Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.
This is naive. The government simply doesn't have that power. If they tried to downplay Taiwan people would be absolutely furious.
The extent of "mind control" is really not that great. The internet exists, and despite imperfect controls people have access to information. It would probably take Xi down to try to abandon Taiwan.
Serious question: Why do the Chinese people care so much about Taiwan though? What do they want with it? What's the endgame plan?
If the vision is that everyone will be living happily ever after under the PRC umbrella, I could see some flaws in that reasoning. Like a whole population that will probably take up arms guerilla-style. I've visited Taiwan and even wearing pro-CCP colours is frowned upon. If they just want the territory and not the people and it'll end up another XinJiang style "re-education" camp, well that's obviously something unsupportable.
Also, of course Taiwan is so crucial to global supply chains that this has all the ingredients to become a world war in short order, which is pretty worrying.
How about unification, under the government of Taiwan? Is everybody down with that? No? Oh, then maybe the mainland could see why Taiwan isn't down with unification on the mainland's terms.
But that's the problem. Neither side is willing to be unified "under" the other. That's not unification; that's subordination. Neither is willing to be subordinated. So no non-violent unification is currently possible.
My point is that whether the west thinks the Chinese ought to think that way, is not very important. People can debate that all day long, but at the end of the day the Chinese do think that way, and they are willing to fight for it.
This has strategical implications. Do we want to grandstand or do we want to actually solve a problem? If we want to grandstand at all cost, then we have to wage war with China and force them into submission. If we want an actual peaceful resolution then something has to give.
Taiwan is already an independent nation by all measures that anyone really cares about; the status quo is to their advantage. If China wants to change this, they are going to have to wage war by sending ships across the strait.
Maybe the Taiwanese can defend their nation mostly by themselves; amphibious assault is not easy, even for major world powers. Even more difficult with satellites watching your (extensive) preparations. Even more difficult with hostile submarines prowling the seas. The PLA can't march to Taiwan.
China does not have that much of a problem with the status quo. The status quo with the One China Policy has worked very well for decades. In fact, 2015, right before the DPP got to power, could be regarded as the height of cross-straight relations. Things only started going sour after the DPP started making moves towards true independence, and after the US sent increasing numbers of warships to China's back yard.
It is not China that is deviating from the status quo.
Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.
Then you clearly either haven't read enough of my tweets, or you don't know official CCP positions as well as you think you do in order to differentiate my views with official CCP positions. Do I need to copy a few links where I disagreed with CCP official position?
If you think my views are too much like CCP's, you should talk to more mainlanders. There's a way deeper rabbit hole out there.
Yes I have a different opinion than the mainstream western one. So what? I can have my own legitimate, independently researched opinion, of which some parts may or may not align with other actors because that's what I happen to believe in based on research results.
Who is "we" and "they"? The west vs China of course. This was, after all, the context to which I was replying to. Not sure how you missed that context.
What's absolutely disgusting is you misrepresenting my views like that in order to smear me just because you don't like the fact that I have a different opinion about China. If you read that thread it is perfectly clear that I merely pointed out that different opinions about the situation exists without giving my own view, but that's not acceptable to you because you seek to doxx. To be perfectly clear, if that wasn't already so, I am against any kind of sexual assault and I support an investigation into corrupt officials. Thank you very much.
You presented yourself as an authority (native speaker) and provided a translation + opinion of her statement. You omitted the part about her crying, etc. Why? And why do you refuse to you update us on your opinion now that the omission has been pointed out?
Again, the question: does your opinion of her statement change when considering the panicked crying (that you casually omitted) which was pointed out by another user?
>To be perfectly clear, if that wasn't already so, I am against any kind of sexual assault and I support an investigation into corrupt officials.
Another dodge. The question isn't about generalities. It isn't about "different opinions about China". The question is about this very specific instance.
(I didn't doxx you, your information is in your profile.)
I never said I'm an authority, I simply posted a link to a translation and I said I checked it. People can choose to listen to me, or not. You made up the strawman that I'm positioning myself as an authority.
