[retrac]

If the United States were invaded on the east coast, and the invaders were stopped at the Mississippi, and the US then carried on with its capital in Sacramento for the next 1000 years, do you think the executive would no longer be called the President of the United States just because the US lost some of the states? (Credit to Dan Carlin for that little thought experiment.)

The Byzantines called themselves Roman. They thought of themselves as Roman. To them, the constitution of their political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost Rome. It wasn't just a label. For example, Latin remained is use in law in the empire, many hundreds of years after they lost the west. Emperor Heraclius around 610 AD would undertake a project to start translating all the old Latin laws into Greek (even though he may have spoke Latin himself natively). If nothing else, the Roman self-identity is important for understanding how they saw themselves in their own historiography.

[ffgjgf1]

> them, the constitution of their political order dated to 753 BC with the founding of Rome, even after they lost Rome.

I’m not sure they were particularly bothered by that. The late Roman/Byzantine empires was over everything the universal “Christian Empire” and being a true Orthodox-Catholic Christian basically became synonymous to being Roman the pagan past prior to Constantine was mostly ancient history by the middle ages and had limited if any influence on their self-identity.

[thaumasiotes]

So you're fully on board with the idea that Tsai Ing-wen is the President of China, and anyone who thinks they see some important distinctions is just making a weird mistake?

Neither your first paragraph nor your second one manages to distinguish modern China from ancient Rome.

Calling yourself Roman won't make you Roman any more than calling yourself Australian will make you Australian.

[sapphicsnail]

If the ROC still controlled half of mainland China and those regions were governed in pretty much the same way as before the civil war and the rest of China was broken up into tiny little kingdoms that didn't last very long then yeah, it would make sense to think of them as China.

[ffgjgf1]

Constantinople was the center of the empire long before Italy and Rome were lost (and the Byzantine empire controlled the city of Rome itself until the 750s).

It’s a bit like saying that Angles/English stopped being “English” after they moved from northern Germany/Denmark to the modern territory of Britain.

At least for several centuries the “Byzantine” Empire was the Roman Empire and was undoubtedly recognized as such both in the west and east.

[reaperman]

Not even Tsai Ing-wen herself would claim that. Your rhetoric is absurd, there are surely better tactics if you wish to engage in rhetorical argument. Today's ROC has a different view than their predecessors relating to claims on Chinese mainland.

[thaumasiotes]

> Not even Tsai Ing-wen herself would claim that.

Are you kidding? It's her formal title right now. She can't call herself anything else!

If we're going to insist on dealing with "historical and administrative facts", shouldn't we at least know the facts?

[reaperman]

She's publicly refused to agree that Taiwan is part of China and also rejected the one country, two systems model proposed by the PRC. Instead, she said that "Republic of China, Taiwan" already is an independent country[0] and that Beijing must "face reality". This reality that she herself has accepted is that Taiwan and China are two different countries and they each hold no valid claims over the other.

> “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan. We are a successful democracy … We deserve respect from China,” she said. “We have a separate identity and we’re a country of our own.”

> Beijing has refused to deal directly with Tsai on the grounds that she has not, like her predecessor, accepted the so-called 1992 consensus which says that Taiwan and China are part of “one China”. That vague agreement leaves it up to each side to interpret the definition of “one China”.

Tsai Ing-Wen leads her party further along the overton window that ROC is "just Taiwan, not the mainland", but it is widely accepted among experts that ROC doctrine dropped the pretense of ever retaking the mainland, for all practical endeavors, quite some time ago.[1] This is viewed to have occurred through the period when Taiwan was transitioning from an autocratic government (justified by it's "war footing") to an open, democratic government (facilitated by "war" no longer being viewed to be necessary or desired, merely "defense" instead).

So to directly address your verbiage:

> It's her formal title right now.

Her formal title is "president of the Republic of China, Taiwan". In her own words, "the Republic of China" is just Taiwan, not the mainland.

To steel-man your argument, it is true that the ROC party has not yet released any statement dropping their old claims to the mainland. But even that valid, stronger argument falls when confronted with the fact that the ROC hasn't re-asserted those claims in a very long time, and the leader of the ROC frequently makes statements which are in direct contradiction to those old claims.

---------------------------------------------------

Also please read HN's commenting guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Your comment would be interpreted as unhelpfully inflammatory by many readers. I admit that mine above could have benefited from similar proactive discretion on my part.

