Somewhat reddit-brained lib friend of mine sent this article which triggered a whole discussion of geopolitics: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-euv-machines-are-equipped-with-a-remote-self-destruct-in-case-of-an-invasion
He said that would reduce the chance of an invasion and I was like (paraphrasing): “really? does it? the generations-long and unfinished business of the chinese civil war and all the history there is outweighed by the thought of losing one chip fab that they’ve already proven they don’t really need after all the sanctions? They aren’t going to invade unless their hand is forced, there’s literally already US troops on taiwan-held islands, if they were on the brink of invading they would have done it already, but they aren’t.”
He basically argued that the majority of people there wanted to be independent therefore its simple self determination and the US should help them, etc.
I said the no capitalist state gives a flying fuck about self determination and asked if texas has the right to secede, or perhaps more relevantly, if texas settlers had the right to secede from mexico and join the US in the first place? because its not like the nationalists that took over the island were its native inhabitants, who are now mostly dead, flooding a low-population place with “settlers” doesn’t mean you own it…
we went back and forth a bunch and he stopped arguing when I pointed out the inconsistency of supporting palestine but also taiwan, when they (while not the same, taiwan wasn’t settler colonialism) have kind of a similar arc, what with israel’s “majority”, both having invaded and largely displacing the prior inhabitants.
I don’t feel I had all the best arguments at my disposal, though overall I feel good about my responses.
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For Taiwan a lot of people in the west just have no idea about the history. Things like the White Terror, Chiang Kai-Shek, even the Chinese Civil War - they’ve never even heard of these things let alone are able to place them along a timeline and articulate how they relate to Taiwan. So I usually just take the non-argumentative angle of being like “yeah it’s a pretty interesting problem, yada yada yada… (briefly talk about the past 75 years of history)” - even name-dropping some of these events will get people to realize they know shit about fuck, which might open cracks for discussions in the future. If people know this entire history and still believe Taiwan should secede and form its own independent country then that opens interesting avenues for discussion about secession generally and state formation. But yeah basically my approach is to not really argue but just discuss these concepts both in the abstract and with reference to analogous situations closer to home.
My quick go-to is "Imagine if the Confederacy, after losing the civil war, retreated to Puerto Rice, slaughtered the natives and every emancipationist they could find, and then spent the next 40 years in a state of martial law trying to root out “Yankee sympathizers”.
This is exactly what I say except I use Key West instead of Puerto Rico. It’s more clearly a part of the US and it was a part of the confederacy
I literally said this but I said “Cuba” not PR.
that was right before they said “taiwan has the right to self govern and make their own alliances, and ask their allies for support when they are threatened by a neighbor, just like ukraine”. I should have stuck to the analogy because I’m really curious what they think isn’t fitting about the comparison. If I had to guess its at best just “well the nationalists already ruled taiwan but invading PR/Cuba would be unacceptable” but that’s not even exactly true, it was handed to them by the japanese iirc
I often use the same argument but, being French, with the French Revolution, Louis XVI and Corsica instead.
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“imagine if mussolini, instead of getting captured and owned by communist partisans, fled with his secret police and what remained of his armed forces, to sicily. and if america called a halt to the conflict after the rest of italy was liberated from fascism and started funneling money to the island of fascists to prop it up as a government in exile to challenge the legitimacy of a socialist government in italy and be a training ground for spies and saboteurs.”
“anyway, 70 years later, welcome to taiwan.”
“also, check out operation gladio, because what the US actually did in post-war italy is also wild.”
EDIT: a funny historical bit of trivia to mention is that apparently Truman grew bored / irritated with the dependency of the chinese fascists on the american payroll and their corrupt grifting, so would refer to Chiang Kai-Shek as “Cash My Check”.
A few points:
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The majority of Taiwanese people are pro status quo.
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The separatist party ate shit in the 2024 legislative elections and only won the presidency by a weak plurality.
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The original Indigenous population of Taiwan tend to vote for the pro status quo party and are fairly hostile to the separatist party.
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Taiwan as the Republic of China claims what the People’s Republic of China claims (plus some additional territory like Mongolia) and has aggressively pursued those claims in the South China Sea, including building two naval bases and teaming up with the PRC against Vietnam and the Philippines in a legal case.
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The original ROC constitution doesn’t even have the word “Taiwan” in it and the later addendum to the ROC constitution only mentions “Taiwan” once.
