Have events in Ukraine made you feel more or less safe about Taiwan thus far?

What are they ?

The government leaders call themselves “communists”, but that is just a name.

China is economically capitalist.

The ruling party in the country is an oligarchy.

The oligarchs stated political and social goals are “socialism with Chinese characteristics” - which in practice is 1. the current ruling party stays in power forever, 2. the country expands its wealth and influence through capitalist economics and 3. controlling the direction of their society through what they call “socialism” to keep #1 and #2 going as long as possible.

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Lol

Taiwan should annex Thailand most of the world thinks it’s the same place already

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Thailand has enough trouble! No need for Taiwan to take that on. :grin:

Guy

I lived 5 years in China and here is a (very very brief) list of reasons I call them communists:

  • One party system
    There is no democracy at all. Chinese can technically “vote” inside the party but as you must be aware, that system is communist, or at least totalitarian (like fascism or a plain military dictatorship).

  • Government own companies.
    Yes, there are companies, and yes, money is the most important thing for most of people and certainly the government. However the “capitalism” that you may deduce from this is just an illusion. The bast majority of companies are directly owned by the government and there is no “free market”. For example, there are 3 main phone companies, but all of them have the same services, prices and procedures. All of them owned by the government.

  • Freedom of speech
    You know how it goes. To get a phone number, you need an ID. Government owns the phone company. To log in in any system where you can give your opinion you need a phone number. Therefore, all you say and do online has your ID attached. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc are banned in China because they can’t know who is posting. The fact that they have their own versions of these apps is not to create “national product” is because all of these apps are basically own by the government.

  • That’s how they call themselves
    “People’s republic of China” is how they call themselves and how people refer to them, although it’s not for the “people”, it’s certainly not a “republic” and you can even find lots of people who agree that they are not the real “China”.

  • Communism has never really been the “real” one
    Not even the Soviets, and neither the Cubans, North Koreans and a long list of other countries that believe the idea of communism sounds good have failed to implement the “real” one. The term “communist” nowadays pretty much translates to “people or governments that use the supposed benefits of this political system to justify the lack of freedom they are enforcing” or “a system where everything is government-owed, even if it doesn’t match the communist vision”.

  • Bussines
    Small shops and independent workers have it easy to operate, but when the company gets bigger, it starts having to have members of the party in the board and the government has more and more to say about what happens there. A communistic goal of “make sure not that many people become part of the bourgeoisie” that in reality is to avoid average people to become too powerful.

I don’t want to change the topic of this conversation, and I repeat that my reference to them as “communists” was just a way to refer to the government, but there is more about them once you lived there and experienced first hand.

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My hope is that China sees this and is now going to tell the world: “See, we are not the bad actors here, we want to find a peaceful solution.”

Not wishing any Russians harm, but the more soldiers they lose the more likely China will be deterred from going to war over Taiwan. Hope the Russian people will turn on Putin soon to give him no other option than retreat.

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So they are pretty much non democratic socialist then? The land ownership policies are still almost communist as when you buy land in China you can only own that land for I think 50 years. One of the ideas of communism is that the land belongs to all the people although I think this has never been achieved in any communist state so far, as corruption always seems to come into play. The banking system of China or should I say financial system is much more controlled than in the capitalist West. Although I’m not an expert on that, but I wouldn’t call them capitalist, I agree with you that they are more like socialist, but pretty much non-democratic.

You never own land. You pay the government to “use” the land for 50 or 70 years. What you own is what is on top of the land they “rent” you.

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I’ve found the international response encouraging. It’s early to say of course, but I think China will be wary of being identified with Russia in the future.

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Ok well that is a communist policy , always has been one. The idea is the state takes back the land , after which they return it to the people who all own it. I am not an expert on this , but purely what I’ve heard.

IE the party bigwigs keep the wealth.

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Yes, in reality, they relocate it to themselves and their friends. They steal it or borrow and forget to redistribute.

And all the pad Thai we can eat!

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I live here. My wife is Taiwanese, as are my three children. I have friends and relatives here/.

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Why the quotation marks? Do you not pay the government to use the land? Does not the government rent it to you?

I want this whole thing to end tomorrow, regardless of implications for Taiwan.

I don’t want to see any more Russians or Ukrainians die.

5.7K Russian soldiers have already died.

This whole thing is stupid.

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Allegedly… I don’t trust those numbers, unless the casualties on the Ukrainian side are equally high.

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Totally. Thinking about what it would be like if a bomb dropped on our kindergarten…
I’d go straight to the front line with an AK47 shoot down as many enemy soldiers as possible and die a man full of hate.

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These numbers are from the Ukrainian military. But I don’t think they have to be equal to be plausible. There is significant home field advantage in a war.

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