Speaker 1: It's it's it's it could happen here the podcast. The
Speaker 1: thing that's happening here is that once again, like a
Speaker 1: bunch of random American politicians are going in Taiwan, and
Speaker 1: this time they didn't announced they were going, apparently because
Speaker 1: announcing they were going last time went great. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is, this is what we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: and with with me is James. Hello James, how how
Speaker 1: you doing? All right? I'm wonderful and I'm splendid. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: so we have to talk about Taiwan. And I think
Speaker 1: like people who have listened to me on this show
Speaker 1: for a while know that, like so like, okay, a
Speaker 1: lot of my family is some Taiwan. I don't like
Speaker 1: talking about Taiwan very much. Um I I think I've
Speaker 1: talked about Taiwan the politics and detail exactly once on
Speaker 1: this show when I was forced to for Iguana wood shooting,
Speaker 1: and like I would really prefer not to like not
Speaker 1: something I particularly enjoy talking about, which is you know,
Speaker 1: a big part about what we haven't But unfortunately I
Speaker 1: can't continue not to talk about it because the American
Speaker 1: left and and this is true of not just the
Speaker 1: American Institute the British Lift. This is true of the
Speaker 1: left kind of writ large is being systematically lied to
Speaker 1: about Taiwan by a group of incredibly malicious nationalists who
Speaker 1: are attempting to rally support for their like incredibly violent
Speaker 1: and bizarre imperial delusions, and unfortunately it's working. So I'm
Speaker 1: and instead of that, I'm going to give what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call Taiwan one oh one, and I'm calling it
Speaker 1: tai Wan one on one, even though this is going
Speaker 1: to be like an hour long, because this is as
Speaker 1: far as I could cut this whole thing down, Like
Speaker 1: Taiwanese politics is genuinely complicated, as part of the reason
Speaker 1: I like talking about it, and at people who are
Speaker 1: giving you simple answers to what's happening in Taiwan are
Speaker 1: lying to you. This is the best I can do,
Speaker 1: and it this is this is like the length of
Speaker 1: a Bachelor's episode. So nice, I'm excited. Yeah, So well,
Speaker 1: welcome with ti Want one on one. Um. The beginning
Speaker 1: of Tie one one on one is that Taiwan is
Speaker 1: a series of islands off the coast of China. And yes,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of islands. Nobody talks about this
Speaker 1: like because again, people who talk about Taiwan like couldn't
Speaker 1: find their own ass on a map. So you know,
Speaker 1: there there, there, there's a bunch of islands. There's one
Speaker 1: big one that there's several like a lot of smaller ones. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of fundamental principles of not just
Speaker 1: being on the left, but like being a decent person
Speaker 1: is self determination. And you know, self determination on on
Speaker 1: a very basic level is that people have the right
Speaker 1: to choose how they want to live, and in a
Speaker 1: more immediate political context, they have the right to choose
Speaker 1: how they want to organize their governments and who they
Speaker 1: do and don't want to be ruled by. So okay, well,
Speaker 1: what are the actual numbers in Taiwan? Say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we we we have recent pulling from the National Chung
Speaker 1: Chi University's elect Election Studies Center, which says that a
Speaker 1: grand total of six point six percent of Taiwan's population
Speaker 1: wants unification with China. The overwhelming majority of people in
Speaker 1: Taiwan eight want to just maintain the status quo, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I said. So the status quo right now
Speaker 1: is that like China claims that it is the sole
Speaker 1: legitimate Government of Taiwan. UM. Taiwan like technically legally claims
Speaker 1: that they are the sole legitimate government China. Nobody actually
Speaker 1: believes that anymore. Like if if you scoured the entirety
Speaker 1: of Taiwan, you might find six dudes in a bunker
Speaker 1: who still believe that, like they're the real government of Tchina. Like,
Speaker 1: but the actual status quo is that Taiwan is basically
Speaker 1: de fact is like this, Taiwan is de factoway self
Speaker 1: governing polity that has elections and stuff, and yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: gets incredibly mad about this. Most people want to preserve
Speaker 1: the status quo. Um inside of the people who want
Speaker 1: to maintain the status quo, you have, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like like basically for for three different options basically, so
Speaker 1: there's very similar numbers of people who either want to
Speaker 1: like decide the formal status of Taiwan, like is an
Speaker 1: independent country as a part of China that if you
Speaker 1: want to kick it down the road. Some of them
Speaker 1: want to keep the status quo indefinitely, and some of
Speaker 1: them want to move towards full independence like later on.
Speaker 1: But overwhelmingly what people want in Taiwan is for nothing
Speaker 1: to happen now if this were a saying in rational world,
Speaker 1: that would be the end of the episode. Right, Taiwan
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be ruled by China, Like okay, well
Speaker 1: that's okay, that's the right, they have the right self determination.
Speaker 1: That's it. Case closed and a story. It literally doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what the Chinese government thinks about whether it should
Speaker 1: control Taiwan, because again, Taiwan doesn't want to be ruled
Speaker 1: by China. And because a British person, I maybe I
Speaker 1: maybe you ought to like not contribute further to that discussion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, and I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's this whole thing that exists right where when
Speaker 1: when you when you force your role on another population,
Speaker 1: it is called imperialism considered to be bad and anyway
Speaker 1: and everything is it's still bad even if everyone inside
Speaker 1: the imperial power thinks that it's good. Like if every
Speaker 1: person in the US suddenly decided tomorrow but they wanted
Speaker 1: to invade Cuba, like, it wouldn't make it morally right
Speaker 1: because people in Cuba don't want to people in the US,
Speaker 1: which we've done before. But it's true. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: partially why I picked Cuba as example, because we really
Speaker 1: we did this. We we really did like kill an
Speaker 1: enormous number of people trying did Yeah, based on bullshit
Speaker 1: that people made up and portrayed his news. There was
Speaker 1: the best speculation. Yeah. But you know, as we can
Speaker 1: tell by the fact that the U. S Has invaded Cuba,
Speaker 1: we do not live in a saying irrational world. We
Speaker 1: live in hell. And this means that I have a
Speaker 1: talk about a bunch of which is absolutely bullshit, arguments
Speaker 1: that a bunch of nationalist dip ships made up justify imperialism.
Speaker 1: So all right, this is where we start going into
Speaker 1: townan these history. Um So, the starting point of any
Speaker 1: actual history of Taiwan that's worth a single ship is
Speaker 1: Taiwan's indigenous population. And it is incredibly important to understand
Speaker 1: from the outset. The indigenous population of Taiwan is not Chinese.
Speaker 1: They are not ethnically Chinese, they are not linguistically Chinese,
Speaker 1: they are not culturally Chinese, they are not any of
Speaker 1: these things. By literally any definition of the word Chinese,
Speaker 1: you can imagine they are not Chinese. Um this, this population,
Speaker 1: this indigenous population is Austronnesian. It's it's an Austronesian people
Speaker 1: are population stretches basically from like it's it's an enormous
Speaker 1: screw of people across specific stretches from like Madagascar all
Speaker 1: the way to like Hawaii, and that that that those
Speaker 1: are the people who who who who live on Taiwan
Speaker 1: and have lived on Taiwan for six thousand years. And
Speaker 1: you know, if if you read like CCP accounts of
Speaker 1: Taiwanese history, right, you'll see them they they won't talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that there again there's been an indigenous
Speaker 1: population that has lived in Taiwan for six thousand years. Um,
Speaker 1: what you'll see references to you are like in like
Speaker 1: the Suiti and like Sung dynasties, people like sent troops
Speaker 1: to Taiwan and the season people will be like, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they they they they they governed Taiwan and they ruled it.
Speaker 1: It was a part of China, and like ancient times,
Speaker 1: like this is all bullshit. Like basically what would happen
Speaker 1: is periodically, every like a few hundred years, some Chinese
Speaker 1: leader would be like we should send some people to
Speaker 1: that island and they went there and we're like this sucks,
Speaker 1: and they all left. But you know, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and and you know, like okay, so like these guys,
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, this think this thing sucks. They leave,
Speaker 1: and the indigenous population continues going like you know, goes
Speaker 1: back to dude, like their normal thing, right, Like this
Speaker 1: is the the the actual history of who has controlled
Speaker 1: Taiwan for almost this entire history is that it was
Speaker 1: controlled by the stigenous population. But in four colonial powers
Speaker 1: start getting more involved and the Dutch sees control of Taiwan. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the Dutch taking most of Taiwan. There's a part
Speaker 1: of Taiwan in the north that's ruled by the Spanish,
Speaker 1: and they do like bunch of just like horrible, like
Speaker 1: unspeakable crimes to the indigenous population before they ran out
Speaker 1: by like basically like a fragment of the dying like
Speaker 1: Chinese Ming dynasty. And so yeah, six two this guy
Speaker 1: whose name okay, so she has like a name that
Speaker 1: he's known by in the West that I genuinely have
Speaker 1: no idea how to pronounce, because this the name that
Speaker 1: he's known by in the West, I think is a
Speaker 1: Dutch translation of his title and not like his name
Speaker 1: his baffling I okay, Like I think the Mandarin version
Speaker 1: of his title is something like Cushing. Uh. The Dutch
Speaker 1: somehow turned that into what I'm going to interpret as
Speaker 1: coaching GA. Like it's baffling, It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Their transliteration is is nonsense. But yeah, so there's this guy.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll see you'll see his name written as like
Speaker 1: coaching um, and he's described alternately as sort of like
Speaker 1: you know. You'll see some inscriptions of him which will
Speaker 1: be like he is a all your list ming general um,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of true, like sort of. You will
Speaker 1: also see descriptions of him that call him a pirate warlord,
Speaker 1: which is like also true. And you will also see nationalists,
Speaker 1: like Chinese nationalists celebrate him as like an anti colonial
Speaker 1: hero and call him like running out the Dutchess like
Speaker 1: the liberation of Taiwan and like that's not true, like
Speaker 1: which this is not true, Like I've I've seen people
Speaker 1: like from Taiwan like could do stuff with the indigenous population,
Speaker 1: like I've I've seen them call I've seen them call
Speaker 1: him by Taiwan's Christopher Columbus. So this is how this
Speaker 1: is going. Um. Wait, so we're saying that changing from
Speaker 1: one colonial power to another, it is not liberation, no,
Speaker 1: it turns out and fascinating. Yeah, you can tell it's
Speaker 1: not that not liberation because you know, like a lot
Speaker 1: of people like actually like you know, do believe that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be less bad for us under this guy
Speaker 1: than it is going to be on for the Dutch.