However, I stand by my assertion that you're primarily engaging in rhetorical argument, using mostly logical fallacies to "win", rather than engaging in actual intellectual debate. I'd honestly argue that pretty much every sentence you've typed on the topic so far has been merely one rhetorical technique followed by another. The techniques of "rhetoric" that you've used include:

- Red Herring (overall): Introducing Tsai Ing-Wen and the modern political status of Taiwan diverts the conversation from the historical discussion about the Roman and Byzantine empires.

- Straw Man (severe): "So you're fully on board with the idea that Tsai Ing-wen is the President of China"

- Poisoning the Well (severe): "anyone who thinks they see some important distinctions is just making a weird mistake?"

- Appeal to ridicule (severe): "Are you kidding?"

- Misleading Vividness or Appeal to Emotion (severe): "shouldn't we at least know the facts?" suggests that anyone not agreeing with your presentation of "facts" is either ignorant or willfully misleading, thereby emotionally charging the argument to sway the listener without providing substantive evidence for your position.

- Appeal to authority (major): "It's her formal title right now. She can't call herself anything else!" This is appealing to the authority of formal titles and official designations, and falsely removing the agency of the person herself. As well as implying a factual mis-statement of the official title. The implication is that her title is "President of the Republic of China" but her actual title is "President of the Republic of China (Taiwan)"[2]

- Begging the Question (major): "She can't call herself anything else," assumes that Tsai Ing-Wen is bound to her title without addressing why that must necessarily be the case beyond asserting some formalistic requirement. This begs the question by assuming the point under debate (that her title defines her political reality completely) is already proven. Notwithstanding, again, that the implied title is factually incorrect in the first place.

- False Analogy (minor, debatable): comparing the historical administrative status of the Byzantine Empire as the Roman Empire to modern claims of national identity.

- Red Herring (minor, debatable): "Did he know where Akkad was?" introduces an irrelevant issue (Cyrus's geographical knowledge of Akkad) to the discussion of legitimate rule and continuity of empires.

- False Dilemma (minor, debatable): "She can't call herself anything else," suggests a false dilemma that Tsai Ing-Wen has only two choices: to fully adhere to the (imagined) restrictions of her (factually incorrect) formal title or to entirely abdicate it.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-s...

1: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2021.1...

2: https://english.president.gov.tw/Page/40

[thaumasiotes]

> Her formal title is "president of the Republic of China, Taiwan". In her own words, "the Republic of China" is just Taiwan, not the mainland.

There are several problems here:

1. "Taiwan" does not appear anywhere in her title.

2. The English title "President of the Republic of China" specifies explicitly that her country is called "China".

3. Her actual title, 中華民國總統, does the same thing, only without also calling the country a "republic". This would translate directly as "President of the People's State of China", where 中華 is a fancier word for China than the plainer 中國. It's the same one, by the way, used in the name of the PRC, 中华 [China] 人民 [People] 共和国 [Republic]. This should make plain what was already plain from the English formal names, that Taiwan and China overtly claim to be the same country. This also happens to be an administrative fact known as the One China Policy.

I have to stand by my appeal to you to know the facts before you take a position on what they are.

I also hope you've noticed that your objections to my point immediately imply that there is no valid reason to claim that the Byzantine Empire is the same thing as the Roman Empire, which of course is my point. Every argument marshaled upthread in support of this claim applies in full to Taiwan. They tend to be stronger for Taiwan, actually, given the fact that Taiwan was invaded and occupied by a bunch of foreign Chinese, who persist there, operate the government, and have successfully imposed their own foreign language, whereas the Byzantine Empire was populated by the same people who were there before the Romans took control, speaking the same language they spoke before the Romans took control.

If you think that this argument is nevertheless valid for the Byzantines but invalid for Taiwan, you need to state a difference between the two cases. Otherwise, "are you kidding?" is really the only possible response. Similarly when your argument consists of bare lies. Tsai Ing-wen clearly wishes that her title were not "President of China". She could make the attempt to change what it is, but she hasn't.

> "Did he know where Akkad was?" introduces an irrelevant issue (Cyrus's geographical knowledge of Akkad) to the discussion of legitimate rule and continuity of empires.

Think about the possible reasons why the "King of Akkad" might not know where Akkad is.

[reaperman]

> "Taiwan" does not appear anywhere in her title.

president.gov.tw, which I linked above, has "Taiwan" in the title. Please see the official logo on the government's own webpage here: https://english.president.gov.tw/images/logo.svg

That said, I really love the way you present information in this most recent comment. I will definitely take some time to consider your points!

[foobarian]

I am working on some messy cdk code as I read this and find myself breaking out in cold sweat :-)

[anikom15]

Yes