[legitster]

It's worse than a rebellious province. It's a more successful rebellious province.

For China, they hold up all of these technical accomplishments and quality of life improvements they have made under their one party system. But now over here is Taiwan that never bought in and is doing even better! It undercuts all of their messaging.

If the communist party could wave a magic wand, they would take Taiwan and not just extract wealth, but also pump out a lot of propaganda that says Taiwan is doing even better under party rule and Western-style democracy was holding it back.

[axus]

Hong Kong is a test case for what would happen to Taiwan (but with less shooting).

[r00fus]

> It's worse than a rebellious province. It's a more successful rebellious province.

That statement just made me LOL. In what dimension other than foreign investment do you see Taiwan as more successful than China? In 2025, it's pretty clear that China has self sovereignty, is the world's factory, leads in BRICS, and isn't subject to the US empire.

[legitster]

Per capita income? Percentage of people with education/clean running water/out of poverty? Things that actually matter to the daily lives of people?

Yes, China has lifted millions of people out of poverty over the last few decades, but the median person in China is still vastly worse off than the median person in Taiwan.

[coliveira]

Chinese people know that Taiwan is only what it is because of money pumped by the US into the little island. It has always been the strategy of Western countries to support little states in the vicinity of enemy countries as a way to contain and divide the nation.

[dangus]

So when people in the US buy stuff and it's made in (mainland) China is that not considered money being "pumped by the US?"

U.S. Imports from Mainland China: $438.9 billion

U.S. Imports from Taiwan: $116.3 billion

Please explain how your logic survives this basic analysis.

[legitster]

I mean, we are also going to brush past the infrastructure development done by the Japanese when they occupied Taiwan during the Meiji period that made it a valuable island to begin with. Or that Taiwan did a better, more equitable and less violent version of land reform than Mao did. And that Taiwan never expelled academics and didn't attempt the Great Leap Forward.

If so, it would sound like the Chinese people are being mislead about the economic history of the island they supposedly claim.

[nine_k]

North Korea has self sovereignty, space rockets, nuclear weapons, and sends its troops to a war overseas to project its power!

South Korea is just much more successful at putting bread (and many other foods) on the tables of its citizens. It is also more advanced technologically, and, curiously, has a working democratic government instead of a hereditary single-party rule.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Taiwan is 3x more prosperous per capita. PRC just has a lot more people.

[tazjin]

So Norway and maybe Monaco are more successful than the US?

[dontlikeyoueith]

In improving the lives of their people?

Yes, absolutely.

[bigfudge]

Norway, probably yes. Their population is more educated, and their civil society much better functioning than the UK. Their society is less unequal and (I’m pretty sure) their quality of life figures would be higher. Monaco is just a tax wheeze and playground.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Norway's GDP is driven by their nationalized petroleum business (20 - 35% of GDP)

[ithkuil]

there are multiple success metrics

[junipertea]

also, to answer the original question: yes they are

[ithkuil]

well that really depends on the metric right?

do you care about quality of life? literacy? about social justice? about women's rights?

or about who has the most richest billionaires or the strongest military?

or who has the best american football teams?

Not every people care about the same things. Some people would rather live in a country that treats others as shit, and take pride in that and absolutely don't see the point why other other countries have some better metrics on some they may consider useless stuff like education.

EDIT: I mean, I know it sounds silly, but failure to understand that there are so many people who literally don't give a shit about why education matters, or why empathy matters is the reason we are in this situation. We took for granted that there are universal values, and organized our societies around goals oriented towards those universal values and in the meantime we got this resentment brewing in part of the population that got exploited by populist forces

[tdeck]

> they hold up all of these technical accomplishments and quality of life improvements they have made under their one party system. But now over here is Taiwan that never bought in

Never bought in to one party rule huh? It seems like people forgot about the 38 years of martial law:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Taiwan

[legitster]

Even so, this doesn't change the fact that anything that Maoists could take credit for was done better by the non-ideologue dictator next door.

But the fact that the martial law came to an end largely democratically is good evidence that both democratic reform was easier outside of the CCCP, and that the Taiwanese single party rule was probably not as totalitarian as some people claim.