Speaker 1: It is kind of less bad. Like there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of redigenous people who go who fight with show
Speaker 1: coaching gun like you know, and he he helps they
Speaker 1: helped him defeat the Dutch. But what what he does
Speaker 1: instead of like you know, freeing the people there is
Speaker 1: he maintains the Dutch colonial system while basically just seizing
Speaker 1: Taiwan to run his court from. And you know, like
Speaker 1: Dutch colonial rule. Okay, so like Dutch colonial rule is over,
Speaker 1: but what if we're placed by is the rule of
Speaker 1: an independent pirate warlord state. It sounds fun, I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of is, like I mean, there's this whole
Speaker 1: so okay, So the kind of background of this is that,
Speaker 1: like the US, the Ming dynasty is falling apart. The
Speaker 1: Mean dynasty had ruled China since they ever threw the
Speaker 1: Mongols basically, and but like they're they're imploding. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of revolutions going on there. They are in the
Speaker 1: process of getting eventually getting knocked off by um the
Speaker 1: Qing dynasty, who a group of people from Manchuria who
Speaker 1: we will be getting to in a second. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy's like technically in mean general, but he's sort of
Speaker 1: not and he's he's doing this sort of pilot warlord stuff.
Speaker 1: But then he like he sets up like his own
Speaker 1: dynasty like very short lived see there. And this is
Speaker 1: the first time that there's been like actual political control
Speaker 1: of Taiwan by any kind of Chinese entity, right like
Speaker 1: the like the weird dipshit armies that like China was
Speaker 1: sending in like the Song dynasty, Like they don't they
Speaker 1: don't actually like set up a government, right, Like they're
Speaker 1: just kind of there forbidden they leave. This is the
Speaker 1: first time like they actually conquered the island and rule
Speaker 1: it as like a political enter. And even then it's
Speaker 1: kind of a half as conquest, like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of places they kind of just like they're just like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we're just not gonna bother with this. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, again, like this is the first time this
Speaker 1: has happened, and it's not like the Chinese state, right,
Speaker 1: it's a pirate war Mark and his descendants get like
Speaker 1: knocked off by the Chain dynasty in sixteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: and this is the first time like a real Chinese
Speaker 1: government has controlled Taiwan um because bye bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: Six eighty three, the Chanine dynasty has finished taking overall
Speaker 1: of China or all all of what used to be
Speaker 1: like the main dynasty in China. And this is the
Speaker 1: period that these nationals a point to and say like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: really really hold on, hold on. Taiwan actually is part
Speaker 1: of China because we conquered it in like six eighty three,
Speaker 1: which you know, okay, yeah, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: a part of Taiwan's China's ancient times. Yeah that this
Speaker 1: place we conquered in sixteen eight three, which ignores also
Speaker 1: again the previous five thousand, four hundred years where Taiwan
Speaker 1: was rule by its indigenous people. It's it's baffling nationalists,
Speaker 1: brame words stuff yep. That has worked historically for other countries,
Speaker 1: notably this one and the one I'm from. But make
Speaker 1: it right, yeah, well, and then you'll you'll get people
Speaker 1: arguing this is like well, how like like how how
Speaker 1: is this different from the U s. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I am a leftist, and I am
Speaker 1: capable of understanding that multiple things can be bad at
Speaker 1: the same time, especially when they're bad in the same way. Like, wow, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe these are all settler qualities. We should destroy them, Okay,
Speaker 1: But we should actually talk about the Chin dynasty a bit,
Speaker 1: because a lot of what Chinese nationalism draws from is
Speaker 1: the sort of imperial expansion of the Chan chyneste. Even
Speaker 1: though the Ching are the Ching are not like a
Speaker 1: Han Chinese dynasty. Um, they're like ethnically they're from a
Speaker 1: different ethnic group. But yeah, I mean it's said, it's
Speaker 1: it's the like the the Ching dynasty is a Manchion
Speaker 1: dynasty ruled by the people like the Manchies out of Mancharia.
Speaker 1: But I I think like insofar as people think about
Speaker 1: the Chin Dynasty, they tend to think about like the
Speaker 1: Late Chain dynasty Like this is like, you know, like
Speaker 1: the eight hundred Chang dynasty is a disaster, right, Like
Speaker 1: they lose the Opium Wars, they can beat by Japan.
Speaker 1: This is the whole sort of century humiliation thing has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like Ching imperial decline. But
Speaker 1: you know that that's like the eighteen hundreds change, the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds change, especially in the sixty seventeen hundreds change.
Speaker 1: Is it incredibly dynamic and you know, incredibly militant and
Speaker 1: expansionist empire. Um here, here's I'm gonna I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a passage from the book Taiwan's Imagine Geographies. Having annexed
Speaker 1: taime On in sixteen eighty four, the Ching turned its
Speaker 1: attention to Central Asia, pacifying quote quote unquote pacifying the Mongols,
Speaker 1: and bringing eastern Turkistan and lass of the capital of
Speaker 1: Tibet under Ching rule. The Ching further expanded its control
Speaker 1: in south and southwest China, subjugating various non Chinese peoples.
Speaker 1: Of this reason to Ching domination at its height in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, Ching influences set it into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burman, Nepal,
Speaker 1: all of which came under the suicerenity of the Empire.
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty, the Ching had achieved the incredible feat
Speaker 1: of doubling the size of the empire's territory, bringing various
Speaker 1: non Chinese frontier people under its rule. The impact of
Speaker 1: changing expansionism was thus was thus tremendous, as the chain
Speaker 1: not only redefined the territorial boundaries of China, but also
Speaker 1: re fashioned China as a multi ethnic realm, as a
Speaker 1: multi ethnic realm, shifting the traditional border between Chinese Hua
Speaker 1: and Barbarian Ye. In doing so, the Ching created an
Speaker 1: image of China that has vastly from that of the Ming.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's really important to understand
Speaker 1: what kinds of empire this is, which is to say
Speaker 1: that the Change dynasty is an incredibly brutal colonial power
Speaker 1: even like by the standards of like that's like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like all of all, like the all the the okay,
Speaker 1: Chinese dynastic history is not pretty right, Like this is
Speaker 1: you know, it's an empire, right, it's an empire. It's
Speaker 1: ruled by an emperor. It kind of sucks, like it's
Speaker 1: not it's not good per se. But like, even by
Speaker 1: the standards of like China, the Qing are incredibly militants,
Speaker 1: an incredibly expansionist um. For example, like shing Chong, which
Speaker 1: which is a province that the Ching conquered, so it
Speaker 1: used to be inhabited by a Mongol speaking people until
Speaker 1: the Ching just exterminated them all and settled the entire
Speaker 1: land with with Han and weaker like a thin groups.
Speaker 1: And you know, this history points to something that's important
Speaker 1: to understand when we talk about China Taiwan in the
Speaker 1: U S. Which is that what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: three settler qualities. And I think people, you know, might
Speaker 1: be like, wait, what do you mean China's settler colony?
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna read this passage from the book, uh,
Speaker 1: Sovereignty Frontiers The Possibility, which is by Julia Evans, Anna Genevis,
Speaker 1: Alexander Riley, and Patrick Wolf. And and yes, that is
Speaker 1: that Patrick Wolf, who was like was basically the godfather
Speaker 1: of settler colonial studies and one of the most important
Speaker 1: like academics a turn of like in terms of like
Speaker 1: advancity annalysis of setterer colonialism, like the Palestinian conflict. But
Speaker 1: here's here, here, here's what he has to say about China.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of a long passage, but like,
Speaker 1: I want to include an explanation of what settler colonialism
Speaker 1: is because I've kind of just been tossing it around analytically.
Speaker 1: The case of Palestine reveals that the relationship between the
Speaker 1: external and internal dimensions of sovereignty is not a priori
Speaker 1: but contingent. Settler colonization converts external into internal, rendering indigenous
Speaker 1: sovereignties either non existent or domesticated. Annexation does the same thing,
Speaker 1: only is illegal. The difference again is sovereignty to annex
Speaker 1: is to practice settler colonialism in sovereign territory. Thus, the
Speaker 1: frontier is aligned in time as well as in space. Spatially,
Speaker 1: the frontier to limits unconquered native territory. Temporally, it marks
Speaker 1: the conversion of outside into inside. It renders externality a
Speaker 1: thing of the past in the global conquest of settler colonialism. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the internal and external dimensions represent the state of play,
Speaker 1: quote unquote. The ultimate prize is state formation with internationally
Speaker 1: recognized territorial sovereignty. Once the settler takeover as complete, the
Speaker 1: native realm becomes a thing of the past, superseded and detoxified,
Speaker 1: reduced to persisting in the settler's terms. Since in the
Speaker 1: case of Palestine, this process remains incomplete, the situation can
Speaker 1: still go either or potentially any way. At the international level,
Speaker 1: this uncertainty is reflected in the ambivalent status of Palestinian sovereignty,
Speaker 1: which remains simultaneously both acknowledged and questioned locally, The stags
Speaker 1: involved in the resolution of such international uncertainties could not
Speaker 1: be higher. Tibet represents a case in point. Despite significant
Speaker 1: informal deference to Tibet's national separateness, It's incorporation into the
Speaker 1: People's Republic of China is not seriously questioned. At the
Speaker 1: diplomatic level, Tibetan representation at the United Nations remains unimaginable.
