The high point of Taiwanese separatism was in 2019 when Tsai Ing-wen, despite being unpopular and almost getting primaried by the current Taiwanese president, was able to ride on the fears of the Hong Kong protests to win the presidency in 2020. After that, separatists have eaten nothing but L’s since then.
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They got BTFO in the 2022 local elections, topping it off with Chiang Kai-shek’s bastard great-grandson getting elected as mayor of Taipei. This also means he has presidential ambitions, so a funny outcome would be Taiwan having a third president from the Chiang family.
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They ate shit in the 2024 legislative elections and don’t have a majority in the Yuan.
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They got their president elected with a crappy plurality made worse by all the 16-17 year old TPP supporters who can’t vote because they’re too young, meaning his popularity is even weaker than it looks.
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Taiwanese zoomers, basically the people who are of conscript age, are voting for TPP instead, which ruins the DPP’s plan of replacing the KMT through age demographic changes. Just because the KMT is going to be the party of irrelevant boomers doesn’t mean your party will get the zoomers.
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The ROC military has openly displays signs of disloyalty including a retired general saying they should simply coup the DPP and various officers repeatedly getting bribed by the PRC to lay down their arms. It turns out accusing the KMT, of which the ROC military is politically, culturally, and historically aligned with, of selling out to the PRC in order to win votes for your presidential election has far-reaching consequences.
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The combination of the Taiwanese economy stagnating and the dumpster fire with TSMC attempting to build a factory in Arizona is forcing Taiwanese business to push harder towards the status quo, where they can get favorable trade deals with the PRC.
Isn’t it TSMC that’s building a factory in Arizona?
let’s just say it’s not going well, TSMC has zero incentive to actually finish the project because it will take all the leverage they have from them
Whoops, I meant TSMC. Thanks for the correction.
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Taipei Times saying the quiet part out loud “Beijing’s new set of judicial guidelines targeting Taiwan independence advocates and dozens of Chinese planes entering Taiwan’s real estate come after a visit to Taipei last week by two US deputy assistant secretaries of state”
I’m having trouble understanding your point. What is the “quiet part”? That representatives from a foreign government visited Taipei?
They do not touch on the real reasons for these amendments. One is to look tough and nationalistic to their domestic audience. Another is to inflict psychological fear in Taiwanese and those who support Taiwan internationally that the CCP could potentially be coming for us, not only in China, Hong Kong and Macau, but in 45 other countries as well.
Hey guys did you know the real reason is to look tough and nationalistic and not (among other reasons) the US attempt to have an unsinkable air craft carrier to project power
According to human rights NGO Safeguard Defender
Lel
Taiwans ADIZ
I wonder why this extends into the mainland. Could there be historical context?
When the CCP is planning another dramatic change of the status quo, they go out of their way to also pick a date when it will send a message.
For example, often when countries switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, the announcement will be timed to pack a punch, such as Nauru making their announcement right after William Lai (賴清德) won the election. Similarly, there was no way the enormously complex live fire training exercises China launched to upend the status quo could have been planned in the tiny window of time from the-then US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement she was to visit Taiwan and her arrival. They had planned it long in advance, — her trip was merely an excuse. To this day, it is common to see the Chinese military gray zone menacing behavior that continues being traced to Pelosi’s visit, almost as if she were somehow to blame.
Hey trust me they’ve been planing this for a long time. And these misogynists of course blame girl queen Pelosi. Not like China denounced the visit in advance. Classic reversal of cause and effect.
Safeguard Defender
“Prosperity Guardian” level cringe lmao
This… is not a well written article.
Beijing’s new set of judicial guidelines targeting Taiwan independence advocates and dozens of Chinese planes entering Taiwan’s real estate come after a visit to Taipei last week by two US deputy assistant secretaries of state
I get what you mean but why didn’t the editor catch this? This paper is a part of the billionaire owned Liberty Group, why don’t they have editors?
Though there is a chance that the surfacing of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 094 Jin class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine last Tuesday in the Taiwan Strait is connected, that is only possible if Chinese intelligence had gotten wind of what was about to happen ahead of time, which is hard to prove. If they had, they could have meant it as a warning to the US.
This is just straight up misleading. It’s referring to an event last week where a Chinese submarine surfaced in the Taiwan straight. Technically. 200 KM west of Taiwan, 10km off the short of Xiamen. I am not joking, they literally state “A surfaced submarine, which appears to be a nuclear-armed Jin-class submarine, is pictured about 200km from the western coast yesterday.” in the prior article I just linked. They then proceed to use a Reuters photo of TWO nuclear submarines (dated 2018) just to fearmonger some more.
A huge non-event to get clicks from paranoid China watchers is getting milked a SECOND TIME.
