Demagogue actor turned president

And now turned dictator holding onto power only with the help of a Nazi junta since his term has expired and he refused to hold elections.

That’s my country’s foreign minister, Annalena 360°. Some say she is the world’s dumbest foreign minister. Of course i would never say that because if i did she would try to have me criminally prosecuted.

Now that’s praxis.

a territorial claim is NOT objective

That’s correct. That’s what i’ve been trying to tell you, that the subjective matters and that we can’t just ignore it and pretend like we can establish an objective framework for everything where human relations are concerned, which is ultimately what international relations are just on a larger scale.

I have a question for you: do you think that the people of Tibet would be materially better off if they had been turned into an anti-China proxy by the imperialists like Ukraine is now for Russia? Do you not think that maybe being a part of China and enjoying the peaceful economic and social development that China has brought to Tibet has been to the advantage of the people living there?

What exactly would you hope to achieve by making Tibet “independent” (leaving them more vulnerable to imperialist meddling and exploitation) and how do you know that Tibetans actually want that? I’m trying to understand, why are Europeans so fixated on creating ethno-states everywhere? What is wrong with Tibet being a part of the multi-ethnic Chinese nation to which they have deep historic and cultural ties?

Then it was independent 1912-1950

It formally wasn’t. China never recognized it as independent and neither did the “international community” (however you want to interpret that term).

Should Mongolia also be absorbed into China?

That’s not for me to say. The PRC recognized Mongolia’s independence and they have great and lucrative relations now. I don’t currently see that anyone who matters has any material or ideological interest in changing that.

I’m not making a prescriptive statement. I’m telling you how things are and not how they should be.

Countries are not inert objects in a universal logical framework, they are made up of people and what the people of a country think and want and feel matters, even if that’s subjective. And when that country is a civilization state like China that carries a certain weight.

By that logic no small country could ever become independent of a big one.

They usually can’t unless their independence is to the advantage of one of more big countries. For instance, although Mongolia being independent has more to do with Russia and the Russian civil war than it does with China, it is nevertheless a useful buffer state for both.

If it wasn’t, it probably wouldn’t be independent.

You or i may think it’s not a good justification but for a lot of people it is. China was subjected to a century of humiliation during which imperialist powers invaded China and attempted to rip it apart, to separate it from territories which had been a part of China for centuries. The restoration of China’s national unity, integrity and sovereignty was and is viewed by a majority of Chinese people as a national imperative if China is to regain its dignity. It’s why they will never accept “Taiwan independence”.

It is very dangerous when westerners refuse to understand this and think that borders are meaningless and that this or that territory can be separated from China and they will just accept it. You have to understand that China is determined to never again allow to be done to them what was done in the 19th and early 20th century. (The same goes for Russia too, which is why we have the conflict in Ukraine which Russians view as an existential one and will never accept losing.)

All this fancy philosophical talk about objective ontology is meaningless when you ignore how a nation of a billion people feels.

That is, as pretty much all western media on the topic of China and Tibet, an awful article full of complete nonsense. They throw around bullshit buzzwords like “occupation” and “forced collectivization” that betrays either a total ignorance or purposeful and malicious distortion of the history and status of Tibet in the PRC. But as you yourself recognize even they cannot help but admit that over 95% of the population of Tibet were essentially enslaved and that the fairy tale image of pre-liberation Tibet that has been sold to westerners is a crock of shit. And yet the CIA funded “free Tibet” crowd are even lying about that and trying to claim that that history is all “Chinese communist propaganda”. So ask yourself, why should anyone believe anything else they say about Tibet?

I want to correct a few misconceptions that are evident in your comment:

I’m not convinced the Tibetan people supported the invasion.

It wasn’t an invasion, it was a liberation, and a peaceful one at that until reactionary forces, fearing the loss of their privileges if the serfs should be liberated, started a brutal armed insurrection.

