• YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    This article is nearly two years old. Also, I implicitly distrust any source which depicts Taiwan as part of the PRC.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Every single country on Earth except like seven (I only remember the Vatican and Paraguay) acknowledges that Taiwan is a dependent province of the PRC, including the USA and just about all of Europe.

      • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        Yes, but as you know in many cases it’s for purely diplomatic reasons since acknowledging Taiwan’s sovereignty means basically severing ties with the PRC, and most countries do far too much trade with it to make that in any way appealing.

          • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            The end result here being the non-acknowledgement of Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty, which is decidedly not a reflection of reality. I dare you to tell a Taiwanese person that they live in a dependent province of the PRC because other countries serving their own interests said so and see how they respond.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              The bulk of Taiwanese support the status quo, including that being their official diplomatic position, so I think it would go over better than you imagine. The diehard separatists are a minority faction.

              • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                The status quo has broad support because it keeps the peace, and the Taiwanese people generally don’t want to fight a war against China. That doesn’t equate to the majority of the Taiwanese people holding the view that they’re a part of the PRC and it should be fairly obvious that they don’t believe nor want that.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  You’re the one that invited the thought experiment. I’m sure that is they were polled, they would also say that eternal youth and space travel would be nice, but they need to live in reality, and in reality the path they support is one where their official status as far as most international organizations are concerned is that Taiwan is part of the PRC.

                  You can’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you are so blatantly trying to cherrypick concepts that support you and explain away those that don’t.

                  I sure wonder how the descendants of the pre-1947 inhabitants – those who survived the White Terror, I mean – feel about this issue vs the blatant settler-colonial population of the “government in exile” shoe factory co-founded by the US

            • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              The reality is the Taiwan isn’t broadly recognized as a sovereign country, so it doesn’t wield the same authority as an independent nation in terms of international agreements, trade, etc. It doesn’t have allies who would defend potential sovereignty, and it doesn’t have enough guns or money to leverage itself as independent. That’s way more important than some abstract discontent some people feel. At best you could say Taiwan is a Chinese client state.

              Countries don’t exist because some people feel like they should be one. I could ask you to talk to a Texan secessionist and tell them their cause is hopeless.

              I will tell a person living in Taiwan they live in a province of China, sure. I don’t care. Their government is the remnant of the defeated nationalist faction and I have no sympathy for it. I have way more sympathy for the Gaoshan and other indigenous Taiwanese people who aren’t represented well. Taiwan will hopefully get reabsorbed into the mainland within my lifetime.

              • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                Texas is de fact and de jure a part of the United States. It’s not a valid comparison and you know it.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        So fucking what? My government’s official stance is not that they are a bunch of dickheads, yet here we are.

        Outside of SOME official government communication (Western governments will happily send official delegations to Taiwan from time to time just to piss off the CCP) and other matters of strategic ambiguity like the Olympics, Taiwan is a country. Everybody but China and a few lonesome tankies agrees on that.

        So when a private entity shows Taiwan as part of the PRC, it can only be assumed that they are tankies, Chinese propagandists, or incompetent. Either way, probably not trustworthy.

            • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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              8 months ago

              I mean, you’re not that far off given the PRC’s permanent seat on the UN’s security council, but you know full well that most states and the WHO have a vested financial interest in not pissing off the CCP.

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                8 months ago

                uh, buddy, you’re aware the US has that too right? like, by your own logic the chinese cannot control the UN any more than the US can, and I’m purely using what you’ve said, no other needed information about the history of what the UN says and sides most of the time with needed.

                • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                  8 months ago

                  I was poking fun at your sarcastic comment; I don’t genuinely believe that China nor the US controls the UN any more (or any less) than their role in the geopolitical landscape would dictate.

                • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                  8 months ago

                  I wouldn’t argue that it’s a stooge at all. Yeah, the US holds an outsized influence on its constituent states, but that’s only because it holds an outsized influence over geopolitics on general. The same goes for China and Russia (the latter maybe moreso prior to the Ukraine war).

          • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            The obvious intention is to somehow “prove” that Taiwan is a part of the PRC. It’s a really common tactic by people trying to push the CCP’s worldview.

