TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – China’s military sent 103 warplanes toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period in what the island’s defense ministry said Monday was a daily record in recent times.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – China’s military sent 103 warplanes toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period in what the island’s defense ministry said Monday was a daily record in recent times.
Part 1
Definitely not purely a semantic dispute. Have you read Lenin? Lenin’s analysis of imperialism still stands as the dominant critical analysis of imperialism, though there has been some recent attempts to update it to adapt to the new form imperialism caused by unipolar hegemony under the name superimperialism or hyperimperialism.
The context of that sentence in the report shows that in culturally Tibetan regions outside the Tibet Autonomous Region are showing opposite trends, meaning that “ethnic minorities” are becoming majorities. Clearly this is not a program of Han supremacy but of social integration. Autonomous regions are not meant to be insular, but integrated into one country with multiple systems. Compare this to actual colonialism, where colonists use rape, child separation, enslavement, cultural repression, starvation, land fractionalization, and other techniques to dilute and dismantle ethnic minorities. China is doing none of this. In the TAR, the Tibetan language is used to conduct nearly all business and all education, from grade school through university. That is not colonialism.
It’s only insidious if you presuppose the intent.
Well, considering that the top position of party secretary is the only referenced in your quotation, and considering the autonomous regions experience a significant amount of indigenous cultural practices on all dimensions, we must imagine that a Han Chinese party secretary can’t possibly be anyone that has the requisite social history to be responsible for that flourishing. Given that, we come to the conclusion that, in fact, the indigenous members of the autonomous regions wield significant influence over their regions and that the party secretary does exactly what a party secretary that is correctly managing an autonomous region would do - ensuring alignment with the state’s core strategic direction. That means ensuring the autonomous regions are not infiltrated by Western spoilers, elevating compradors to positions of influence or power, and ensuring party resources are allocated in ways that maintain good relations with the region. If this was not what was happening, then you would be seeing separatists and sympathizers all over the place. Instead what we see is separatists are almost exclusively associated with Western programs for destabilization and most of the population in the autonomous regions are aware of the need for protecting their region against these interests. When the US is training Tibetan terrorists and air lifting them into the region to conduct acts of violence and build terror networks, it’s pretty important to maintain a counter-intelligence posture even in autonomous regions.
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I’m not saying that the West invented colonialism. I’m saying the colonialism you are talking about is explicitly a phenomenon of Western society. Japan adopting it doesn’t stop it from being a Western social project, that would be race essentialism. China is actively working to undo the damage of colonialism qua the Western social phenomenon. It cannot do so by replicating it.
But more to the point, you assume that China would get the same benefit of colonialism that the West did and is therefore incentivized to engage in Western colonialism. This is where your belief about the world does not match the reality of the world. The reality is that Western colonialism is fatally flawed and those countries that engaged in it are being undone by it. China is aware of this and is actively working to bring about the conditions that ensure the contradictions of Western society move inexorably towards the resolution of those contradictions by the undoing of the colonial project. If China were to then begin its own colonial project, it would be doing so with the full knowledge that it would ultimately destroy China. This is what Western chauvinists can’t seem to grasp. The anti-imperialist movement is fully aware of how unsustainable the North Atlantic project is. They have no desire to emulate it. Western chauvinists just think that imperialism worked really well and now all the anti-imperialists just want to become imperialists in their own right, because obviously your opponents are guilty of the same things you are guilty of, right? But that’s just projection. Modern anti-imperialists movements are based on Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and are fully aware of the absolute death trap that imperialism is. Their understanding of the world and how it works is that if they engage in imperialism, they will collapse, just like the West is collapsing. Don’t project your bad behavior onto China.
You don’t know what imperialism is. Your definition of imperialism is so anemic that it cannot distinguish between imperialism and anti-imperialism.
(Continued in Part 2)
I mean you’re entire argument is based upon a different understanding of the word imperialism, I’d say that’s pretty semantic.
