@zeph

Thanks, that was helpful.

@Putin

So, what are you actually trying to say?

Yep, sorry for that confusion. But it is a similar situation. Hong Kong is no more Chinese than Taiwan or vice versa.

And by similar I mean that neither is part of mainland China. Another good anology would be Sicily and Italy. One may be Italian, but if they are from Sicily, they are Sicilian first.

@Draugnar
of course, I agree with the rest of what you're saying.

Also, the China-Taiwan issue may be unique because of the legal loophole in which it came about. When Taiwan was ceded to Japan, China was under the Qing Dynasty. At the end of WWII Taiwan was placed under administration of the ROC, however Japan did not renounce sovereignty until 1952 when the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed, and NEITHER ROC or PRC were present due to the Chinese Civil War, and the debate over which gov't was legit. Japan merely "renounced sovereignty over Taiwan" but did not specify who would control it.

and to bring it all back on topic..
due to this history, things are much more complicated than "100% Han Chinese", and really, I don't think it should matter so much. We should embrace diversity and mixing! We're not all that different from each other, and "ethnicity" and "race" are social constructs anyway.

mom born in Indonesia to a father born in Indonesia and mother born in Mainland China, and they all speak a southern Chinese language called Teochew (dialect of Min Chinese), as well as Mandarin and Indonesian

dad born in Taiwan to parents born in Mainland China, and they all speak an Anhui dialect of Mandarin, altho my dad is much closer to Taiwanese Mandarin

I was born in the US :D

Sounds to me like Japan should recognize Taiwanese sovereignty then (and maybe the rest of the world too?) seeing as there was no official Chinese government to claim it back.

tho there is now no country that would want to risk that, and lose the vast market of China.. most countries have unofficial relations with Taiwan anyway.

Every major power country tries to appease both sides by remaining vague.. "United States and Japan *acknowledge* rather than *recognize* the PRC position that Taiwan is part of China." Canada and UK *take note* of Beijing's position but do not use the word *support*. And for the longest time, the ROC would not accept that it only controlled Taiwan and other islands, but insisted that it control all of "China". It wasn't until very recently that the idea of a "Taiwanese nation" and ROC controlling only the territories it currently does, came up.

A fun thing about the Taiwanese is their adoration of anything American, which is understandable given the fact that without US Navy, we wouldn't be having any discussion of this kind at all. If you look white then everyone asks you whether you're American and it's evident that they're sad when you say no (sad in the East Asian way, nothing rude at all, Europeans are fine too). You can debate with them on US politics or culture and you wouldn't know you're on the other side of the world talking with someone from completely different cultural background. I don't know if there's any other example of something similar in the world.

@ Ulytau

...I'm curious now. Where in the world does sadness go hand in hand with rudeness? And how does that work, exactly?

You have your expectation high only to be disappointed (sad). In case of people, when you realize you're not talking to someone big but to an ordinary guy, you might quickly lose interest in the conversation to the point of abruptly (rudely) ending the small talk.

Go to some high-profile social event and watch the people approaching you. Many of them will treat you like a turd once you admit you're nothing special.

That's how I see, hope my previous formulation wasn't that ambiguous.

Ah... I wouldn't know about such things. Whether this is because I really am special or becuase I never get invited to high-profile social events I will leave a mystery :p.

Zephyris is largely correct. The government of China - the Qing monarchy - held the island for 200+ years. It was formally incorporated into Fujian province in 1684. Notice most people in Taiwan speak Fujianhua (Fujian dialect). The so-called indigenous "Taiwanese" people are Malay people who the Taiwan independence forces believe to be second-class citizens. They have no respect for them whatsoever. Other than this small minority, there is no such thing as "Taiwan identity" or "Taiwanese". This was invented by the DPP, a completely recent invention because they know the "ROC" can never be recognized as the legitimate government of China by the vast majority of states around the world.

