For those of us, unfortunately, in the imperial core, what steps should we take to stop a US war with China over Taiwan? I’ve honestly been pretty scared since the war in Ukraine started knowing that China is next. We must avoid this at all costs to save the thousands of Chinese lives that will be sacrificed by the west in their bid to reestablish a unipolar world.
While I’m not discounting the achievements of the anti-war movement in support of Vietnam, the war still waged on for years. The same with Iraq. What should be done differently?
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Vietnam: the majority of the people of Vietnam didn’t want the US there, the US was interfering in a civil war it shouldn’t be meddling in.
Iraq: same thing, the US wasn’t wanted and didn’t have a reason to meddle.
Taiwan: the people of Taiwan don’t want China there and China shouldn’t invade. No one should invade.
People have a right to self determination. If China doesn’t control Taiwan and the people of Taiwan want to keep the same government they have, then they should be allowed to. China invading Taiwan would be an unjustified imperialist act. Taiwan has a right to call upon its allies and friends for help if invaded and the alliances and friendships should be honored by those allies.
Taiwan: the people of Taiwan don’t want China there and China shouldn’t invade.
Not to link dump below, but I think the history of the civil war and specifically the White Terror give necessary context. China (as the ROC) already invaded Taiwan.
“The KMT lost the Chinese Civil War and retreated to Taiwan in 1949. However, Chiang Kai-shek intended to eventually return to mainland China and retake control of it. In order to do this, the KMT attempted to “sinicize” the Taiwanese people.[19][20][21][22] KMT’s Taiwan Garrison Commander Chen Yi stated that after 50 years of Japanese rule, “Taiwanese customs, thought, and language would have to gradually return to that of the Chinese people”.[23] The KMT believed that a centrally controlled curriculum would forge a unified national sentiment in Taiwan. They also believed education would help build a martial spirit and stimulate enough military, economic, political, and cultural strength not only to survive, but also to recover the mainland.[24]”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_people
40 years of martial law and something like 20,000 executions were enacted in order to build the public opinion they have now.
Please note that I agree with your main point (China should not militarily invade Taiwan), but I do support China’s stated goal of peaceful reunification
I believe that regardless of what happened in the past, the only thing that matters is what current Taiwanese people want.
The White Terror ended in 1987, and involved the genocide of the native peoples of Formosa.
It doesn’t seem honest to refer to “public opinion” while ignoring the events that shaped that opinion.
Events are not isolated in time; past events make future events possible, while future events are determined by the past. If you condemn the events leading to the status quo, then it’s necessarily the case that you should not take the status quo as any sort of ethical baseline. That is, the current inhabitants of the island must not be exposed to war, and they will obviously decide their fate with their actions, but I don’t find a reason to believe that their government deserves any special status regarding the island.
If you condemn the events leading to the status quo, then it’s necessarily the case that you should not take the status quo as any sort of ethical baseline.
That’s quite impractical since all nations and their borders were established as a result of unethical conquest. This can be used as a justification for an unending cycle of violence.
Exactly. Every change to the world order has people in favor and against, and can have a multitude of effects deep into the future. If one carefully considers them, one can subjectively label some change as good, some as bad, a few violence justified, most condemnable. But setting some arbitrary point in history as the stop point is unsound from a justice standpoint.
My POV is that old events whose participants are dead stop being relevant for future moral actions. We should prefer justice for the living as opposed to justice for the already dead.
But those events have consequences for the living right now. If you’re in poverty while someone else is rich because their ancestors stole from yours, then the current situation is unfair. You could of course simply equate all past actions to a sort of “ambient” condition, presumably outside the realm of ethics, but that would not necessarily have the effect of negating them:
- Thinking in terms of rights, if you have the right to inherit (literally or effectively) wealth from the past, then that should be conditional to also inheriting any ethical considerations associated to that wealth.
