The 21st century obsession of Chinese empire building

Excellent article, certainly worth a read. Oh and it exposes flaws in the Indian policy towards the Chinese. And totally rebukes China's "historical" claim over Taiwan.

Great article. I cant seem to understand why we as a country would provide jobs to 100 million chinese when they hate us sooo much. The Chinese Govt uses this money to build up their military.

We should stop feeding these Chicom rats and starve them instead.

Long time lurker (3 years now) at the Free Republic, first time poster though. I normally never choose to comment here, opting only to read. However upon the "comments" from the Indian posters towards Pgnani in the last post, I just had to respond to this one. Simply put, the monomaniacal obsession of you Indian pundits here at the FR with China would be laughable were it not so sad. This "article" by Srirangan is a testament to shoddy scholarship, raging paranoid insecurity, and willful distortion of facts for the purposes of propaganda. In sum, it is a heap of blatant fabrications and historical distortions I hardly know where to begin to unravel. Disregarding the status of Taiwan's legal definition which is subject to debate, the history of Taiwan (according to certain Indians) is completely wrong.

Let’s start with this shall we

"China has no continuous history as a nation state. Before 1279, only the central part of what is China today, was Chinese, i.e., inhabited by the Chin or Han Chinese tribe. China is still called in Japan Chugoku or the Middle Kingdom. During 1279 to 1368, China was a part of the Mongolian Empire, and it ceased to exist as a sovereign state.

From 1368 to 1644, China had the Ming Dynasty of the Chin or Han Chinese tribe. At that time, Taiwan was occupied first by the Dutch and then by the Portuguese. For a brief period from 1645 to 1662, a half-Japanese general of the Ming Dynasty, Tei Seiko, after being driven from China by the invading Manchus from the north, occupied Taiwan. However, soon Portuguese regained control of the island, which they had renamed as Formosa, or the beautiful island.

During the Qing Dynasty of the Manchu Emperors (1644-1912), the Manchurians, not the Han Chinese, ruled the land. The main argument of Sun Yat Sen, who had proclaimed China as a republic by driving out the Manchu Emperor China Pu Yi in 1912 was that Pei Yui was not a Chinese but a Manchu."

On the first point you already make a mistake, China claims as its political pedigree the Qin dynasty as the beginning of the Chinese imperial-bureaucratic state. Its history as a state (irregardless of territorial claims) dates as far back as the Roman Republic and each succeeding dynasty has claimed linearity. That China is referred to Chugoku today in Japan is a complete canard, having no more significance today than France being called Frankreich in German. Chugoku is simply the Japanese pronunciation of the same two ideograms that are pronounced Zhong Guo in Chinese, which happens to be the shorthand name for China (The official being Zhong Hua Ren Min Gong He Guo, i.e. The People's Republic of China).

Regarding the history of Taiwan, I don't particularly know which book you are read, or more likely which random internet "factoids" you cobbled together to form the idiot's guide to Taiwan's history. The first error you make, Taiwan was never colonized by the Portuguese. Portugal never had a presence on the island, their only relation to Taiwan being that passing Portuguese sailors named it Ilha Formosa, being Portuguese for beautiful island. An altogether generic name which also happens to be applied to a number of other islands around the Pacific. The Dutch colonized the island with two major settlements in southern Taiwan for agricultural purposes, as well as the raiding of other European shipping heading further east to mainland China and Japan. The Spanish at one point also had a settlement on northern Taiwan for about 16 years near Keelung and Tamsui until ousted by the Dutch. Again, Portugal was not involved. Koxinga, the Dutch romanization of Zheng Chenggong, was indeed a Ming loyalist and a pirate warlord that ultimately displaced the Dutch presence on the island, on that fact you are correct (those of course you engage in a bit of puerile and unsophisticated psy-ops by using the almost unknown Japanese reading of his name in a disingenuous attempt to downplay the Chinese influence on Taiwan). Koxinga and his descendants held the island for a few decades, until the island was inevitably invaded by a Qing force seeking to extinguish the last of the Ming rebels. Again Portugal was not responsible for driving Koxinga out and they did not recolonize Taiwan, not that they ever had to begin with. Disregarding the complex cultural and racial interplay of Han and Manchu that was responsible for Qing society (it would take too long and it’s not like you would even comprehend it), again you are mistaken on the primary impetus of the Wuhan revolution in 1911. Certainly there was a racial component to it as witnessed by the many accounts of violence against the Manchu's following it, yet the overriding factors that toppled the Qing government were it's failure to modernize and the failure of reforms as conservative elements continued to stymie necessary progress. The collapse of the Qing dynasty was not precipitated by Sun Yat Sen, he in truth was more or less a figurehead observer, as the individual military garrisons and increasing autonomy of local commanders were what immediately caused the government's collapse. The issue is fairly complicated and whole books have been written about it, but suffice it to say, ethnic tension is fairly low on the list of the many grievances the Chinese public had with the government.