The amendments do not distinguish by nationality or geography, meaning anyone from any country could be tried in absentia in China.
The amendments also do not distinguish by species. My god! Your pet dog could be extradited to China!
According to human rights NGO Safeguard Defender,
Oh boy, an NGO cited. Every time you dig into these you get some gold. Lets look into “Safeguard Defender”.
Director: Peter Dahlin, a writer for the far right pro Trump anti vaxxer “newspaper” Epoch Times. Oh, that was easy. You’d think an editor would catch this. Back to it.
I was asked once by some students from Hong Kong if I thought what happened to their city would be the model for the CCP if they took Taiwan. I said no, the model would be East Turkestan, what the Chinese have taken to calling Xinjiang, because Taiwan is not a compact, easily controlled space and Taiwanese historically have been rebellious
The ROC called it that too. So did the Qing dynasty. Because it’s been the name of the region in Mandarin since the 1700’s. The sentence is omitting “…what the Chinese have taken to calling Xinjiang since 1759”
Also, historically rebellious is a dubious claim. Most of the population of the island were the Establishment, not the Rebels in the civil war since they were refugees. If the author was talking about Aboriginal Taiwanese who went from the majority ethnicity of the island to less than 2% of the population today, I guess they did try to rebel before getting gunned down.
That the CCP put forth these amendments is no surprise, but that they picked last Friday to announce them was, as well as following them up with 48 hours of heightened incursions into the ADIZ. When the CCP is planning another dramatic change of the status quo, they go out of their way to also pick a date when it will send a message.
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If this was their message, why not do it around the May 20 inauguration? Or even the one-month anniversary on June 20? Why Friday, June 21? This was very out of character for the CCP to just pick a random day with no particular historical significance or political activity going on.
This entire section is just padding for words. Dedicating 4 paragraphs to say absolutely nothing. “China normally does these military exercises near an event like Nancy Pelosi visiting, but this time nothing was happening, what are those inscrutable Chinese plotting?”
The English-language headline from the same story reads: “US officials say UN Resolution 2758 twisted: sources.” This was picked up by a few local news outlets, but only in a surprisingly limited way.
Ah ha! It’s because last Thursday, 2 US officials along with representatives of Taiwan’s 12 allies, and as well as those from other like-minded nations, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, the EU, Finland, France, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland and the UK.. Disregarding the fact that he copy and pasted the list verbatim from his colleague at the Taipei Times including the error of implying The Vatican sent a representative to Taiwan for a 1 day secret summit, as well as representatives of the nation of “the EU”. China is mad that this meeting that definitely happened (and also we are the only news to have reported on it in 3 days) so they had a submarine resurface 200km off the coast of Taiwan and fly planes in the ADIZ, which conveniently covers mainland China.
Who’s the author for this article that would write like this? Let’s check the biography he wrote about himself Oh cool, he’s wearing a fedora and suspenders.
“On turning 19 years old, I decided to take a semester off of university and visit Taiwan in 1988. I fell in love with the country, and that semester off has lasted most of my life… As a co-founder of Taiwan Report, in writing for various publications, in large Facebook groups I founded” He’s a college dropout who started a Youtube page that gets literally 2-3 digit views
People forget that the reason Taiwan’s shifted to its current stance has been that the DPP has risen to power on the backs of rampant KMT corruption, not that Taiwanese people are in support of DPP foreign policy. Even so, the past election demonstrated that the majority of Taiwanese really don’t want a DPP government… Unfortunately Lai is still head of state under the FPTP system, so here we are.
Both the KMT and TPP (which together received a majority of votes and would’ve won the election if not for the coalition negotiations failing to back a combined presidential ticket) support a more moderate stance with China.
In fact, today it’s the DPP that’s come under fire because of corruption. Recent bills that have passed through the Yuan have seen DPP members stealing bills before reading to avoid anti-corruption language from coming into effect and brawling other parties’ legislators because of opposition. It’s actually quite funny if you ever get the chance to watch proceedings.
Just an FYI, it’s best practice to actually type out the words the first time, then initialize them afterwards. If you never type them out, many people will have no idea what you’re talking about.
It just reads like every military dudebro’s deployment story.
“Ah yeah we had to FTP the RBO to the HEP, but before we could do that the ASO had to POI the BBU. And of course, that means we had to help the ASO set up their LKI before they could start the POI. All while EMGs were bearing down on us with their TGT-30’s. But once we got the LKI set up and the ASO was able to POI, the BBU went pretty quickly. So we got the RBO FTP’ed to the HEP in record time, and were back at the FOB by EOD.It’s an article about Taiwan. If you don’t know the main politician players in Taiwan, maybe you shouldn’t be here?
Very helpful. thank you.
