- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
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The news media needs to stop using the word “reunify” to refer to the PRC’s threatened imperial conquest of an island they’ve never controlled.
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If they’re using a false term but quoting someone they should use quotes:
Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will “reunify” Taiwan with China
Iit should always be apparent there is editorialization happening tho. Kinda like [sic] -> that is obviously the author clarifying they are not misquoting or misspelling
What you’ve written is still editorialising. The way it’s written is also clear who was making the statement, Xi was. In the eyes of China it is reunifying, so no matter one’s opinion, it is their stated opinion, so seems weird to put “reunfiy” in quotations when the rest isn’t.
report what is true and verifiable
if they did that there wouldnt be much news, a lot fewer journalists, less jobs overall, and much less advertising revenue.
never gonna happen
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The nation wasn’t developed by the people who escaped. That’s an ahistorical way of framing the issue
Taiwan was developed by the overthrown proto-fascist military junta who just lost the civil war. After taking the island, they didn’t tell the people of Taiwan that the war had been over and they were no longer China until 1991. The first labor laws outlawing slavery were introduced to the people of Taiwan in 2006. The people of Taiwan still consider themselves China (it is afterall the name they go by, not Taiwan) and full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island.
Just to be clear, I am a supporter of their independence, but this is a very messy situation in which the political party who comrade the country is the same fascist party who lost the war in the first place and still maintains to the UN that they are the legitimate government of the mainland. Full separation is convenient for the West, but neither side actually wants that, they just don’t want to be ruled by either fascists or communists, and I think that is incredibly fair for all people actually involved to want.
full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island
Excuse me wut
of an island they’ve never controlled.
Oh boy this might get me downvoted. Saying the Communist Party never controlled it is a tautology. That’s what happens when there’s a civil war that turns into a stalemate: one side does not control the land of the other side. So of course the Communist side never controlled it. This is ducking the nuance of what the actual situation is, that there was a civil war that never ended.
Even before that Taiwan did not belong to the rest of China.
There were some settlers from the main land, but the indigenous population always controlled most of the island and the Chinese settlers were careful not to antagonize them.
This lasted for hundreds of years, pretty much until a brief period at the end of the 19th century when the Chinese government decided to send troops to brutally subjugate the indigenous population, only to shortly after lose control of Taiwan to the Japanese.
It’s a historical fact but how is it a tautology? Territory can change hands during a civil war as evidenced by the RoC no longer controlling China. Unless I’m misunderstanding something. Either way I don’t think that changes the point, if that’s a tautology then claiming that it can be reunified is a contradiction.
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If they invade, won’t all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? Pretty sure TSMC said that was the plan.
Doesn’t seem like they’ll be able to capture a whole lot aside from land and that will come at a pretty steep cost I’d imagine.
I heard about that too. The technology produced there is too valuable to be left to invaders.
The chip thing is definitely an issue. However, even if they didn’t get any chip tech or factories, they still get the island. Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security. Additionally, it will grant them control over the shipping lanes in the surroundings waters, which are heavily used for international trade.
The US needs it for trade/their economy. China needs it to protect itself and gain more economic power. For these reasons, it makes sense for both China and the US to be heavily interested in controlling Taiwan. Personally, I really don’t see a likely solution to avoiding military conflict unless the powers of the two sides figure out how to resolve their antagonism, which I think is unlikely without a change in Chinese leadership.
Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security.
I don’t really know if that makes a whole bunch of sense… The only country with the capabilities of attacking China is the US. The only real provocation that may spark that military conflict is an attack on Taiwan or South Korea.
Taiwan isn’t even that advantageous of a location for an invasion either way, the strait of Formosa would be a death trap for any amphibious landing. The most militarily important region for China is and always has been the Korean peninsula.
I think Chinas main motivation is that Taiwan disrupts their plans to completely control trade routes in the South China sea. Once the 9 dash line is under control and expanded to include the territorial waters of Taiwan, China will have a defacto monopoly on trade for most of eastern Asia.
The land is most of what they want. Taiwan is militarily strategic land, it essentially blocks all access to the Pacific.
They moved TSMC production facilities to Phoenix, Arizona. It’s slated to open in 2025.
They didn’t move them, they’re just building new fabrication plants here so we don’t have to depend on threatened foreign land for the production. https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Also SMIC (China’s chip manufacturer) is now also producing 7nm chips, even though they were sanctioned in 2020. That means they either had a breakthrough in the process or they obtained and were able to repair and operate/reverse engineer the incredibly complex TSMC fabs.
