It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido.
But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]
China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
Japan has a big army/"self-defence force", impenetrable terrain over most of its territory, and 45 tonnes of plutonium. Even if the defence treaty with the US vanishes, the probability of a foreign invasion is rather low.
That is, the constitution written by the KMT dictatorship that was awarded the island as spoils of war after the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in WW2.
In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants unification by submitting completely to the other. So the only way it's happening is with force.
Chiang Kai-shek is a standard part of the world history course in the US in high school. We know why China wants Taiwan at the personal level, much of the world is just interested in that not happening.
It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil war and France helped out.
This is the first time I've ever seen a non-Chinese person say it this way on Reddit, X, or this platform.
I must have scrolled through way too much Reddit.
Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember Mr. Eyerly making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my 10th grade world history class.
No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland are standard course material; the history and politics around reunification aren't some big mystery.
Don't get me wrong. The history is interesting, but from an American perspective interesting history doesn't translate into justification for violent incursion on an established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with. The American lesson from our history isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
Yep, any war of aggression would be wildly unpopular today. Limited actions may be somewhat tolerated inasmuch as they're seen as being at the behest of the legitimate Venezuelan government in exile, but no one wants a land invasion or to see American missiles killing civilians.
I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden was also known for his dovish politics.
My personal experience tells me that people are happy to praise China’s achievements in technology and poverty alleviation, but when it comes to the territorial issues of Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a completely uniform narrative has already formed.
Every single day on Reddit I see a new map of China being Balkanized.
> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
> "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial expansion to me.
The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.
Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.
So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.
Are you arguing by metaphor that the Han Chinese on Taiwan are slaves to the native Taiwanese, or what? Or that slaves weren't Americans? I have no idea what your comment is trying to say.
Xinjiang and Tibet have been part of China for many periods throughout history; Japan never was.
At most, Korea was merely part of the tributary system.
There is a fundamental difference here.
I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.
Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.
And they will never become part of China again, ever.
They once were, and after World War II they were supposed to be handed over to the Republic of China (Nationalist government), but the Nationalists stupidly refused. Then the United States gave them to Japan as a reward.
This completely violated the post-WWII United Nations agreements. So if the UN still wants to claim any legitimacy or relevance, these places should not belong to Japan, but they will never belong to China either.
Okinawa was as much a part of China as Botswana and Argentina were. Going back centuries, they've always spoken a japonic language so your government propaganda is a strange approach for seeding justification for invasion in the future.
The Okinawans are a branch of Japanese, but the Ryukyu kingdom was tributary to the Chinese empire before being annexed by Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago, the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few decades after being occupied by Japan there still were many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any opposition.
I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would have been their decision.
Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong ties with China for many centuries and which recognized the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily discriminated in Japan.
I never said they speak Chinese or anything like that. in ancient times they were part of China’s tributary system. The Chinese tributary system explicitly allowed different places to keep their own culture and language.
It was Japan that annexed them and then systematically destroyed the local culture.
The post-WWII agreements (Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Proclamation, San Francisco Peace Treaty framework) all stated that these places was to be stripped from Japan.
China is only using this historical fact now to pressure Japan on the propaganda and diplomatic level.
No Chinese person actually believes China should (or will) annex them.
All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China.
That’s the essential difference.
Tributary networks were a system of trade and diplomacy. It'd be like saying the Philippines belongs to Indonesia because they're in ASEAN. And saying Okinawa doesn't belong to Japan is the exact, 100% identical argument Russia used and continues to use to justify its brutal invasions of Georgia, Ukraine, and more and more countries. It's kind of bizarre how anyone who speaks English could assume this propaganda works, though I am making the giant leap in assuming I'm not talking to Deepseek right now.
What I’ve always wanted to emphasize is the post-World War II agreements. That should be the real focus, right? At least according to those treaties and agreements, these territories (Okinawa/Ryukyu, etc.) explicitly do not belong to Japan.
I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world would be a much better place if China just chilled the fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how long will you go back in history to justify your greed for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and they succeed in many places, they are very close to something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?