Speaker 1: Yet even Tibetans might count their blessings when they compare
Speaker 1: their situation to that of Weakers, who, like them, are
Speaker 1: being officially colonized by Hans settlers in the so called
Speaker 1: autonomous region called shing Jong, a Chinese appellation that could
Speaker 1: have been scripted in sixteenth century Europe. It means new land,
Speaker 1: being so much more firmly domesticated within the Chinese state. However,
Speaker 1: weaker sovereignty remains from vote from global concern now. Now obviously, okay,
Speaker 1: this is written before like shing Jong became like a
Speaker 1: global news story. And also I I I question wolves
Speaker 1: translation of the word a little bit, like I think,
Speaker 1: I think new Frontier is probably a slightly better translation,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like you can see what's it are here, right,
Speaker 1: Like wolves argument is that like yeah, like like China
Speaker 1: is running to settler qualities, like the internal status of
Speaker 1: which is like even more internationally fucked than like most
Speaker 1: other settler colonies, which is incredibly grim. Like yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we don't. I don't know why we were so
Speaker 1: we've been so slow to see selling colonialism and these
Speaker 1: contiguous empires like here. Yeah, I mean I think part
Speaker 1: of what's happening here, like you know, okay, Like I
Speaker 1: think there's sort of a different dynamic with looking at
Speaker 1: this with Russia, but I think with China it's like
Speaker 1: people are just like it's really really hard to get
Speaker 1: people to understand that colonialism and imperialism are things that
Speaker 1: like not that like non white people can do, yes,
Speaker 1: and especially especially like this, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: this goes back to the sort of like Chan dynasy discussion, right,
Speaker 1: which is that like, yeah, you know, the like the
Speaker 1: way that people on the left understand the Ching dynasty
Speaker 1: is through the sort of nationalist lens looking at like
Speaker 1: the AG hundreds, and so they missed the whole part
Speaker 1: where they're doing all the settler colony stuff. But like
Speaker 1: what happens to them basically is that like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they're there. It's kind of like the Ottomans, right,
Speaker 1: We're like their empire suddenly runs into like newer, better,
Speaker 1: more violence and more efficient empires. But like it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that like they worked also empires. Like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: and then when people do work that out sometimes, like
Speaker 1: people and when we talk about like settler clonism in
Speaker 1: the US, sometimes like when folks have forced to retreat
Speaker 1: from the first position and that like that the US
Speaker 1: is not a settler quality, they'll then fall back on, well,
Speaker 1: they're indigenous empires beforehand, as if that somehow justifies Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it does not right, and like you know,
Speaker 1: like and I think it's the thing that tobet to
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, the pre existing Tibetan government was
Speaker 1: not good, like defends like that government. It sucks. I
Speaker 1: would also point out that the whole we're going to
Speaker 1: stop the slave trade thing is one of the things
Speaker 1: explicitly in in the in the Tree that was side
Speaker 1: of the Conference of Berlin. That was the thing that
Speaker 1: they claimed that that like that that was the thing
Speaker 1: that the European powers claimed they were doing when they
Speaker 1: invaded Africa, so like when they split Africa, but between
Speaker 1: the Clune of Powers, so like you know, okay, I
Speaker 1: mean also it's you know this this is getting slightly
Speaker 1: off topic, but it's also worth noting that like there
Speaker 1: wasn't there was actually a communist movement like in Tibet
Speaker 1: that wasn't the CCP, and the CCP killed them all.
Speaker 1: So that's great and fun. That's never happened before with
Speaker 1: titanitarian communist pass Yeah, it's it's going to happen again.
Speaker 1: The sort of I think the stakes of what's happening here,
Speaker 1: I think become more clear when you understand that, like
Speaker 1: you like the US and trying to to like two
Speaker 1: different extents, right, like I don't know, like China has
Speaker 1: parts there, like there are parts of China where it's
Speaker 1: like very hard, like it's not a settler state. It's
Speaker 1: just like their states, but there are part of definitely
Speaker 1: are a settlers date. And there's the U S which
Speaker 1: is like entirely a settler state. And then Taiwan is
Speaker 1: also to a settler state, although it's like post independence
Speaker 1: Taiwan is at least violence of them, which is like
Speaker 1: not like a, I don't know, you're not winning much
Speaker 1: of a price by being less violent than China in
Speaker 1: the US, but like true god between those two yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but but but I think that this
Speaker 1: brings us back to like the Chin the Ching coccupation
Speaker 1: of Taiwan, which is that the Ching occupation of Taiwan
Speaker 1: is China's first like first new settler colony. The Ching
Speaker 1: administrators they divide indigenous population into quote cooked and raw savages.
Speaker 1: Um that those are their words. That literally that's what
Speaker 1: they call them. Like it is why because they're really racist,
Speaker 1: Like I mean this, this is like this, this is
Speaker 1: like a very old thing and sort of like sort
Speaker 1: of Chinese imperial course, right, It's like you have the
Speaker 1: difference between like barbarians and like Chinese people and like
Speaker 1: savages and non savages like this this is like this
Speaker 1: is how these people think, right, and it's not good.
Speaker 1: Like I don' don't know like how many more ways
Speaker 1: I can like try to explain to people who are
Speaker 1: like who have been like like people have been like
Speaker 1: telling them Chinese nationalists stuff for so long that it's
Speaker 1: like this this also was not good, Like guys and
Speaker 1: again it's something the US has done the UK. There's
Speaker 1: classic imperialism, right. We took absolute tribes in the US,
Speaker 1: the racist in the British Empire. Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a passage from Taiwan's imagine geography. Indeed, as ching
Speaker 1: writers began to construct the Taiwan indigenous as two distinct groups.
Speaker 1: Negative traits that have been formally associated with quote the
Speaker 1: Taiwan savages as a whole began to be mapped on
Speaker 1: the wild or raw savages. We're Earlier text claimed, for example,
Speaker 1: that the savages quote by nature like to kill or
Speaker 1: quote we're were quote stubborn and stupid. Now writers attributed
Speaker 1: these characteristics to the raw savages alone. Head Hunting, a
Speaker 1: notorious practice that the earlier the earliest sources had associated
Speaker 1: with the natives of Taiwan and other Pacific islands, also
Speaker 1: became also came to be seen as a raw savage practice.
Speaker 1: By the early eighteenth century travel writing, travel writers increasingly
Speaker 1: emphasized the violent and murderous behavior of the raw savages.
Speaker 1: The expansion of the Han Chinese population at this time
Speaker 1: caused an exhalation of conflict between Chinese settlers and the
Speaker 1: indigenous over land and other resources. Hostile indigitees were thus
Speaker 1: becoming a real threat to the safety of Han Chinese settlers.
Speaker 1: Although some writers blamed inter ethnic conflict on troublemaking Han
Speaker 1: Chinese settlers, many Ching literati attributed the belligerents of the
Speaker 1: raw savages to the inherent bloodthirsty nature. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's real. It's real. It's real, classic empire ship like
Speaker 1: text bookshit. Yeah, and you know, and you can see
Speaker 1: that there's this whole nationalist myth that like you'll read
Speaker 1: if you read modern people like talking about this, or
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, the indigenous population of Chinese government
Speaker 1: got along so great. It is completely bullshit. This is
Speaker 1: an incredibly racist settler state, and it stays an incredibly
Speaker 1: racist setaler state when when the Japanese take over Taiwan
Speaker 1: and the Japanese occupation is even worse than the Chin
Speaker 1: occupation of indigenous people in a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: real ship show there's a huge massacre that they do
Speaker 1: in the thirties. Um, yeah, and and okay, we just
Speaker 1: also mentioned at this point, so I've been focusing a
Speaker 1: lot on the the indigenous population because almost everyone who
Speaker 1: tells the story from all sides, doesn't talk about them ever,
Speaker 1: because it's it's incredibly inconvenient to like everyone's narrative that
Speaker 1: there were people here for literally six thousand years, um.
Speaker 1: But you know, whow Basically since the Dutch showed up
Speaker 1: in the in the mid sixteen hundreds, UM, there have
Speaker 1: been like increasing numbers of Chinese settlers, and as as
Speaker 1: the Chin occupation sort of wears on, the number Chinese
Speaker 1: settlers increases and increases increases, and it gets to the
Speaker 1: point where, you know, kind of close to like what
Speaker 1: we have today, where like the the indigenous population of
Speaker 1: Taiwan is like two percent of the population, and it's
Speaker 1: which is which is pretty close to what the indigenous
Speaker 1: population presenting the population of the US is for example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sorry, I'm not going to it's okay, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about Elizabeth Warren. But god, god, you know,
Speaker 1: actually fucking I will talk about Elizabeth Warren in the
Speaker 1: middle of this, because yeah, because her her whole thing
Speaker 1: of like like pretending to be indigenous was also fun
Speaker 1: because like she has a cookbook, and the cookbook yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that claims both her and her husband or indigenous and
Speaker 1: then in that he's like maybe the most incomprehensible lee
Speaker 1: awful like example of Chinese cooking every scene in my life,
Speaker 1: which apparently stole from like another cookbook. Really like just
Speaker 1: cascading levels of racism all the way down. It's God,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's all fine. All the settler colonies are bad.
Speaker 1: Their politics are all also always bad because again, like
Speaker 1: being a settler colony inherently makes your politics awful because yeah,
Speaker 1: and representing yourself an indigenous person to gain personal advantage
Speaker 1: in a settler colony when you are not one is
Speaker 1: ongoing active colonialism. Yeah, genuinely terrific stuff Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't do it. So having said that, so okay, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about the Han population. There's like different
Speaker 1: like subgroups of the Han population who are have different ethnicities,
Speaker 1: to speak different rates, like speak different languages because Han
Speaker 1: is like a very large sort of category, and like
Speaker 1: inside of Han Chinese there's like people who are Hawka.