7nm doesn’t need EUV, as things get smaller it doesn’t suddenly become impossible to do things with traditional lithography it just becomes harder and at some point incredibly uneconomical. They certainly ripped off the node from TSMC in some way (whether spionage or reverse-engineering), that is, the shape of the transistors and stuff but that doesn’t mean that they’re producing them in the same way.
Thank God they’re finally building some chip plants here. The fact that our whole economy depends on some foreign island next to a huge country that has always hustorically threatened to take it back is insane to me. Although I think we should have more manufacturing in the homeland in general. Thanks capitalism, for off shoring manufacturing for the last many decades -_-
TSMC is just the end of a long supply chain of one-of-a-kind suppliers, all conveniently aligned with the West. TSMC does not make the lithography machines, the Dutch ASML is the only company that does (though they have some plants in the US now I think). Even so, ASML would be dead in the water without Swiss Zeiss optics.
The US’ strength was never autarky, but global trade. The reason the US economy is so resilient is because most US dollars are not in the US, but in reserves across the world. That means even the US currency is intertwined with global trade. If the US attempted autarky, it would collapse both the US and the world economy. That’s why Trump’s policies were beyond stupid by the way.
Zeiss is German. The Semiconductor supply plant is in Oberkochen.
It’s a pretty interesting story where Taiwan decided to invest enormously into chip production so they could use the economic benefits to shield themselves from China. Worked pretty well eh
It was a gamble to focus on fabrication only and not include design. It payed off but it was a gamble.
Except they have problems finding workers. 3rd world Americans aren’t cut out for the jobs it seems like.
I think it’s mostly because it’s in Arizona… Not exactly the tech capital of the U.S…
They wanted somewhere where land and labor was cheap and neglected to consider educated engineers and water are vital for a semiconductor fab to operate.
It was a fucking stupid decision, and TSMC has been flying in Taiwanese engineers and workers in general to make up for the short comings.
[Curb Your Enthusiasm closing credits song plays]
More info on TSMC from an AI chip manufacturing perspective: https://youtu.be/AJGrdtKT3LM?si=M-3EWWOPcIXX8vgv
Even just destroying the competition makes their stuff much more valuable.
TSMC just finished building a factory in the US mainland.
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That’s a good threat if plausible.
That’s probably not a good plan, however. What you gonna do after the blowing up the plant? Emigrate, maybe, but for those who’ll stay: Congratulations, you have just blown up your job, your life and any bargaining chip you ever had.
“Reunify”. Just like Putin tries to reunify Ukraine with Russland… Strange how one is called Invasion and the other Reunifying
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Uhm, you can freely leave China? And unless you’re a secret FBI agent, your family is probably safe.
I’ve heard those stories of “secret Chinese police in the Netherlands”, but they are based on words of like one man without decent confirmation
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in its* population
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“Re-unify” is dipshit-speak for invade, pillage and crush… for anyone wondering.
A. Xi said they would prefer to do it peacefully.
B. Autocratic regimes routinely define “peacefully” as a coup or overnight invasion.
C. Xi specifically set an atmosphere of strategic uncertainty by saying a time “hadn’t been decided”.
That tells me they’ve given up on winning elections in Taiwan. If they’re scheduling it then it’s not on Taiwan’s election schedule. Ergo, definitely not peacefully in democratic terms.
Well it will be interesting at least.
I suspect this will happen during USAs election… you know when the world stops existing for a few days.
Few days. Months!!!
Well the Russians largely succeeded with the Olympics. So that’s a possibility too.
Well it will be interesting at least.
As in “May you live in interesting times?”
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Your prize options are nuclear incineration during Friday rush hour or cake.
ROC is gonna take back the mainland?
You mean West Taiwan?
Glory to Taiwan and their West Taiwan acquisition project!
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Depends on the person in question. Some don’t as you’ve said some do.
Source: I’m engaged to a Taiwanese person with family back in Taiwan. Her parents would hate it, her siblings laugh.
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Someone said after Russia’s military was shown to be a farce, that if they were China they’d be shitting their pants and immediately launch an investigation into how good their military actually is.
It’s wild how they’re still obsessed with Taiwan, despite CCP being recognized as China for many decades now. I wonder how much of this is elderly people who still consider the civil war unfinished and how much is strategic. It seems like invading would not be in China’s interest. Perhaps they want to do it before their demographic population collapse occurs.
It’s a Chinese thing. PRC and ROC (officially) both see “China” as including the “province” of Taiwan.
Part of it is brainwashing on the PRC side - they are taught from elementary school that Taiwan is a part of China. Part of it is ROC stubborness. It’s even a political issue within Taiwan. While the younger generation generally sees Taiwan as an independent country, the KMT and the older generation refuses to let go of mainland China.