I think you’ve nailed it perfectly. China definitely has its imperialist side, but the way it operates is completely different from the US style.
I often feel China’s foreign policy is kinda “dumb” in execution, but that’s just our national character at work. Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart. So China’s approach is: “You guys fight it out yourselves, whoever wins, I’ll do business with them. Just don’t touch the projects and interests I already have.”
This naturally makes ordinary people in those countries dislike China – they genuinely believe China is the root cause of many of their problems, and they think importing Western systems will let them solve everything and stand on their own. In reality, that probably won’t happen most of the time. But there’s no helping it; I don’t know what a “better” Chinese foreign policy would even look like.
All I can say is China has been really lucky – thank Trump, thank Sanae Takaichi – they’ve helped us way more than people realize.
While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.
From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.
And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.
And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time
Sure, nationalism definitely serves that purpose. But please consider: in the most recent conflicts/flare-ups, the initiator has actually been Japan, not China.
Their new female prime minister is an extreme-right-wing politician who is not only provoking China, but also picking fights with South Korea and Russia at the same time, while pushing aggressively anti-immigrant and exclusionary policies.
Her approval ratings are also unusually high.
It feels pretty strange that Japan gets zero criticism for this while all the focus stays on China.
> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]
Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.
so i guess the Mayanmar people shouldn't blame china now.. they should build some thing like the Vietness people: we fight the chinese and we always win, lets be proud of it.
The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to hint at future military action against Japan.
It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even originally theirs.
No. The only way the Russians could prevail is to break out the nukes, and that would always run the risk of a nuclear response from the US. Japan's navy is more powerful than the Russian pacific fleet in a conventional conflict. Any attempt to land on Hokkaido would be stillborn.
Even if they managed to land they would probably be pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are already having trouble supporting troops just across the border. There's no way they would be able to support an invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians could pull that off without opposition, something they would certainly have in spades.
> Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 is unwavering. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-japan/
Somewhat related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44828559
isn't it risky to build this in a seismically active region? wouldn't somewhere that has almost no history of earthquakes like korea be better?
It would be darkly amusing if all chips come from either politically unstable Taiwan or seismically unstable Hokkaido.
But then Japan seems amazing at producing all sorts of other delicate things, despite all of its soil being basically built out of earthquakes, so I guess they have this bit figured out.
Japan doesn't have the option of building in Korea? Not if it wants to retain sovereign control.
Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.
What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468/ch...
China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
Wait till you find out Taiwan has the same claims.
yep, and the industrial output/military to back up its claim to the mainland! no wait....
China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
isn't that the same clever argument that Comrade Vladimir uses in Ukraine?
They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
If we aren’t already in a world war from China solving Taiwan as you say, we would be in one from China taking Korea or Japan.
Japan has a big army/"self-defence force", impenetrable terrain over most of its territory, and 45 tonnes of plutonium. Even if the defence treaty with the US vanishes, the probability of a foreign invasion is rather low.
"Once China solves the Taiwan problem"? Then I suppose Japan has nothing to worry about.
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For those unfamiliar with the history, Taiwan’s (ROC) own constitution says it is part of China. Its dispute is with the CCP, not China itself.
Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan conflict is just ignorant.
That is, the constitution written by the KMT dictatorship that was awarded the island as spoils of war after the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in WW2.
In the present day, neither the Taiwanese government nor Taiwanese people are in some kind of dispute with the CCP over who owns Gansu province or whatever, they just would like recognition of their already-existing sovereignty.
The ROC claims it is China, not a part of China.
But sibling comment is correct that today the PRC and ROC are functionally two separate nations, and neither wants unification by submitting completely to the other. So the only way it's happening is with force.
> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.
Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.
yeah its a civil war, lets see who will won.
(Thank you for acknowledging that this is a civil war — that's something you rarely see on Western forums.)
Chiang Kai-shek is a standard part of the world history course in the US in high school. We know why China wants Taiwan at the personal level, much of the world is just interested in that not happening.
