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China gave it to Japan than Taiwan got liberated from Japan. China has zero valid claim on Taiwan
Like legality ever stopped any invasions by aggressive regimes
I was discussing legality though. I am aware that in real life it is still the law of the jungle who wins
Who liberated Taiwan from Japan?
It doesn't matter. Only taiwanese has the right to decide for themselves if they want to be part of China, or japan, any other country or be indepedent
LOL. So it matters that it was part of China, then part of Japan, but it stops mattering after that? Really?
Which country liberated Taiwan from Japan?
The republic of China, i.e Taiwan.
Right, so the answer is that the legal entity known as "China" liberated the Chinese province of Taiwan from Japan, while 2 different Chinese political factions argued over who was really in charge of the legal entity of China, and in fact, the rest of the international community, which ultimately detines countries through consensus participated in this construction as well, asserting that there was only one China and choosing one political faction or the other as who they saw as the legitimate government of that singular legal entity.
So to complete the thread - the nation-state of China colonized the island nation of Taiwan in the early 1600s as frontier land, the nation-state of China incorporated it into the nation-state of China in the late 1600s, the nation-state of China ceded it under duress to the imperialist nation-state of Japan when they lost a war of aggression launched by Japan, then the nation-state of China liberated the island of Taiwan in1945, making it legally part of the nation-state of China again.
This status has not changed since then.
This seems correct, except for that last bit.
For example, when the allied forces liberated France, the liberated forces did not then own France.
The French owned France.
Correct after liberation the territory reverts to the ownership of the nation state prior to occupation
So...the republic of china, which currently exists in Taiwan.
Im glad we all agree Taiwan governs Taiwan.
Again. There is only one nation state of China. That nation state includes the mainland and the island. No one contests this except Western citizens - not the government of Taiwan, not the CPC, not the US, not the UN, not the EU, etc. There is ONE nation state. The 2 contentions are (1) how it is governed internally, which is a matter of internal politics and (2) whether the US, Britain, and Japan should be allowed to build nuclear kill chains on the island.
So again, Taiwan is the leader of Taiwan. Bold of you to agree that they are also the legitmate goverment in exile of China, but I assume they appriecate your support.
The question of who is the legitimate government of the nation state of China is a collaborative question between the people of China and the international community. It has been abundantly clear that the overwhelming majority of Chinese people and the overwhelming majority of nations recognize the CPC as the legitimate government of the nation state of China.
And there you go. The end result of your tortured logic to give China an independent nation state it hasent controlled for 80 years.
"Ohh Taiwan is just part of china because they consider themselves the rightful goverment of china in exile. But ohh, oops, because they think they should govern china, that mean the group that actually leads china owns them, tee hee."
Hilariously self serving and transpartent logic. If Taiwan wanted to be part of China, they would be part of China now. Instead they have embraced democracy and are arming themselves to protect their nation from being attacked by China.
Yeah, you're not actually using anything resembling historical reasoning. Just vague platitudes.
China, the nation state, liberated the island province of Taiwan from Japanese control, reverting back to it's centuries-long historical status as territory of the nation state of China.
This status has not changed since then. The fascist minority that lost the civil war did not secede from the nation state of China, they did not declare independence from the nation state of China. Similarly, the international community recognizes precisely one China and over the decades from 1950 to today slowly came to recognize the legitimacy of the CPC as the governing structure of the nation state of China.
That's really the long and short of it. Taiwan does not claim to be a separate nation state, the Chinese people - who are the super majority of the residents of the island - do not support being a separate nation state. The governments of the world do not claim Taiwan to be a separate nation state. There is no legitimacy from any source of globally recognized legitimacy of the existence of an independent nation state on the island of Taiwan, especially not one composed or Chinese people.
As far an invasion of by the PLA, please just go search for "Xi peaceful reunification". What you'll find in the Anglosphere is an unending series of articles snipping about 12 words from the CPC or Xi himself talking about peaceful reunification and then 5 paragraphs about why this columnist believes the PLA actually wants to invade the island.
The reality is that the CPC has held the exact same position on Taiwan as it has for 50+ years. Taiwan will eventually reunite with China by the will of the people on the island of Taiwan because it will become obvious that it is in their best interests to do. During the rebuilding period after the civil war, mainland China was massive and impoverished and it would take many years to even make a dent in the quality of life. On the island of Taiwan, however, the population and land mass were small and the leadership was fascist and they allied themselves with the West. The West invested heavily in the quality of life there, making it a no brainer that people would want to stay allied with China's enemies, and yet, it required 40 years of mass murder and political repression to completely purge the island of the social movement for reunification. But now that the West is dying, the people of Taiwan will have to make the decision about their future. Will they ally themselves with the violent and declining West who are approaching them about installing nuclear capabilities on their island, making them a proxy of the US military? Or will they wait out the collapse the West and incrementally reintegrate with the mainland for economic vibrancy, quality of life, and peace?