- At any rate, there’s no reason to believe ethics doesn’t apply to ambient conditions. E.g., if I become seriously ill for reasons outside my control, society should compensate and take care of me. This comes naturally in the form of welfare, or partially as insurance.
The only people in Taiwan with the right to self determination are the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples and Taiwan’s proletariat. And because of the constant state of western interference and propaganda upon the populace in Taiwan, much like South Korea, the are more barriers to understanding that being apart of the PRC, like Hong Kong and Macau, is a good thing in the long run.
While The White Terror did end, we must recognize that the ROC itself is still a western backed colonially dominated capitalist regime, and is therefore illegitimate.
The only people in Taiwan with the right to self determination are the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples and Taiwan’s proletariat.
There are no indigenous peoples in Taiwan. We all come from Africa.
Having established the extreme, where do you cut the line who can exert self-determination? Most inhabitants of Taiwan were born in Taiwan, on what ground can’t they decide their fate?
It is more complicated than other examples of indignity because of Taiwan’s unique history of colonial dominance, that being that it isn’t a settler colonial project. The Han people there are not there with the explicit purpose of the eradication of the island’s indigenous peoples. This is why I include the island’s mostly Han proletariat as having, to an extent, to say in self determination. This situation is a lot less cut and dry than a settler colonial state like Israel, where the settler proletariat, due to their settler status, does not have any say in the self-determination and state of Palestine, only the Palestinians do.
If we stay in debt to them, then it’s unlikely we’ll go to war. Who attacks their own investment?
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While the lives lost are nothing to quibble about. Let’s be real. China has the population demographics. They just simply have more people. It takes the combined populations of all of Europe plus the United States to come close to the population of China.
If it ever comes to armed conflict, they will likely win due to sheer numbers. You should be more concerned about pointless Western deaths, of which there would be countless.
I’m pretty sure the US is aware of this and not trying to start a war with them due to this. They’re also still a massive trade partner to the US. US doesn’t want to lose access to cheap microchip fabrication.
The US has been desperately trying to bring some chip fabs back to the US. I’d very much prefer to see Taiwan remain independent, but as soon as the US feels it is in a good position with chip fabrication they may suddenly change their stance on protecting Taiwan. Perhaps Xi will not live that long and mainland China can give up on Taiwan after that. He is only 70 years old so he likely won’t die of natural causes before then.
The US has been desperately trying to bring some chip fabs back to the US.
For sure, but the thing is, they can’t fabricate them in the US for the price they can in China. They just literally can’t because US citizens with the credentials to work in such an environment expect way higher pay than the workers in China do.
Phones have already become obscenely priced, but that price could double if we had to rely exclusively on US fabricated chips. While the US is trying I think you’d see an outright consumer revolt over the price increase.
Good points, but perhaps we will have to rip that bandaid off at some point. Modern phones have become a consumerist frenzy rather than any real neccesity. There are of course way more products than just phones that are more crucial. Still, maybe in 10 or so years the economy of scale will make it all viable and people’s expectations will match the reality of the situation.
Or we could go to war with China. 😑
What’s the point of their recent visits then? Just a fuck you to China? The US is stupid, but I also believe they believe China is a real threat, especially militarily, so why do this if it’s no provocation?
If the U$ does nothing, they’re guaranteed to lose their hegemonic position as China gets better.
If they goad China into a shooting war, they’re just about guaranteed to lose.
If they goad China into a shooting war where it looks like China’s the bad guy, they’ll probably lose.
If they can convince Taiwan to buy over priced military trash, they’ll put off the decline of the U$ for a little longer.
War makes capitalism go round, and therefore we will always have war.
You must organize with like-minded people, which is to say, anti-imperialists, to undermine the war machine. You will not find these people among the major political parties, both of which are imperialist.
Once you are with a group of people, you can strategize around what to do more specifically. Holding rallies, building your organization, creating or joining a like-minded coalition, direct actions, etc.
You can’t do anything meaningful alone.
