this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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I got into an argument with a guy on Reddit because he kept insisting that Taiwan was a sovereign nation and I kept telling him that Taiwan does not view Taiwan as a sovereign nation. At one point he asked me if we sold weapons to China and when I said definitionally yes he lost his shit.
Taiwan #1
How can they possibly be Taiwanese if they don't speak any of the Formosan languages?
How can Americans possibly be Americans if they don't speak American?
Exactly. Death to America!
Bring it loser.
Death. To. America. Every one of your soldiers will be spit on and shot.
If your views can only be propagated through violence, don't you think they should be reconsidered?
America has been at war for all but like 7 years of its entire 239 year existence and they started almost all of them.
so... Death to america.
Please share this pearl of wisdom with the US government, if you're successful you'll literally save millions of lives and no one on the planet will ever be more deserving of the Nobel prize. Please also share this sentiment with the soldiers in question, they're literally involved in killing hundreds of thousands when it's not millions to supposedly propagate American views on freedom and democracy (but in reality installing puppet governments for geopolitical power or to facilitate the theft of natural resources).
I would love for a nonviolent approach to a different path. The PCI tried that in Indonesia and the US backed a massacre of over a million people and secretly bombed Indonesian territory under the pretext of popular discontent (see The Jakarta Method); Allende tried that in Chile, and the US backed a bloody coup, replacing him with the dictator Pinochet; this was tried in Afghanistan, in return for which the US backed terrorism with the express purpose of undermining reform, and with the result of worsening women’s and underprivileged rights and eventually returning to bomb the country and kill hundreds of thousands; Sankara was killed in. US-backed coup, so on and so forth, read Frantz Fanon “On Violence.” Instead of this critique being leveled at the US and their military apparatus, it is slyly redirected, and then the claim is put forward that the revolutionary only understands violence, can only operate through it. We see no peaceful road to liberating the third world from imperialism, not because this is what we wish but because any attempt is met with terror and bombs. I am not afraid to say that as a consolation the rabble will get on top by other means. Fuck America.
So crimes of our fathers then, Americans deserve to die. Pardon me, I don’t find this discussion constructive. May your keyboard warrior spirit never falter, good luck.
You are still invading several countries rigth now. And messing with many others in lots of ways. That crimes of our fathers deffence only works if you stop doing it.
American soldiers do deserve to die. They themselves are criminals. It’s not about what their fathers did
Bruh they're still doing it. Love how you pearl clutch and pretend they said Americans should die and not the volunteer soldiers currently killing to maintain this order.
That sounds like some Nazi defending to me. “Don’t attack Nazis, debate them”
Ooh that period was a deliberate choice, and it is not paying off
I agree with your sentiment, but we should refrain from using these emotionally charged words. We must remain polite so that people reading this thread will get a bad impression of Hexbear.
Where do they live again?
Chinese Taipei of course, comrade.
Is that what the majority of people who live there would say?
Only when they want to participate in the Olympics
I'm pretty sure they would rather use Taiwan as their name in Olympics if China allowed them to.
Haha you got me there! Guess that settles it.
Question - do you know if they include Taiwan's gold medal count with mainland China's?
No, absolutely not.
Chinese Taipei is not a place name. It is the name people in Taiwan use to participate in sports. Like it or not, the island is called Taiwan, whether they are their own nation or just a province of China.
Taipei is a city in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei
I can accept you claiming that Taipei is a city in China, but the Wikipedia article you link to does not seem to agree.
But it does? I mean it's a long article, I'm not going to read the whole thing for something this uncontroversial, but I'll back up my very factual assertion with evidence from the opening paragraph.
This implies Taipei exists, thus backing up my assertion that "Taipei is" and "is".
Since it's named Taipei city, this is circumstantial proof that Taipei is a city.
Capitals are cities, this backs my assertion that Taipei is a city.
Taiwan is a location in China, this backs my assertion that Taipei is a city associated with China if you combine it with the rest of the sentence. Technically it could still be somewhere else.
This means that Taipei is on Taiwan, so now the information presented has changed from being associated with to being inside of.
This provides specificity in case there are multiple places named Taiwan, since we now also know it's close to Keelung which is also in China.
