What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon? How many wars has China started?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.
China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.
There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.
Taiwan has been illegally building tiny military outposts throughout the sea to try and enforce its claims, like the PRC's doing? Because that's what I was talking about.
I never said they weren't a threat, I said they haven't done anything illegal. But with the reasons you gave, then the US is an even bigger threat to my country.
> "Ah, but who's to say anything's illegal really, am I right??"
You still haven't answered my question and are beating it around the bush with silly jokes.
And you know the answer, you just don't like to say it because it's not politically correct. Here, I'll remove your burden and say the uncomfortable truth for you: In war, whatever you can get away with, is legal. Similar to all the warmongering and meddling the US has done in the Middle East, Asia and LATNM. If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal. Same with China's actions. When you're too big and too powerful to be held accountable for your actions, nothing that you do can be illegal because legality is an artificial man made construct where the strong enforce their will on the weak, not an irrefutable fact of nature. This has been the US's MO and soon China's.
You might not like that it's like this, but IT IS like this. And you're not doing yourself nor anyone any favors by pretending it isn't like this.
I don't disagree with your general argument, but I do have a small nitpick with this:
> If nobody can hold you accountable and punish you for it, then it's legal.
Just because someone isn't punished for an act doesn't make the act legal. I think a more accurate description of the behaviour of certain countries is "if you can get away with it, who cares if it's legal."
China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.
I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.
A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).
What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?
China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.
China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).
So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?
They also claim that the Taiwan-island is part of their territory. Since Its currently full of taiwanese people and China holds regular military exercises around that island an invasion does not seem far-fetched.
The CCP takes a long view of things. They know the diplomatic fallout from the invasion will subside eventually, so they're less worried about "global concern" than you might think. It's likely they would have done the invasion already but for the fact that invasions over water are really difficult and they're not sure it would succeed.
Don't most people maintain the view that Tibet is part of PRC China? They might think further autonomy or independence for it would be a good thing, like the Basque Country, but the control isn't really disputed right now. And nobody really seems to think it should be part of India.
In contrast to Taiwan, where the governments in both Beijing and Taipei officially maintain that those places are part of the same country, and the international community sometimes pretends the same and only recognises one government, but de facto everyone trades with both countries and deals with both governments.
Sure, Tibet is part of China now. But the country was independent from 1912 until China annexed it in 1951. I'm pretty sure most Tibetans would rather be independent.
> Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs.
Not an issue I follow, but I did read something that said China had proposed swapping claimed territory for zones of actual control, and India turned them down.
It's literally the same argument that every king, dictator, or president used to justify invasions in Europe (and presumably most of the world) since the end of feudalism. Even the Austrian moustache man justified his invasion of Russia based on myths of Aryan people having held that land in the distant past.
> there's a recent theory putting the location of the proto-Germanic speakers in Finland.
There is no credible theory to that effect. Either you have stumbled on something that is not taken seriously, or you are misunderstanding the consensus. Namely, Proto-Germanic speakers did visit the eastern Baltic coast for trading and raiding, and so there are Germanic loanwords into Finnic languages of Proto-Germanic date, but the agreed location where Proto-Germanic formed is in Scandinavia, not Finland.
Yes, I’m afraid that you are still misunderstanding the research. Your linked article speaks about gene flow associated with the movement of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers to Scandinavia, but later Proto-Germanic formed in southern Scandinavia according to the longstanding consensus. This is clearly spelled out in the abstract: “Following the disintegration of Proto-Germanic, we find by 1650 BP a southward push from Southern Scandinavia.”
There’s no new theory here at all, just some nice archaeogenetic evidence to support a quite traditional view. FWIW, I work in a closely related field and am constantly reading Germanic–Finnic and Baltic–Finnic contact literature, and I can assure you this is old-hat stuff.
Do you think I'm misunderstanding something other than that I'm not drawing the same distinction between proto-Germanic and "paleo-Germanic" that that paper appeals to?
You've quoted something that says after proto-Germanic had diversified, daughter lineages left southern Scandinavia to establish themselves elsewhere in the world.
But I pointed out a completely different idea in the paper, that before proto-Germanic diversified, about 2000 years before the time you mention, its speakers arrived in Scandinavia from "the northeast coast of the Baltic".
Your post above wrote “the location of the proto-Germanic speakers”. Terminology matters; Proto-Germanic is something strictly defined as to what it was, with a longstanding consensus about where and when it was. If you wanted to talk about pre-Proto-Germanic speakers (or “Paleo-Germanic” speakers as this paper does, though I suspect some would quibble with that term used for a very early date), then you could have done so.
Moreover, you posted about a “new theory”, but the paper here only gives new evidence for an old theory.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s Prime Minister), on the day that China launched an unprovoked surprise war against India in 1962. It was a crushing victory for China, and they grabbed all their territory they wanted. More can always be said but here’s a 2 minute video that explains the war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek
You know how Mao said diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun? That wasn’t a metaphor. That is PRC policy since 1949.
"""
The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]
You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to.
Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will.
Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them.
Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy, resources or anything.
As someone who has been living in Asia for decades (including in several of China's neighbouring countries), thank you for this even-handed take. It aligns very well with my own experience of how people living in these regions outside of the Western media bubble generally think about China.
Thank you for voicing a different tone than the seemingly prevalent obscene warmongering. I believe people of good will are generally less comfortable speaking out and are therefore underrepresented, including here on HN.
I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it’s crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with Indian forces.
The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]
About a decade ago, some Chinese propagandists were encouraging calling Okinawa the Ryukyu kingdom and trying to ferment an independence campaign. It didn’t get too far.
Ryukyu was an independent kingdom with its own ruling court, language, culture etc until 1872, when it was annexed by Japan. Quite a few Okinawans would rather like to return to the previous state of affairs, although probably not if it involves exchanging the Japanese yoke for the Chinese one. (Ryukyu was a Qing tributary, but the Qing had bigger problems on their hands than worrying about a bunch of small islands.)
That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.
The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.
Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.
For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.
Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).
So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.
Right. There's no clan that's blameless. All our current progress stands on a mountain of blood and death. Humanity is drenched in war. Is that all we can ever be?
These do not have a non-hostile invasion purpose. China could have used these peacefully as some sort of "Look at how peaceful we are" PR in getting aid into Palestine, like the US's floating piers, and likely had better results, but they didn't, because these are war machines for invading Taiwan.
Almost all other military buildup China has done can be validly called protecting itself from a US blockade and maintain an ability to protect shipping, but these barges cannot be considered anything else.
>What's with all this scaremongering around China gonna invade everything anytime soon?
China has publicly declared their intentions to take back Taiwan, and publicly declared their intent to be militarily competitive with the United States, and publicly bitches and moans whenever anyone treats Taiwan as the independent country it is.
Also Korean War, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Nathu La and Cho La clashes, Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, Paracel Islands conflict, Sino-Vietnam border clashes, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, China–India border clashes (Galwan), South China Sea standoffs.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.
Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?
In my lifetime I've only seen one major county besides Russia having a habbit of starting illegal wars whenever geopolitics doesn't go its way and it's not China.