August 1st's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Go here for live updates on the Taiwan situation.
August 3rd's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
August 5th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 6th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Sundays.
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
And what happens after they seize the island? This isn't a videogame where once you win against your opponent, their units entirely disappear and the entire area is at your disposal. Unlike the situation in Crimea and the Donbass with Russians who are sympathetic towards Russia, the vast majority of Taiwanese don't want to be part of the PRC. This is reality, regardless of whether you believe they are brainwashed or mentally colonized or whatever. They do not want to be part of the PRC. The main reason Russia was even able to successfully take Crimea is because unlike Taiwan, Crimeans culturally identify with Russians and have faced persecution from the rest of Ukrainian society, meaning they were more than willing to join the Russian Federation.
Taiwan isn't like Tibet because the vast majority of Tibetans do not want their own sovereign landlocked country but would rather hitch their wagon on to China. Taiwan isn't like Xinjiang because the people of Xinjiang, both Uyghurs and Han, would rather be a part of the world's largest economy than be like Kyrgyzstan. Taiwan isn't like Hong Kong, where even at the height of the protests, there was an equal amount of counterprotests by people who supported the PRC and 1c2s. The vast majority of Taiwanese do not want to be part of the PRC.
Having said that, nothing is set in stone. And it's incumbent on the PRC to make the case for reunification to the people of Taiwan. Fortunately for the PRC and unfortunately for the West, most Taiwanese do not want independence either, but would rather adhere to the status quo where Taiwan exists in this weird political limbo. But the status quo is a form of soft reunification since Taiwan's economy gets further entwined with the Mainland with each passing year, which is why the US has to resort to these cringey hail marys because in lieu of some major disaster, reunification is inevitable.
Besides, the real strength of the PRC isn't in its military but its economy. And faced with a geopolitical rival that's experiencing record levels of inflation, among other economic woes, why would the PRC stoop to the level of some tinpot dictator instead of hitting where it really hurts? Like seriously, how would a jet escort actually hurt the US? Hell, even shooting down the fucking plane wouldn't do much either. Great, some senile ghoul who's too senile to do her daily tasks is no longer around to be useless dead weight in the halls of Congress.
The vast majority of people in Israel and USA don’t want to de-colonize either. Tough titties, the dialectic of history moves on and compradors and colonizers will be swept away
At the very least China needs to install a puppet government in Taiwan and oust the imperialists
I mean, they're settlers living in a settler colony on stolen land. Of course they wouldn't want to decolonize and return land back to the Indigenous. But unless you're arguing Taiwan is some Han settler colony that has to return land back to the Taiwanese aborigine, it's not particularly applicable to Taiwan.
Taiwan was settled and colonized by the KMT, the indigenous population massacred en masse during the white terror, it’s no different than Israel in this regard. The ROC is not legitimate, and the nation and settler-state of “Taiwan” should cease to exist, but that’s very unrealistic in the short term. What is more realistic and still necessary is to kick the separatist factions and imperialist compradors out of power and permanently secure Chinese Taipei as Chinese, and not the puppet state of the west
The White Terror largely targeted suspected communists and dissidents regardless whether they were waishengren, benshengren, or aborigine. "The White Terror was the KMT targeting innocent benshengren" is literally a DPP talking point, you know, the party that's pushing for Taiwanese independence. Furthermore, the conflation of the Taiwanese aborigine and the benshengren is another DPP talking point, where they both get lumped as "indigenous" even though the aborigine was around in Taiwan for 6 millennia before benshengren began migrating there during the Ming dynasty.
"Taiwan" is the Mandarin approximation of the Taivoan people, which sounds like "Taiwan" when spoken. There's no need to change the name.
I wouldn't characterize the KMT as compradors. They're closer to the Chinese national bourgeoisie if anything. Why else would the CPC ally with the KMT during the Warlord Era? The Northern Expedition was essentially the proletariat and peasantry, represented by the CPC, allying with the national bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT, to oust the actual compradors from power.
I think a lot could be said about China and Taiwan relations, but for starters you wont get the full picture here just by looking at random polls. The issue isn't just being part of China, it also includes a significant component of being played as a pawn by American interests against their fellow han Chinese. I think just like in Ukraine many people who otherwise wouldn't want to live in Russia have come to accept that anything was better than what the Ukrainians were doing while trying to defend the territory, and so they've accepted the occupation for what it is, a chance of a better life. Ukraine was already significantly poorer than Russia.
Taiwan is already quite dependent on trade and investment with China. The their share of trade with China amounted to 180 billion last year. Taiwan simply can't afford to sustain itself without trading with China.
But the point isn't just the economics but the realy material conditions. The west will give you weapons, planes, tanks, missiles, but not jobs or food.
For Taiwan the issue will simply be how much of an economic disaster are you willing to accept for some vague idea of national identity. You don't eat nationalism. You don't keep yourself warm at night with nationalism.
The question of an occupation to me is not an issue. Everyone speaks the same language and there is already a huge amount of economic integration between both countries. Taiwanese should have no problem acquiring Chinese visas and move to the mainland if necessary.
Militarily speaking this war is even more lopsided than Russia vs Ukraine, there is no conceivable way for Taiwan to resist an invasion. The nationalists fervor to use civilians as shields like the Ukrainian Nazis is also not present. Without the US directly intervening(WW3) you should not expect civilian casualties to be particularly high.
This is different from Ukraine where they think terrorism against their own population would make them afraid of accepting the Russian occupation.
Which is why they're attempting to destroy the Han Chinese identity of Taiwanese people. The DPP has been extremely instrumental in this through desinicization of the Taiwanese education system. The damage has been done as the majority of Taiwanese zoomers do not see themselves as Chinese or Han. It is, of course, not set in stone and doesn't preclude subsequent generations from being resinicized, but I think the majority of an entire generation has been lost. And this isn't even getting into the really mentally colonized ones who pine for the days when Taiwan was a Japanese colony. Taiwan is actually pretty fucked up mentally, even worse than Hong Kong, and it's precisely because it hasn't been fully decolonized like the rest of China. The PRC would have to take all this into account.
This is true for supporters of the KMT, who tend to be more pragmatic and less ideologically driven outside of vague liberalism and anti-communism. The KMT also completely ate shit in the last Taiwanese presidential election. Tsai Ing-Wen, who herself was also fairly unpopular and almost got primaried, blew out her opponent by simply campaigning how the KMT is going to sell out Taiwan to China and turn Taiwan into Hong Kong (the Hong Kong protests were occurring during that time).
This is the go-to argument for the KMT, who prefer maintaining the status quo and fostering business ties with the Mainland. Too bad the DPP is the ruling party, and unlike the KMT, the DPP are complete comprador sellouts. They also have almost complete control of Taiwanese media, especially popular culture. It also doesn't help the KMT once upon a time ruled Taiwan as a military dictatorship and has that terrible history behind it. In modern Taiwanese society thanks in no small part to the DPP and pro-separatist voices, the KMT is seen as the party of uncool waishengren boomers.
Occupation is absolutely going to be a thing if a populace is hostile towards your rule and has connections to your geopolitical rivals (ie the West).
I said in my previous post about how the status quo is soft reunification and inevitable, but I forgot about the DPP playing the role of saboteur. As the party of Japanese-simping American-bootlicking compradors. I believe they're being steered by the US to make reunification as costly and bloody as possible. They're going to lead Taiwan off a cliff. and I don't want to think of the human cost.