And yes, I have read Lenin. And while I agree with a lot of the overarching theory of imperialism seen through a capitalist lens, I think it fails to explain the nuance of a lot of historic and modern conflicts. For one I believe that it fails to recognize historic form of imperialism that happened before the industrial age. It’s overarching themes can be forced into perspective, but it requires the use of a very plastic definition of capitalism. Secondly, I think that Lenin’s theory of imperialism being a stage of capitalism is a product of its time, and is thus is a extremely eurocentric view of history and geopolitics.
I do t quite see how you’ve made that you interpretation? It just sounds like the native people of Tibet are being pushed out of their own homeland. How does directing more funding to immigration than the entire autonomous regions gdp equate to social integration?
And there isn’t a history of reeducation camps that have been accused of rape, family separation, and cultural repression in any autonomous zones?
Lol, that’s like saying the US didn’t colonize Puerto Rico because they still use Spanish as the official language. China has jailed and killed hundreds of priest and nuns in the country, going as far as disappearing their religious leader.
It’s only not insidious if you ignore the possibility of ill intent. If the US started funding immigration to Puerto Rico for white people, to the point that it exceeded Puerto Rico s entire gdp… would you hold your judgment until you understood their intent?
You can’t substantiate that claim? There’s been plenty of evidence to suggest that indigenous cultures have plenty of limitations imposed by the state.
Again, this statement is predicated on an unsubstantiated claim.
You are basing your entire argument on a post hoc fallacy, you have not substantiated the claim that indigenous people are flourishing.
Lol, okay so your logic is that if there were oppression going on that it would cause separatist movements, but according to you all separatist movements were started by western powers … very convenient.
Yes, my point is that china is not immune to adopting certain aspects of western colonialism.
That’s another unsubstantiated claim.
Ahh yes, now you get to make claims for me. I sense a strawman argument coming around the corner…
That would be if the Chinese were practicing the same extraction based colonialism, which is not a claim I’ve made. I believe the type of colonialism we have seen is more of a slow boil version of Americas expansion west, which involves more assimilation and subjection, and placation until the he local popular can be replaced.
You don’t get to define imperialism as you see fit, Lenin was a brilliant man, but his ideologies aren’t all encompassing. Theories like historic materialism may be the best overarching theory of the motives of human conflict, but it leaves a lot to be desired when you try to utilize it to explain every conflict. Yes material needs might be the inherent reason for the racism that started the first war, but the fighters of the following reactionary wars aren’t going recognize that, or even remember the material needs being the base for their own racism.
I don’t. I use Lenin’s work on the topic and all the people that came after him that used and refined it.
I don’t know any analysis that agrees with you. Unless you can back this up with actual analysis, I assume you’re just vibing in order to maintain your cognitive dissonance.
Oh, I see. So you think historical materialism is good except when its conclusions disagree with your liberal programming.
This is an individualist perspective, a liberal one. As though whether each individual is explicitly conscious of their interests matters. You’re not a Marxist. At least not yet.
Based on exactly what? China has not expanded AT ALL. It’s reintegration of Hong Kong and it’s plan to reintegrate the island of Taiwan is not expansion, it is reclamation territory that was stripped by European intervention. There isn’t a theorist in the world that supports your conjecture. You imagine China is running a Han supremacist program based purely on what you understand America did. That is textbook psychological projection. Do some actual research.
You are literally claiming that China is doing imperialism and colonialism. They could be doing it thinking it will benefit them or they could be doing it thinking it will harm them. I assume you don’t imagine China is actively working to harm itself consciously, so the only option left is that China believes imperialism and colonialism will benefit them. They don’t believe this. They write about it all the time. The theory is clear and has been clear since Lenin. Imperialism is a dead end. China knows it, which is why your claim that it’s doing imperialism is ridiculous.
My god. China quite literally says it out loud on a regular basis. Their state officials, their party announcements, their diplomats, it’s constantly said. Read. Don’t just vibe. Read.