You further assert that

"From the anthropological point of view, only 14 per cent of the 22 million people of Taiwan today are pure Chinese who came along with Chiang-Kei-Seik in 1949. The rest are either the indigenous Taiwanese related to the Malay races or a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. During the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) large-scale migration from China took place but only Chinese men came to Taiwan as the migrations of the females to Taiwan, a barbarian area considered by the Han Chinese, were forbidden by both the Ming and the Manchu emperors of China. Thus, the majority was the mixture of Chinese men and local proto-Malay women, not pure Chinese in any way.

Japan during its rule from 1895 to 1945 has promoted interracial mixture of Japanese and the local people as a means to wipe out separate Taiwanese identity, the Kuomintang forces, after their defeat in 1949, came to Taiwan along with thousands of Mainland Chinese. They committed large-scale massacres of the local people during 1950s and imposed a draconian dictatorial rule over Taiwan until very recently. These minority Kuomintang Chinese are the most vocal for the unification of Taiwan with China. The majority of local population, only after they had democracy a few years ago, have started asserting their rights very recently as a separate nationality from the Chinese and now calling for an independent status for Taiwan, which China resents."

Those 14% "pure" Chinese as you put it are no such thing; you are assigning an ethnic designator where one does not exist. The mainlander clique is a socio-political distinction, not a racial one. The rest of the population are certainly not a mix of Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Aboriginal, and Chinese ethnicities as you insist. Your ignorance of the issue is outdone only by your brazen distortion of truth. First things first, the Portuguese never settled the island. Second, the Spanish presence was only for 16 years and primarily trade related and isolated in enclave settlements in Northern Taiwan. The Dutch presence on the island, the largest and most significant in Taiwan's early history, was at it's height only 600 men in strength during the mid 17th century when at the same time the island's overall population was over 100,000. The colonial practices of the Dutch were not geared towards prolonged settlement and occupation but trade, privateering, and encouraging Chinese settlers to cultivate the island's agricultural bounty. The terms of the individual Dutchmen were outlined in the contracts signed with the Dutch East India Company, the sailors were in essence what one would conceptualize today as temporary contract labour. They would work for the company for several years and upon the expiration of their contracts, return to Holland to either renew their work with the Dutch East India Company or settle down permanently at home. They did not marry local women, that is not to say that they would not have sired children with them, but their small numbers and the temporary nature would have made the results of such liaisons statistically insignificant. The amount of Dutch admixture in Taiwan today is for all intents and purposes nonexistent and for those who can distinctly trace such ancestry if they exist, they would be something akin to 1/512th's Dutch. Regarding Japanese population policy during the occupation era, your statement that the Japanese encouraged interracial mixing is somewhat odd. By somewhat odd I mean completely wrong. The Japanese never did any such thing and the Japanese settlement of the island consisted primarily of either complete families or single male government workers that would inevitably return to Japan to find a wife. It would be completely absurd to expect a colonial power to encourage interracial mixing as that dilutes and distorts the social and cultural constructs that maintain the power disparity between colonizer and colonized. That is not to say some Japanese-Taiwanese marriages or liaisons did not take place, yet again they are statistically insignificant when contrasted to Taiwan's population as a whole. That leaves only two real ethnic components to Taiwan's identity, the Chinese and the Austro-Malay aboriginals. It is true that a majority of the population of Taiwan does contain a significant degree of aboriginal genetic legacy, but what matters is their cultural affiliation and identity. In that regard they are Han Chinese, even if they happen to be 1/8th aboriginal. A parallel can be drawn to the great number of Americans who can similarly claim Indian (Native American in this case) ancestry somewhere in their genealogy, yet they do not generally identify with that culture even if one of their ancestors happened to stem from it. Today, only 2% of Taiwan's population can be said to be completely aboriginal, the rest being Han Chinese (Hakka and Hokklo are still Han).

The rest of this post concerns matters of Indian defense policy, a topic I will not claim to be proficient in. Yet if it is based upon such self-serving garbage as the aforementioned "facts" I expect it to be similarly narrow-minded and moronic. I was never one to expect sterling commentary at the Free Republic and in truth, the level of discourse that passes around here has never ceased to amuse me in one way or another. However, you Indian-nationalists really take the cake as it were in the depths you will wallow in. Pgnani was right, there is a high degree of Indian presence on these forums perpetuated by Indians posting and I wonder why you even bother unless you were refugees from Bharat-Rakshak. Say what you will about China's failings, and their are many, but at least the boisterous and vainglorious proclamations by Chinese nationalists (who are sensible enough to limit themselves to their own realms) are darkly echoed by dire warnings from the Americans, the Japanese, and many others who have a stake in the future of Asia. For all the boosterism at the Free Republic for India, the sad and lonely truth of the matter is that it is uniformly carried by no one else but non-resident Indians. It speaks volumes that the only countries that have an existential concern of Indian affairs are Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Welcome Chicom and Goodbye!!

