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Notes -
Considering how much of current American culture war debates revolve around national identity, sovereignty, and international influence, it makes me wonder: are conflicts like Russia’s move into Ukraine and China’s posture towards Taiwan fundamentally rooted in the same security dilemma, rather than pure expansionism?
I’ve been thinking about the deeper drivers behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s stance on Taiwan.
For Russia, Ukraine joining NATO would have meant that a major military alliance would sit directly on its border, severely shrinking Russia’s strategic buffer zone. Similarly, for China, the growing U.S. military presence around Taiwan raises a direct security concern.
Since U.S.-China relations have deteriorated, there has been increasing discussion about the possibility of the U.S. deploying missiles or even establishing a permanent military presence in Taiwan. Given Taiwan’s geographic position, major Chinese cities like Fuzhou, Xiamen, and even Shanghai would fall within the range of intermediate-range missiles.
This makes the Taiwan issue not purely about nationalism or ideology, but also about very tangible security calculations.
In 2024, U.S. defense reports indicated a rising focus on “hardening Taiwan” against potential Chinese action（https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jan/19/2003375866/-1/-1/1/2024-NDS.PDF”
China has repeatedly emphasized that foreign military deployments in Taiwan would cross a “red line”（https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-us-should-stop-official-exchanges-with-taiwan-2024-03-05/）
Russia and China's positions on Ukraine and Taiwan are first and foremost based on nationalism and what you could call ethnic sovereignty, and only secondarily based on pragmatic security concerns. You can read Putin's essay on the topic for a pretty clear description of what motivates him. Some excerpts below:
You can see that while the idea that Ukraine is a springboard for foreign powers to threaten Russia geopolitically makes an appearance, issues of national identity take precedence, including the idea that Ukrainian identity itself is a weapon that threatens Russia. This is not the kind of essay an American could or would write about Cuba in 1962, which is a case when there was a strategic threat from a foreign power without any shared ancient history or blood and soil concerns involved.
As for Taiwan, while it is not an ancient part of China the way Ukraine is an ancient part of Russia, its significance is that it is the last piece of territory (with a Han majority) taken from Qing China by foreign powers during the Century of Humiliation that remains outside of PRC control today. The CCP justifies its rule to a domestic audience by claiming that only they can undo the damage done by the Western powers and Japan during those years, firstly by making China too rich and powerful to be invaded or subjugated ever again and secondly by getting back all the territory that was stolen from them, including Taiwan. The fact that Taiwan is part of the First Island Chain with the potential to strangle Chinese naval trade in the event of a war is certainly of interest to their military planners, but it is a distant second in terms of motivations for invading or blockading the island.
I think Americans often have trouble understanding the way nationalists in other parts of the world think because it is quite alien to their own thought process, but imagine for a moment if most Anglo-Canadians were still diehard royalists who held a grudge against the US for expelling their ancestors during the Revolution and for being traitors who deny their true English identity, and would seize on any opportunity to punish them and force them back into the imperial fold. Sure, there might be offshore oil wells, cod fisheries, or Great Lakes ports of strategic importance involved in any dispute, but that's not really what it would be about.
What's "ancient" for you? Ukraine was incorporated in Russian Empire in late 18 century. That's not something people really call "ancient" usually - that's like saying "Texas is one of the ancient states of the US" or "Lincoln's Gettysburg address is one of the great ancient speeches". Surely there's no strict definition of "ancient" but that's not the usage most of people would be comfortable with.
I was referring to Kiev, the first capital of the original Rus state from which modern Russia claims cultural, linguistic, and religious continuity. To the extent that one can claim that Russia itself is ancient (which is debatable), Kiev was a part of it. It is true that the territories that comprise "Novorussia" in the southeast of Ukraine were seized from the Crimean Khanate over a thousand years later, but they are peripheral to the importance of Ukraine in the Russian mind, despite having been easier for them to conquer in the current war on account of their terrain and their population not having gone through the cultural separation from Moscow and St. Petersburg that the rest of Ukraine has.
That is an extremely tortured argument. Like claiming US must invade and annex Italy because our culture has so much connections to Romans. Kiev, as you know, is the capital of Ukraine, and not Russia, and while it is true that Kiev, at certain times, was the center of the civilizational entity which gave birth to many other that eventually become modern entities including Russia, treating this as a claim that "Ukraine was an ancient part of Russia" makes as much sense as claiming "Rome is an ancient part of the US". It's just ahistorical nonsense based on shallow TV-news-level knowledge - which is exactly why Putin is using it btw, his target audience knows "there was something with the name vaguely resembling "Russia" in Kiev at one time, so that means Kiev always belonged to Russia".
This has nothing to do with the population or what they would want or not want. Pre-2022, the territories were mostly conquered by using Ukrainian internal turmoil and weakness to capture control. The population wishes had precisely little to do with it - it's not like Russia is a democracy or cares what the population thinks - people that think wrong just get jailed (or die of mysterious illnesses, or fall out of windows, you get the idea). Once they expanded their interest to the territories which couldn't be easily grabbed, the default mode became just bomb the shit out of it until nothing but barren scorched earth is left. Again, nothing to do with "cultural separation". It's not like Civilization games when there's a "cultural vote" among the population and if the culture of other country wins, this city joins it. What actually happens Russian just bomb this city into dust, and it matters preciously little what the former occupants of the former city thought about St. Peterburg's culture.
