China’s Army posts “Preparing for war!”

Taiwan is a democracy.

China is a dictatorship with concentration camps and history of ethnic Cleansing.

How the fcuk are people claiming China has a right to Taiwan.

During the Iraq war (03), which I was very opposed to, I used any opportunity or excuse to bash the US. I personified the country and it's history as a whole and fell into the trap of irrationally (and fanatically) "taking sides" against that, as opposed to just objectively criticising the Bush administration.

There's plenty to objectively criticise about the Biden admin's policy with China, but I see little of it in this thread.

what the hell are you on about?

Exactly this. Years ago, before Xi came into power, I had started to imagine a potential peaceful solution where Taiwan would actually choose to join with mainland China in a Hong Kong-style 2-systems 1 country model. But now that Hong Kong is clearly being converted into a regular province of mainland China, with all the freedoms of expression they typically don't have, I can't see that working at all.

Taiwan have HK as a clear example of reasons why to keep themselves out of Beijing's control.

Some posters have been doing a tally of the number of wars China has started vs. the US, but counting off international wars is leaving out the conflict that the CCP Government has been engaging in the past 80+ years, the War against it's own people. The CCP want absolute control of their county and have done many terrible things to ensure it. I feel that having a liberal Chinese democracy right across the waters from their lands is part of their motivation to invade. You can't have your people getting silly ideas of choosing their own government, or head of state. Or getting voted out for doing a crap job! Imagine!

The idea that letting the CCP take over Taiwan would somehow lead to peace is nonsense. A PLA conquest of the island would be the stuff of horror, and likely a mirror of what happened in the areas of around Kiev that the Russian's briefly took. Taiwan should absolutely be empowered to defend itself, as the alternative is too horrible to allow happen.

This is the trap I am referring to. People simplify and cherry-pick the worst of a country's history, fall into the trap of personifying that country, then form an irrational stance against it. They associate the policies and actions with that personification, rather than the different administrations.

Based on this they often assume the worst geopolitical intentions based on this "personality" they've assigned to it, they use any opportunity to soapbox/rant about that country's history, they steer away from the key subjects at hand to focus on that country, they pay lip-service to the topic whilst spending inordinate amounts of time "discussing" that country, they gaslight about it, they attempt to project objectivity, etc

When you have individuals who systematically do this, it's very clear what's going on. When they've mentioned Iraq more times than George Galloway has in topics that have nothing to do with it, when they give "the summary speech" about US cold war history for the 20th time and so on - these are just some of the very obvious red flags.

I fully agree, the US is a part of this discussion. Keyword: part.

It's a bit disingenuous to say that Putin was stopped without western intervention. Since 2014 the us alone have invested 11bn and supplied training to help prepare the Ukrainians, again with their consent. Then since the invasion they have been providing intelligence, weapons, more training and economic pressure at a cost to America. People will refute their intentions or motivations but in the end, a sovereign nation asked them for assistance and they assisted and operated within the consent of that nation. This is the difference. The Chinese and Russians do not care about the consent of their targets. If Taiwan voted tomorrow that they would like to merge with the mainland, the Americans would back away peacefully.

the useful supply of military hardware began after the invasion. US involvement prior to the invasion came down to Ukraine playing both Russia and the US off each other so that Ukraine could benefit, and there is no real idea of how that investment was spent

Just because you cant tell "how the money was spent", doesn't mean that it wasn't an intervention. Even along those lines, I would imagine some of it was used to improve military capabilities of a country that was partially occupied. The Ukrainian military capability improved substantially from 2014-2022. The fact remains that the US were supporting Ukraine before February 24th with financial and training assistance, which can be verified. That directly contradicts your statement that there was no western intervention(you subsequently decided in reply to use the term direct intervention and it is true that they did not directly engage militarily)

Personification of a country's history. There's no "they", it's not a person with a personality. These are nations with complex politics, run by many different sometimes polar administrations with diverse foreign policies. E.g. Germany is not hypocritical for criticising war because "they" have started wars before. Summarising history and thinking like that is a very slippery slope.

I think you misunderstood my point, certain countries administrations are part of the discussion, not all of the discussion.