Yup, theres that same tortured reasoning that the fully independent nation of Taiwan is owned by China after 80 years of independence and seperate governance, but this time with extra handwaving away of China's explict comments about attacking Taiwan and forceably removing their sovernity.
Keep rehashing Chinese propaganda as much as you like mate. It doesnt change the actual world.
You can keep asserting that Taiwan is a fully independent nation but that doesn't make it so. There are mechanisms by which nations are defined. Taiwan has participated in none of these mechanisms. Also, your definition of "Independent" is entirely specious as the island was demonstrably a protectorate of the US and UK which executed a naval blockade (an act of war) to protect the ultra minority fascist military that lost the civil war. As a protectorate, it is difficult to state that Taiwan is clearly an independent nation state.
Please source Chinese explicit statements about attacking Taiwan. I assure you that any statement you source can be shown to only explicitly be in reference to the national security implications of foreign weapon systems, capabilities, and troops being stationed on the island. China has held the line on peaceful reunification since the 1950s.
Ahh, a continued case book in propaganda.
Only refencing a democracy like Taiwan by its autocratic past to minimize China's current brutal authoritarian goverment, arbitrary and undefined "Taiwan cant be nation because I said so" statements, and continued wild handwaving away all the statments about "forced reuninfication" from PRC party members and endless military drills, war games and international provications when Taiwan arms itself to assure its own autonomy from a brutal aggressor. No shit China doesnt want Taiwan to be able to defend itself and is threatening anyone who assists them. It has made it very clear they intend to attack the nation as soon as international politics allow it.
Nothing you've said changes the fact that Taiwan has been an independent state for 80 years, and a democracy for 30. The fact that other democracies stand by its right to self determination is only a threat to China because it is a totalitarian regime that wants to plunder Taiwans resources for itself.
I don't need to defend against two dronies spouting the same bullshit. I have responded to all your points in the comment thread with my original interlocutor. You can read along there since you clearly have no original thoughts of your own to add.
Hate to break it to you but there literally are none. The concept of legal statehood is a fantasy; your existence is determined by what land you hold and who agrees to work with you on the international stage.
Taiwan in 2025 fits basically any state definitions (geographic location, population, government, election sovereignty, etc...), but the only thing holding them back from ratifying their current independence and gaining formal international recognition is the 1.43 billion lb gorilla across the strait. By the PRCs own stance, a declaration of independence would provoke an invasion and cut diplomatic relations with any country that supports Taiwan independence. This is how you get phrasing like the USA acknowledging (not recognizing) the PRCs claims and not supporting Taiwan independence (vs opposing).
Only 51 countries outright endorse the PRCs claims with the rest staying far away from an official position, so it's not difficult at all to see Taiwan's de facto independence. But the PRC has a knife to their throat preventing that from being formal, which is great for internet propoganda warriors like yourself.
Lmao PRC has nearly been guns hot with their saber rattling brinkmanship multiple times. If they stopped doing that for a few decades then maybe they'd get more support for a "peaceful reunification", but it's far more likely that Taiwan would want to remain independent.
They're a fucking nuclear power, that alone is such an obvious deterrent that any Taiwan threat is negligible from a national defense standpoint. We've lived in a world with ICBMs since 1957 for fucks sake. It doesn't matter if a rival superpower decides to attack you from 50 miles or 5000 miles, it's not going to end well (for anyone most likely)...
But the war games and rockets and patrols serve a much more important purpose than national defense: keep Taiwan hostile and use that hostility to preserve your casus belli. The moment that the USA (or whatever superpower) decides to withdraw their support you can hop right over and clean house. A peaceful annexation is much more risky and politically messy [see Hong Kong].
Spouting "peaceful reunification" is such a laughable farce when their posture is so obviously counter productive.
Yes, statehood is a legal fiction. It's still a historically developed social construct, with historically evidence mechanism for it. Contracts are fantasies too.
Taiwan does not fit the definition of a state because it has not triggered any of these mechanism. It fits the definition of an imperial vassal based on its history.
As for the PLA having a weapons-ready posture, again, the vassalage of Taiwan was done by imperial gunships. Of course there's a military posture, it was forced upon them by a literal invading military in the middle of a civil war.
