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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

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Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#351

Post by GekkePrutser »

sudosysgen wrote: post #228
petilon wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unification is Chinese core value Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.

This is naive. The government simply doesn't have that power. If they tried to downplay Taiwan people would be absolutely furious. The extent of "mind control" is really not that great. The internet exists, and despite imperfect controls people have access to information. It would probably take Xi down to try to abandon Taiwan.

Serious question: Why do the Chinese people care so much about Taiwan though? What do they want with it? What's the endgame plan?

If the vision is that everyone will be living happily ever after under the PRC umbrella, I could see some flaws in that reasoning. Like a whole population that will probably take up arms guerilla-style. I've visited Taiwan and even wearing pro-CCP colours is frowned upon. If they just want the territory and not the people and it'll end up another XinJiang style "re-education" camp, well that's obviously something unsupportable.

Also, of course Taiwan is so crucial to global supply chains that this has all the ingredients to become a world war in short order, which is pretty worrying.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#352

Post by mytailorisrich »

motiejus wrote: post #200

I am Lithuanian; Lithuania Taiwan PRC conflict is frequently a topic of discussion these days among my peers. My position, shared by a few others, is that this is the next best thing that happened in Lithuania after leaving USSR: the first being joining NATO and EU in 2004. Everyone in the world can (and almost everyone do) endorse PRC. "You won't get fired for picking IBM/Oracle/PRC". While very few countries have t…

I think we should not be overly naive and idealistic when it comes to international relations. A country's course of action is weighted in order to advance national interests.

In the context of tensions with Russia and Belarus it seems likely that Lithuania is getting something out of its stance against China from the US.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#353

Post by neom »

whimsicalism wrote: post #316
eloisius wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Calling disproportionate imprisonment (and racist imprisonment by ethnicity) "genocide" is genocide-trivialization, in my view. It wasn't a "genocide" when we imprisoned 1 in 3 black people in this country, even though it was pretty awful. The Holocaust was a genocide.

Cultural Genocide is certainly a thing:

The concept of cultural genocide : an international law perspective https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864

https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#354

Post by VictorPath »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #306
Krasnol wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressively colourful whataboutism. Are we supposed to order them by which may be even close to what we see with Taiwan or doesn't it matter at all?

The parent you are responding to has a very colorful comment history too, with a certain theme to it. Strangely only in political threads.

> political threads

I thought this was a discussion site about "hacking and startups".

If there's enough daily top of the front page US/EU bash China/Russia/Iran/Cuba/Venezuela (put your developing country not bowing down to the west here) threads for someone to have a "colorful comment history", then maybe this new focus of the site can be updated in the about section.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#355

Post by k__ »

To me, the story of China and Taiwan sounds strange.

It's like if the confederates lost the war, but simply kept Florida or if Nazi Germany lost, but kept Austria.

I don't know how bad the Chinese nazionalists were back in the days, but I can kinda understand why the rest of China is unhappy about them.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#356

Post by nyokodo »

whimsicalism wrote: post #280
lui8906 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look to their diplomatic behavior around the South China Sea for the last couple of decades.

The US views itself as the enforcer of UNCLOS for all navigable bodies of water in the entire world, a treaty it hasn't ratified. It has tons of military bases in the SCS, a region not even close to it, compared to the furor when it becomes possible that China might build a single military base along Africa's atlantic coast. It seems like a bit of a double standard to me. I wish a good faith discussion about China wa…

> The US views itself as the enforcer of UNCLOS for all navigable bodies of water in the entire world

50 years ago Americans were mass bombing North Vietnam, spraying toxic chemicals across large swathes, and generally killing. However, now America is a friend and trading partner to Vietnam and China is a bitter rival because China has many centuries of history bullying and brutally subjugating Vietnam and compared to that the US comes off looking ok. It doesn’t diminish how terrible and regrettable the Vietnam War was but it sure puts China’s long held attitude toward foreigners in stark relief!

If criticism of the US and the President were treated by the US with such vitriol and reprisals as China responds to criticisms of China and Xi then the world would be a smoldering crater.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#357

Post by manuelabeledo »

pphysch wrote: post #325
manuelabeledo wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both China and the US are trying to protect their interests, and both are aggressors. Making it look like this is some sort of US initiated warfare is insanely simplistic, and mostly wrong.