It's a civil war like the American revolution was a civil war and France helped out.
This is the first time I've ever seen a non-Chinese person say it this way on Reddit, X, or this platform. I must have scrolled through way too much Reddit.
Yep, it's 100% common knowledge. I distinctly remember Mr. Eyerly making a point to explain why Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi were both valid transliterations in my 10th grade world history class.
No one in America with a high school education believes that Taiwan is an unrelated country that China randomly decided to pick on after throwing a dart at a map. Chinese history from antiquity to modern European/Japanese colonialism and war crimes to the unresolved civil war and KMT's retreat from the mainland are standard course material; the history and politics around reunification aren't some big mystery.
Don't get me wrong. The history is interesting, but from an American perspective interesting history doesn't translate into justification for violent incursion on an established nation's sovereignty. We largely don't even support our own past unprovoked invasions, much less invasions by rivals against stable and prosperous liberal democracies that we have long-standing friendly relationships with. The American lesson from our history isn't "we screwed up in Iraq and Vietnam, so other countries should get a pass to behave similarly"; it's "let's work to prevent such tragedies from repeating".
so the war in Venezuela...
Yep, any war of aggression would be wildly unpopular today. Limited actions may be somewhat tolerated inasmuch as they're seen as being at the behest of the legitimate Venezuelan government in exile, but no one wants a land invasion or to see American missiles killing civilians.
I'm not saying it could never happen, but the party in power would be burning a ridiculous amount of political capital, to put it mildly. A big part of the reason President Trump even exists is the perception that Bush lied to get us into Iraq and Obama kept us there. Trump consistently ran as the "anti-war" candidate, and Biden was also known for his dovish politics.
> that's something you rarely see on Western forums.
No, it's quite common.
My personal experience tells me that people are happy to praise China’s achievements in technology and poverty alleviation, but when it comes to the territorial issues of Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a completely uniform narrative has already formed. Every single day on Reddit I see a new map of China being Balkanized.
> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
> "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial expansion to me.
basiclly every big country...
The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.
Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.
So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.
During the American Civil War, the majority of the population in the Deep South states were actually Black slaves
Are you arguing by metaphor that the Han Chinese on Taiwan are slaves to the native Taiwanese, or what? Or that slaves weren't Americans? I have no idea what your comment is trying to say.
> No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.
I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang
Xinjiang and Tibet have been part of China for many periods throughout history; Japan never was. At most, Korea was merely part of the tributary system. There is a fundamental difference here.
I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.
Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.
And they will never become part of China again, ever. They once were, and after World War II they were supposed to be handed over to the Republic of China (Nationalist government), but the Nationalists stupidly refused. Then the United States gave them to Japan as a reward. This completely violated the post-WWII United Nations agreements. So if the UN still wants to claim any legitimacy or relevance, these places should not belong to Japan, but they will never belong to China either.
Okinawa was as much a part of China as Botswana and Argentina were. Going back centuries, they've always spoken a japonic language so your government propaganda is a strange approach for seeding justification for invasion in the future.
The Okinawans are a branch of Japanese, but the Ryukyu kingdom was tributary to the Chinese empire before being annexed by Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
Before being annexed by Japan one century and a half ago, the culture of Okinawa was much more strongly influenced by China than by Japan, which is why during the first few decades after being occupied by Japan there still were many in Okinawa who would have preferred to become a part of China instead of a part of Japan, but the new Japanese authorities have eventually succeeded to suppress any opposition.
I believe that there is no doubt that Okinawa should belong to Japan and not to China, but historically this was not so clear cut. If the Okinawans could have voted in the 19th century to whom they should belong, instead of being occupied by force, it is unknown which would have been their decision.
Therefore any comparisons with Botswana or Argentina are completely inappropriate for a kingdom that had strong ties with China for many centuries and which recognized the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor.