Chinese culture also has the famous line that translates roughly to “after having been united for a while, it must split. After having been split for a while, it must unite” that refers to China in general. Taiwan, HK, and “China” have been split for a bit and the PRC wants to see it reunited.
The problem is that any such reunification would presumably be on the PRC’s terms, and that didn’t turn out so well for Hong Kong.
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Honestly, I think it depends who’s in power at the time.
It’s that “saving face” stuff which makes you lose even more face by looking silly.
They want China to be the old Qing borders. Both Chinas still claim it.
China gaining Taiwan would end global trade. That is the reason no one will let them forcibly take it.
Take the hint Xi, she’s just not into you.
If trying to invade Taiwan weakens china like it did with Russia invading Ukraine then I’m all for it. Fuck china
Throwing other people’s bodies into the meat grinder to spite our global enemies, heck yes!!!
China could just fuck off, leaving them alone and then no one has to die. But people supporting sovereign self defense are the baddies?
Alas, world powers think it’s their business to fuck around with other countries.
Laughs in CIA
I’d wager China is on a different level than Russia. But I hope I am at least partially wrong.
They aren’t. They’re trying to reform their military, and they’re in a better position to do so. But if they invaded today it would be really bad for them.
It would be bad for everyone. Not just in military casualties - from my shit analysis it would bring the world to a halt with chip manufacturing, all the good in the western world are made in China and Asia. Just thinking about what I know makes my head hurt
Eh, manufacturing is moving more into SE Asia and India now. And chip production in the US is coming back online. There would be shortages but not anything unmanageable.
You are not taking into account china can lock down shipping from it’s neighborhood of SE Asia and India, and last I looked into it, Taiwan produced a staggering number of chips compared to every other chip producer combined - last I checked TSMC was still producing over 90% of the worlds chips (and I checked a few weeks ago)
TSMC has factories online in the US.
Also, if China starts going after global shipping then they’re going to very quickly find out what it’s like to fight the entire world.
China wants to maintain the status quo and believes (perhaps wrongly) that Taiwan will eventually normalize relations with China due to economic opportunities.
The US wants Taiwan to declare independence to contain the China threat, which is why the US funnels so many resources from government-funded entities like the National Endowment for Democracy to Taiwan’s DPP.
The fact that the US is taking more overt action in Taiwan today is a sign that there’s a perception in Washington that China’s status quo strategy is working.
Horseshit. That status quo has always been a Taiwan free of CCP rule. The PRC has never controlled Taiwan and their stated goal is to make it part of their country by any means necessary; that’s disrupting that status quo. The US, on the other hand, supports the status quo of the ROC existing and the people of Taiwan being allowed to decide what they want for themselves.
Even the most shameless CCP propagandist should realize that trying to convince people of the ridiculous lie that the country promising imperial conquest of land that’s never been theirs “wants to maintain the status quo” is foolish nonsense.
yeah thats like saying hong kong normalized into china
The status quo is Taiwan having de facto independence without seeking de jure independence.
It’s not that complicated.
So, again, your original assertions are horseshit. The PRC is very explicitly trying to change the status quo of Taiwan having de facto independence. We know this from repeated, unequivocal official and unofficial statements about “reunification”. This article is, in fact, about exactly that.
Your assertion that the US is trying to change the status quo by supporting the DPP might make sense in a world where the PRC wasn’t supporting the KMT to an ever greater extent; either they’re both equally trying to disrupt the status quo through political support or they’re both maintaining the status quo by supporting opposing parties. You can’t paint a “US guilty, PRC innocent” picture out of that no matter how hard you try.
But then, of course, suggesting either major political party in Taiwan actually supports or is proposing a change to the status quo isn’t really true either, is it?
The KMT supports the status quo, the DPP wants to flip it on its head.
Are you even Taiwanese?
Edit: classic Westerners trying to put words in the mouths of the people who actually have to deal with the actions driven by their words
The ROC was independent and sovereign before the PRC was even a thing. If anything it’s the autonomous mainland provinces which need to seek de jure independence from the ROC. The PRC should be thankful that the ROC by now is, by and large, willing to grant such a request (There’s some Kuomintang who’d bitch and moan but they’d get over it).
By having the CCP step down, right?
That would be a dream, but not feasible.
bla bla… but everyone still buys shit from china… you use iphones, chrome and everything as long as it is convenient for you… and then do the butthurt cry here. hows that supposed to change anything?
Yeah, voting with your dollar definitely will make the change, just buy something else and struggle a bit harder, that change is right around the corner /s