Speaker 1: There's there's a whole bunch of different groups. Um, And
Speaker 1: I guess the one thing that's worth mentioning is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the like you'll hear people talk about
Speaker 1: Taiwanese as like its own language, and like that's like
Speaker 1: there there are a bunch of people who were on
Speaker 1: but who don't speak Mandarin, and so like a lot
Speaker 1: of people in Taiwan speak Taiwanese, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like Hakka h ish leg. Well, okay, what's what what's
Speaker 1: what's the most technically accurate with Vegas. It is a
Speaker 1: language that has developed on Taiwan, like in Taiwan by
Speaker 1: people who speak Kaka, and it's basically pretty close to that. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And we're not gonna get into super gradular detail about
Speaker 1: these ways of immigration, um, but basically, like one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens is that among these sort of
Speaker 1: hansellos there becomes this sort of like Taiwanese identity of
Speaker 1: like them being Taiwanese, like specifically as a thing. And
Speaker 1: when when the Japanese lose World War Two, the Nationalist
Speaker 1: Party or the CAMT just like occupies Taiwan. But this
Speaker 1: is a real problem because again, most of the people
Speaker 1: don't want to be ruled by the CAMT because the
Speaker 1: CAMT like absolutely suck. Um. If you want me to
Speaker 1: hear me, like go deeper into them, go listen to
Speaker 1: My Bastard's episode the World Anti Communist League. Uh. The
Speaker 1: short version is that the KMT is a genocidal like
Speaker 1: anti communists squad party run by an organized crime outfit
Speaker 1: that's led by Shankai Check and you know like they
Speaker 1: suck like really like absolutely horrible people. Um. And as
Speaker 1: the camp starts to lose, a civil word of maw
Speaker 1: like born more CAMT supporters not some people just like
Speaker 1: running from the war start fleeing in Taiwan, and this
Speaker 1: develops a mass like you get these massive tension between
Speaker 1: the people who had already been there and the KMT
Speaker 1: and they're sort of new supporters and that their new
Speaker 1: sort of like settler immigrant population, and this boils over
Speaker 1: into what's called the February incident or the two eight incident. Um.
Speaker 1: Basically what happens so a CAMT cop like attacks a
Speaker 1: woman who was like selling cigarettes on the street illegally
Speaker 1: because the KMT, like I really also kept like they're
Speaker 1: so unbelievably corrupt and so like that they have all
Speaker 1: these like monopolies where it's like okay, like that there's
Speaker 1: a guy who has like the opium monopoly or like
Speaker 1: a guy who has like the cigarette monopoly, and unless
Speaker 1: you're running through that monopoly you can't sell like cigarettes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in something that I think will be familiar
Speaker 1: to people who like like have followed the number of
Speaker 1: people in the US who have been killed for uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the cops start like beating this woman over the
Speaker 1: head with it with his pistol, and everyone around them
Speaker 1: gets incredibly piste off. And there's these giant protests, um,
Speaker 1: and the camp to your response to the protests by
Speaker 1: shooting into the crowd. And yeah, I mean, so there's
Speaker 1: another side of this I should mention like briefly, which
Speaker 1: is that, like part of what's happening here is like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a kind of ugly like basically race
Speaker 1: riot that starts happening at the beginning of this where
Speaker 1: like people like the sort of like Contowonese population like
Speaker 1: starts just like attacking like any random like any random
Speaker 1: people from like the campt generation, just like they found
Speaker 1: on the street, that start attacking and killing and like
Speaker 1: that sucks. Um. It is also unbelievably less violent than
Speaker 1: what happens next, which is at the KMT Like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so so there there there's sort of this race right thing,
Speaker 1: and then there's there's like there's a full scale revolution
Speaker 1: and the Taiwanese population like seizes control of base of
Speaker 1: like almost the entire island, like the entirety of the
Speaker 1: main island, and they start demanding like democratic rights and
Speaker 1: stuff like you know, a free press and free assembly
Speaker 1: and the protection of the digitus population. Although I should
Speaker 1: also mention that like like nobody really inti one like
Speaker 1: treating digits population. Well, like it was bad enough, Like
Speaker 1: my seven year old mom was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: why is everyone treating these people so badly? Like it's
Speaker 1: but you know, okay, So they do this thing, they
Speaker 1: have this revolution and then the KMT like just sends
Speaker 1: the army to the island and they kill something like
Speaker 1: twenty people in a week. Um like they are like
Speaker 1: they're they're cutting people's face like later, like cutting parts
Speaker 1: of people's faces off with like knives, Like it is
Speaker 1: unbelievably brutal. And this begins thirty eight years of martial law. Um.
Speaker 1: The subsequent CAMPTI police state tortures like tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of people in rules Taiwan with like an with an
Speaker 1: iron fist until like the late eighties, and this is
Speaker 1: where things get really messy, right because up until nineteen two,
Speaker 1: like nobody in China like and and and this included
Speaker 1: both the KMT and the CCP until actually forty two,
Speaker 1: neither of them actually claimed that Taiwan was part of China.
Speaker 1: But then in nWo both of them start claiming that
Speaker 1: that one is part of China. Yeah, and so when
Speaker 1: when when the KMT flees to Taiwan, both the CCP
Speaker 1: and the CAMT both claimed to be a legitimate government
Speaker 1: of China and be to be the legitimate government of Taiwan.
Speaker 1: And it's a disaster, Like the cam T is nuts,
Speaker 1: Like my they again, like they made my like seven
Speaker 1: year old moms sing songs about how they they were
Speaker 1: one day they were going to reclaim them other land.
Speaker 1: Like these people suck some of them still in myanma
Speaker 1: or maybe perhaps not now, but like I've heard from
Speaker 1: them from friends who are older who were there, that
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of CAMT like living in parts
Speaker 1: of me and Mari and tourists would go pay to
Speaker 1: visit them. Yeah, like that's it's the thing. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like they most of the people flee that flee
Speaker 1: to Taiwan. But like they break in a number of
Speaker 1: different directions, and there's like a bunch of weird rump
Speaker 1: states they set up, they get knocked off. Eventually, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a whole mess. But in Taiwan, like they
Speaker 1: have this problem, which is that, like, okay, so there's
Speaker 1: like water in between China and Taiwan, and if you
Speaker 1: want to get troops over it, you have to have
Speaker 1: those troops across the water. And this is a real
Speaker 1: problem for like an invasion. So what ends up happening
Speaker 1: is a series so like okay, so you have the
Speaker 1: cam T in the CCP like staring each other down
Speaker 1: across these islands, and the product of this is what's
Speaker 1: called the Three Taiwan Straits crises. So basically in the
Speaker 1: CCP starts sell shelling, Taiwan starts shelling like time one,
Speaker 1: and then they do it again at fifty eight in
Speaker 1: like the CAMT shelves them back, and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's a couple of points where it looks like they're
Speaker 1: going to invade, but then the US like move supplies
Speaker 1: to the KMT to like keep the CCP from invading,
Speaker 1: and you know the result of this is just like
Speaker 1: I think incredibly psychologically revealing move after the crisis, which
Speaker 1: crisis ends with the KMT and the CCP agreeing to
Speaker 1: shell each other on opposite days because and I cannot
Speaker 1: emphasize this enough, this entire conflict is profoundly bullshit and
Speaker 1: was foisted upon Taiwan by a bunch of pedley, squabbling
Speaker 1: Chinese nationalists. How big is that distance we're talking about,
Speaker 1: Like they're sending shells over there in the fifties, so
Speaker 1: it's probably not vast. Well, part of what's happening is
Speaker 1: so it's it's a hundred miles, hundred ten miles, but
Speaker 1: what's happening here is like there there they basically like
Speaker 1: have set up on outposts in different islands in between,
Speaker 1: like the Big Island and uh the shore, so that
Speaker 1: they they're like they're on these islands shelling each other,
Speaker 1: like they drafted my grandpa and sent him to one
Speaker 1: of these places and that's and then he came back
Speaker 1: and was like, funk this, we're out, and so like
Speaker 1: that that's where my family is in the US because
Speaker 1: he was like, We're not doing this ship again. This sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be
Speaker 1: cannon fodder for these like weird nationalists psychos. So okay,
Speaker 1: so what the sort of result of this, though, is
Speaker 1: that the KMT gets the backing of the US, and
Speaker 1: the KMT becomes in Taiwan is the like the legitimately
Speaker 1: internationally recognized government, um, like of all of China from
Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War until like the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, how's the u n ceat I
Speaker 1: actually we get We'll get into that and you know what,
Speaker 1: we we do it here. So one of the things
Speaker 1: happens here is that okay, so, like the US really
Speaker 1: really does not want the CCP to have the u
Speaker 1: n C. And one of the things they try to
Speaker 1: do is that they offer neighbors India like the seat
Speaker 1: on like what's it called, am I blanking on the
Speaker 1: name of the thing? National security? Yeah? Yeah, you Security Council.
Speaker 1: They offer India Sea the Security Council, and neighbor is like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna take this. I'm not gonna take this.
Speaker 1: This this is China seat on the Council, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna take this. And then Mao repays him by
Speaker 1: invading India three in ways. Um, this is not in
Speaker 1: my script, I am I am off Yeah, I am
Speaker 1: off script? Oh not two? Sorry yeah yeah, So like
Speaker 1: this a this, this goes great for neighbor mao, just
Speaker 1: like invades and the Indians lose the war very badly.
Speaker 1: Don't understand why eventually China gets recognized. You have to
Speaker 1: talk about it about like what was going on inside
Speaker 1: of the PRC, inside of the people is probably in China.
Speaker 1: So the CCP fights a war with the Soviets in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, which in this war gets called the
Speaker 1: Sino Soviet Border Conflicts. But like this is like pretty
Speaker 1: much a real war, Like there are like Chinese and
Speaker 1: Soviet division shelling each other, like a lot of people die.
Speaker 1: Um like I I don't know if I've told the
Speaker 1: story on this podcast before. My my, my favorite part
Speaker 1: of this whole thing is that the Soviets start like wargaming,
Speaker 1: can can they defeat China and nuclear war? And they
Speaker 1: figure out that they can't because the Chinese population is
Speaker 1: so just is so dispersed that even even if they
Speaker 1: knew all of China, they can't kill everyone. They'll and
Speaker 1: they'll lose the war in human wave attacks. So the
Speaker 1: Soviets started developing developing the strategy of like having like
Speaker 1: a line of nuclear land mines across the Soviet Chinese
Speaker 1: borders so that the human wave attacks can't get through,
Speaker 1: because they like this is this called the is nuts,
Speaker 1: Like both China and the USS are are trying to
Speaker 1: get the US to ally with him to like do
Speaker 1: do do a preemptive nuclear strike on on the other side,
Speaker 1: Like it's crazy and and this like completes the Sino
Speaker 1: Soviet split, and the US like really really wants to
Speaker 1: make sure that the Sino Soviets but sticks, and so
Speaker 1: the US starts negotiating with China basically to bring China
Speaker 1: to the well, Okay, there's two ways of looking at it.