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I don’t think it’s that important to press, if they want to put self destruct mechanisms on factories, it doesn’t really matter. But what the majority of people want is maintenance of the status quo, not formal independence. The status quo of deliberate ambiguity has worked well enough for the past 40 years, and I fail to see how deviating from that would benefit anybody, except through scoring political points.
I’ve never met anyone who could articulate a historical basis for Taiwan’s independence from mainland China. It’s not even how residents or politicians of either part of China think of Taiwan. Besides 5-10,% of the island who got side-tracked and ingested brain fatal doses of CNN or BBC and like 1,% of the mainland, nobody really disagrees that there is only one China, and you could kind of say they disagree about who governs the whole of it…
No one besides the most propagandized people on Earth think they care even a bit about Taiwan. Of course the propaganda is just pushing for an untenable situation requiring more weapons sales to ROC, because of the lack of historical basis or popular consent in either involved country.
Does the RoC still claim it owns Mongolia? If Libs were capable of consistency it’d be funny to see them try to work their way around that one. “There is only one Republic of China and I fully support the Republic of China’s stated goal of invading Mongolia and forcibly re-integrating it in to the Chinese mainland” and then just watch their brain cell fizz.
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Oh no i am a lib! I don’t know the term, either
He basically argued that the majority of people there wanted to be independent
Taiwan’s current status is not independent, it’s in a weird in-between state. Polling has shown over and over again that the people of Taiwan mainly support the continuation of the status quo. This person is provably wrong and has no idea what they are talking about.
taiwan wasn’t settler colonialism
Also absolutely false. It was settled by the KMT circa '47-'49 when it became clear to them they were about to lose the Civil War. A huge number of KMT-aligned people went to Taiwan and the KMT established a brutal military dictatorship that slaughtered natives and dissidents for decades in the White Terror. That’s part of the reason that indigenous people make up only like 2% of the population there (though much of the population is the much older wave of Han Chinese).
Not that any of this is particularly worth arguing to your friend about.
He basically argued that the majority of people there wanted to be independent
This is a good place to start, because it’s close to something with an objective answer:
Less than 6% of people in Taiwan either support the immediate pursuit of independence from, or unification with, the People’s Republic of China. More than 88% want to maintain the status quo—at least for now.
If they argue against this anyway, you’re wasting your time. If they are receptive to learning that the people on the ground have a much different opinion on the matter than your friend has been led to believe, you can work with that.
It also transitions smoothly into talking about how everyone – the PRC, the ROC, the U.S. even – view Taiwan as part of China.
Tell them you fully support the Republic of China’s claim to control of Taiwan and then try to just surf the chaos.
What conflict?
Is this lib friend of yours good on Palestine? If so, try using that as context for understanding the rest of foreign policy. Then show them what side the governments of taiwan and
take on the ongoing genocide and ask them how this can be justifiedEdit: oh I can’t read, you already mostly tried that
Uh, maybe try going over it slower in more detail
You appear to be thinking in terms of winning an argument.
Political arguments are the same as religious arguments. Essentially they never resolve and there is no winner.
The best you can hope for is that you both learn something from each other.
If you keep that in mind you’ll have more fun, learn something and have the opportunity to teach something.
Tons of people change their political opinions, it just usually happens as a culmination of a bunch of different factors over time, rather than an on-the-spot change right there in the conversation.
Its not necessarily just “winning the argument”, although I do fall into that at times, I want to understand the situation better and I know many of my comrades on here know a lot more about it and the theory surrounding it than I do, hence the question/comm.
I don’t hound this friend about it, I just push back on their narratives when I believe they are wrong or buying into propaganda. I am of the belief that political arguments, engaged in good faith, can and do resolve, when the people involved recognize their common interests and take a materialist approach to analyzing the political situation through the lens of those interests.
This friend does sometimes teach me things or get me to question my understanding of topics, but is generally less well read on politics, and so I like to try and expound on why I don’t share their perspective when we disagree. I’m not angry when they don’t agree, but I do think that with sufficient discussion we’d land closer to my perspective than theirs.
I think this is mystification of the mechanisms of belief. My favorite essay has a better account for explaining how it is both very stubborn and very Protean:
Important thing to keep in mind is when to give up. If after showing them the facts of Taiwanese opinions on independence, history of colonialism, fascism, and oppression they still disagree, you stop trying and do better things with your time. You have limited time and energy to agitate people, always go for the easiest targets to maximize your results
