Myths that stir trouble in the South China Sea

A sensible solution would have been for USA (preferably together with the Soviet Union) to put pressure on both China and Taiwan back in the 50:s to recognize each others as sovereign states. This wouldn’t have precluded peaceful reunification as with Germany, but would have simplified for them to talk to each other and made international diplomacy a lot easier.

This illustrates at least two universal pitfalls of modern political analysis.

(1) Here, says the article, are five myths: let us show how false they are. But myths need not be false in order to function as myths, and myths that are not false do not become in any sense true. They do not inhabit the same spectrum of truth/falsity as rational discourse and it is a category error to measure them by the standards of rational discourse.

(2) Here, says the article, are five myths: and, boy howdy, a’n’t they though? But in politics everything is a myth, and to single any out for rebuke is, necessarily, to imply that all the others are not, when the only possible point is that they all are, and that is the problem, not the nature or origins or effects of any specific one(s).

Best thing for Taiwan would be to denounce the 9 dash line of china’s bogus claims to the sea off of the Phillipines, Viet Nam et.al.
China still thinks of itself as the “Middle Kingdom” that is owed tribute by all others.
China’s claim to Taiwan is a joke.
Japan excercised soveriegnty over it since the 1900’s before that, going back to Marco Polo, it was an island of pirates, as described by chinese ruler.
It is as absurd as china’s so called historical claim of Tibet which only occured in the 1950’s by force of arms.
So as china still sees itself as the middle kingdom around which all others orbit so does the Kremlin still think that naming itself as the 3rd Rome (Rome, Constantinoble before) gives it claim to old Roman empire of millieniams ago.

Of course, if Mao had chased the KMT out of Taiwan, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese would have died in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (instead of hundreds in the White Terror), and Taiwan would be ruled by a dictatorship instead of being a thriving democracy, and would have a GDP/person one quarter of what it is now. Pity.

The problem with demanding that China recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state is that Taiwan was separated from China by foreign violence, first by Japanese aggression and then by U.S. aggression, and essentially nobody in mainland China thinks that this is a good thing. Thus far the Chinese have been persuaded not to forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland firstly by their relative military weakness (which no longer prevails) and secondly by the fact that the U.S. was not aggressive towards China and would not use Taiwan as a pretext for aggression and a base for armed attacks. Unfortunately this latter situation also no longer prevails.

If the Chinese government believes that the U.S. government is serious in its policies towards China — economic sanctions, armed menace, propaganda (much of it repeated in some of the comments here) and probably covert destabilisation — then the long-term consequences will be rather dire. I think that it is those long-term consequences which the original post seeks to point out and to suggest that it might be a good idea not to promote conflict with China. Sadly, the effect of this resembles the effect of yodelling down a drainpipe in Kazakhstan. There is simply too much patriotic brainwashed Sinophobia in the West and in its satellite propaganda agencies (my own local paper ran two successive Sinophobia articles in the last two days on its business page, which is the only page which sometimes contains factual information) for people to think clearly about the matter. It’s much easier to rant about Mao and the yellow peril.

Chris S: the indigenous Taiwanese have a lot to complain about, but the CCP has not exactly championed the rights of minorities either. And presumably a CCP which had conquered Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War would have landed its own politically reliable settlers and set about indoctrinating and subjugating the locals.

Chris S @11: I came across a 19th-century American journalist who found it necessary to insert into some of his articles: “NB this is wrote sarcastical”. Maybe I should do that more often.

Marc Pontin@13 “Those who initiated the AUKUS deal have made a similar deal with Taipei.” So the US/UK are going to provide nuclear-fuelled submarines to Taiwan?

Please be so good as to explain either how you have gained this extraordinary knowledge: or why you can possibly believe that very long range nuclear-fuelled submarines could be of any use in defending the shallow, close waters around Taiwan: or how far you understand the difference between nuclear-fuelled and nuclear-armed.

Yours with no great expectations of a coherent reply

Stephen