Venezuela has accused Donald Trump of making a “colonialist threat” after he said the airspace around the country should be considered closed.
The country’s foreign ministry called Trump’s comments “another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people”.
The US does not legally have the authority to close another country’s airspace, but Trump’s online post could lead to travel uncertainty and deter airlines from operating there.
That’s not actually the situation, but thanks for playing. There is a country called China. It has existed for many years. Taiwan become a province of China in 1683 by force. 212 years later, Japan invaded it and made it a colony.
In 1945, the country known as China was ruled by a party called the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang and party in the country of China, the Communist Party of China, joined forces to push the Japanese out of China, which included pushing them out of Taiwan. Taiwan becomes a part of China again.
So Taiwan is a part of China at this point and the CPC and the KMT fight in a civil war The KMT loses. This makes the CPC the ruling party of China. Much like how the Union defeated the Confederacy and reunited the USA.
At this point, however, Britain, a country actively occupying colonial holdings in China, and the USA, actively asserting its privilege to own the colonies of Japan, decides that they would rather work with the KMT than the CPC so they intervene in the civil war and prevent the integration of Taiwan so they can engage in financial neocolonialism. They do this through force of arms.
So which is it?
A) Taiwan was never part of China because they stole it from the indigenous Islanders? In this case the US should be dissolved, as should Australia and all of Latin America.
B) Taiwan was part of China but because might makes right they rightfully seceded by the force of arms from the British and American imperial program? So now might makes right and Puerto Rico and Hawaii and Guam and the Marianas are colonial holdings fair and square.
C) Taiwan has been a part of China for centuries and restoring territorial integrity is the first step to ending the primarily contradiction of imperialism which threatens all progress in all other realms? China has demonstrated a commitment to 1-country-2-systems so we know Taiwan will be able to administer itself relatively autonomy except in areas of national defense. And we know China supports the cultural expression of indigenous peoples and that the indigenous of Taiwan will be afforded the ability to express cultural automony on the island and eventually will partake in a post-colonial movement after the existential threat of Western imperialism is contained.
Love the mental gymnastics, gold medal.
Also lol.
By way of example, in the USA, indigenous children were stolen by the government, forced into boarding schools, and beaten for using their native language. In Tibet, all schools teach Tibetan, from the earliest childhood schools to higher education. In Xinjiang, all schools teach the Uyghur language from the earliest childhood to higher education.
Please feel free to shit on the USA and Canada alllll day for their treatment of the first nations . I’m 100% in agreement with you on that point. But to say in one breath how open China is to minorities in Tibet while Tibet is occupied is funny
Tibet is occupied in a way that there is almost no historical precedent for. Tibet was a slave economy with a monarchy. China’s occupation has increased the autonomy of the masses of Tibet over their previous formation. There have been very few, if any, occupational in history where the people being occupied run their own government, speak their native languages, maintain their cultural traditions, and collaborate with their occupier on programs to reduce poverty and increase quality of life.
But of course the reality is always multifaceted. In American occupied territories you don’t see foreign governments training terrorists and air lifting them into the territory to create chaos and death. Whereas in Tibet that’s exactly what the US has done.
There’s a reason why the Dalai Lama’s brother wrote in his memoirs that he deeply regrets collaborating with the Americans/CIA - because they made everything fundamentally worse and there only interest was attacking communism at all costs.
Further, Tibet never had any standing as a Westphalian nation-state. It was never recognized as a nation-state internationally. Now, I don’t personally think the Westphalian system is a great system to make judgements by - Palestine has never been a Westphalian nation-state, for example - but we need to be clear in what our comparison points are. Tibet is occupied like Palestine and the Americas are occupied. Of those 3, Tibet is doing the best, has the greatest quality of life, has the greatest autonomy, has the safest cultural practices, and is on an upward trajectory.
Would I love to see decolonization everywhere? Yes. But I am fully able to hold that desire while realizing we have to decolonize the Commonwealth first if there are to be any unsustainable gains along that dimension. Any attempt to decolonize territory that is not part of the historical Commonwealth is going to be a movement that strengthens the EuroAmerica global colonial/neocolonial empire.
The majority of the Tibetan people are living good lives, are happy enough with the current situation, and are not agitating for separation, likely because they understand first hand what US and British meddling leads to - mass death. The Free Tibet and other similar orgs are Western orgs, not homegrown ones, and they primarily serve the purposes of US imperialism.
So it’s ok when China does it. Gotcha.
What does it mean for it to be OK? It is a thing that China did in the 1600s. I don’t think colonization is OK. China’s current management of its occupied populations is head and shoulders above what what all other occupations have done and are doing.
Further, it’s clear that any reduction in shared national security in Tibet would result in violent American intervention. That much they have proven. So now the question is - what is to be done? As far as I can tell, the Chinese hypothesis is to maintain shares national security while collaborating with the people to promote their culture, their collective thriving, and their autonomy to best of their abilities. And it appears to be working well both on maintaining security against American terrorism and maintaining healthy communities.
I’d say that’s sort of the best we’ve seen in history so far.
Rationalize Chinese colonialism however you want. Just remember that the pro colonial on the “other side” use the same stupid arguments
The pro colonial on the Commonwealth side use the same arguments like they we let them use their languages and don’t force them into reservations? The SCOTUS, with RBG leading the opinion, reaffirmed that US territorial claims are based on the Doctrine of Discovery, a papal bull that establishes indigenous people as subhuman as the legal basis for why it was OK to murder, rape, and disposses them.
That doesn’t sound anything like what China is saying or doing in the least. Again, there are no Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies training indigenous terrorists and sending them into America to wreak havoc and kill innocents. The language of Tibet is thriving while in the US there are dozens of languages that have fewer than 10 speakers left.
It’s really a night/day comparison. I can’t imagine anyone actually believing that the pro-colonial position in the Commonwealth is anything akin to what China is doing.