As China's footprint grows, Taiwan wants to keep its few formal allies close while deepening informal links with world.
The first to go was the Solomon Islands, which broke with Taiwan on September 16 ending a 36-year diplomatic relationship.
Four days later, it was Kiribati. The Pacific island nation had established diplomatic relations with Taipei in 2003.
Both countries were wooed by China with offers of development aid and assistance.
"If we give up now, Taiwan's future generations will lose their sovereignty, their freedom, and their democracy; we will lose everything."
In all, seven countries have severed ties with Taiwan since Tsai, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), came to office three years ago. It now has formal diplomatic relations with just 15 nations, including the Vatican.
Some 70 years after China's nationalists fled the mainland to establish their capital in Taipei, the diplomatic tide has now almost completely turned in favour of the communist-led government in Beijing.
Shaohua Hu, professor in government and politics at New York's Wagner College and author of the 2017 book Foreign Policies towards Taiwan, noted that China's efforts to pick off Taiwan's political allies was a political strategy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 26 2019, @06:12PM (9 children)
They aren't aiming to kill a king, they are establishing territory, choking off liberties, capturing easy stones, one little move at a time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday September 26 2019, @11:41PM
They can have their Steenkin' Taiwan as long as they take back all of their Californian Chinks with it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 27 2019, @12:42PM (6 children)
It amazes me how people can admire this ham-handed act.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 27 2019, @02:33PM (5 children)
China doesn't play chess, they play go... China doesn't care as much about timetables as the Western states, they do care about final outcome. Like the mess they made in Tienanmen Square, and Tibet, the mess in Hong Kong will die down over time and they will have achieved the outcome they are looking for. Holding Taiwan as a bone of contention may be a play to justify additional military spending in the region.
Blitzkreig didn't work out so well for Hitler, but if he executed a similar vision on a multi-generational timetable, we might be negotiating Britain's entry to the Deutsche Union, rather than their exit from the European Union today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @02:58AM (4 children)
Who doesn't? Again, it's not minor details about what games they're playing, but rather the competence of how well they play those games.
So will the present Chinese government. Which one will go first?
His people would be out of power for a long time. Sorry, Nazis were no good at that game.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 28 2019, @04:19PM (3 children)
Hitler actually was quite good at the game of unifying and activating his people, and it wasn't just war that got them going.
Without such aggressive Lebensraum and ethnic cleansing actions, who knows how long he could have played the game, whether or not he could have developed "the bomb" before the rest of the world, etc.
As for whether or not the Chinese are playing an optimal game, I doubt you are anywhere close to familiar with the challenges of top level politics in China. Sure, in fairy dreamland the whole country can get together and act as a single super-organism with optimal foreign and domestic policies. Alfred Hitchcock pretty much covered this in "The Birds" - could happen, but doesn't. Not here, not there, and not in the bird flocks that migrate above us.
With their money/power, Melinda Gates struggles to effectively bring clean drinking water to people who don't have it. Even Wang Jianlin couldn't hope to "fix" Chinese policy from his position of limited power, and there are few, if any, Chinese with more power than him.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:42AM (2 children)
That's why Germany was split for half a century afterward? That's "quite good"?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 29 2019, @04:32PM (1 child)
A whoosh was heard, like a V2 passing overhead of a bowl of petunias which had absolutely no idea what a V2 even was...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:28PM
Just because you missed the target doesn't make it my fault. The Nazi Germany hypothesis is ridiculous. Hitler had to make bigger and bigger gambles merely to stay in power. It's a classic Red Queen situation. There was no long term future. He could talk big about thousand year Reichs, but staying still meant death from the enemies he had accumulated inside and outside Germany as well as economic collapse of Germany itself.
It also wasn't a Nazi plan, but something the Germany military had come up with earlier in secret. They had to consolidate power under a dictator and militarized faster than their relatively pacifistic neighbors in order to win militarily. When Nazi Germany was unable to finish that strategy, leaving huge enemies in play who eventually surpassed them in industrial and military might (namely, the US and USSR), they were destined to lose. There was no long term game that could save them once they committed to this strategy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 30 2019, @04:20AM
As an aside, while chess has a lot more mobility to it, those are effective tactics in chess too. At a high level, the strategies are similar - create opportunities for oneself while denying the same to the opponent. Here, China has come to the situation where it wants to crack on Hong Kong, but can't because such an overt crackdown harms it's future strategies, including potential absorption of Taiwan. This isn't successful long term thinking. This isn't competent Go strategy. It's a bumbling, but ruthless giant that has stymied itself for a time just because they got in a hurry.
And no government lasts forever. If they stay stymied long enough, Taiwan can indeed win merely by outlasting them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 26 2019, @06:14PM (12 children)
It's one of those points about reality I quite dislike. Power is power. You get power by exercising the power you've already got against the powerless. China's doing it. The US has done it since forever. It's not fair, it's not reasonable, but it is real.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:10PM (11 children)
I think the Kissinger summary was something to the effect: "If you have power, but don't use it, you're just wasting resources on acquiring the power in the first place."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:20PM (10 children)
Kissenger sucked so much ass and represents everything about why power begetting power is inherently evil.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:28PM (9 children)
Not everything, the Presidents he advised were right up there with him.