The Chinese government was forced to cede sovereignty of Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Zephyris is correct to say the Treaty of San Francisco did not specifically say who gets Taiwan (PRC or ROC), but it also did not say Taiwan is independent. In international law, the duration of permanent sovereignty in such cases prevails, and since China had governed Taiwan for centuries prior to the Japanese occupation, Taiwan is Chinese. It doesn't matter whether the RoC or PRC is considered the 'legitimate government of China'. It still belongs to China, period. Taiwan is not a separate country. It is not a separate nationality. It is not a separate ethnicity.

The Allied powers (including China) issued the Cairo Declaration in 1943, which said " "It is the purpose of the three great Allies that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Penghu], shall be restored to China."

The Potsdam declaration which *was* signed by China and the Allied Powers said that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration will be carried out". The instrument of surrender of Japan, which was also signed by the RoC, stated that " "Japan hereby accepts the provisions in the declaration issued by the heads of the Governments of the United States, China and Great Britain on July 26, 1945 at Potsdam, and subsequently adhered to by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

From 1945 to the present, Taiwan had been returned to Chinese sovereignty and is Chinese. No legal instrument whatsoever claims Taiwan to be independent from China.
157 countries recognize the PRC as the legitimate government of China, so therefore the PRC rightfully should control the territory. However, just because it does not exercise de facto control doesn't mean that Taiwan is not part of China. Just like Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and all the rest of the territories taken from China.

"But it is a similar situation. Hong Kong is no more Chinese than Taiwan or vice versa."

How ridiculous. Is Zanzibar not Tanzanian? Is Hainan not Chinese? Is Shikoku not Japanese? Is Bali not Indonesian? Is Funen not Danish? Many countries have mainland/peninsular components + islands. Many countries are archipelagos. That doesn't make the islands any less part of the country. Taiwan people speak Fujian (Minnan) dialect. A dialect widely spoken in Fujian province, the nearest mainland province to Taiwan. Many of the people living in Taiwan are descendants of recent emigrants who fled from the mainland when the Nationalists lost the war. It is ethnically, culturally, and historically an integral part of China.

"Govoriš vrlo dobro, vjerojatno bolje nego ja engleski"

Hvala, ali ti Engleski bez greške. Istina je. Oduševljen sam da neko govori srpski ovde okolo.

" Mi smo znači rođaci preko tvoje bake"

Zaista? Jako mi je drago. Puno pozdrav, rođače.

@SacredDigits : Alsace and Lorraine haven't been independent republic ever in History, but a single city-state in Alsace (Mulhouse)

I am:

3/4 Hispanic (1/2 Honduran, 1/4 Mayan)
1/8 Navarran Spanish
1/16 Andorran
1/32 Maltese
1/64 Germanic (former Teutonic territories in Latvia)
1/64 French
Add that all up and you get 100% American citizen.

wow! andoran, that isn't very common.

3/8 Irish
2/8 Dutch
2/8 German
1/8 Cherokee

Alsace Lorraine were an independent republic for 11 days following World War I. Then the French occupied.

Re: China and Taiwan

I think whoever occupies territory owns it. I occupy my house, so I own it. Until China figures out a way to beat Taiwan, Formosa belongs to Taiwan.

That applies for anywhere. Until the Palestinians kick Israel out of Palestine, Palestine belongs to Israel. Guantanamo Bay belongs to America because America occupies Guantanamo Bay.

That means Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait was legal. In fact, any act of aggression is legal so long as the aggressor manages to win. Not that I think Iraq's invasion was necessarily aggression, but it is widely considered as such so I'll use that example.

But the law of conquest doesn't even apply in Taiwan's case, because the Nationalists were planting the Republic of China flag in Taiwan for all of China. It is only now, much later, that any notion of "independence" is coming to the fore. The only reason Taiwan is not de facto integrated into the rest of China is because US intervention prevented the liberation of Taiwan. So China doesn't have to beat the RoC government, it has to beat both America and the RoC government.

If your argument is going even further, and saying that subnational government units can at any point, decide to declare independence - because they "own" these subnational government units, that's an even bigger recipe for chaos. That also means the CSA secession was "legal", and any unilateral declaration of independence is "legal".