Again, read. Just do research. Taiwan has a separatist movement, it is part of Western programming. Hong Kong had a separatist movement, mostly youth. Their parents and grandparents literally threw the kids out their homes because those that lived under British rule have zero desire to go back and want to integrate. The Hong Kong movement itself was part of the British program. The East Turkestan separatist movement is a tiny group of extremists with a completely unsubstantiated interpretation of Islam that emerged around the same time the British and USA were meddling in the Middle East to create new Islamic extremist groups to fight communism. Tibet was a slave society and the Tibetan working class supported the ouster of the owning class. The British and the USA were involved heavily in supporting the owning class, to the point where the CIA has been working with Dalai Lama for decades. The Dalai Lama’s own brother wrote a book about how much he regrets working with the CIA. And Falun Gong is a cult and when they were pushed out of China they had no problem collaborating with the CIA and with fascists.
I know it’s hard for you believe that you’ve been lied to so thoroughly, but that’s the reality. Harvard did a 15-year study of Chinese satisfaction with their government. The government has a 95.5% approval rating across that time. Completely unheard of in any Western country. There are no internal separatist movements because China has done a great job building a society that meets the needs of all its people, not just the Han majority. It’s not built on the contradictions of Western capitalism, it’s not built on the contradictions of Western colonialism, it’s not build on the contradictions of Western imperialism. It is explicitly seeking to build a society that resolves contradictions in order to proceed towards the future without the threat of collapse from the inside or defeat from the outside.
Provide the evidence. The evidence we have includes literacy in indigenous languages being higher than anywhere in the West, more mosques per capita than anywhere in the West (and even more than some Muslim countries), validation of the claim by the Arab League, a coalition of 30 Muslim countries. What evidence do you have of plenty of limitations on indigenous cultures?
The TAR is not their entire homeland. The TAR is a subset of their homeland. In the entire Tibetan region outside of the TAR, Han representation is decreasing, as per the article you pulled your numbers from.
If the TAR’s existing GDP is really really low, it’s easy to spend more than the entire GDP as a percentage. The TAR’s GDP is $31B USD. If GDP is useful (which generally it’s not, but let’s use it as a stand-in) for determining the economic vibrancy of a region, and that economic vibrancy is useful for general social integration and defusing conflict (which it is), then finding ways to improve the economic vibrancy of the TAR would be a priority of the state. Using the party secretary as one member of the TAR’s government, the secretary can identify what would be the most effective and most acceptable without causing conflict within the region. This is likely the outcome of many years of discussions, negotiations, and collaborative decision making. You don’t get 95.5% approval ratings by being Han supremacist and just throwing bodies around in order to outbreed minorities. Again, that’s what white people do, and it’s pretty obvious to anti-imperialists that they shouldn’t do it because it leads to contradictions that will unravel their entire society.
There’s a history of the West lying about these things, yes. You act like reeducation is a bad thing, which again means you haven’t read enough. Do you know how the PLA won the war against the KMT? There were PLA units that experienced greater than 100% casualty rates and still kept fighting. How do you keep fighting when all your soldiers are dead? The PLA won the war by perfecting reeducation. They captured KMT soldiers and then they socialized them into the PLA unit. They ate meals with them, they swapped stories, and they educated them. The KMT soldiers had been fed lies by the KMT about the evil commies, and the lies had to be more extreme than the KMT’s actual treatment of their soldiers. When the KMT POWs saw how the PLA treated them and the common folk, they eventually joined up with the PLA. This reeducation process has been a major part of the Chinese social fabric ever since the PLA was formed. Reeducation camps are working in China to reduce terrorist attacks by massive proportions. But the West continues to spread lies, and just like the KMT they have to make the lies extreme in order to make it look worse than what the West actually does and people see with their own eyes.
Look at the outcomes over the decades. Puerto Rico is getting picked apart, the TAR and Xinjiang are being developed. There is no comparison.
I mean, this right here is a completely fallacious statement. I can fully embrace the possibility of ill intent, but that possibility doesn’t imply it’s insidious. You have taken a logical leap that is unfounded. I agree that the possibility is there, but the solution isn’t to fallaciously assume the possibility is reality but rather to use the possibility to guide your research. There is no data that bears out your accusations EXCEPT as comes from the US State Department and the propaganda machine of the West.