Libs, always asking others to make their lives easier. If you care enough about Taiwan to argue about it online, but you don’t care enough to look up their parties and their institutions at even a cursory level, then maybe you can understand why the the left is constantly trying to throw you out of discourse spaces. You’re lazy, entitled, ignorant, confident, and self-righteous. It’s a disgusting combination.
Edit and here you are, casually excluding the admittedly and respectfully ignorant, while they try to become better informed.
Is this how you think you bring people to your position? Or educate them?
Edit this is a global discussion platform. Someone is allowed to say “I don’t know what that is”. You don’t have to hold their hand, you could for example say “those are political factions in Taiwan,” and that’s that, but criticizing someone for saying they don’t understand is gatekeeping, shitty behavior. Assuming their political alignment (and then denigrating them for that assumed alignment), all based on their seemingly good natured request for clarification is additionally shitty.
Edit edit it is also a journalistic and academic standard to write out acronyms the first time they are used, this isn’t an opinion thing, a political alignment thing or any else.
The Taiwan province English-speaking journalist class are shitting themselves because they know they’ll be up against the wall when reunification comes.
Yes, an authoritarian government with a lot of economic and military power just made it a crime to even speak about their own country’s independence, so they have legitimate reason to be afraid.
Yes, the DPP is authoritarian for shutting down Taiwanese news stations that refuse to toe a pro-separatist line and must be overthrown in order for democracy to flourish. DPP politicians should fear for their lives.
DPP politicians should fear for their lives.
Ah, another appeal to violence as the source of morality.
It’s very funny for you to accuse anyone else of being authoritarian.
Damn, I guess you like authoritarianism but only when it’s authoritarianism that your side is doing.
Nah, the funny part here is you not understanding that any government’s power (not “morality”) is upheld through violence (whether implicit or explicit), and that the idea of a “non-authoritarian” government is completely nonsensical.
Skill issue. If I wanted to have a recognized independent country I would simply win the civil war instead of losing and then hiding in America’s skirt like a coward.
I see, so “might makes right” for you then?
I appreciate you making your sense of morality - or lack thereof - so very clear.
International recognition in line with the principles of customary international law as codified in the Montivedeo Convention make right, but that’s not very snappy.
No, you said:
I would simply win the civil war instead of losing
Which indicates quite clearly that you believe military power should decide whether a nation has the right to independence. You don’t get to try to deflect that ex post facto. You either admit that this is what you genuinely believe in spite of its obvious morality problem, or you admit that you were wrong to make such a statement and acknowledge that your ideas about national independence need changing.
The Chinese Nationalists thought that military power should decide that they were in charge of China, right up until the People’s Liberation Army fucking bodied them and they fled to their little island with their tails between their legs (and then conducted massacres against the native population and anyone remotely leftist).
This “”“independence dispute”“” would have been resolved seventy years ago had the US Navy not stuck their fucking imperial beak in and stopped the communists chasing down these fascist war criminals and finishing the job.
The outcomes of civil wars is widely acknowledged by both state practice and opinio juris as being a legitimate factor in the determination of sovereignty over a territory. If you don’t believe me, ask the Confederate States of America and the Republic of Vietnam about their experiences and get back to me.
There is no “morality problem” because there is no issue of morality here. Morality is not a factor in international law.
We’re not talking about what is ‘widely acknowledged’, we are talking about what you have expressed as your personal belief. And you do have a morality problem:
Skill issue. If I wanted to have a recognized independent country I would simply win the civil war instead of losing and then hiding in America’s skirt like a coward.
You believe that in order to be independent from mainland China, Taiwan should have used military force - or again, that might makes right.
You made this statement. It is not about international law, or opinio juris, or any other deflection you want to attempt. It is about what you believe justifies a nation’s independence, and it is solely based on the exercise of military power.
The point is not whether it should, the point is that it definitely is the primary factor.
No, that is not the point that was made in this comment:
Skill issue. If I wanted to have a recognized independent country I would simply win the civil war instead of losing and then hiding in America’s skirt like a coward.
This comment makes very plain that the writer believes that a nation only achieves independence through military force.
The United states used military power to defeat the slavers in the south(and to get their independence in the first place), and the allies used military power to crush nazi Germany and their fascist allies. Not every use of military force is unwarranted or “immoral”
Journalists aren’t a class
I took two levels of journalist before I multiclassed into rogue.
Smh you powergamers ruin all the fun, I’m just over here going all in on
class and I gotta be compared to mfers like youNgl it was a difficult choice between NatSec Talking Points Journalist and School of Raytheon Rainbow Washing Bard.
Dont forget that the death penalty is now on the table for “taiwanese separatism”.
Everything is coming to a head. Hopefully it can wait until after July 6th when I’ll be safely in China
