fucking intellectual honesty, homophobia when it’s in the service of jingoism, and just generalized bundles of pathologies and cognitive dissonance.
Go take a break from the Internet, sweaty.
It hurt you.
Fucks me. I’m just exposing your hypocrisy and it’s fun. You’re all the same, all talk about imperialism and revolution with a heap of crap loaded on.
And you’re full of shit. You admitted as much with your ‘thank you’ rubbish. Your point?
*Sweetie
Keep going. The audience loves watching you make a fool of yourself
Yes it is. That’s exactly what the belt and road initiative is … to bring impoverished nations into the fold by lending them money they’ll never be able to repay.
Western nations should have jumped in, but we didn’t. That still doesn’t excuse China’s manipulative, colonialist behaviour.
Read the article from The Atlantic. You are incorrect. Chinese debt forgiveness is massive, in the tens of billions.
That‘s not going to happen because it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. 3½ years of anti-China & anti-Russia news posts by several similar Lemmy accounts
Thank God you’re here! I was feeling really lonely trying beat off all these people with both hands.
But yeah, OP is pretty obviously ideologically commited to the project of spreading Western propaganda. Maybe they’re a paid professional, but I know plenty of people who think it’s their mission to stop China just because they’ve been so immersed in sinophobia/Yellow Peril for so long that they’ll do this shit for free. Same with Red Scare and Russophobia brain damage. Just zealots and patsies, carrying water for free.
Look at this nonsense you’re spewing. It’s clear that china is threatening Australia and any country who interferes with what they consider a domestic issue, but anyone who isn’t a sinofascist understands is two independent nations who should stay that way and work on improving the world; not killing people.
This isn’t a “china bad” or “sinophobia” issue. It’s a being a decent human issue.
Inside out.
You may still be on your own here, I’m afraid. I just wanted you to know what you’re up against. I think the mods of the communities that have been hosting these ideologically and/or financially-motivated power posters for years know what they’re doing. These aren’t fora for good-faith discussions. For instance, the reason I noticed this conversation at all is because someone is filing false reports that your comments are “Spam or Abuse” and “Breaks Community Rules.”
Jesus
Holy crap what have you been sniffing, that must be some good shit
Australia was a penal colony for Irish rebellion during the 1700s. They are probably more Irish than English ancestry
You say that as though there’s any prospect of that happening by any means other than violent colonial oppression on the part of the PRC.
LOL. You are so funny. The presence of Han Chinese people on the island of Taiwan is the colonial oppression. The very people you are supporting in Taiwan are settler colonists from a colonial project that started 400 years ago. Do you even know the name of the indigenous people of the island? Do you know their name for the island? Fuck off with your ignorant sanctimonious projection.
Nice deflection. We’re not talking about what happened 400 years ago. We’re talking about what’s going on right now.
Yes, the pre-communist, pre-republic Chinese imperialism against the native Taiwanese population was bad. It doesn’t justify modern-day imperialism from the PRC, any more than poor treatment of the various central Vietnamese native populations would justify Chinese imperialism against Vietnam. Or indeed any more than Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous population would justify China deciding to invade Australia.
Your blatant whataboutism is not a defence of China here.
So you understand what colonialism is but still insist on calling Chinese/Taiwanese integration colonialism? Your intellectual honesty is clearly unimpeachable.
Taiwan is a sovereign nation you tankie shit. Move to russia or NK or china since you love it so much. The west doesn’t need more division from tankies, we got enough to deal with right now.
Dealing with the ignorance is exhausting. But it must be done.
No, Taiwan is not a sovereign nation, nor is it a sovereign country (yes there are differences). The government of Taiwan is a Chinese government. It has never declared itself a sovereign nation or country. It has always maintained that it is the legitimate government of the country of China. The country of China includes Taiwan as a province. The legitimate government of China would be sovereign over the country of China which would include Taiwan. Both the government on the island and the government on the mainland agree with this and have agreed about it continuously.
The only people who have ever claimed Taiwan is a sovereign country are Western civilians. Western governments haven’t even made that claim.
