Wikileaks - 2007: UN told to drop ‘Taiwan is part of China’ by US

[Valmy]

Because if history and culture mean nothing for determining the validity of states, then we're left with the simple calculus of might makes right.

I am talking about the validity of claims on other people's territory you do not currently control.  Taking other people's stuff sorta depends on your might does it not?

[Ideologue]

@Berkut:  Heh, if you can't think of any reasons why China's claim on Taiwan isn't stronger than Ide's claim to be emperor of Russia, I doubt we will have any room for finding common ground in this discussion.

FU, Camerus.  I would be a fine tsar.

But yeah, at what point did PRChina get a shield on Formosa?  I mean, fuck, might as well say Japan has a legitimate claim to it.  At least they held it for sixty years.  It's like saying Britain has a legitimate claim on the territory of the United States.

Well...

[Solmyr]

Britain already lost all its overseas cores since it's been more than fifty years. And they cannot use the nationalism CB either since the US isn't British culture anymore.

[dps]

Why on earth does the victory of the CPP invalidate centuries of Chinese history and make China start at year 0 in 1949? 

Why on earth does ancient history validate anything?  I guess the Germans were legitimate to invade Poland since Danzig and the Polish corridor were legitimately theirs?  No.  They were strong so they took it and used history and ethnicity as their political justification.  Incidentally nobody was particularly convinced by the justice of their cause.

But also there is a Chinese government in power in Taiwan so the claim it must belong to the Chinese because of history is not even particularly compelling from some sort of self-determination nationalist standpoint.  The issue is the claim that the PRC is the only legitimate government of every part of the world that ever belonged to a previous Chinese state.   I do not see why that is super just and proper.  But they make it so with their political clout.

Because if history and culture mean nothing for determining the validity of states, then we're left with the simple calculus of might makes right.

But perhaps I am misunderstanding your position.  Is it that history or culture have zero bearing on the validity of claims?  And that China's claim on Taiwan is equally legitimate to its claim on Angola?  Or is it just that might makes right?  That China's claim on Taiwan is only valid because they have the potential ability to enforce it?  Or is it the belief in self-determination for all peoples?

I support the RoC's independence, but to claim that China has no legitimate reason to consider it a part of China strikes me as absurd.

In my opinion, the CCP doesn't have any claim to be the legitimate government over any place beyond the claim of might makes right.