As I read through this thread, I wondered why Putin was getting so upset about Taiwanese independence/nonindependence. Then I remembered that Taiwan is an example of a stubborn bourgeoisie refusing to submit to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

On a tangentially related note:

Putin, how do you feel about the PRC's loosening of economic restrictions on citizens in the last few decades? How do you feel about the degree of freedom, however you choose to define that, available to Chinese citizens today?

As for the actual thread:

75% German
25% American

I'm not getting in yet another commie debate.

I wasn't going to try and debate or argue. Not that I can speak for the rest of this forum.

Well two things: 1 - The extent to which China has "loosened economic restrictions", as you put it, is greatly exaggerated. Wu Bangguo, the #2 man in the Politburo (behind President Hu) announced recently that "We have made a solemn declaration that we will not employ a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation; diversify our guiding thought; separate executive, legislative and judicial powers; use a bicameral or federal system; or carry out privatisation".

I note in particular the last point.

Earlier, in 2006, the State Council (equivalent to the US Cabinet, although more influential) made the following policy statement:

"T]he State should solely own, or have a majority share in, enterprises engaged in power generation and distribution, oil, petrochemicals and natural gas, telecom and armaments. The State must also have a controlling stake in the coal, aviation, and shipping industries. Central SOEs should also become heavyweights in sectors including machinery, automobiles, IT, construction, iron and steel, and non-ferrous metals."

This list leaves out other sectors which are reserved for state ownership: banking, insurance, finance, media, and railways, among others.

So what I'm saying is the new leadership which rose to power after the 16th Party Congress held in late 2002 (Primarily Hu, but also Wen Jiabao) has reversed course on the full throttle scheme of economic liberalization that had been going on under Jiang Zemin, the previous "paramount leader". Now, Jiang clung to his positions of influence a bit and Hu didn't really seize full control of the top leadership until a few years later, and that's when we see an openly stated policy of expanding the state-owned sector and putting a stop to further privatization.

But this point is not as important as my second point.

China is a developing country, and considers itself to be in a 'primary stage' of socialism. It is not understood that socialism is built in stages. This is ignored and then critics accuse China of being 'capitalist'.

What the primary stage means is that Chinese productive forces are at a low level of development. And as is clearly known from Marx, socialism cannot fully mature under such conditions. You cannot end exploitation and achieve social justice without highly developed productive forces. Economic liberalization, much like under Lenin during the NEP, is an attempt to achieve economic development before moving to a more mature stage of socialism. While China has made great strides, it still has problems due to a very large population, a weak economic base, and great disparities between city and country and between various regions.

The point being that to develop a backward country of more than one billion people into a highly developed, prosperous, and harmonious society, especially under the external pressures it is under, is no easy task. China is doing what it takes to develop, under the competent guidance of the party.

Just imagine what China would be like if the most profitable sectors of its economy were controlled by capitalists and capitalist parties, seeking only profit for themselves, ruled the country? I can't even fathom it. It would be a disaster.

Would it be fair to compare Deng Xiaoping and Jiang's "loosening" to the NEP, then? In any case, I guess that, from that argument, we should see increased state control in the coming years.

What about agricultural privatization, or at least decreased state control? I have always been under the impression that the collectivization of agriculture was a complete disaster in terms of the famine it exacerbated (I get a similar impression of the USSR after Stalin's movement away from the NEP). Would you argue that this damage was overstated or necessary? Furthermore, where does agriculture fit in in the future?

@ Putin33

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was legal, and America's counterattack was equally legal. Imperialism is not illegal, but anyone who grabs land for no apparent reason definitely has some explaining to do.

Right, so in your world nothing is illegal. I got it. Of course civilization has moved beyond this kind of "law". Your system of law isn't even the 18th century system of international law.

"but anyone who grabs land for no apparent reason definitely has some explaining to do."

Why would they need to explain? They can simply appeal to the law of conquest. There are no need for "reasons". Any reason is as good as any other.