This doesn't provide additional information for my purposes, but they reiterate that it's a city and in proximity to locations in China.
Notice the preposition of. They did not say in. If they used in that could mean that they think Taipei is in China. But they used of, implying that Taiwan is a country. They also used the word capital, meaning a city where the political center of a country is, not as in a "city". There is (generally) only one capital in each country. Also, the text did not at all say that Taipei is in China. That Taipei is in China is what you (incorrectly) inferred from the text.
Ah but Taiwan is a special municipality and has it's own government. So this is expected actually. China is actually in a weird situation where there is a rebel government that controls a portion of the country, and they claim their capital is Nanjing. But because the regular government controls Nanjing they have a temporarily administrative centre in Taipei, since it's the only large city under rebel control. So Taipei is just a capital in China, specifically the capital of Taiwan municipality, but isn't the capital of China. China actually has many capitals. Hohhot, Lhasa, Nanning, Ürümqi, Taipei, Yinchuan and Beijing. (According to the rebels, it's only Nanjing).
This is kinda besides the point of whether Taipei is a place or not though. You're right, it didn't say it's in China. You need to click on the article for Taiwan or read further down for that. That's why I mentioned that it has multiple place-names, so you could look those up on a map. They really should've mentioned where the city is, I think that's pretty standard for an encyclopedia article on a city.
Those multiple capitals in China you mentioned are actually capital cities of first-level administrative divisions (省會). They are not what people think of when they hear capital. When people hear capital they generally think of the biggest city in a country (首都). Saying that the capitals of China are Hohhot, Lhasa, Nanning, Ürümqi, Taipei, etc. is not wrong, but it's as weird as saying that the capitals of the US are Jackson, Lansing, Springfield, Albany, etc.
I actually am not quite sure what we are even debating about at this point lol. Not that the points you made were bad, it's just that the matter is kinda trivial. I couldn't come up with more arguments besides nitpicking your errors. Can we just agree to disagree?
ps. the overall experience I had debating with you was actually not bad, unlike the ones I had with some people who resort to ad hominem attacks.
You wrote "Chinese Taipei is not a place name." and I hadn't noticed your name appear multiple times in the comments so I figured someone just genuinely didn't know Taipei is referring to the city rather than being some random Olympics-only moniker. And then with that second comment I just enjoyed being a pedant. Then when I did notice you had multiple comments I decided I should stop being rude because you weren't being rude.
There isn't really anything to disagree on. We (leftists) aren't oblivious to the fact Taiwan has (not full but significant) practical independence from China, and many of us are not even against them receiving de jure independence as long as they aren't allowed to host USA-controlled weapons. What I was trying to stress is that Chinese Taipei is a fine descriptor whether you support the PRC or ROC, since it's the Chinese city of Taipei, or even if you want Taiwan independence, it can still currently represent a team of Chinese people living in Taipei.
The hostility you see in the comments isn't because people want to deny Taiwanese their agency. Independence is stupid, and reunification under the PRC is absolutely what's best for the proletariat on Taiwan, and the rest of China, but it shouldn't happen without their popular support. What we're against is rocking the boat or god forbid, a war starting. The situation is currently workable for everyone. China gets their forced security guarantee because they legally own the land and the government on Taiwan is mostly left alone. The PRC doesn't blockade or sanction Taiwan over trade or financial issues. Every time they sanction them it's because of a direct military transgression and they've all been temporary. The PRCs whole strategy for reunification is just outpacing them in quality of life. Despite what western media claims, China is not being provocative. So stories creating the conditions for military conflict scare and anger us.
On the capitals. They're not equivalent to US-state capitals. They're supposed to be the centres of political power for the people who live in each autonomous region. While undoubtedly Beijing is the capital, or centre of political power for the whole country, that doesn't negate the regional governments' power. You said the biggest city is the capital, right? But the biggest city financially in the USA is New York, and culturally it's Los Angeles. And in terms of population they're #1 and #2 too. But the capital of the USA is the centre of political power. China aims for a higher level of autonomy than the USA does, partially because they're more committed to democracy, but also because the material conditions necessitate it. Beijing just isn't as good at administrating autonomous regions as they are themselves.