this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Look, I support Taiwan's right to sovereignty as much as anyone else, but I think this one doesn't fit with your other examples because Taiwan is ethnically Han Chinese and shares a history with mainland China, so this is more like a dispute between cousins. It's closer to if the British tried to take back over the US, or if the French decided Quebec belongs to them again.
China-Tibet is a better example (which gets forgotten about unfortunately often these days), or even China-Xinjiang. In both cases, the PRC colonized land that didn't belong to them, and began forced assimilations of the people with different language, culture, ethnicity, and religion. And pretty much imprisoning, re-educating, and enslaving anyone they didn't exterminate or force into exile.
The native Taiwanese are not Han Chinese. No.
That's as bad as claiming the Irish are British people, so The Troubles in Northern Ireland shouldn't have been an issue.
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)).
Saying the ROC/KMT invasion and brutalizing of the Native Taiwanese was Colonialism (the KMT ran a military dictatorship for over 25 years there) - doesn't detract from current criticism of the PRC.
You can have multiple Colonialists/Imperialist interests repeat behavior over time in a region. It just means it's a tough time for the Native Taiwanese.
I didn't say it detracts from criticism of the PRC, I said your argument that the native Taiwanese aren't ethnically Han Chinese detracts from your other argument that the PRC is attempting settler-colonialism in Taiwan.
If you actually read anything that I wrote, you'd see that I'm not minimizing the imperialism of the PRC. I'm simply stating that their aggression against Taiwan is not an example of settler-colonialism. It's still a bad thing, but it's a different kind of bad thing.
If you want to point out examples of the PRC doing settler-colonialism, those exist. I even mentioned a few. But their aggression against Taiwan is not one (but it is, again, still wrong).
Colonialism is a mindset.
I don't see what mindset has to do with this, unless you mean you're in the mindset that you can't be wrong and that anyone who corrects your argument must be the one who's wrong?
I'm against the concept of people "correcting" things that are subjective matters of perception.
Colonialism is a mindset too, China has explicitly stated Taiwan is part of their domain, that's enough for me to view it as Colonialism.
It's not a subjective matter of perception. The PRC and the ROC are in a protracted civil war with each other. The ROC views themself as the rightful government in exile. The PRC views them as separatists.
Settler-colonialism is about displacing and/or assimilating ethnic/cultural minority groups. It's a form of ethnic cleansing and cultural imperialism. It's fundamentally not what this situation is about, according to the facts. Not my opinion, not my perception.
The fact that you can't see how it's different means you're incapable of grasping nuance, and I don't see why I'm bothering to continue trying to persuade you. Especially since from the beginning, I wasn't even disagreeing with you. Just correcting a small error that weakens your argument. Feel free to double down more though, I don't care anymore.
Plenty of Settler Colonialism has been done as part of civil wars, because plenty of wars have the killing and replacing of identity as the motif.
Happened in the Punjabi and Tamil regions of india for instance. You can't just go "yeah but that was during a civil war" and have the ethnic violence or identity replacement aspects go away.