While for me as a foreigner, the similarities between the Ryukyuan languages and mainland Japanese are obvious and many features of shared cultural heritage with ancient Japan (Yamato) are also obvious, these were not at all obvious for the Japanese themselves, who, after occupying Okinawa tended to consider the Okinawans as foreign barbarians, so for a long time they were heavily discriminated in Japan.
I never said they speak Chinese or anything like that. in ancient times they were part of China’s tributary system. The Chinese tributary system explicitly allowed different places to keep their own culture and language. It was Japan that annexed them and then systematically destroyed the local culture. The post-WWII agreements (Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Proclamation, San Francisco Peace Treaty framework) all stated that these places was to be stripped from Japan. China is only using this historical fact now to pressure Japan on the propaganda and diplomatic level. No Chinese person actually believes China should (or will) annex them.
All Chinese media are emphasizing that these places do not belong to Japan, not that they belong to China. That’s the essential difference.
Tributary networks were a system of trade and diplomacy. It'd be like saying the Philippines belongs to Indonesia because they're in ASEAN. And saying Okinawa doesn't belong to Japan is the exact, 100% identical argument Russia used and continues to use to justify its brutal invasions of Georgia, Ukraine, and more and more countries. It's kind of bizarre how anyone who speaks English could assume this propaganda works, though I am making the giant leap in assuming I'm not talking to Deepseek right now.
What I’ve always wanted to emphasize is the post-World War II agreements. That should be the real focus, right? At least according to those treaties and agreements, these territories (Okinawa/Ryukyu, etc.) explicitly do not belong to Japan.
No, i'm the lates Kimi model
I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world would be a much better place if China just chilled the fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how long will you go back in history to justify your greed for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and they succeed in many places, they are very close to something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?
I think you’ve nailed it perfectly. China definitely has its imperialist side, but the way it operates is completely different from the US style. I often feel China’s foreign policy is kinda “dumb” in execution, but that’s just our national character at work. Take Myanmar as an example: if we were the US, it would be simple – send in troops, install a pro-China regime, done. But we’re not America, and we can’t do that without the entire Western media tearing us apart. So China’s approach is: “You guys fight it out yourselves, whoever wins, I’ll do business with them. Just don’t touch the projects and interests I already have.” This naturally makes ordinary people in those countries dislike China – they genuinely believe China is the root cause of many of their problems, and they think importing Western systems will let them solve everything and stand on their own. In reality, that probably won’t happen most of the time. But there’s no helping it; I don’t know what a “better” Chinese foreign policy would even look like. All I can say is China has been really lucky – thank Trump, thank Sanae Takaichi – they’ve helped us way more than people realize.
While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.
From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.
And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.
And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time
Sure, nationalism definitely serves that purpose. But please consider: in the most recent conflicts/flare-ups, the initiator has actually been Japan, not China. Their new female prime minister is an extreme-right-wing politician who is not only provoking China, but also picking fights with South Korea and Russia at the same time, while pushing aggressively anti-immigrant and exclusionary policies. Her approval ratings are also unusually high. It feels pretty strange that Japan gets zero criticism for this while all the focus stays on China.
> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]
Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.
[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.
so i guess the Mayanmar people shouldn't blame china now.. they should build some thing like the Vietness people: we fight the chinese and we always win, lets be proud of it.
The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to hint at future military action against Japan.
It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.
Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future?
If you mean Russia, then no.
Ukraine has a proper army and the support of Europe, albeit with dated weapons. Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in. Hokkaido has always been under threat from Russia and the Soviets quickly took the Kuril Islands, which wasn't even originally theirs.
No. The only way the Russians could prevail is to break out the nukes, and that would always run the risk of a nuclear response from the US. Japan's navy is more powerful than the Russian pacific fleet in a conventional conflict. Any attempt to land on Hokkaido would be stillborn.
Even if they managed to land they would probably be pushed off pretty quickly. Japan's military is more powerful than that of Ukraine, and the Russians are already having trouble supporting troops just across the border. There's no way they would be able to support an invasion force over water. I'm skeptical the Russians could pull that off without opposition, something they would certainly have in spades.
> Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
Japan is a turn key nuclear state, that is all…
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