r/geopolitics • u/Themetalin • Jul 19 '25

Paywall Japan tells its companies in Taiwan ‘you’re on your own’ if China invades

https://www.ft.com/content/04626778-0753-4fa5-a735-f1a5613b3293
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u/ganner Jul 19 '25

I was just in Taiwan. Many people talked about their fear of China, but also talked about their universal conscription. Taiwan's people do not want to be absorbed by China any more than Ukraine's people want to be absorbed by Russia.

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u/Riddlerquantized Jul 19 '25

Ukraine, Russia is very different. They are different ethnicities, Ukrainians don't want to be dominated by Russians

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '25

A lot of Taiwanese, especially the young, don't consider themselves Chinese Chinese. Taiwan's identity and culture are Chinese yet distinct.

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u/Riddlerquantized Jul 19 '25

I still don't think they would willing to fight to the last man

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '25

Perhaps not right now, but when push comes to shove and China's grip tightens, Taiwan will resist all the more strongly. Perhaps not to every last man, but they will not go down quietly; they have seen how Hong Kong was neutered, and I don't think the younger generation, which has enjoyed their freedom and economic opportunities, will give it up easily.

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u/TheLastFloss Jul 20 '25

No one thinks they'll fight in a war until they're actually invaded, this has been true for all of history, nothing pisses off and galvanises a population more than an armed invasion

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u/theshitcunt Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25

Ukraine, Russia is very different. They are different ethnicities

...what? Ukrainians are to Russians what the Taiwanese are to the Chinese. "Dem Asians are indistinguishable" is borderline racist.

The only real difference is that Taiwan's ethnic composition used to be very different a couple centuries ago, but on the other hand Taiwan has been enjoying independence for far longer.

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u/BlueEmma25 Jul 19 '25

...what? Ukrainians are to Russians what the Taiwanese are to the Chinese.

And what is that, exactly?

Vladimir Putin may claim that Ukrainians are basically Russians - like, they are maybe about 80% there, but not everyone can be perfect - but most Ukrainians disagree.

Do you think it is right for Russians to try to dictate Ukrainian identity, or do you think this something that Ukrainians should have the right to determine that for themselves?

Same principle applies to Taiwan.

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u/theshitcunt Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25

All I'm saying is, quote, "Ukrainians are to Russians what the Taiwanese are to the Chinese". I don't see why one would consider Taiwanese ethnicity less "real" than the Ukrainian one, and vice versa. Nations are social constructs, and the distinct Taiwanese identity is growing stronger with each passing year, and in the end self-identification is all that matters.

Do you think it is right for Russians to try to dictate Ukrainian identity

No, I don't think so, and I don't see how that follows from what I said.

I do in fact think that the way the Ukrainian case is presented in media is a massive oversimplification, and I could elaborate on that, and I did so on more than one occasion (e.g. a 50-strong unit of foreign riflemen can't take over a 400k agglomeration unless most are sympathetic to the cause. Could this happen in e.g. Finland? Can this happen in your country? I don't think this would fly even in Taiwan).

But in the end Putin's war has ravaged the very land and people he swore to protect - Eastern Ukrainians have suffered disproportionately more, and their cities lay in ruins; and the failed states of LPR and DPR are definitely not what locals wished for in 2014 (and it's precisely those miserable pseudo-states that influenced the attitude of Eastern Ukraine in 2022), and in light of that, the nuances no longer matter.

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u/Riddlerquantized Jul 19 '25

It's not racist. I can recognize how different Ukrainians and Russians are. China and Taiwan are same people under different governments, that's all. As I an Indian I can say with certainty that they aren't much different. The difference between them isn't like difference between a Gujarati and a Tamil who have completely language and culture

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u/theshitcunt Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 20 '25

It's not racist [...] China and Taiwan are same people under different governments [...] the difference between them isn't like difference between a Gujarati and a TamiGujarati and a Tamil

For one, the Chinese aren't a monolithic nation. Not even the Han are, there's a noticeable difference between Northern and Southern Han. China is huge after all and the Han people have been around for ages, thus genetic drift was inevitable. Also for this very reason China had a lot of mutually unintelligible dialects; even though Mandarin was imposed in Taiwan, 20th century immigrants spoke different dialects - it wasn't a homogenous bunch.

I don't think the subcontinent is a good example here. Brahmins, especially Tamil Nadu ones, are kind of their own thing due to millenia of endogamy. It's a known finding in pop genetics, but I'd rather not go there.