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            8 months ago

            No, but this type of rhetoric goes hand in hand with Chinese nationalism and I frankly detest nationalism in any form. It spurs non-constructive, bad-faith discourse and in more extreme cases leads to literal genocide. Nazi Germany, present-day Israel, the Xinjiang province… The list goes on and on.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              Didn’t you get the memo that it’s now a “cultural genocide” in Xinjiang because the feds who constructed the worldview you are spoonfed realized a narrative of “literal genocide” was rhetorically unable to cope with the lack of evidence?

              • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                There are firsthand accounts of human rights abuses taking place against the Uyghur people on Xinjiang. The Chinese fucking government reported a 60% decline in birthrates in certain Uyghur-majority regions in the province between 2015 and 2018. If that doesn’t scream forced sterilization then I don’t know what does.

                Also, cultural genocide is still genocide definitionally.

                • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  Show me the pictures dude. The genocide’s been going on for decades and western tourists have been free to visit Xinjiang during that period, so it should be easy to find Gaza-style devastation there, right?

                • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  Also, cultural genocide is still genocide definitionally.

                  Not according to the Western diplomats who argued against cultural genocide being included in the UN Genocide Convention but… Go off?

                • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  There are firsthand accounts of human rights abuses taking place against the Uyghur people on Xinjiang.

                  There are first hand accounts of human rights abuses taking place against Chinese people in the USA, I guess America is genociding the Chinese.

                  he Chinese fucking government reported a 60% decline in birthrates in certain Uyghur-majority regions in the province between 2015 and 2018. If that doesn’t scream forced sterilization then I don’t know what does.

                  Imagine trying to make this argument in a serious court.

        • GorbinOutOverHere [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          wow you really are so brainwashed that literally nothing could change your mind because you aggressively seek to ignore reality when it doesn’t match up with what you think you know

        • Flaps [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          How do you want people here to take you seriously when this is how you react to someone providing extra info regarding the UNs position when it comes to Taiwan

    • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      The unofficial consensus between the KMT/PRC was that Taiwan and China are one country. The NED-funded DPP has been trying to break that status quo, though.

        • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          DPP is Taiwan’s current governing party. Rather tight ties with the US government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

      • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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        8 months ago

        I’m not sure why you would assume I’m American. I mean, you happen to be right in this case, but I’m still not sure why you’d assume that.

        Anyhow, there’s an irony in your assertion that disagreeing with the position of one’s government is “brainwashed.”

        • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          Americans are very ease to distinguish based both on their political stances (which tend to be rather unique) and how they express them (which IS unique).

          Y’all are like those pickup trucks with LED lights. Once you realize they exist, you can’t miss them.

          • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            Anti-China/pro-Taiwan sentiment isn’t exactly unique to the US. I think you’re alluding to an incendiary tone with respect to how you say Americans express their views, but that doesn’t seem to quite fit so I’m a little lost there.

            • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              I mean, clearly people can tell that you’re American, so maybe it’s time for some introspection?

              • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                You made an assumption and you’ve yet to expound on how you justified it beyond some vague assertion about American political discourse. Give me something to introspect on, then, for crying out loud.

                • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  Most countries that aren’t America aren’t inundated with anti-China rhetoric, so if someone starts spouting off about China (and especially Chinese civil rights, or uses the term “CCP”) in English they’re almost certainly an American.

                  Does China lag behind the west in terms of queer rights? Yes. We’re critical of that but also recognize the grassroots initiatives within the CPC to change that, and support those efforts. Does China pollute more in raw numbers than America? Yeah, but they’re also the global leader in green power production, so they’re clearly working to fix the emissions problem, which we support. China also takes a non-imperialist stance internationally, which is far and away better than anything America has ever done internationally.

        • ikiru@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          I’m not sure why you would assume I’m American. I mean, you happen to be right in this case, but I’m still not sure why you’d assume that.

          che-smile

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          You don’t disagree with your government; you didn’t know what your government’s position was until right now.

          You still don’t really know what your government’s position is, otherwise you’d understand that here, as in many cases, there’s an official stance for diplomatic relations and then a bunch of propaganda (for both domestic and foreign consumption) that undermines that official stance.

          • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            Bold of you to assume what I do and don’t know about geopolitics. I’m well aware of the fine line that the US government walks, but I don’t speak for the US government and my views aren’t informed by “propaganda” but by the simple observations that 1) the PRC is a totalitarian regime, and 2) that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign state which broadly speaking doesn’t particularly want to be assimilated into the PRC. Where is the propagandistic angle here?

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              my views aren’t informed by “propaganda” but by the simple observations that 1) the PRC is a totalitarian regime,

              lol

              Just because you agree with it doesn’t mean it isn’t propaganda

                • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  In totalitarian USA the racist police run over protestors with impunity and torture you at a blacksite for made up poverty crimes, president Xi please my people yearn for freedom

                • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  you’re only allowed to call the PRC “totalitarian” or undemocratic if you condemn the “democracies” of the english speaking world. the US president isn’t even the person who gets the most votes🤡

                  Taiwan does not “generally” have a stance against reunification, some independence parties are a bit more popular than they used to be, but them becoming a legally independent state requires vast constitutional and international changes no government has even begun to implement

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  “Totalitarian” is a buzzword with a hazy definition at best. Go ahead and substantiate it.

                  But my point is that using such a buzzword with no further explanation is a somewhat comical display of how propagandized you are for how thought-terminating your use of the word is.

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              my views aren’t informed by “propaganda” but by the simple observations that 1) the PRC is a totalitarian regime,

              And how exactly did you observe that?

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          You aren’t brainwashed, you are just enculturated to a very reactionary ideology. I actually agree that it’s better to analyze them as separate countries for the purpose of something like this graph, but this thinktank (which, to be clear, is very Atlanticist, i.e. aligned with your geopolitical views) is almost surely gunning for having their little infographics be diplomatically palettable in hopes that they get used by important bodies.

          • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            I understand what you’re saying here and I agree that that’s what’s going here, but making something “diplomatically palatable” is for all intents and purposes equivalent to appeasement and (in my view) automatically makes any other claims made subject to suspicion.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              I mean, Atlanticists are imperialists and should be condemned, but your view is rather unhelpful since it means the vast majority of statements connected to the UN since ~1980 fall under the same view. It’s not like the PRC denies that the RoC government exists and effectively controls the island of Formosa, in our context it is just a rhetorical affectation to the effect of the RoC government not being legitimate, which is a pretty fair stance to take given the RoC’s own positively absurd territorial claims.

              • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                The ROC’s territorial claims are a side effect of the PRC’s stance on Taiwan. I don’t remember the exact details but essentially the PRC has previously declared that it would interpret any change in the ROC’s territorial claims as a declaration of war. It’s a matter of pragmatism.

                • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  Uhh the RoC’s territorial claims are a direct effect of their century-old hyper-nationalist stances that led to them losing a civil war against the peasantry of China.

                  Unless you think Mao somehow personally provoked them into declaring ownership over Mongolia?

                • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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                  8 months ago

                  Given that the civil war never technically ended, I’m pretty sure a “declaration of war” just reinforces the status quo.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Pretty bad drought and floods over the past 20 years, and the country is too mountainous to support most effective reforestation strategies. So it’s mostly climate change, economic isolation, and only 17% of the land can support forests in the first place. It’s not a good time right now.

  • jupyter_rain@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    I am always happy to hear about reforestation, but has somebody understood out of which source the numbers from china are coming? I mean they are sometimes quite the enthusiasts talking about their successes

  • Randomunemployment@lemmings.world
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    8 months ago

    I would be hesitant in claiming this as a win. I know that Japan has one of the highest number of trees per capita in the g7 but that was a hold over from post WW2. Where they planted a shit ton of a singular tree type. The monoculture wrecks havoc in their ecosystem. All this to say it’s good that they are planting trees I’m just hoping they are doing it planning it out carefully.

    • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      A monoculture only wrecks havoc on an ecosystem if a flourishing ecosystem existed there already…

      In China, trees are mostly used to block desertification.

  • Ironfist@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    according to (checks notes) … “visualcapitalist”. Yeah that sounds like a totally unbiased and reliable source.