[Retric]

This isn’t an abstract comparison. CCP mostly overthrew the existing government and Taiwan was a continuation of that existing system. So for that system be quantifiably better is an issue independent of things like elections.

It’s a clear demonstration that failures like the great Chinese famine simply wouldn’t have happened if the communist revolution failed. That’s a significant political issue, because people from that time period are still alive so they can’t simply erase the memory of it.

[hosh]

I mean, it depends on what you mean by "rebellious". There is a lot more nuance than that. From the Kuomingtang's perspective, the CCP are the rebels.

One piece of history is that after Sun Yat-Sen died, his successor Chang Kai Shek purged the Kuomingtang of any socialist, community, and otherwise left-leaning members of their assembly. When some members escaped the purge, this sowed the seeds of the CCP that came to fruit after fighting off the Japanese during WWII.

When the Kuomingtang retreated to Taiwan, it was not run as a republic or a democratic society. Martial law ended in 1987 and a second political party did not appear until it was illegally formed in 1986. The Kuomingtang and its coalition continues to identify with China -- the civilization -- whereas the DDP-lead coalition is done with that and wants their own national identity of Taiwain.

[knowitnone]

the US made China it's manufacturing arm and now the US wants to take that back? Kind of late. If China invades Taiwan, the US is to blame. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

[lupusreal]

> If China invades Taiwan, the US is to blame

That's completely deranged. The CCP has intended to take Taiwan from day one. Before they even managed to drive the ROC out of mainland China they intended to take all of China, including Taiwan, and their failure to take Taiwan has never been something they were satisfied with.

Manufacturing has nothing to do with it. America only has anything to do with it insofar as they have helped Taiwan resist the CCP so far.

[ithkuil]

Yeah that weird logic is all too common recently. I'll paraphrase:

The ravenous wild beast is pounding at your door. The only thing standing before you and certain death is your front door that needs urgent repairs. You call your landlord begging for help but they say it's not their problem.

The beast smashes through the door and eats you up.

Some would agree that the landlord is to blame because of inaction. Some would argue instead that the landlord is not responsible for your problem. You should have not provoked the beast. Or fixed the door yourself. Or paid more rent etc.

This framing only works of the wild beast has no agency at all. It's by definition wild and we all know what it will do and it can't help itself but being a man eating wild beast. It has no moral obligation to not be a man eating beast.

But by applying this framing to Russia and CCP you're dehumanizing them. You're assuming that they are so evil they cannot possibly have any moral obligations and so the burden falls on third parties (or worse, you, their victim!) if they attack you!

[jjtheblunt]

> the US made China it's (sic) manufacturing arm..

i think it's more accurate to give credit where earned: one thing the CCP did smart was _win_ foreign business (US Apple and Dell etc) by building the rentable factory system with deep dependable supply chains directly adjacent. That was uniquely able , globally, to compete and win business.

The US didn't seemingly even think to do that, perhaps distracted by the Cold War?

[xxpor]

And China made the US its source of income. The relationship works both ways. The consumer market in China is a disaster.

[ethbr1]

Hard to have a strong consumer market with 17%+ youth unemployment.

[xxpor]

And the reason there's 17%+ youth unemployment is because there's a weak consumer market!

This is what happens when you structure your entire economy around exports: artificially weak currency, capital controls, artificially low wages, etc.

[dmoy]

Well also the 50%+ savings rate for a long time (down to the 30%s maybe ten years ago, then back up for awhile)

If everyone in the US saved 30-50%+ it would not go well for our consumer market either.

[xxpor]

Absolutely.

[dehrmann]

US tariffs on China are worse for Taiwanese independence than TSMC building fabs in the US.

[nine_k]

Pray elaborate! What is the mechanism of that, in your opinion?

(Not saying that the US policy is decent here, or anywhere else, under the current administration.)

[dehrmann]

The trade war reduces China's dependence on the US, whether through sales or holding US treasuries. This means China can invade Taiwan with less risk of economic sanctions. That said, without TSMC, and especially with the current administration, I doubt the US would step in.