Speaker 1: One is that they just want to separate, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the Chinese from the Soviets. The other way of looking
Speaker 1: at it is that they want to like bring China
Speaker 1: fully over to the American side of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: And I think the latter approach actually works, right um
Speaker 1: so uh. In nine, the US recognizes the CCP as
Speaker 1: the legitimate government of China. Uh. Several months later, China
Speaker 1: invades Vietnam in defense of the Khmer Rouge, which the
Speaker 1: US was also backing. So yeah, and and this is
Speaker 1: where we get into some more diplomatic bullshit. Uh okay.
Speaker 1: So China maintain something called the one China a principle.
Speaker 1: The one China principle holds that the CCP is the
Speaker 1: only government of China and then it rules Taiwan. The
Speaker 1: US has something called the One China Policy, and the
Speaker 1: One China Policy is it does not take a stance
Speaker 1: either way on who the government of Taiwan is. What
Speaker 1: it does is it acknowledges that China claims that it
Speaker 1: rules Taiwan. And you will see nationalists lie about this constantly.
Speaker 1: They will say things like the US recognizes Taiwan as
Speaker 1: part of China under the One Child Policy. Uh blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. Action is a violation of the One China Policy.
Speaker 1: And that's not true, right. What actually happened is the US,
Speaker 1: the US technical term for this is called strategic ambiguity.
Speaker 1: And you know, so they have this thing like, they
Speaker 1: don't they don't formally recognize either side as legitimate government
Speaker 1: of Taiwan. They recognize that this is what China says
Speaker 1: about Taiwan. They don't actually recognize, but they have no
Speaker 1: formal position on whether this is the actually rules Taiwan.
Speaker 1: What they have is a recognition that that China leaves this.
Speaker 1: And again this is all diplomatic bullshit. It's partial. Why
Speaker 1: I hate like talking about this because like, again the
Speaker 1: lives of literally tens of billions of people are being
Speaker 1: governed by like diplomats saying doing like that kind of
Speaker 1: ship because it's sucks. Yeah. So that's that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the one Child policy thing, which is not Jesus the
Speaker 1: one China policy, which is not the same thing as
Speaker 1: the One China principle. Um. Yeah, and and so like
Speaker 1: all the while while this is going on, the CCP
Speaker 1: and the KMT yere in this massive racisty you can
Speaker 1: kill the most communists like that. The CCP kills about
Speaker 1: a million commination the Cultural Revolution and then invades Vietnam
Speaker 1: to kill even more communists. Uh. The KMT like not
Speaker 1: not to be outdone by by by by by their
Speaker 1: former comrades across the border. The KMT is training desk
Speaker 1: squalls in Honduras and like helping the Guatemalan government do
Speaker 1: the Guatemalan genocide. It's it's really grim stuff. And you
Speaker 1: know the product of this idea Loge. The product of
Speaker 1: this whole thing is the audio complete audiological collapse of
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party as like a party that does communism,
Speaker 1: and then the political military collapse with the KMT so
Speaker 1: the but by I mean it's kind of it sort
Speaker 1: of has already stopped at the eighties, but by the
Speaker 1: nineties nineties, the CCP substantively has stopped being a communist
Speaker 1: party by the sense of the word, like they're just capitalists,
Speaker 1: and they're not they're you know, they're out there making money.
Speaker 1: And by by by the late two thousands, even like
Speaker 1: you know, there had been a faction of what's culture
Speaker 1: of the Chinese New Left, but had thought that like
Speaker 1: they could you know, they could, they could you know,
Speaker 1: this is still a communist party and we can still
Speaker 1: change China from the inside. And those guys are like
Speaker 1: liquidated completely, like they're just gone, um and you know,
Speaker 1: and so, but you know, by by like now right,
Speaker 1: like it's just it's just it's just capitalists. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: in Taiwan in the eighties and nineties, there's there's increasing
Speaker 1: resistance the camts like one party like dest squad, like
Speaker 1: one party state, and their whole dest squad like reclaimed
Speaker 1: them motherland politics. Everyone like starts to hate them. And
Speaker 1: this is where things get really weird because on the
Speaker 1: one hand, the camp T is incredibly anti communist, but
Speaker 1: on the other hands, uh, they're the political faction that
Speaker 1: wants the tie type want to China, and this means
Speaker 1: that like, you know, as they're sort of like ruthlessly
Speaker 1: suppressing communists and leftists, they're also like vehemently independence and
Speaker 1: so like they kill a bunch of anti independence organizers, um,
Speaker 1: which is like not not not not how anyone like
Speaker 1: talks about this conflict because it's too weird. So there's
Speaker 1: all the sort of weird political things going on in
Speaker 1: n The KMT ends the martial law that they had
Speaker 1: been in force since the February incidents, and the KMT
Speaker 1: like disarms, right, they disarm. They're not as in like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the KMT used to be a party that would like
Speaker 1: assassinate people for writing an author right, like assassinate Americans
Speaker 1: on American solo for writing on authorized biography biographies of
Speaker 1: like Schenkai check. And they kind of stopped being that,
Speaker 1: Like they disarm. They're not really in the drug trade anymore. Caveats.
Speaker 1: Don't quote me on that, but like there they're not
Speaker 1: the party they were in the eighties, right, That's that's
Speaker 1: what the important thing, like that they lose to one
Speaker 1: party dictatorship, and you get the sort of transition to
Speaker 1: democracy that ends in the first free presidential elections in
Speaker 1: Taiwani's history. In and this, like the right right before this,
Speaker 1: you get the third Taiwan Straits Crisis, where the President
Speaker 1: of Taiwan like goes to the US and China react
Speaker 1: to this by having an enormous temper tantrum and like
Speaker 1: starts doing military exercises, like they start like simulating an
Speaker 1: invasion of Taipe one. They start like shooting rockets like
Speaker 1: at the coast, like jet the the leve these rockets
Speaker 1: on the land like just off the coast, and it's edgy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And event this ends when the US moves like two
Speaker 1: carrier groups into into the Pacific and the crisis ends.
Speaker 1: But like, okay, there's a feelings I would say here.
Speaker 1: One is that like, okay, so on the one hand,
Speaker 1: this is the CCP having a temper tensium, right on
Speaker 1: the other hand, like it really and this is the
Speaker 1: thing that I think most Americans have never experienced, right,
Speaker 1: because the US is not a country that like gets attacked, right,
Speaker 1: having another country firing missiles at you fucking sucks psychologically,
Speaker 1: it is awful. Like we saw how insane the U
Speaker 1: S went, like the like the first time it had
Speaker 1: actually been attacked since like World War Two, when at
Speaker 1: eleven happened, Like you know, you saw just absolutely batshitt
Speaker 1: the u S goes, right, Like, Okay, if you are
Speaker 1: a person in Taiwan, right, which like a lot of
Speaker 1: my family is, and you are constantly having another country
Speaker 1: shooting rockets at you, like, it sucks like and and
Speaker 1: I want people to like like sort of like think
Speaker 1: about that for a second, because like I think a
Speaker 1: lot of what how, how this crisis and how this
Speaker 1: whole thing has talked about on the left is as
Speaker 1: a sort of like abstract thing that's like you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's instead of ab principles, right, and not
Speaker 1: stuff that's happening to real people who are like watching
Speaker 1: missiles fucking fall into the ocean and you know, like
Speaker 1: and what we're watching another country like preparing to kill
Speaker 1: them and this sucks. Um. One of the other things
Speaker 1: that were not noting here is that like, part of
Speaker 1: what's going on in terms of the hardening of China
Speaker 1: Taiwan relations is gentlemen square happened, um. And the reason
Speaker 1: that this matters is that so one of the things
Speaker 1: that like stabilizes I guess relations between Taiwan and China
Speaker 1: in part is the fact that they're both incredibly economic
Speaker 1: closely economically connected to the US UM. And this is
Speaker 1: because all of the all China, Taiwan and UH and
Speaker 1: China are all capitalist countries and so they're ruling classes
Speaker 1: are all completely independence like people. People talk a lot
Speaker 1: about Pelosi like investing in a bunch of like chip
Speaker 1: manufacturing companies in Taiwan, and that's true, but she also
Speaker 1: has a bunch of investments in China, because again, capitalists,
Speaker 1: single ruling class, they all they're they all all of
Speaker 1: your logistics lines run through each other. Blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. I will insert and note here that is
Speaker 1: not in the script that anytime you someone talk about
Speaker 1: like the U s decoupling with their economy from China,
Speaker 1: they're they're full of ship. Do not like everything they're saying.