My post was never supposed to be a full summary, and I never claimed that it is, so it's very strange that you attack me for not fully summarizing. Passages such as crying, feeling like a zombie, etc are already covered by western media and people have likely already read that -- me pointing out all that again does not add anything useful. The intention from the beginning is to let people read the full thing, including translation nuances, and to let them read parts that they probably haven't read yet (or not in its original form), so that people can make up their own minds. That includes reading up about crying, and more importantly, how the passage about crying was written as well as the context in which that passage appears.
I added some commentary after people asked me to comment on another translation and compare that with the first. But that commentary was secondary to the main goal, which is to let people read the original, full text and make up their own minds. Thus it is neither necessary nor a goal of that commentary to be a full analysis, and I never claimed that it was.
Why are you so obsessed with this? Why is my opinion so much more important to you than what Peng Shuai herself wrote in full? What are you afraid of? Why do you not like the fact that I let others read the original source?
I think there is only one possible answer: you have a specific opinion that you want to force on others, so you are alarmed by others being exposed to more and original information. That's some chilling 1984 thought police behavior right there.
This is our 6th (or so) exchange on this matter and the first time you've even acknowledged that the crying wording exists(!). I've asked you what you think of the crying over and over and you repeatedly answer in vague terms like "people are free to listen to me if they want...", but never, not once, answering the very direct, very specific, and very simple question.
What do you make of the crying?
Do you not see how your attempt to skirt the question makes you look like an apologist and not a neutral commentator? Do you think people reading our exchanges won't notice?
>I think there is only one possible answer: you have a specific opinion that you want to force on others, so you are alarmed by others being exposed to more and original information.
I haven't disputed any "information" you've provided. Not once. The truth is exactly the opposite: I've been questioning your omission of key information.
>That's some chilling 1984 thought police behavior right there.
In a thread precisely about abuse of state power, with real lives at stake, this comment is tasteless. It's you who support the CCP in almost all your commentary here and on Twitter.
I hope you see the irony. Rest assured, people reading this will.
>Why are you so obsessed with this? ... What are you afraid of?
As someone with women in his family who have suffered sexual assault, I find your refusal to even acknowledge her crying, both sickening and cowardly. That's not even to mention your unwavering support for the CCP. But that will be on your conscience not mine.
As someone who also has a close woman friend who suffered such assault, and as someone who has even discussed the Peng Shuai issue with multiple women, I find your willingness to take a pitchfork to go after imaginary enemies to be sickening.
Okay you know what, this time I'll tell you why I was reluctant to answer.
The first part is: because I don't trust you!
Here, just look at this sentence:
> It's you who support the CCP in almost all your commentary here and on Twitter.
This is a huge misrepresentation of my (much more nuanced and complex) position. If you do good research into my Twitter history will you find multiple points where I disagree with CCP. But the fact that you disregard such facts, and choose to misrepresent me as "supporting CCP in almost all commentary", is telling.
Right off the bat, your suspicious, paranoid behavior gives you away as someone who actively seeks to label people as a propagandist, shill, enemy, criminal, etc. merely for disagreeing with your world view on China. The fact that you continue to stalk and hunt me further confirms it.
The second part is because the Hacker News crowd loves to attack, or downvote without discussing, comments on China that they don't agree with. I have to be careful with not offending the crowd by giving too much wrong opinion. And here you are, zooming in on wrong opinions, which you call "apologist".
I've discussed the Peng Shuai situation in detail in private with multiple people, including women. The opinion among mainland Chinese is, for the most part, very different than the narrative painted in mainstream western media. But why should I say too many things which will potentially cause a flood of downvotes and shitstorm simply because that's not what people here like to hear?
Just think about how wrong this is. For a crowd that loves to preach freedom of speech, I have to fear giving my opinion, in no small part thanks to people like you who continue to harass me and continue to label imaginary enemies. For a crowd who wears the mantra of "we are only against the CCP, not the Chinese people", I have to be wary of giving opinions aligned with the Chinese people. No, having a different opinion on China is not "being an apologist", it's having a different opinion.