As for national security implications, y'all love to think nuclear war is limited to just the launching missiles ignoring the US's constant project to undermine MAD and win a nuclear war. There are two primary components to this, both of which drive the US's encirclement of its opponents. The first is highly variable flight paths with short travel distances. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of missile defense and greatly increases the chances of a total decapitation attack before full scale MAD can be engaged. The second is missile defense. By encircling opponents with missile defense, the US hopes to prevent the large majority of retaliatory launches.
Yes, the US installing its military on the island of Taiwan is a national security threat while simultaneously undermining the claim that Taiwan is an independent nation state instead of an imperial vassal and unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Again, you keep claiming to know that the heart of the CPC is evil and duplicitous while simultaneously supporting every single statement about Taiwan that the US makes. Meanwhile, the US has been the most duplicitous actor in the world stage for a century, they have lied to go to war more times than you can remember, they are actively engaging in double speak daily while they commit war crimes, and you expect me to believe that the things they say, which are the same things you say, are true?
Please. I wasn't born yesterday. The US lied to invade Iraq. It is lying while killing Venezuelans. It lied to destroy Libya. It lied to invade Vietnam. It lied to bomb Iran. It lied to kill Soleimani. It lies to commit genocide. It lies to bomb Nigeria. It's all lies.
Meanwhile, China has not dropped a single bomb in 35 years. The people of China consider the people of Taiwan to be as Chinese as a Floridian considers a Montanan to be American. Invading Taiwan serves no strategic purpose outside of a material threat from the US, and it actively harms Chinese strategic interests.
Spoken like a mask off fascist. When has invading one's neighbor even been easy business? When has it ever been clean? The only people who believe this are cartoon villains and the fascist Western leadership who models themselves after said villains.
No, the Hong Kong transition is going quite smoothly. The protests came and went, the police were restrained in their response to being literally fire bombed by students egged on by the Brits and the Yanks. Sure, there are difficulties, but that's literally what China has said they would be doing since fucking Deng took office. One country, two systems. It literally has its roots in the Qing Dynasty!! It's a historical process and governance strategy that China has been pursuing for fucking four hundred years.
There is ZERO evidence for your claim that na invasion is cleaner, that it's faster, or that it even achieves the CPC's goals. All the evidence points to a country that is recovering from being dismembered by the most brutal genociders in history (the North Atlantic empire system) and doing everything it can to avoid being checkmated by a psychopathic society that regular writes op eds about winning nuclear war.
Go find articles from China about how invasion would be faster and cleaner. Go find articles from China that they don't care who dies because they're traitors anyway. Go find articles from China saying that they must expand their empire in all directions and win a nuclear war to claim their place as global hegemon. You can't because they don't write them. That's all Eurofascism speaking. You are so convinced that there are people as evil or even more evil than your society out there and you have taken to simply disbelieving all evidence to the contrary.
You are fully bought in. You are ride or die white supremacist empire. You are ready to nuke China if that's what the US leaders say is the only solution to the Yellow Peril. You are fully cooked.
So you failed to read the linked text entirely?
The goverment of China, which then became the goverment of Taiwan shortly thereafter, liberated Taiwan. Then, in the 1980s, Taiwain opened up to democracy, and elects its own leaders.
So yes, its very clear who liberated and governs Taiwan, Taiwan itself.
Taiwan itself claims to be a part of China. They claim to be the temporarily embarrassed government of China in fact.
It is an ongoing civil dispute between factions in China, of which Taiwan is a part. This is all clearly outlined in the arguments and citations above. Including yours.
You just don’t like it.
China claims Taiwan is part of its nation, but that has not been the actual case for nearly 80 years.
Taiwan has internal civil disputes about whether it is part of China only in the context of it being the legitimate goverment in exile of China. Those are the only people claiming Taiwan is part of China, so if you agree with that you must agree with them as well. Do you agree that Taiwan are the legitimate leaders of China?
No I read it. You're just making a logical leap and refusing to admit it. Political parties do not own national territory. For example the Republican Party does not own Wyoming the United States of America does. In fact the only way that a political movement is able to claim ownership of territory owned by the nation state that the political movement is a part of is for that political movement to secede from that nation state as the Confederacy did. This is not happened in Taiwan. There is one legal entity internationally recognized in this debate and it is the legal entity of the nation-state of China. Inner workings of a given nation state are not subject to international consensus the existence of a political party inside the United States is an internal matter. Whether or not the green party exists is not a question of international consensus. But whether a nation state exists is a matter of international consensus. There has never been an international consensus that there are two nation states one in Taiwan and one in mainland China. The international consensus has consistently been for several centuries that there is one nation state called China and the internal political movements within the nation state of China are an issue exclusively for the people of China to resolve and manage.