-----------------
The Trump Presidency - an attempt to make Nixon look good.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Captival on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:35PM (7 children)
Everybody I agree with is so wrong and stupid and also evil. If only they agreed with me, then they'd be smart and virtuous. PS: everybody that's big and important is bad.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:42PM (6 children)
No Kissinger was a mass murdering psychopath who helped Nixon sell out the United States for personal gain. There is literally no context or framing to view the man positively unless your metric of quality is completely deranged beyond human recognition. If it's "just your opinion" the only possible explanation of that is your opinions are incredibly poorly considered.
There aren't two sides to every story. Kissinger arranged mass death for power.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:01PM (2 children)
I listened to a long interview with Kissinger a while ago that crossed a wide array of topics. One of the more interesting things was him bragging about keeping Nixon in the Vietnam war for longer than he wanted. Nixon had wanted to pull out as quick as possible as he saw the war as unwinnable and saw no point in continuing when the end result would be the same. When Kent state happened Nixon demanded to his advisors that we begin the withdrawal the next day, but it was Kissinger who lied to claim that more lives would be lost pulling out immediately than would be by forcing the NVA and Vietcong to the negotiating table by bombing their resources in Cambodia. We all know how this played out.
Nixon gets a much worse rap these days than he probably should. When Cronkite reported on Nixon's campaign promises related to ending the war he would point out that troop levels were decreasing ahead of the original schedule that Nixon had laid out and gave him credit for his efforts in trying to remove us from the conflict.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:24PM (1 child)
Nixon did many, many things right. None of them make up for his wrongs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:44PM
Ending the US involvement in France's war for rubber trees in Vietnam is something we should be very grateful for. Attempting detente is a huge change in comparison to Johnson and Truman's openly threatening the USSR with nukes if they don't give us what we want.
Blinded by hatred are you, learn history you must.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 26 2019, @10:04PM (2 children)
The people who benefited from that shift of power would disagree with your position. All 3 million of them (the 1%).
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday September 27 2019, @03:31PM (1 child)
!5 would be 2 million when Nixon was president.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 27 2019, @04:32PM
True enough, but the 1% continues to benefit today from the groundwork laid by Kissinger et. al.. As for the other 347 million of us, meh. Only if you believe in trickle down, and if you believe in that, let me sell you a story about the Easter Bunny.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:35PM
Advised? Commanded!
He has far more power than any president. But he's not wearing the red nose in front of cameras, so who is going to notice?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Thursday September 26 2019, @07:43PM (1 child)
For those playing along at home, the list of countries formally recognising the Republic of China is quite short:
Belize
Guatemala
Eswatini
Haiti
Honduras
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Nicaragua
Palau
Paraguay
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Tuvalu
Vatican City (The Holy See)
Other nations positions on Taiwan is quite complex as the PRC has a One China policy, forcing informal relations with the ROC. For example the US policy is summed up with the following five points:
The United States did not explicitly state the sovereign status of Taiwan in the three US-PRC Joint Communiques of 1972, 1979, and 1982.
The United States "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
U.S. policy has not recognized the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan;
U.S. policy has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country; and
U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as undetermined. U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as unsettled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Position_of_other_countries_and_international_organizations [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @11:58PM
Donald should threaten to make a formal visit there as part of his trade negotiations. Who knows, maybe he has.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dale on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:06PM (18 children)
Anyone that is in Taiwan that doesn't want to live under Chinese should be working on relocating to somewhere they'd like more than China now. This isn't any different than video game company mergers. It is only a matter of time before they are consumed and brought into the fold fully.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:27PM (2 children)
Hey Dale, can you come over and clean my house, mow the lawn and make me a fortada?
Since moving countries is easy to you, I know i’m Asking a trivial favor.
(Score: 2) by Dale on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:05PM
I didn't mean to imply that it was easy or lightly taken. I am simply saying that if they find the thought of being like mainland China is not what they want for themselves and/or their family/decendents it would be wiser to leave now than to wait for the gates to close. If I was taken as it being easy it was not my intent.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:02AM
Are you perhaps suggesting that it's easier to resist the domination of a huge country (at least an order of magnitude larger) intent on gobbling your country up than it is to move to another country.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by loonycyborg on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:42PM (11 children)
Taiwan IS China. It's what remains of Chiang Kai-shek nationalist government. It was in state of civil war with communist china, and it lost this war due to their stupidity and incompetence despite having the upper hand initially. Taiwan remnant only exists because US blocked communist china's landing with their warships. That's the reason you can't actually acknowledge Taiwan as a sovereign country without pissing off PRC: you basically intervene in their unfinished civil war. To add insult to injury US themselves didn't acknowledge Taiwan as independent state.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @01:43AM (1 child)
Hah no, they were specifically told against advancing on communist positions, and denied supplies, with the US threatening to pull out if they do. Blame the US Diplomatic Corp.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Friday September 27 2019, @10:05AM
They totally succeeded at defeating communists which only a lot later managed to do a comeback with aid of guerilla warfare, and communists could only pull it off due to overwhelming support of people because they at least were a lesser evil compared to nationalists. So how come US supports a faction that promotes a relative minority's interests at expense of rest of Chinese? Doesn't it contradict the idea of democracy?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:09AM (8 children)
For those keeping score, that makes it NOT China. After all, if it were China, then it'd have the same government and the same territory as China does.
