Political Memes

Except it's not the same at all. The Irish people lived in Ireland before the English lived in England. British rule in Ireland is a classic example of colonialism.

The native Taiwanese are closely related to the Ryukyuan people, and by extension the Japanese (who are likely descended from the Ryukyuans, at least linguistically, not the other way around, although modern Ryukyuan has many elements borrowed from Japanese due to later colonization).

The Taiwanese government though is primarily Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese. If your point is that those aren't the native Taiwanese, well you'd be right, but that would also imply that the ROC is the colonizer in this situation, which you could argue, but that detracts from your criticism of the PRC aggression against the ROC.

The current conflict in Taiwan is primarily between the PRC and the ROC, with the PRC being the aggressors and the ROC just wanting to maintain their independence. It's a conflict between two Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese governments with diametrically opposed political philosophies.

I don't know what kind of relations exist between the Han Taiwanese and the original Taiwanese ethnic groups. I'll admit I'm ignorant on that subject. But that's not what the PRC's aggression against Taiwan is about at all.

It's just far more complex than the other examples which are blatant cultural imperialism and ethnic supremacism, whereas the PRC-ROC conflict isn't about language or culture or ethnicity, but about alignment and political philosophy, and to a lesser degree economic systems (because PRC is capitalistic as fuck, it's just state-controlled capitalism like – surprise! – fascism (also heavily nationalistic)).

I'm not suggesting that one way or another, because the PRC does not currently have control over Taiwan. I do not know how they would treat the native Taiwanese population, because no such thing has happened.

You just gave me an example of the current Taiwanese government engaging in ethnic cleansing of the native population, though. Which would seem to me, to undermine the assertion that China's mere intent to invade Taiwan counts as settler-colonialism, when a much more clear-cut example is happening right now, not under PRC rule.

My point is that words mean things. Settler Colonialism isn't just "when a country I don't like does a bad thing", it's a very specific process of ethic replacement, carried out in the US and Canada, South Africa, Palestine, Western Sahara, among other places.

But China having poor relations with Taiwan over a civil war that never ended, just isn't an example of settler colonialism.

I don't even think that's an especially good example.

Crimea has a predominantly ethnically Russian, and Russian speaking, population. The Russians aren't replacing Russians with Russians. Russia did annex Crimea in likely contravention of international law, which we might think is bad. But that doesn't make it settler-Colonialism.

Now, Russia has been adopting out Ukrainian babies in its occupied territories to Russian families, something Putin is wanted by the ICC for, so that would be a much closer example.

But even that, I feel, isn't as clear cut an example as Palestine or Western Sahara. Russia hasn't been putting Ukrainians onto reservations or anything like that. Doing so would compromise the national identity of the Russian Federation as a multi-ethnic state. An identity it relies on for domestic legitimacy. Russia just isn't framing its invasion of Ukraine as a war of ethnic extermination. They're explicitly framing Ukrainians as a kind of junior partner in a conception of a "greater Russia" that can stand up to The West.