So while you may claim that the KMT is a separate internationally legal entity from the CPC the reality is that both of those organizations are Chinese they belong to the nation of China and their schism is a matter of internal Chinese politics. The KMT and the subsequent governing body of the island of Taiwan have never declared independence nor seceded from the nation state of China.
Everything do not matter except that Taiwanese are the only legitimate people to decide if they want to be part of China, Japan, any other country or stay an independent country.
And the majority have chosen to not decide at all.
But there are differences between formal status and de facto status.
A truly independent state has its own government and its own military. This is critical because the Chinese government has been very clear that it will not attempt to reintegrate Taiwan by force, knowing that doing so will create a terrible resistance movement that will make life bad for everyone.
But the Chinese government is also clear that if the US brings its military to Taiwan and establishes the island as a de facto or actual US military base then it will invade. If Taiwan allows the US to establish such a base there, then the locla Taiwan government is not choosing independence but vassalage.
What? The CCP has been extremely consistent in its position that use of force is absolutely on the table.
EDIT: Fuck it's .ml ... got me again
Yes, the use of force is on the table IF the US or other nation uses Taiwan to create a threat of force against the mainland.
Not having an opinion is still a decision. As long as the majority of Taiwanese do not say yes then China has no right to take it even peacefully. The hypocritical west also has zero right to tell Taiwanese what they should do
How would the Chinese government "take" Taiwan peacefully? The Chinese government position is very clear on Taiwan - Taiwan will come to desire integration with the Chinese government over time as relations between the mainland and the island improve (remember Taiwan was openly fascist until 1992, which is only 34 years ago) and as relations between the island and the West deteriorate.
Right now, the status of Taiwan is as ambiguous as the status of the dominance of the Western global system. When the KMT fled after their loss, all of China was totally impoverished after a century of humiliation at the hands of the imperialists. As the imperialists do, to create division, they improve the material conditions for a subset of people - in this case they invested in fascist Taiwan and developed it into an economic power, just like they did with Hong Kong. The purpose of this was to make the people living in the island prefer working with the rich imperialists over working with the very very poor communists, and of course it worked. But, as the West continues to sunset, Taiwan will get less and less economic benefit from aligning with the imperialists, and the whole dynamic will slowly, naturally change.
The problem here, as ever, is not actually the Chinese government but the Western governments.
My point still stand . Taiwanese are the only people who has the right to decide right now they do not support reunification. Once they show intention I will switch my position
To be clear, the concept of "the Taiwanese people" is a modern construction. It would be like saying the people of California are the only ones who can decide if California is part of the United States of America. The people of California are in fact Americans. And while they may have an opinion about their desire to participate in the federal government, the existence of California depends entirely on the United States government for its legal basis. Additionally the territory that makes up California is of incredible critical importance to the national defense and economic ability of the United States of America to provide for the livelihood of its citizens. The people of California have no greater claim to completely independent nationhood than the people of Taiwan.
But to be abundantly clear not only do I agree with you, that the people of Taiwan have the authority to make the vast majority of decisions about their self-governance - excluding those issues that threaten the self-governance of others - but the CPC also agrees with that position and has clearly stated that position for decades. It is the US and the collective West that continue to report their speculation that China will invade Taiwan and is preparing to invade Taiwan despite literally decades of official Chinese government positioning that it will not invade Taiwan unless the United States or another foreign military uses its relationship with Taiwan to threaten the rest of China.
The USA didn't give away California to someone else than start saying I want it back. Chinese was not always called Chinese either. Places, ethnic group names etc. change in history . I don't see the pertinence of that.
China was invaded by Japan and lost the war. To claim China gave away the island to Japan is like saying I have my wallet to the mugger. It reveals how unserious you are in your discourse
You are killing em in here. I appreciate you.
I used to believe everything these people are saying. It took me years to recognize how propagandized I was and how ignorant of history, politics, and law I was. I thought that because I went to college and was intellectually curious and I challenged the positions of my elders and read counter-cultural texts that I was basing my views on facts and well formed reasoning.
Now that I realize just how wrong I was, and how ignorant I was, and indeed how difficult it was for me to admit that I was making all sorts of claims without the least bit of real historical engagement or understanding of the things I was talking about, now I feel compelled to disabuse people of their miseducation.
Used to be, but still are, too. Just with a different slant.
Yeah, because I spent 16 years in Chinese schools, watching movies rewritten by the Chinese military during my formative years, have members of my family in the Chinese military, adopted new parents to socialize me in China, etc.
Sorry. That's not how this works. There's nothing China could do that would be anything more than a drop in the ocean of propaganda and socialization I have received from the North Atlantic empire my entire life.