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by thaumasiotes
762 days ago
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> 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? |
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> “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.
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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