Speaker 1: Everything they're about to say is a lie, it does
Speaker 1: not happen. It has not happened, it will not happen,
Speaker 1: like they're lying. Um yeah, this is important. Um even
Speaker 1: the height of Trump's bullshit. Yeah yeah, Like like there
Speaker 1: was kind of an attempt when it didn't work because
Speaker 1: like you know, you can, okay, like there there are
Speaker 1: some things you can offer to Mexico, right, but like
Speaker 1: most like China, China has a unique combination of a
Speaker 1: like a really good energy grid for the most part
Speaker 1: of those I mean, okay, there have been times where
Speaker 1: has gotten over tax but Liken compared to most other
Speaker 1: development countries that has a really good energy grid. It
Speaker 1: has a population in which actually doing union organizing is illegal,
Speaker 1: and it has a population that you know, like gets
Speaker 1: forced to work incredibly long hours, right, And the combination
Speaker 1: of those three things makes it makes it, you know,
Speaker 1: a place where if you're an American capitalist, if you're
Speaker 1: a Taiwanese capitalist. And that's actually part of this too,
Speaker 1: is that like part part of the reason there's so
Speaker 1: much like hatred for Taiwan instid of Tchina among people
Speaker 1: who you wouldn't expect it to be is that, like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of people in China whose
Speaker 1: only experience of Taiwan is working for like fucking Fox
Speaker 1: Cohn and like working just in hell conditions for a
Speaker 1: like for a Taiwanese capitalist, and you know, and that
Speaker 1: that's very easy to transformant a national sentiment and it sucks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, but you know, like okay, so
Speaker 1: like there're the U s has an incentive just to
Speaker 1: stabilize US Chinese relations in part because it's economically like
Speaker 1: tied to both of these countries. But when something goes
Speaker 1: really wrong in US China relations, like for example, after
Speaker 1: Tianna Man where you know, and I think it's also
Speaker 1: worth noting like from from the period like basically from
Speaker 1: when China invades Vietnam and even before that from but
Speaker 1: from when China invades Vietnam in up until Tienamen, the
Speaker 1: US China relations are really good. Like the the US
Speaker 1: the scene as like an ally against the evil at
Speaker 1: Soviet evil Empire like all this, and you know, but
Speaker 1: gentlemen makes things go really badly because like the the
Speaker 1: only thing in American ally can possibly do that will
Speaker 1: sour the American press on them is to shoot a
Speaker 1: bunch of students in front of the American press corps
Speaker 1: like that. That's literally the only thing you could possibly do,
Speaker 1: Like you can, you can do actual genocides and the
Speaker 1: US press corps won't care. But if you shoot a
Speaker 1: bunch of students right in front of you, they will
Speaker 1: get very mad. And you know, okay, times we've we've
Speaker 1: avoided doing that in minima. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's grim, lots lots of lots of yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know the consequence of this is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when something goes really wrong in US trying to relations
Speaker 1: you get China starts doing sabler rattling at Taiwan, and
Speaker 1: the effects of this on Taiwan ease politics and also
Speaker 1: just sort of what's been happening inside of Taiwan is
Speaker 1: really weird. So the CAMT, who have been again like
Speaker 1: the militantly anti comunist party for half essentially for half
Speaker 1: a century, are suddenly the fashion that once closer ties
Speaker 1: the CCP. And the product of this is that the
Speaker 1: KMT and the smaller like hardcore pro Utification Party has
Speaker 1: become known as the Pan Blues. And the Pan Blues
Speaker 1: are the people who like want closer relationship with China
Speaker 1: and don't want closer relations with like the West. It's
Speaker 1: like the U S et, etcetera. UM. And their opposition
Speaker 1: group is this reposition progressive opposition groups, which are just
Speaker 1: composed of the groups that opposed the Camptis military dictatorship.
Speaker 1: And these groups form well, okay, they form a couple
Speaker 1: of parties. The big party the first party they form,
Speaker 1: which is the biggest one by far, is called the
Speaker 1: Democratic Progressive Party or the d p P, and the
Speaker 1: dppnis allies which include some leftist parties I think, like
Speaker 1: the green parties in this coalition. Uh, there's also these
Speaker 1: like smaller like radical pro independence parties. UM. They become
Speaker 1: known as the Pan Greens. And this is like to
Speaker 1: this day, this is like the main dividing line in
Speaker 1: Taiwanese politics. You have the conservative Pan Blues you favor
Speaker 1: closer relations with China, and the Pan Green progressives you
Speaker 1: favor like closer relations with democracies. And also I think importantly,
Speaker 1: the the Pan Greens had this kind of like are
Speaker 1: the people who are in favor of like there being
Speaker 1: a distinct Taiwanese national identity, and the Pan Blues are
Speaker 1: kind of more suspect of that because again like you know,
Speaker 1: their basis the KMT right, they want closer ties with China,
Speaker 1: and closer ties with China means not having like a
Speaker 1: distinct Twani's identity that's separate from China. And Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: enormously oversimplifying this, and people who are experts in this
Speaker 1: will like this part of it will be like it's
Speaker 1: more complicated in that, and it is this is this
Speaker 1: is the simplest explanation I could give you that people
Speaker 1: will understand. Like I was, like, I was debating whether
Speaker 1: I even wanted to talk about like the pan blue
Speaker 1: like closer ties with China versus paying green like closer
Speaker 1: ties of the West thing at all, because it's confusing
Speaker 1: and people probably won't remember it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to understand Tiwani politics at all,
Speaker 1: like this is the line you have to take. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to at least throw out the
Speaker 1: people are gonna hear if they're going to engage in
Speaker 1: any discussion beyond like what has his tweeting And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna also like I'm gonna like lay my
Speaker 1: cards on the table so people don't understand my political
Speaker 1: position on this um, and my political position is one
Speaker 1: that pisces off literally everyone, which is that like, I'm
Speaker 1: not like a DPP supporter, Like I'm not one of
Speaker 1: the sort of like progressive like groups. I'm not in
Speaker 1: this sort of like I'm not really kind of like
Speaker 1: in this sort of like I wanted dependance camp. I'm
Speaker 1: not really like a DVP person. I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: but I'm also not a KMT person, like because the
Speaker 1: KMT are capitalist reactionaries. Um, but I also like, okay,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna do my critique of
Speaker 1: the DPP and then I'm gonna sort of walk it
Speaker 1: back a little bit. I think that Taiwanese progressives in
Speaker 1: general are waged you close to the American security state
Speaker 1: for me to want anything to do with them. And
Speaker 1: the ones who aren't, like, okay, the Taiwanese left, like
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, get your ship together. Taiwan's most famous anarchist
Speaker 1: is literally a government minister. Like this, This is how
Speaker 1: funned the Taiwan's left is, like, uh, like like like
Speaker 1: these people, God, I'm enormously frustrated by like people couldn't
Speaker 1: develop like a left. The puple couldn't develop a natural
Speaker 1: class analysis. You beat them over the head with a
Speaker 1: copy of capital Um. And okay, like I think, like
Speaker 1: Taiwanese progressives will point out, and I think this is fair.
Speaker 1: That is very easy to criticize, like allying with the
Speaker 1: U S when it's not your ass in the firing
Speaker 1: line of Chinese rockets, which is true. It is much
Speaker 1: easier to criticize the US when the when the rifles
Speaker 1: being pointed in your face are American rifles, then when
Speaker 1: it's you know, Chinese soldiers pointing Chinese rifles. And this
Speaker 1: is a big part of what Chiwanese politics are so
Speaker 1: fucked um. Things get reduced at this sort of like
Speaker 1: democracy versus authoritarian US versus China, like Taiwanese identity versus
Speaker 1: Chinese identity to less extent like binary. But it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: like my family is Taiwanese. But like I was born here,
Speaker 1: I grew up here, and you know, I know, I
Speaker 1: know what American democracy looks like. It's the army hiring
Speaker 1: Eric Prince to slaughter rocket civilians and bagdad. And you know,
Speaker 1: I also know what you know. I have a bunch
Speaker 1: of family in China too. I know what Chinese authoritarianism
Speaker 1: looks like. It's the CCP hiring Eric princibility trading basis
Speaker 1: for mass and tournament camp guards John like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: And the only actual like political solution that will ever
Speaker 1: get anywhere is to fight both of them, a position
Speaker 1: that is extremely unpopular literally everywhere. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: I I think they're like the progressives have a good
Speaker 1: argument that that you know, this isn't this isn't a line.
Speaker 1: They have the luxury of taking right because they they
Speaker 1: they have they have an immediate enemy, and they're going
Speaker 1: to do whatever they have to not get invaded. And
Speaker 1: that means allying with people who like I want to
Speaker 1: overthrow and see liquidated as a class. And like I
Speaker 1: I understand why they think that I also am not them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is this is this is me laying
Speaker 1: my cards on the table. And I think also like
Speaker 1: this goes back to the whole sort of like settler
Speaker 1: state question, right, which is the sort of unresolved political
Speaker 1: question in the U s, Taiwan and China, Like no
Speaker 1: actual major political force has like committed itself to destroying
Speaker 1: the settler state and returning indigenous sovereignty. Uh like two
Speaker 1: indigenous people and you can't have like any kind of
Speaker 1: liberatory politics in a settler state without that. But on
Speaker 1: the other hands, like okay, the actual politics of Taimani's
Speaker 1: digenous people is really complicated, like it it doesn't work
Speaker 1: in the same way that like indigenous politics in the
Speaker 1: US does for example, like different true, I mean, and
Speaker 1: this is also true in the US, like different tribes
Speaker 1: and different relations to sort of indigenous nationalism. Like and
Speaker 1: another thing that that's true about um, the that that
Speaker 1: that that that's true about Timany's dedigenous people is that
Speaker 1: a lot of them vote for the KMT. And they
Speaker 1: do this for a couple of reasons, one of which
Speaker 1: is because the KMT has this like really really powerful
Speaker 1: and eccentric patronage network that they've been running for literally
Speaker 1: like basically since they got into the island. They've been
Speaker 1: running this patriots network and this allowed them to do
Speaker 1: like real incredibly intense and powerful based building in indigenous communities.
Speaker 1: Right Like they're like the d DP are the people
Speaker 1: who like distribute, Like okay, they have like a center
Speaker 1: and right and you go there and they get they
Speaker 1: give you like food, right like they this this this
Speaker 1: is the place where you get your like sesame oil. Right.
Speaker 1: And then also there's the that's the second layer of
Speaker 1: the picture network, right, is like if you want to
Speaker 1: get a job, you join the KMT, And so they
Speaker 1: have these they have these really deep sort of political
Speaker 1: roots in that sense. And then also, um, the CAMT
Speaker 1: does this thing where they're like, hey, look the DPP
Speaker 1: is doing settler nationalism, like hey, these are the people
Speaker 1: who colonized you, like fuck them, like you should alley
Speaker 1: with us instead, which is true, Like like it it
Speaker 1: is true, and like I think, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: Taiwanese progressives kind of like tap dance around this, but
Speaker 1: like yeah, like it is true that the sort of
Speaker 1: like Han Taiwanese identity is a sort of settler nationalism.