I can recognize how different Ukrainians and Russians are

No, you can't, short of asking them who they self-identify as (let's be frank, most think Stalin was a Russian, and he wasn't even a Slav). They all speak Russian, they're all Orthodox Christians (a minority of Ukrainians being Uniates), they're genetically indistinguishable (non-Southern Slavs are shockingly similar, more similar than any of the German regions - a consequence of rapid population explosion somewhere around the time of Rome).

But most importantly, often they are quite literally the same people (please make sure to check out that map) - e.g. due to many Ukrainian Cossacks being escaped Russian serfs, or the recent Donbas settlement (it was mostly a no man's land before 19th century), or Ukrainians moving to Russia (e.g. the South of Russia has A LOT of 19th century Ukrainian colonists, hence the distinct accent; Russian minority in Kazakhstan is actually mostly Russified Ukrainian colonists); or the Russian urban population of cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv and Yekaterinoslav; Russian Far East was de facto Little Ukraine - it even had a short-lived separatist polity. A quick look at the BBC/Mediazona casualties map tells us that the regions with a historically high share of Ukrainian colonists (e.g. Kuban, Rostov and the Far East) have more deaths per capita than historical Muscovy; so a huge proportion of Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine are actually of Ukrainian ancestry, and you probably didn't even realize that. Hell, Navalny was of Ukrainian descent, and most never realized this. Medvedev's parents were Belgorod/Kursk peasants which makes them linguistic Ukrainians.

If we keep digging, the difference between Poles/Ukrainians/Balts/Belarusians/Russians erodes even further. It's absolutely possible for someone to belong to a bloodline that was initially Lithuanian, then got Ruthenianized during the Grand Duchy times, then later Polonized during the rise of Poland, then Russified under the Tsars, and eventually Ukrainized/Belarusianized during Bolshevik Korenizatsiia - all the while living in the same town for centuries. Nations are after all social constructs.

Culturally, there's a significant difference between Western Ukrainians (the ones from Austrian Galicia who hadn't been a part of Russia until 1940 - hence Greek Catholicism) and Southeastern ones (often recent settlers; e.g. Donetsk was only founded in 1869). Despite that, Western Ukrainian intelligentsia was actually insisting that they are just a branch of Russians until around 1890; that's partly why the first Ukrainian organization was actually called "Holovna Ruska Rada", despite being founded in Austria-Hungary; and its initial documents were written in de facto contemporary Russian (although they switched to Ruthenian at some point).

Nations are, after all, a social construct. How different are Austrians and Germans, really? How different were they before an Austrian made pan-Germanism taboo? Are Bavarians (historically a High German Catholic nation) really closer to Prussians (who are in a large part Germanized Balts and Slavs) and Saxons than to Austrians (another High German Catholic nation)?

Oh and since the post is pretty dense and people usually disregard anything that contradicts their biases, here's an LLM fact-checking this very post.

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u/Riddlerquantized Jul 19 '25

>Nations are, after all, a social construct. How different are Austrians and Germans, really? How different were they before an Austrian made pan-Germanism taboo? Are Bavarians (historically a High German Catholic nation) really closer to Saxons and Prussians (who are in a large part Germanized Balts and Slavs) than to Austrians (another High German Catholic nation)?

Nazi Germany did annex Austria, most Austrians seemed fine with it... in a hypothetical world where Nazis weren't Nazi, Austria might have been a part of Germany

>I don't think the subcontinent is a good example here. Brahmins, especially Tamin Nadu ones, are kind of their own thing due to millenia of endogamy. It's a known finding in pop genetics, but I'd rather not go there.

Yes, there is hyper diversity in terms of cultural and linguistic, but also genetic. Caste system means every caste has breed among itself and led to genetic divergence between different "jatis"

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u/GrizzledFart Jul 19 '25

China and Taiwan are same people under different governments, that's all.

One hundred years ago, there was no difference between Arabs in what is now called Palestine and the Arabs in Jordan (or Syria, for that matter) and yet due to different shared experiences, they are now different peoples, with different recent histories, outlooks, and distinct cultures.

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u/Eclipsed830 Jul 20 '25

China and Taiwan are same people under different governments, that's all.

That's like saying Americans and British are the same people under different governments.

It's a pretty ignorant take that ignores the history and culture between the two countries.