> Making it look like this is some sort of US initiated warfare is insanely simplistic, and mostly wrong. It is a simplification, but it is mostly true . Washington has literally been trying to contain PRC's rise since it was born in 1949. Because duh, China has historically been the most prosperous civilization on the planet and they just got out from under the boot of Western/Japanese imperialism. War in Korea (and…

The Korean and Vietnam wars had nothing to do with China, but the USSR.

Other than that, China was the clear aggressor in most of the conflicts you mention.

China invaded Tibet with the excuse of “liberating” their people, which is essentially what the US has claimed to justify most of their foreign interventions.

The CCP violently squashed the Tiananmen protests.

China keeps claiming authority over large areas of the South China Sea, disregarding protests by surrounding countries like the Philippines.

The CCP backtracked on their promise of keeping Hong Kong’s system of government, putting more agreeable politicians in charge, and disregarding and/or squashing any citizen movements.

Taiwan is a de facto independent country whose mere existence is threatened by China.

I could go on and on, but pretending that China is not the aggressor here is almost laughable.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#358

Post by ww520 »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #99
subroutine wrote: post #44

China would be much better off if they just gave up on the whole Taiwan charade. I understand how badly they want to put Taiwan under thumb like they did HK, but Taiwan is really the only issue I foresee with potential to derail China's progress.

It isn't that easy. It's not just China's government that believes Taiwan is part of China — China's people also believe that. There is a saying that if China is democratic, they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. Or another saying: if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow. Another factor that complicates things is the fact that Taiwan is a strategic location for the US's military co…

CCP has a much greater control on its people than others can imagine. If they want to give up on Taiwan, they can do it without much trouble. Japan used to be China's mortal enemy. CCP has no trouble normalized relationship with Japan and built "Sino-Japan friendship" [1]. No citizen uprising over this in China, though CCP used Japan as a whipping symbol to flame up nationalism from time to time. Mongolia used to be part of China and it's an independent country now. No one in China made a sound. Vast vast area of Siberia including the city Vladivostok were taken by Russia from China. Under CCP no one made a sound again. In fact, CCP and Soviet/Russia in the 90's signed a treaty to recognize the ceded territory. Again no one in China made a sound, no one overthrowing CCP on that issue. The funny thing is ROC Taiwan doesn't recognize the ceded territory and still claims the land as part of China. Taiwan is a CCP issue; Chinese people really have no say in it.

[1] Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#359

Post by baybal2 »

ipaddr wrote: post #336
baybal2 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Chinese Americans are extreme right wing, and that includes ones who aren't specifically Taiwanese, or Fukienese Americans.

63% voted for Biden. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12...

Voting D, and being very right wind doesn't preclude each other. This election was really an outlier.

As the article already mentions: "While Biden performed well among Asian Americans, the data suggest that Trump didn't lose support with the group, either."

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#360

Post by mytailorisrich »

forty wrote: post #220
motiejus wrote: post #200

I am Lithuanian; Lithuania Taiwan PRC conflict is frequently a topic of discussion these days among my peers. My position, shared by a few others, is that this is the next best thing that happened in Lithuania after leaving USSR: the first being joining NATO and EU in 2004. Everyone in the world can (and almost everyone do) endorse PRC. "You won't get fired for picking IBM/Oracle/PRC". While very few countries have t…

I'm French, I hope we (France, EU) follow your lead.

No. France's traditional stance is more independent non-aligned and it is in France's interest to maintain decent working relations with all sides.

France was the first Western country to recognise the PRC, for instance. This was realpolitik and hopefully that will continue.

Before every action we need to ask yourself what we want to achieve and whether that is actually achievable. This requires knowledge of other countries' history, culture, and politics. Rash, emotional moves are rarely productive. Historically France and other Western powers have been aggressors towards China (which partly caused the reaction that led to the current Chinese regime). The reality is that a country like France is in no position to pressure China and rash action against China would help the Chinese government at home by allowing them to invoke history.

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