Speaker 1: But like also this is true with the KMT as well,
Speaker 1: Like the CAMT are also was settler nationalism, like you know,
Speaker 1: like they conquered the island and ruled as you know, okay,
Speaker 1: And and you'll you'll you'll try you'll also see people
Speaker 1: who will take this argument and try to argue that
Speaker 1: indigenous people voting for the KMTE means that indigenous people
Speaker 1: support China invading Taiwan. And this is just comically wrong,
Speaker 1: like they're just they are lying to you. Indigenous people
Speaker 1: in Taiwan, like literally everyone else in Taiwan do not
Speaker 1: support being ruled by China, and the argument that a
Speaker 1: Chinese occupation of Taiwan is somehow less of a settler
Speaker 1: state than the current system is just like comically propaganda bullshit.
Speaker 1: And yeah, China, Yeah that's not being kind. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get into like this a little bit too, right,
Speaker 1: which is okay, So, like I've been trying to be
Speaker 1: fair and balanced here, right, like I have been giving
Speaker 1: you my critique of Taiwe's Chinanese progressivism. This is gonna
Speaker 1: piss off a lot of people. But like, having said
Speaker 1: all of this, China invading Taiwan would be really really
Speaker 1: really bad, Like I cannot emphasize enough how bad this
Speaker 1: would be. Like, okay, so Taiwan is like a regular
Speaker 1: regular settler bugwad democracy with like all of the sort
Speaker 1: of good and bad things about Bushwa democracies which we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with, right, Like we understand what is that
Speaker 1: lared democracy is um to be fair, the modern taime.
Speaker 1: His government is like infinitely less violent than the modern
Speaker 1: American government, like like the I I looked at, like
Speaker 1: the prison population in like relative population in Taiwan is
Speaker 1: like I think it's like an eighth of the of
Speaker 1: what the American prison population is, right, Like, it's it's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, okay, it's it's like Taiwan is
Speaker 1: not like a sort of like it's like Taiwan is
Speaker 1: not a socialist state, right, but it's also like, you know,
Speaker 1: better in the U s which is an incredibly low
Speaker 1: bar that like you could trip and fall over it,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, okay, it's it's better in the
Speaker 1: US UM. Yeah, you know, it's closer to like Sweden
Speaker 1: or something in terms of violence. But I think is
Speaker 1: also a good comparison because Sweden also has an indigenous
Speaker 1: population called the Sami, and I all Swedish leftists will
Speaker 1: studiously never admit that they exist or talk about them
Speaker 1: at all. So okay, again, this is not a stateless
Speaker 1: class society. But it's also like like sence sence, since
Speaker 1: the CAMPT has been disarmed, like this is not one
Speaker 1: of the world's great purveyors of violence, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: not the us UM. China, on the other hand, is
Speaker 1: a ferociously reactionary, capitalist, settler dictatorship. And this is something
Speaker 1: that Americans have very little experience with. Um for a
Speaker 1: long time, people argue that, okay, like if if if China,
Speaker 1: like if Taiwan became a part of China, Taiwan would
Speaker 1: get some kind of relationship similar to what Hong Kong has.
Speaker 1: Were like they were free elections and union organizing and
Speaker 1: free speech is legal. But you know, twenty nightteen happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, you know, I mean even in Taiwan, like
Speaker 1: the I'm sorry, not even even even in Hong Kong, right,
Speaker 1: the extent to which like you know, like union organizing
Speaker 1: and free association and free press existed. We're like and
Speaker 1: again like Hong Kong also, and I want to point
Speaker 1: this out, like the CCP has been strengthening this the
Speaker 1: entire time they were there. Hong Kong is the only
Speaker 1: place on earth wor corporations have the right to vote
Speaker 1: and they vote for the c C peach Like it's
Speaker 1: so okay, this is this is great, but you know
Speaker 1: twenty Nen happens, right, And guess what now, Hong Kong
Speaker 1: has National Security Law, which allows the government to rescue
Speaker 1: literally for posting on Twitter that you don't think that
Speaker 1: China should control Hong Kong. UM Secretary Secretary Way for
Speaker 1: Security in Hong Kong, Chris Tang said earlier this week
Speaker 1: that criticizing the government with the intention to provoke quote
Speaker 1: potention to provoke hatred quote between the classes was a
Speaker 1: violation of the National Security Law. A position that if
Speaker 1: actually like that, that, if actually like like this, if
Speaker 1: you take this position, this would outlaw in its entirety
Speaker 1: all socialist organizing in Hong Kong. Because again, anything that
Speaker 1: attempts to provoke hatred between the classes ISAs illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes, some of era of liberal Democrats existence within Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the moneth and like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean again like people people talk about this lot,
Speaker 1: like Hong Kong is one of the world's most neo
Speaker 1: liberal cities and this ISP has taken it over. And oh, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what they're They're they're living out the neoliberal dream
Speaker 1: of making it illegal to try to do any like
Speaker 1: trying to do like class war stuff. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that happens immediately after National Security laws that
Speaker 1: it's used to destroy China's China's Independent Trade Unions Federation,
Speaker 1: and this brings us to like the sort of class
Speaker 1: perspective on this. Um independent union organizing and China is illegal.
Speaker 1: And when I say it's illegal, I don't mean illegal
Speaker 1: in the sense of like jaywalking. We're like, okay, if
Speaker 1: someone if if like a cops sees you jaywalking, they
Speaker 1: might arrest you. Like if you try to do independent
Speaker 1: union organizing in China, men will show up to your
Speaker 1: house in the middle of the night and you will
Speaker 1: disappear for three months until a video of you with
Speaker 1: two very large men standing just out of camera range
Speaker 1: appears in which you recan't you're organizing and apologize for
Speaker 1: your crimes, like to to to get a sense of
Speaker 1: the level of oppression we're dealing with here to Chinese
Speaker 1: leftists named Louis You You and Leading You recorded and
Speaker 1: published a series of protests like they basically they had
Speaker 1: they on the Chinese social media, like they posted this
Speaker 1: like record basically of strikes and protests that were happening
Speaker 1: in the country every day. So like literally all they're
Speaker 1: doing is they are documenting the strikes and protests that
Speaker 1: are happening and collecting data about them and posting it.
Speaker 1: Um In the police showed up to lose house, put
Speaker 1: a bag over his head and dragged him away to
Speaker 1: a dragging away to a jail cell. Uh Lou spent
Speaker 1: four years in prison. Lee got two years, and the
Speaker 1: two of them never saw each other again. So again,
Speaker 1: this this is what happens if you literally just report
Speaker 1: on the wildcat strikes that are happening, someone will put
Speaker 1: a bag over your head and you will go to
Speaker 1: prison for four years. Like it is. It is like
Speaker 1: the situation for organized labor of any kind of anyone
Speaker 1: trying to do union organizing in China is unbelievably dire. Um. Now, China,
Speaker 1: and this is when I'm talking about, here's the independent
Speaker 1: union organizing. China has an official trade union federation, um,
Speaker 1: the Trading Unifederation China has such a fucking joke that
Speaker 1: is literally a matter of academic debates, Like there are
Speaker 1: academic papers arguing about whether or not it even actually
Speaker 1: counts as a union. And this has been true since
Speaker 1: the late neteen fifties when the CCP decided that, oh hey,
Speaker 1: this trade union is there to represent the party and
Speaker 1: not workers, and its roles to mediate between the you know,
Speaker 1: to mediate between the party and workers, not actually to
Speaker 1: you know, like represent them when they like when they
Speaker 1: had a dispute with their bosses. So yeah, like they
Speaker 1: don't like they they don't. They don't go on strike
Speaker 1: like ever like they they they they they They exist
Speaker 1: as like another part of the party state, the goal
Speaker 1: of which is to make sure that bosses keep making money.
Speaker 1: If you try to work outside, if it, they will
Speaker 1: arrest you. Now, Taiwan is not like a shining workers paradise,
Speaker 1: right that the sort of vaunted semiconductor industry that everyone
Speaker 1: talks about is run by a bunch of workers getting
Speaker 1: the ship burned out of them by vats of acid.
Speaker 1: But conditions for the Chinese working class are even worse.
Speaker 1: Counties wages are highered. Taiwana is better workplace protections. Again,
Speaker 1: you can legally organize unions. Uh. Meanwhile, in China there
Speaker 1: are famously suicide nets around Chinese factories because working for
Speaker 1: these places is so fucking awful that people would literally
Speaker 1: rather kill themselves and live in it. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can ask why is this happening, And the reason
Speaker 1: it's happening is that a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: is literally the worst fucking nightmare of the American left
Speaker 1: things like your boss owning your apartment is just standard
Speaker 1: practice in China. This is this is just this is
Speaker 1: just what it's like to be a worker in China.
Speaker 1: Your boss owner apartments. You have literally hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of people who live in these tiny like they're called
Speaker 1: workers dormitories, which again often literally owned by like the
Speaker 1: owner of the factory they're in. You get like when
Speaker 1: when I say like the workers dormitories, right, it's not
Speaker 1: even like it's not even like an American dorm building
Speaker 1: right where like you you know, you have like your
Speaker 1: own room. It's like it is yeah, like it's it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people sleeping in cots, like like sleeping
Speaker 1: in bunk beds with like a fucking bucket next to
Speaker 1: them to go to the bathroom. Like it is. It
Speaker 1: is horrible. Um, you have like like the the I
Speaker 1: talked about this lot in this show. But again like
Speaker 1: literally there are paid a loans integrated into delivery apps
Speaker 1: like this. This is the level of capitalism that that
Speaker 1: China is. And like I'm not gonna like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to argue that it's worse than the US. I
Speaker 1: think they're bad in different ways, like they're there, there
Speaker 1: are there are there, like the the U s IS
Speaker 1: incarceration system is like you know, like one of the
Speaker 1: great human evils the entirety of human history right there.