You should read more about this. It will be easier than arguing with someone you don’t respect.
Lol, you have drank the fuck out of some CCP koolaid. You tankies really should just leave, you can enjoy your love for the CCP up close.
Said the anglophile who has been indoctrinated into imperial propaganda since birth and whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were indoctrinated in the same vein for generations upon generations. Yes, it’s me who is drinking the Kool aid. You’re right
Taiwan has been an independent country for over three quarters of a century. So yes, a forceful invasion of another country for the purposes of exploiting its resources and population would be colonialism.
No it hasn’t. For fucks sake read a book.
The island of Taiwan was a province of China starting 400 years ago. Imperial Japan attacked China and China lost. Japan demanded China give Taiwan Island to Japan as a condition of the war ending. When the nation of China expelled the Japanese during WW2, Taiwan reverted to its original centuries-long status as being a province of China.
During the civil war, two factions of the nation of a China fought, and one faction of the nation of China lost and fled to the Chinese province of Taiwan.
At no time did that faction of the nation of China declare independence, request independence, or describe itself as an independent nation. It continued to act on the world stage, with the support of over 100 other countries, as the government of the nation of China, which included the mainland.
Eventually, most countries in the world realized that the faction on Taiwan was not a legitimate national government and they recognized the CPC as the legitimate government of the country of China, of which Taiwan island was still a province and that status was never changed by literally anyone.
You know about Chinese settler colonialism on the island but you don’t know that Taiwan has never been an independent country? Talk about confirmation bias! Or maybe you know you’re being disingenuous and outright lying but don’t care so long as it opposes your ideological enemies?
None of what you said is new to me, or likely to anyone in this thread. And apart from the last two paragraphs, none of it is even controversial.
The penultimate paragraph is a bit misleading. It’s not that Taiwan is not “a legitimate national government”. It’s that its claims to be the national government of all of China were obviously bullshit for a government that had not had actual control over mainland China for over two decades at the point that UN recognition changed.
The last paragraph is true in the sense of what is official recognised, but obviously incorrect in reality. Taiwan is an independent country as a matter of fact and has been since the end of the civil war. I’m not interested in what they claim, or the PRC claims, or America claims, or even what Australia claims. It is an entirely separate country that maintains entirely separate foreign policy, separate defence force, and entirely operates its own internal affairs. In no real sense is it part of the same country. And that’s what actually matters. Anyone who claims Taiwan is not an independent country is doing so for political reasons, and their discussions on the subject should be treated with significant scepticism. At best, they’re playing a game of realpolitik. At worst they’re talking bullshit.
I know which is going on here.
That’s just not true. Independent countries are defined by consensus. If they weren’t, then Crimea and the Donbas are no longer part of Ukraine, and I doubt you hold that standard. Taiwan has less claim to independence because they literally never expressed a desire for independence.
That’s wild isn’t it. That’s the definition of chavunism. You don’t care about international law, about democratic referenda, about the history of the social construction of sovereignty, about the claims of the people in question. Nope you just care about your moral framing and everyone’s just gonna have to deal with it because it’s objectively correct.
You must be a blast at parties.
Maybe I can reason with you by analogy. Racism is a social construction, right? It was invented in a book by a Portuguese guy and through the process of history became elevated to the point where it is very real but also not based on reality. It’s made up but we still measure crime statistics and distribute money and do censuses on the basis of race, right? So in what sense is race real? Only in the sense of the socio-historical process of reifying an idea into a superstructural reality that effects human lives.
Sovereignty, nations, countries, and states are the same. They don’t exist “out there” for us to discover. Some guy wrote something down and through a socio-historical process these concepts have evolved and developed into “real” things. So there are MANY real senses in which Taiwan is not an independent country - it never declared independence, it never seceded, it isn’t recognizes internationally as one, etc. These are all the mechanisms by which we socially construct the shared legal fiction of sovereign nations.
So I know you want to say that because the PLA didn’t invade Taiwan during the civil war that therefore the didn’t get their seat and the music stopped and life is actually a game of musical chairs, but that’s actually less real than the realities of international consensus. And the international consensus is that Taiwan is not an independent country.
