TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China accused the United States of turning Taiwan into an “ammunition depot” after the White House announced a $345 million military aid package for Taipei, and the self-ruled island said Sunday it tracked six Chinese navy ships in waters off its shores.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office issued a statement late Saturday opposing the military aid to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
“No matter how much of the ordinary people’s taxpayer money the … Taiwanese separatist forces spend, no matter how many U.S. weapons, it will not shake our resolve to solve the Taiwan problem. Or shake our firm will to realize the reunification of our motherland,” said Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office.
“Their actions are turning Taiwan into a powder keg and ammunition depot, aggravating the threat of war in the Taiwan Strait,” the statement said.
China’s People’s Liberation Army has increased its military maneuvers in recent years aimed at Taiwan, sending fighter jets and warships to circle the island.
On Sunday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said it tracked six Chinese navy ships near the island.
Taiwan’s ruling administration, led by the Democratic Progressive Party, has stepped up its weapons purchases from the U.S. as part of a deterrence strategy against a Chinese invasion.
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and Taiwan has never been governed by China’s ruling Communist Party.
Unlike previous military purchases, the latest batch of aid is part of a presidential authority approved by the U.S. Congress last year to draw weapons from current U.S. military stockpiles — so Taiwan will not have to wait for military production and sales.
While Taiwan has purchased $19 billion worth of weaponry, much of it has yet to be delivered to Taiwan. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles to Taiwan.
Arming a secessionary territory after protecting it with European interventionism for decades is literally making it into a powder keg. Deliberately demonstrating military capabilities, like detonating over 1000 nuclear bombs in territories inhabited and used by the world’s indigenous peoples, from the Pacific Islands to the deserts of Turtle Island, is a calm and rational deterrent strategy.
You are projecting your Western atrocities onto other people. Again.
The Chinese Civil War ended without Mao being able to capture Taiwan, where the KMT moved its Republic. No secession necessary. It was part of the ROC before the war and never part of the CCP.
Put your propagandized version on the bookshelf next to the story about your tanks running over your own youth to preserve your authoritarian system.
And you talking about indigenous people while you try to eradicate the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is another book on that shelf.
The fucking Europeans moved their navies in to defend the KMT and made it clear that they wanted to work with the KMT because Europe was anti-communist. It’s not merely that the PLA couldn’t take Taiwan.
The idea that because Taiwan was part of the ROC and therefore is legitimate because it still is is so fucking ridiculous I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s maybe start with the White Terror that history books say started when the KMT declared martial law on the island but doesn’t include the killing of 18k people on the island who rose up to fight the KMT. Why would that have happened if they were all just part of the ROC and everything was fine and continuous? Why would the White Terror last 40 years of it was just everyone on the island was totally fine being part of this continuous ROC you imagine in your delusion? Why would the KMT need to spend decades killing dissidents?
You can put your version of events into your needle and inject it straight into your track marked arms. You live off delusional coping mechanisms that allow you to maintain your self-concept as one of the good ones who sees and understands the true evil in the world.
Except I hate all the terrible shit America does and have no delusions about its terribleness. Two things are similtaneously true about Taiwan. They do not want to be under the control of mainland China and deserve to live free from oppression. Yet, under the rules based international system of sovereignty that is not based on popular sovereignty, mainland China has a substantial claim to Taiwan. This doesn’t make their claim ethical or morally right as the system itself was made by imperial powers.
China is in part terrible because it has to exist in the terrible international system of imperialism and global capitalism. They needed to adopt the practices of global capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism to compete on the world stage and avoid being victims of imperialism. This doesn’t make China the heroes, as they do the evil themselves, but it explains some of the evil. I don’t know how to dismantle a global system, but only a fool would take China’s word that they’ll totally do communism in the future, especially when they have so many tools for enslavement.
The first part of this sentence is moral virtue signalling. The second part is patently false. You clearly don’t understand all of the terrible shit America does because you don’t understand the global historical context of America. Therefore, you don’t understand the history of Europe and therefore you don’t understand the modern history of Asia, nor of Africa.
This is very clear when you say this:
You do not understand world systems. You do not understand who is oppressor and who is oppressed. If you wanted the people on Taiwan to live free from oppression, you would demand the deportation of all Chinese from the island and allow the indigenous people of the island to flourish and rebuild their society and rediscover their people’s history. Instead, you believe that the oppressive Chinese society that was created on Taiwan through the White Terror is somehow legitimate because it’s been there a long time. This indicates to me that while you also hate what America does, you think all it has to do is stop “being evil” and it can peacefully coexist with the indigenous people there.
You are delusional. China’s claim to Taiwan is literally that the government of Taiwan was built from the losing army in a civil war that was then protected by Europeans who were actively exploiting China for centuries. Why would they protect one Chinese army over another, especially the one that lost? Because it was in their interest to do. The prosecution of the White Terror was in the interest of Europe. The propagandizing of the inhabitants of Taiwan was in the interest of Europe. Europe’s only aim has been to exploit and dominate the region.
So when you talk of “free Taiwan”, not only are you saying “continue to oppress indigenous inhabitants of Taiwan”, you’re also saying “Yes, adopt European racialized financial monopoly imperialist capitalism as your continued form of oppression”.
All governments are “terrible” because of realpolitik. China is no way terrible the way the North Atlantic is terrible. The idea that China is imperialist is ridiculous. The idea that China is nationalist is, quite frankly, a nod to Lenin and a necessary requirement for liberty. The idea that because China adopted practices of global capitalism it is therefore somehow legitimate for Taiwan to want European oppression instead of Chinese “oppression” is just cognitive dissonance.
If you want to learn how to dismantle a global system, all you have to do with watch China. They are literally doing it while we watch. China has been at the forefront of making Europe completely dependent on the Third World without giving it control over the centers of production. They are hanging the European bourgeoisie with rope made in China paid for in USD. The profit motive has proven to be so powerful that China has managed to convince the superpowers to divest nearly of their own production. So much so that the US can’t produce enough ammunition, can’t produce enough medicine, and can’t produce enough computers, meanwhile China, which was suffering biannual famines 75 years ago, can produce enough for it’s own population (4x the size of the US) and for the US and EU and most of the world’s people, and they did it without Europe owning anything on the mainland. China is literally dismantling the global system right now. Dedollarization is happening in large part because of the efforts and strategies of China and the alliances it has made with the world.
And the idea that China has “so many tools for enslavement” is just brain rot of the highest order. What the fuck does that even mean? The US and the former British colonies have more tools for enslavement than anyone in the history of the world, and they are shared between the bourgeoisie, the MIC, the state, the media, the financial elite, and military intelligence. You think because China has surveillance that somehow it will never be communist? You think the only way to get to communism is not be able to control reactionary movements and just hope that the force of your liberatory virtues is enough to convince everyone to stop resisting the change?
Listen, I get that you want to believe you’re somehow “good” here because you “understand reality” and aren’t “blinded by ideology” because you can see that, while the US bad, China is also bad. But the reality is that the vast majority of what you think is bad about China is literally fed to you through Western propaganda that predates your existence and likely predates your grandparents’ existence. The West has been propagandizing and indoctrinating it’s people against china for at least 2 centuries. You’re not immune to it. This Taiwan thing is literally proof that it works.