Speaker 1: There are things that like the US is worse at
Speaker 1: like the Chinese police are a lot less likely just
Speaker 1: fucking murder you like you know, but like yes, but
Speaker 1: like China, it sucks to be a worker in China,
Speaker 1: Like it really sucks. And I can't emphasize this enough
Speaker 1: because I don't because people don't really understand this, like
Speaker 1: they they like people do not understand that. Again, like
Speaker 1: the normal Chinese schedule is called you work nine am
Speaker 1: to nine pm, six days a week. This is the
Speaker 1: normal schedule. Mostly a lot of workers like that. That
Speaker 1: that again that that that's like an average schedule. Most
Speaker 1: people work more than this seventy hours a week, right
Speaker 1: like it is it is it is a ship show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if if Taiwan, if China invades Taiwan, that
Speaker 1: you conditions to the Taiwanese working class are going to
Speaker 1: get worse. That is just a fact. Try like imposing
Speaker 1: Chinese law on Taiwan, which strengthened the power of the
Speaker 1: capitalist class. A week in the proletariat um from from
Speaker 1: an indigenous perspective, which we We've talked about this at
Speaker 1: length about you know, we talked about at length how
Speaker 1: the Taiwan system is not that good. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's a settler colony. There's some representation,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's not great. It is much better
Speaker 1: than the CCP system. The CCPs line on ethnic minorities
Speaker 1: is that if you're an ethnic minority in China, you're
Speaker 1: going to work in a han factory. You're going to
Speaker 1: pick crops from han owed fields. You're going to dance
Speaker 1: and smile for hon tourists. If you step out of line,
Speaker 1: you will be dragged out of your bed in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and sent to a fucking camp
Speaker 1: there are you know, like this is the thing that
Speaker 1: Americans sort of have similar experiences with. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you have immigration raids, you have raids on homeless encampments,
Speaker 1: but it's not that's and that that's like, you know
Speaker 1: that that's a kind of experience that is somewhat similar
Speaker 1: to what it's like to live in change on but
Speaker 1: like it's not exactly the same. Like, I I know
Speaker 1: people whose families are just fucking gone, Like the police
Speaker 1: showed up in the middle of the night, and their
Speaker 1: families just gone. They've never seen them again, Like they're
Speaker 1: they're just gone. No no one knows where they are,
Speaker 1: no one knows who's even alife. They're just finished. And
Speaker 1: if and if you think that this isn't going to
Speaker 1: happen to Taiwan's indigenous population, the moment they start talking
Speaker 1: about self determination, you are incredibly bafflingly hopelessly naive. And
Speaker 1: you know, like like that, there there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other ship that you can point to, right like for example,
Speaker 1: Taiwan has game marriage and China dozen't like the degree
Speaker 1: of press censorship just like social media censorship in China
Speaker 1: that doesn't need some Taiwan is like absolutely absurd, Like
Speaker 1: you know, I I think like most like some people
Speaker 1: talking about press censorship in the US are like almost
Speaker 1: always right wing ship heads who were complaining about like
Speaker 1: they yelled a bunch of slurs. Like in China, a
Speaker 1: very common thing that happens, Like someone will be posting
Speaker 1: about a corrupt local official and then every single post
Speaker 1: about it will get to lead. And if you try
Speaker 1: to post the guy's name of your post won't go up,
Speaker 1: and then any emoji that people were using in association
Speaker 1: with the corrupt local official like get blocked and you
Speaker 1: can't use the emotis anymore, and like you know and
Speaker 1: like and I it's it's almost like the level of
Speaker 1: censorship is almost comical to the extent where like people
Speaker 1: don't believe like in the US, like don't like you
Speaker 1: know when people talk about like like oh, the the
Speaker 1: Chinese government isn't really banning get guys who look too
Speaker 1: feminine and gay guys from appearing in medias, Like no,
Speaker 1: they are like they're there there there. I think I
Speaker 1: think it was a Beyonce concert. There there there there
Speaker 1: was a very famous, like very funny thing that happens
Speaker 1: like a few months ago where there was this concert.
Speaker 1: I think it was a Beyonce concert. It must be.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, but like so there
Speaker 1: was a stream of it in China, and there was
Speaker 1: a guy there was a censor who was like putting
Speaker 1: like one of those gray out censored bars like over
Speaker 1: over the singers closed because they were they were considered
Speaker 1: too explicit, and she's just like moving this like dot
Speaker 1: of like censorship thing across the stage trying to fall,
Speaker 1: Like this is the level of bullshit that happens here,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not a thing that like the US
Speaker 1: really has much reference for because like we don't experience
Speaker 1: like this is not a thing that you don't experience
Speaker 1: you experience in the US. Like, yeah, sometimes I like
Speaker 1: to think about these things in terms of like like
Speaker 1: like all people talk about a Well and Huxley as
Speaker 1: these dystopian novels, right and imparts. People don't read those novels,
Speaker 1: but they love to quote them. And like in all else,
Speaker 1: we have like a system which like keep you quiet
Speaker 1: by pushing you down right, and in Huxi's we have
Speaker 1: a system which keeps you quiet by keeping you happy
Speaker 1: with with drugs and such, and like it. Then it's
Speaker 1: important to recognize it, like it both things can be bad,
Speaker 1: but the material conditions in the day to the life
Speaker 1: of people, especially marginalized people in one society, can be
Speaker 1: markedly better. Yeah, well, and I think also like yeah,
Speaker 1: like I think it's as we're not like the ways
Speaker 1: in which the American like there there are similarities, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like there are lots of ways in which the sort
Speaker 1: of Chinese system and the American system are differently bad,
Speaker 1: and that breaks people's brains because you get a lot
Speaker 1: of like you get you get a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: who were convinced to become convinced that like China as
Speaker 1: a socialist paradise. There's a Chinese version of this, where
Speaker 1: like you get international students who come to the US
Speaker 1: for the first time and see an election, and they
Speaker 1: like lose their minds and are like absolutely convinced that
Speaker 1: like American democracy is like the only thabo political system
Speaker 1: and they read Hyak and they like lose They just
Speaker 1: like they become the Chinese version of tank You's, which
Speaker 1: are like weird near liberal people, and it's like no,
Speaker 1: like I no, actually, in fact, none of these things
Speaker 1: are good. Both of these societies are just like not
Speaker 1: good to live in any way. And like you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's no other thing I should
Speaker 1: mention here, like why all of this sort of like
Speaker 1: bullshit posturing is happening between the US and China right now,
Speaker 1: Which is that like on on the American side, like
Speaker 1: Biden is trying to distract from the fact that the
Speaker 1: country is falling apart, and there's a bunch of fascists
Speaker 1: trying to take over and like, you know, like all
Speaker 1: of this bullshit is happening. China is trying to distract
Speaker 1: from the fact that they have nineteen percent youth unemployment
Speaker 1: right now and that like there are there are like
Speaker 1: cops dispersing people doing runs on banks because the it
Speaker 1: finally looks like the Chinese housing bubbles about to crack,
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, this sort of nationalist stuff is
Speaker 1: like for for for China in the US, it is
Speaker 1: this sort of game that they play that has a
Speaker 1: lot to do basically with pacifying their own internal populations.
Speaker 1: But you know, for everyone in Taiwan, like it's not
Speaker 1: a game. And that's that's the thing I think I
Speaker 1: want to close on, which is like the single most
Speaker 1: important thing here, is that there is no way for
Speaker 1: China to take control of Taiwan except by warcent of
Speaker 1: the population does not want to be ruled by China.
Speaker 1: Of the population of Taiwan wants the status quo. If
Speaker 1: you try to force Chinese rule of Taiwan, the only
Speaker 1: way to do it is by war and seasoning and
Speaker 1: controlling season control of and occupying a place with twenty
Speaker 1: three and a half million people is going to be
Speaker 1: a blood bath. There's no other way to do it,
Speaker 1: even if you are. I does want to leave this
Speaker 1: as sort of a message to people who like who
Speaker 1: don't agree with me on this, which is that if
Speaker 1: you've gotten to the end of this and you genuinely
Speaker 1: believe that Taiwan is part of China, are you willing
Speaker 1: to watch your family get bird alife for that principle?
Speaker 1: Because that that that is what you are asking us
Speaker 1: to do. You are asking us to watch our families
Speaker 1: die for your belief about lines in a map. And
Speaker 1: if if you are not willing to accept the concert
Speaker 1: pquences of your belief personally, if you are not willing
Speaker 1: to see your family get obliterated by a fucking rocket,
Speaker 1: then don't push for it to happen to us. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that. That is type one one on one. Um, Please,
Speaker 1: for the love of God, stop doing this bullshit. I
Speaker 1: don't want my family to fuck die. I yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's very well said, mate. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are so detached from the underground consequences
Speaker 1: so they're like theoretical on Twitter dot compositions that it
Speaker 1: can be very easy to be incredibly callous to people
Speaker 1: who have loved one skin in the game. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think I think this is the part of it. Like, no,
Speaker 1: like people on Twitter posting about this, there have no
Speaker 1: stake in this whatsoever. It doesn't matter for them. If
Speaker 1: everyone on top, if everyone who lives and I one
Speaker 1: died tomorrow, it would have no material effect in them whatsoever. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the worst thing that would maybe happen to them,
Speaker 1: it was it would be harder for them to get
Speaker 1: graphics cards. Yeah, you entire family, like this is this
Speaker 1: is this is twenty three million people, an enormous number
Speaker 1: of whom are going to die if this thing happens.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like like, unless you are committed enough to
Speaker 1: this to kill your own family, then fucking stop posting
Speaker 1: about it because that that that like, if if you
Speaker 1: were not willing to materially accept the consequences of your
Speaker 1: own position on yourself, then you shouldn't have it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you're pretending to be left is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this is this is gonna make it happen Here's Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't have a Chinese invasion of Taiwan happened here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: overthrow your local settler quality. Yeah, settle like learnings is bad.
Speaker 1: That's the official stunt of Yeah. Actually I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if we can legally. I think I think
Speaker 1: we can deal say this the official stance of cools
Speaker 1: of cool side Media. I'm pretty sure we can't legally
Speaker 1: say it's the official stance. Yeah. If you cut that down,
Speaker 1: I need Yeah, let's say, yeah, here are cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: We don't endorse set like colonialism. Yeah, don't do it.
Speaker 1: War is bad, don't rocket cities. It could happen here
Speaker 1: as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.