This is a retelling of the story that is biased towards your conclusion. It’s not precisely accurate. Taiwan did not claim to be the legitimate government of “all of China” including the mainland. The KMT faction of the country of China claimed to be the legitimate government of the country called China. That country is a social construction, internationally recognized as such. The country of China has a definition that is historically constructed and again internationally recognized. This social construct that we call the country of China includes the province of Taiwan. The KMT claimed to be the legitimate government of the country of China, like Juan Guaido claimed to be the president of Venezuela. He didn’t claim to be the president of “all of Venezuela including Miami where I am sitting now and also mainland Venezuela”. It’s a political claim about political entities. Control does not really factor into it.
At one level, you’re echoing Steven Miller when he says you can’t claim something if you can’t defend it, which he says to mean the US can take Greenland because the Danish can’t defend it. That’s equivalent to what you’re saying here, and it’s just not how the social construction of sovereignty works. We definitely still have the concept of might making right, in that if a country militarily annexes another country and holds it long enough and claims it to be part of their country the international community eventually concedes the point. But that’s not this. The KMT did not even secede, let alone claim Taiwan away from some other country. None of the conditions have been met for any claims of sovereignty.
And anyone who claims it is independent is carrying water for the US empire who wants nothing more than to continue the European project of carving away parts of China and creating conditions for civil war between Chinese people so they can fight each other and not risk American lives.
See. I can make broad claims like that too. Anyone who claims Taiwan is and independent sovereign nation is doing so for political reasons and is lying by omission, either through ignorance or maliciousness, and should be met with facts and history and eventually derision.
Blah blah blah.
China threatening anyone other than the US is indeed hilarious saber rattling.
Again, there’s no sabre rattling. China is not threatening military consequences. China is informing Australia of the diplomatic consequences
Saber doesn’t literally mean weapons dude. Trade war saber rattling is still saber rattling.
Orwellian newspeak bullshit. Trade is war! Tarrifs are violence! Diplomacy is murder!
Fuck off. Sabre rattling means threats of violence. Contemporary examples of this are Hegseth going to Asia and saying “We all need to prepare for war with China” or Australia saying “We need to build military alliances to fight China”. China saying “we will not forgive you if you oppose us” is not sabre rattling. At. All.
So white supremacy vs Sinocentrism, goooot it
Could you help me find references that make this equivalency? Here’s what I’m looking for based on the behaviors of white supremacists.
Can you find evidence of the Chinese government just ignoring Chinese people holding public lynchings of minorities, making them into picnics and places to bring the kids?
Can you find evidence of forced sterilization programs and eugenics programs? Should be easy since white supremacists were running these programs well into the 80s and there are eugenics laws on the books in various states that weren’t released until very recently.
Can you find evidence of child separation policies aimed at destroying entire cultures? Again, should be easy. Indian boarding schools in white supremacist societies were operating well into the 80s.
Can you find evidence of dying languages in China? In white supremacist societies languages of oppressed people are made illegal and children who are stolen from their families are beaten, sometimes to death, for speaking their native language. Should be easy to find that in “sinocentrism” right?
How about popular Chinese groups of normal citizens arming themselves and openly stating they are sinocentric and they want to get rid of anyone who isn’t Chinese. In the US alone we have a bunch of these groups - Proud Boys, Boogaloo, neo-nazis, Groupers, Stormfront, etc. Should be easy to find stuff like that in sinocentric society like China, right?
Suffice to say, I find your false equivalency to be projection more than reality. White supremacy is a real and present danger to millions of people right now in your face on national TV every single day. There is no equivalent in China.
Just because you come from a failed state that is trying to max out on all the evil stats doesn’t mean that’s the bar for ethnic nationalism.
Decentre yourself a bit, you yank, and stop thinking about everything through either a US-centric Orientalisation lens.
Proclaiming that Taiwan must be annexed to “build the family across the Strait” “兩岸一家親” and that the only way national rejuvenation can be achieved is through annexation is ethno-nationalist and no different to the “Blood and Soil” concept the Nazis had. I’m hoping you can open your mind a second and realise I’m not talking about the “defence against the US” angle for annexing Taiwan, but specifically the extenisve use of ethnic links and family lingo to justify annexation.