Which counts, let us note.
A war that finished 70 years ago. There is so much deeply wrong with this narrative.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Saturday September 28 2019, @04:11PM (7 children)
All is correct with this narrative. War is finished only when peace treaty is signed. Since it's civil ware it would involve dissolution of either Taiwan remnant or PRC. Since both exist civil war most definitely continues. Asserting anything else would be disingenuous. Taiwan can really be considered independent state only if they kick out descendants of remains of nationalist government and other people who came with them onto the mainland, where they belong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @03:37AM (6 children)
You do realize how loony that sounds, right? There's no such rule about civil wars.
Truth is an absolute defense against such accusations.
Or because they're an independent state in fact. That works better. Here's a simple test. What does China do in Taiwan? If Taiwan is not an independent state, then China must run something in Taiwan to provide that alleged dependency.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:20AM (5 children)
There is also no term after which a failed rebellion becomes real independent state. There is no statue of limitations. No major power have declared Taiwan to be independent state, not even the US. If communists and nationalists didn't sign a peace treaty formally deciding who gets what then issue is not settled. Once again there is no statute of limitations on this.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:39AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday September 29 2019, @01:48PM (3 children)
What exactly you mean as independence? To me it's purely something that is formalized with diplomatic treaties. Taiwan definitely doesn't fit this definition of independence. There are other meanings of this word but there are many of them. In modern world everyone are interdependent to some degree.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:15PM (2 children)
Sorry, this is pretty obvious. Just look at the government functions of Taiwan and China and what areas those functions apply. Neither government obtains tax revenue, mandates laws and regulation, manages basic government functions like property ownership, etc in the other. That makes them independent.
This diplomatic treaty says [wikipedia.org] otherwise. It's backed by force of law in Taiwan.
And diplomatic treaties are rather irrelevant without teeth. The above treaty doesn't have that problem.
Sure, we could use your contrived definition of independence. It is valid and relatively well-defined as such things go. But what would be the point?
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday September 30 2019, @01:02AM (1 child)
That's the whole point, Taiwan is entirely without teeth. It's nothing more than a social experiment. Kuomintang failed due to them being assholes. And US preserved them only because they thought they're their assholes. And given relative lack of worldwide acceptance of Taiwan I feel justified in having little respect for them. No more than to average school's mock student council. If they disagree with me then they can feel free to shoot me like their other political opponents..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 30 2019, @04:07AM
Trying breaking their laws on their turf.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @06:11AM (2 children)
But what is the difference between ROC and PRC? Outside of the ruling class, that is. On first sight they are not that much different. Both have plenty of corruption, both have governments that the people do not control. The countries separated when China was Maoist and socialist, but after so many years the differences are smaller. Taiwan does have people who argue for unification, and one would think that a nation on a small island soon will run out of space. The issue of limited natural resources also comes to mind.
Historically, Taiwan developed semiconductor manufacturing and software industry earlier than mainland. But now things changed, China has become a leader in manufacturing of every kind. Resource-wise, Taiwan has no future, and reunification is just a matter of time. No need even to pretend to have two systems; the leaders of Taiwan will retain the power on the island, just the positions in the hierarchy will be renamed and written with the mainland's simplified script.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:13AM
Nonsense. One merely needs to look at how shabbily Hong Kong is being treated now to see that no future can better than unification.
Presently, they're two separate countries not just two systems.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 29 2019, @12:30PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:11PM
Just a matter of time.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:20PM (3 children)
To see how ‘one country two systems’ is working out.
This is the real reason China has not already crushed the HK protests, they know TW is watching.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:47PM (2 children)
If you truly have the power, would you have to care who is watching?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:56PM
Yes, the goal has always been peaceful reunification. before HongKong blew up, they could have pointed to it as an example that worked.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:14AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @08:45PM
The fuck cares if they drop off? They'll be back again when the foreign aid package provided by Taiwan becomes competitive again. I was surprised that Taiwan had as many relations as someone listed above.
Currently, I'm watching to see whether the Vatican will go for relations with the mainland dictatorship. It would be hard to think of the Catholic church being more morally bankrupt as they were around Luther's time, but that should do it.
But as long as the US keeps its protecting hand over Taiwan, they have not much to fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:03PM (1 child)
...sells all its atomic bombs to Taiwan. It'd be a win for everybody except China, and that'd be a good thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @11:16PM
North Korea probably won't let go of all of its nukes. Juche and all that.
They could devastate South Korea with conventional weapons but nukes put you in the big boys club. And we all saw what happened after Libya gave up WMDs.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 27 2019, @11:13AM
This same dance has been going on since the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. Both they and the Communists have been claiming they're the legitimate rulers of China ever since.
So this is not new at all.
Washington DC delenda est.