What a surprise! A rational arguement supported by facts met with the written equivalent of "lalalalala". True I was condescending, but judging from your witty response, it was an apt decision.

Well said.

Like I said before, it'd be hell freezes over before we stop seeing Indians on FR touting how great their country is.

Talking to an Indian is like talking to a frog in the bottom of a well -- it really doesn't know anything outside of what it is told.

Even the most radical historians would agree that what we know as "China" today begain in the Qin dynasty 200+ BC. There are history before that, but they aren't counted because they were fragmented countries (i.e. not united). After i read that part about China doesn't exist before 12th century, i stop reading the rest of the post -- it's another Indian blather.

Just watch -- they'll all pile in now on this thread too! :)

LOL.

China takes 10% of India? What's that? I thought they withdrew back to the dispute border line after the war, and on their own accord i might add - if they wanted to take that POS capital you called New Delhi, there is no force stopping them (and the United States was looking the other way too, because India was pro-Soviet Union).

The facts in 1962 is pretty clear -- India and China made an agreement, and in India it was Hindi Chini Bai Bai or seomthing like that -- where both side proclaimed not to cross over into disputed territory. Right after Nehru did this, he immediately orders his troops into the dsiputed area and build outposts and settlements -- we all know what that means -- establishing of a new line. Geee, what would you think would happen? It's like Mexico were to park a few of their tanks into Souther Arizona, you'd think we'd just sit here and do nothing?

Get the facts straight dude, otherwise, you're looking more like a fool. But, i am sure other Indians will be happy to jump into the fray for you.

I meant to address this in my original post, but it slipped my mind then considering all the other gross distortions what warranted addressing.

"Machu Empire of China has ruled Taiwan only for eight years between 1887 and 1895"

Wrong. Taiwan was according to law, a provincial entity between 1887 and 1895. To say that China only ruled Taiwan for eight years is a myopic and disingenuous statement. Between 1683 and 1887 Taiwan was still ruled by China, however its status was not that of a provincial level administrative region, but rather a prefectural level entity of Fujian province. In 1875, Taiwan was subdivided into northern and southern prefectures. In 1887, it was decided that Taiwan would be reorganized administratively into a province in and of itself.

Come back and talk when you stop suppressing your own people. When you dont mow them down with tanks, when you dont kill tibetans, when you dont force women to abort, when you give people the right to religious freedom.

Your Chinese dictatorship is a shame to any civilisation. ChiComs and the Chinese dictatorship are scumbags.

Recently a Chinese General threatened to nuke us, well all I can say is BRING IT ON.. There wont be much of a "middle kingdom (hell)" left.

I am not surpressing anyone. Nor have I mowed anyone else down with a tank. I've never killed a Tibetan (or mortally harmed any other human or animal! Though I admit having once kicked a dog). I have never forced a woman to abortion, nor do I particularly care which religion anyone chooses to partake in.

All that aside, what does this that have to do with the fact that so many Indians posters at the Free Republic are complete putzes with too little regard for truth and too much for their own egoes?

I am not Indian. I just hate Chicoms who hate life and liberty. Funnily many Indians on FR seem to have the same opinion. India is the largest democracy and is our friend. Unlike China, NK , Pakistan, Saudi and Iran

Obviouslly I'm wasting my time with you Black Beak if you are simply going continue to dissemble endlessly. Good day.

if you are simply going continue to dissemble endlessly

Like all your earlier rants I couldnt understand this literary masterpiece either. Good Day..Happy trolling in Beijing

P.S. : I always find that a discussion about tibet, religion, human rights scares away Chicoms. Hmmmmmm wonder why?

Nixon didn't agree with you and for good reason.

Indians are only our friends NOW -- remember, they tend to side with the Soviets throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's.

It's because he can't talk about India without bringing up China. That's how he rants.

Everybody who doesn't agree with him is a Chicom. LOL. I have met a lot of Chinese in the US and very few of them had ever had any association with the CCP. He must be thinking that the CCP is everywhere :) Probably an extremely paranoid guy.

Why does posts here give the impression of one person here using two FReeRepublic accounts to pretend to be two different persons?

Whoa !

Wow looks like the agents of the PRC have invaded FR!