I’m not even saying this as exaggeration, many Chinese are dumbfounded when they travel to Malaysia or Singapore and find that locals despise them for calling them “compatriots”. Dude is literally using 同胞, not like comrade, literally co-national.
Man. Talk about dissonance. Which is it? Are we comparing China to white supremacist fascists or are we decentering ourselves and considering the Chinese context for what it is.
The idea that healing from a civil war is ethno-nationalism akin to the Third Reich is completely and utterly ridiculous. The situation with Taiwan is not about nationalism, it’s about literally healing the wounds between families that were caught on opposite sides of a civil war. It’s about healing from the 40 year white terror on Taiwan committee by Chiang Kai-shek.
So your issue is that the rhetoric is focusing on the shared aspects of the peoples as opposed to focusing on things like violence, dominion, divine right, might makes right, or some other form of justification? Like what are you even saying? You want to ignore the fact that China has legitimate security interests being threatened by the US operating Taiwan as a foreign base but you want to claim that peaceful reunification rhetoric focused on shared aspects of the people reminds you of the Nazi rhetoric that invented a new white race (Aryan) and a whole mystical system of ascendance and ranking that justified their enslavement, genociding, and occupation of the lesser races like the Slavs, Jews, and Romas?
Like, are you serious and just haven’t dealt with your cognitive dissonance or are you just being totally disingenuous and don’t think anyone can call you on it?
Families that were caught on opposite sides? You mean the ROC soldiers that occupied Taiwan after losing the Civil War? Yeah, there’s ample channels currently for that, I don’t shed tears for waishengren occupiers sorry.
Point is, you don’t have any skin in the game, you’re LARP-ing as a revolutionary because you’re pissed at the US currently. I get you, sorta. But I ain’t buying the “principled anti-imperialist” facade.
Yes, so you clearly don’t agree that the KMT had any material claim to being a legitimate government and the Japanese claim was an imperialist one. So undoing both of those leaves us with Taiwan being a province of China and China being under the governance of the CPC and the protection of the PLA. I am glad we agree.
You’re in England. You live in the old heart of the empire. You’re with the very people who subjugated China with gun boat diplomacy and spent the last 300 years, at least, producing anti-Chinese propaganda. I know you want to claim some form of supremacy that allows you to dismiss valid critique as revolutionary LARPing, but that’s not actually addressing anything other than your inability to formulate meaningful responses.
No it fucking doesn’t. The PRC’s sole claim to Taiwan hinges on the civil war framework and the succession of states, which only works if the ROC has sovereignty over Taiwan (shocker: they don’t, Taiwan and Pescadores were put under ROC administrative control only after Japan surrendered).
I love how confidently wrong you are about most things you discuss here, including where I’m from and my ethnicity. I find it amusing. Maybe try again, third time it’s the charm
Oh you’re Romanian, my mistake.
The idea that Japan being defeated and the treaty canceled means Taiwan somehow doesn’t revert back to it’s 400-year status as a Chinese province is some gymnastics, my friend. It’s pretty obvious that’s how it works to everyone except Sinophobes and anti-communists. The Sinophobes are funny because they forget the inhabitants of Taiwan are Chinese.
What’s also funny is that you people think the ROC, the PRC, and China under the Qing Dynasty are separate countries with separate sovereign claims. There is a single country called China, it organized itself in different ways throughout history. It is internationally recognized as a single country. When the Qing Dynasty ended and China organized under the ROC, it still had to abide by treaties signed by the dynasty because that’s how these things work.
You have to discard so much historical precedent and cherry pick and twist so many facts to arrive at your conclusions, it’s a wonder you all can keep your whole script straight.
I love the idea that Taiwan isn’t China because China wasn’t under the same government when it lost it to imperialism. I’ve seen that from one or two other posters here before . It’s some prime propaganda. But no. It doesn’t work. You’ll have to drop it from your strategy eventually.