The vast majority of the people of Tibet at that time were serfs and lived in miserable, inhumane slave-like conditions. Are you arguing that slaves would prefer to continue to be enslaved?

justified by “slavery existed in Tibet”

That was indeed not the primary reason why the PLA first entered Tibet. It was rather to preserve the territorial integrity and safeguard the sovereignty of China, of which Tibet was and is recognized as an integral part.

by that logic any country with slavery […] deserves to be invaded

Tibet was not and is not a country. For a period of a few decades during which China was in chaos and turmoil following the fall of the Qing dynasty, the local government of Tibet had merely ceased to answer to the central government of China, but the region never formally declared Independence and never ceased to legally be a part of China.

Pro-independence forces fomented and backed by western imperialists who had already once invaded Tibet were however attempting to break Tibet away from China just like they are trying to do with Taiwan today. This created an urgent necessity for the PLA to intervene to protect Tibet and secure its borders.

I don’t think the motivation was to free the slaves.

Whether or not this was the primary motivation, this was still one of the main goals that the CPC openly declared needed to be accomplished sooner or later, as it was evident that the system of feudal-theocratic serfdom was halting virtually all social and economic progress in Tibet. The CPC emphasised the need for democratic reform as soon as the people of Tibet were ready to make that step.

All of this is explained in greater detail in the documentary which i linked in my other comment.

I recently posted about a documentary on precisely this topic. Please do yourself a favor and watch it as soon as possible. Be sure to watch both parts as the first deals mainly with the situation before the liberation while the second goes into the actual process of how the liberation happened. You don’t need to take our word for it, listen to what people who were alive back then had to say and what they wrote.

The documentary references many western sources (too many for my liking in fact, i would prefer a less eurocentric view) both contemporary as well as modern, including some that have very little reason to be sympathetic to communists and some that were probably outright racists and sinophobes, and even these paint a very grim picture of pre-liberation Tibet. It also lets Tibetans themselves tell their stories. So it is by no means presenting an exclusively Han Chinese perspective.

If you still have questions, reservations or concerns afterwards there are more resources that we can recommend to you on this subject.

Salute to comrade whale fighting the imperialists in 6th century AD.

Neither do most US voters.

I guess so far i’ve just been doing it for free like a dummy, but man i could use a bit of supplementary income. Where do i sign up?

Any private for-profit insurance in general is a scam. It’s like going to the casino. Sure in a few rare cases some lucky (or in this case unlucky) individuals may get more out of it than they put in, but on average the house always wins.

The difference is that before you become a scientific socialist your anger is a hot rage, impotent, unharnessed and confused, but when you actually develop a clear understanding of the world and what needs to be done you see that there is hope and little by little you learn to have revolutionary optimism…and while your anger at the injustices of the world never goes away it becomes a constant and calmly simmering driving force that unceasingly motivates you to struggle and make the world a better place, if not for yourself then for future generations. So i say embrace that righteous anger and do your very best to turn it toward something positive, turn it into revolutionary fervor and let it compel you to act, but always act thoughtfully not impulsively.

Posadism.

but hopefully people watching the conversation read them at least

I know I certainly do. Or let’s say i try to do so whenever i have the time, even if i am already familiar with the subject. It’s good to read more about a topic from a different angle that i hadn’t considered before. So i am always thankful when comrades provide sources in their comments. I’m often too lazy or short on time to do the same, but i really should.

Well, you did what you could. Can’t reach everyone right away. Sometimes people need to have time to stew a bit and process new information. Sometimes it takes repeated exposure to the new ideas before they become more open to them. Which is why we should never stop explaining, even if it’s frustrating.

Yeah, when i wrote that there were still fairly few substantial responses compared to mocking ones. But by now i see they’ve been offered plenty of good, comprehensive sources of information, and now that they’re banned and can’t waste as much time saying ignorant things here maybe they will have more time to read the material that they’ve been so helpfully provided with. Probably not though…they’re probably allergic to reading as most libs are…

I’m sorry that some comrades here have been dismissive toward you, but you seriously need to educate yourself more on a subject before you speak on it thinking that you have understood it. There are plenty of resources that the Lemmygrad community can offer you to further your knowledge about China if you leave your preconceptions at the door and come at this with some humility.