Seems like a win win. Reddit is fine with it and becomes a site promoting that Taiwan is a country and spreading awareness of Tiananmen Square massacre 1989. While subs return to normal.
Or reveals themselves to be the mouth piece of the CCP if they force removal of Taiwan is a country and Tiananmen Square massacre 1989.
Edit: #taiwanisacountry should be enough. That mere statement has been enough for western capitalists to quake in fear.
In China, talking about TiananmenSquaremassacre1989 is LESS extreme than saying Taiwan is a country.
The CCP has brainwashed enough citizens to believe that the government did the right thing in 1989, even if you show them the massacre footage. They think the students were terrorists who deserved to be crushed.
On the other hand, most people in China believe that saying Taiwan is a country would be the biggest crime you can imagine.
well the CCP has effectively incorporated Tiananmen Square into the propaganda. it’s become a part of the national narrative - it was “a conflicted time where there were bad decisions made by both sides and they learned from it and are stronger today because of it.” - please don’t call me a tankie i’m trying to summarize CCP narrative
so it’s not really taboo to talk about in China like people assume it is. same thing with the cultural revolution. I read the “three body problem” series by a Chinese author (really good books, if anybody likes sci-fi) and I was amazed at how critical he was of the cultural revolution
and i checked, and he’s not an ex-patriate or anything… he lives in China and released a book that became internationally succesful that was critical of the chinese government during the cultural revolution
it turns out that the CCP actually does allow some level of critique - because they view themselves today as a different party than existed 30 or 50 years ago.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is a current issue. Personally, I feel bad for the taiwanese that don’t want to be integrated into China but it does seem like an inevitability at this point.
Not a problem as long as Taipei remains where the government of China is located for a few decades.
i’m not sure what you are trying to say. you mean taiwan just needs to stay de facto independent for another few decades and they will be OK? maybe you are right, but to call Taiwan “the government of China” is to ignore reality
point being look who has a seat at the UN
I am saying that if there is any unification of Taiwan with China, than the ruling government needs to be the Republic of China whose current capital is in Taipei, and former capitals in Nanjing and Chungking, and definitely not the illegitimate PRC dictatorship in Beijing. That is the only possible way China can be reunited. Taipei would need to be the capital for awhile so everybody knows who rules the country, and eventually move the capital back to Nanjing perhaps.
while pretending like this might be fun for you, reality is it’s never going to happen. even if CCP falls apart, the state apparatus in mainland China for whatever fills the void would still be stronger than Taiwan. They’re like 2 factors of magnitude larger. and that’s assuming CCP falls apart - the momentum doesn’t seem to be going in that direction
It’s like saying Texas will be independent again one day. It’s a larp
CCP doesn’t need to “fall apart”. China just needs to progress in a new direction. If China goes democratic, and someday it will, it could be wise to leverage Taiwan’s democracy to make the entire process more stable. This is what happened in Germany. West Germany’s government simply absorbed the former East Germany. So for a time the West German capital of Bonn was the capital of the unified Germany.
differences between west germany / east germany v taiwan / china
1 - population
east germany 1989 - Around 16 million
west germany 1989 - Around 62 million
east germany was about 1/4th the size of west germany in terms of population
taiwan current - Around 23 million
china current - Around 1.4 billion
china has about 61x the population of taiwan in terms of population
2 - gdp
east germany 1989 - around $300 billion
west germany 1989 - around $1.5 trillion
east germany was about 1/5th the size of west germany in terms of GDP
taiwan current - around $760 billion
china current - around $17 trillion
china has about 13x the size of taiwan’s GDP
3 - time period separated
germany - around 41 years
china - around 74 years
china and taiwan have been separated nearly double the time as germany - with no reunification in sight
So in the case of East Germany vs West Germany, the West was significantly larger both in terms of GDP and population. West Germany was about 4x~5x bigger and was able to incorporate the East because they were bigger. In addition, they were separated for a shorter amount of time… the longer it goes on the more complicated it gets.
If we look at Taiwan and China, Chinese economy and population is somewhere between 1 and 2 factors of magnitude larger. Taiwan simply does not have the capacity to incorporate China. The state apparatus in mainland China is absolutely massive - it’s hard to fathom how many bureaucrats are needed to effectively run that country.
Having said all that, looking at the future of China, I sincerely doubt there will be a democratic revolution. The approval rating for the CCP is very high (much higher than democratic countries in the West). China has historically been authoritarian. They have taken the capitalist model and effectively used it in an authoritarian state. It works well for them and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Of course, nobody can tell the future. With the accelerating pace of technology and the inevitable climate change and who knows how much radical change there will be in the coming decades.
First of all NEVER EVER believe that a dictatorship has a “very high approval rating”. (1) the people have never approved them ever, and (2) If their approval rating really was “very high”, there would be no reason at all not to allow democracy. (3) naive westerners have a long and famous history about being repeatedly conned by dictatorships.
And 2nd LOL that is obvious BS. This happened LESS THAN A YEAR AGO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_COVID-19_protests_in_China
Dude, I already knew all that stuff. So what? None of that is relevant to what I said. The fact remains that (1) Taiwan’s government could be extremely useful in helping China convert to democracy in a stable manner, and (2) It is totally impossible for Taiwan to unify with China unless China becomes democratic like Taiwan. So since #2 is a necessity, it follow that #1 will always be a very important consideration.
The most foolproof way to piss of the Chinese is to say “Taiwan, Number 1”.
I feel like Taiwan is not a country but that the real government of China is located in Taipei.
I think people don’t understand you’re claiming that the CCP are illegitimate and that the government in Taipei on Taiwan is the actual valid government of China. Or, more or less the opposite of what the CCP likes to claim.