So my statement that you are engaging in 1984 thought policing, and actually also in McCarthyism 2.0, is not "irony", it is accurate. The biggest irony is that even though you are supposed to be a supporter of free speech, you attempt to deny others of their free speech by labeling them as enemies, merely because you disagree with them.
You know what, my relatives lives are indeed at stake, and they are indeed being threatened — by a potential US-led war for which its consent is manufactured by anti-China propaganda. So I'm pushing back at that. I can see that you have fully bought into the China threat theory, zooming into anybody who has a different opinion about China, like a drone, denying others of the opportunity to see a different perspective. This is entirely deplorable behavior.
>This is a huge misrepresentation of my (much more nuanced and complex) position. If you do good research into my Twitter history will you find multiple points where I disagree with CCP. But the fact that you disregard such facts, and choose to misrepresent me as "supporting CCP in almost all commentary", is telling.
You've said this a few times so I'm going to call you on it.
Can you point to a few examples? Specifically, do any of your Twitter posts disagree with the CCP's official stance on censorship, human rights, international relations, international boundaries, democracy, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tiananmen Square? Are any of your comments critical of specific, highly ranking CCP officials?
Or, are your comments limited to economic policy and other similarly non-controversial issues?
You've repeatedly touted how critical you are of the CCP on Twitter as proof that your opinion is not one-sided, so I'm looking forward to your response.
And actually, now that I think about, even this is another example of you grossly misrepresenting me:
> and the first time you've even acknowledged that the crying wording exists(!)
Go back and read what I wrote in verbatim! I wrote:
> There is no doubt that Zhao is a manipulative jerk and that he engaged in unacceptable questionable acts.
"unacceptable acts" include that which make her cry! I didn't "omit" saying that he did deplorable things. This is yet another deplorable example of you looking for imaginary enemies and engaging in thought policing.
That's because Taiwan had maintained the One China Policy. This worked very very well for decades. It's only recently when they are becoming more serious about true independence that things are souring.
Furthermore, China can no longer afford to use empty threats when US warships are inceasingly sailing in China's backyard. Things weren't so militarily contested before.
And yet it keeps making them, and no actually doing anything about any of this.
It has been decades of empty threats. I am sure people said the same thing, the last time more empty threats for made.
Yeah, no. Thats the facts. They keep making empty threats, and not following through on them, and they are still doing that to this day.
> more serious about true independence
Well, Taiwan is already truly independent, and that has been the case for decades. They have their own laws, borders, and taxes. That is what an independent country is.
Furthermore, the official stance of the ruling party, is that they are already independent.
Nothing really needs to change, for them to become independent, because that is already the case.
> had maintained the One China Policy.
They have their own taxes, laws and borders. They are already an independent country, actually. There is nothing to be maintained, other than some fantasy make believe lip service.
Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.
But you seem to think that this trend can go on forever no matter what. That is a dangerous mistake. What's needed is deescalation, not more escalation in the faulty thinking that they will continue to do nothing no matter what happens.
> Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.
Exactly, I agree. They keep making threats, that they don't follow through on, and they will continue to not follow through on them.
Nothing is needed, to do anything, given the fact that Taiwan is already independent, and that has been the case for decades.
> What's needed is deescalation
There is nothing to de-escalate. Taiwan is already an independent country, and it has been so for decades, and that will continue.
They have had their own taxes, laws, and borders for decades. And they have those same things today. Nothing has changed. They are already independent, and that was the case before, and still is now.
And anyway, the only one who can choose to stop making those empty threats is china. Complain at them if you don't like their big talk, and no follow through threats.
I am saying that none of this has changed. Taiwan is its own independent country, for decades, and we've been doing the same things, which is follow our defensive treaty with them, and have been doing this for decades.
That's the status quo. Nothing needs to change. Nobody is shooting down Chinese military assets.
All that is happening is the same exact, completely normal defensive treaty actions that we've been doing for a while.
And china isn't going to do anything about this status quo, of Taiwan already being an independent country, with a defense treaty with the US.
Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.