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This may be referring to the Kievan Rus' - perhaps "ancient" is used more poetically in Russian and the translator chose to keep it. However, I couldn't tell if the Kievan Rus' had ever included Crimea, so...
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Is "Ancient Rus" the Kievan Rus'? If so, did the Kievan Rus' ever possess Crimea? And how should Belarusians interpret this?
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It’s still hard to believe, even despite intellectually knowing why, how many Americans and even Mottizens display an astonishing capacity to rationalize bad foreign actors. China wants Taiwan primarily out of essentially hurt feelings; the fact that this is a batshit insane reason to start a war over a territory that has self governed with no major problems for over 30 years is so outrageous many are tempted to look for deeper meaning when there is none. Even if the US literally sent 10x the arms to Taiwan, do you know the impact that would have on Chinese national security? Almost literally zero. Zero. Nothing. Nil. Zilch. Nada.
Hell, Taiwan doesn’t even present a regional influence threat. They don’t and couldn’t project power into the South China Sea for example. The only vague threat is as a refuge for Hong Kongers and other dissidents, and even that is far overblown.
Well, maybe some of it has to do with America’s short memory when it comes to the potency of war fever. A lot of Americans try to pretend they didn’t support the Iraq war, but the opinion polls at the time don’t lie. I’ll grant there was some government deception of course but that doesn’t fully explain it.
Thanks for your response. Just to clarify upfront: I absolutely do not support war or military unification. War is cruel and costly, and I don’t wish it on either side of the strait. That said, I think your framing of the issue significantly underestimates the real factors involved and oversimplifies the strategic logic behind PRC’s position.
First, reducing China’s stance to merely “hurt feelings” is, frankly, a strawman. The Taiwan issue isn’t just an emotional matter—it’s deeply tied to historical legitimacy, national identity, and decades of unresolved civil war politics. You may disagree with the PRC’s claims, but characterizing them as purely irrational makes real understanding impossible.
Second, to suggest that U.S. arms shipments to Taiwan would have “almost literally zero” impact on China’s national security is factually incorrect. Taiwan sits on a crucial chokepoint in the First Island Chain. It’s not just about Taiwan’s own military capabilities; it’s about the strategic potential of allied deployment, surveillance, and missile systems within striking distance of China’s eastern seaboard.
Third, the idea that Taiwan poses no “regional threat” misses the point. No one claims Taiwan is projecting power—but its role in the regional power balance is not about direct aggression. It’s about access, influence, and containment mechanics that any state actor would care about in that geographical position.
Lastly, invoking the U.S. experience with the Iraq War as a vague parallel while simultaneously denying China any strategic reasoning feels disingenuous. If Americans can be misled into supporting intervention based on complex narratives of fear, security, or nationalism, why assume other nations act out of mere irrational pride?
I grew up in China and recently became an adult, and I’m trying to understand these issues from both sides. But a good-faith discussion starts with acknowledging that states—yes, even authoritarian ones—often act from layered, strategic motives, not just unhinged emotion. Painting China as incapable of rational calculation doesn’t just weaken your argument; it reflects a refusal to take seriously a major geopolitical actor. If you’re older than me and still think national defense decisions are made based on ‘hurt feelings,’ maybe you should be less confident in your worldview and more open to reading some actual IR theory.<3
I think it can be difficult for Americans to understand, because in the immortal words of a great hero, “you have big ocean”. Unlike Russia or China, America has basically never faced an existential foreign threat since the Revolution. It’s only existential crisis since then was a civil war, and barring a nuclear conflict its only potential future existential crisis is a civil war. Even the Revolution was a form of civil conflict. Because of that, Americans don’t really have that deep gnawing insecure feeling of “I need to keep my borders secure lest the Mongels/French/Nazis/Japanese rape and pillage my homeland.”
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Either you've completely missed the point or, much more likely, I made the point way too clumsily and misled you. I wasn't presenting a worldview or anything like that, nor trying to provide a comprehensive accounting of all the factors at play.
I'm simply making an observation/claim: when conflicts are primarily feelings-based (deliberately a broad category - set up in contrast to more practical considerations like security concerns, economic considerations, and other more direct impacts - maybe "material" would be a better word?) there's a temptation and tendency for observers, even intelligent ones, to sometimes go "that can't possibly be the main reason(s), there must be some practical aspect I'm missing". They conjure up reasonable-sounding material reasons that either do not exist or are immaterial to the roots of the conflict, and assign them excessive weight. That's not to say emotional considerations are, ipso fact, irrational, nor to say that emotional considerations can't be strategic either; I merely observe the tendency for people to keep searching for non-emotional reasons even when they already have the most important pieces right there in front of them.
As the two most recent examples go:
Russia says they want to invade Ukraine to restore a pan-Russian empire. Western observers go "that seems like a weak reason to actually invade a country, so really they must be worried about NATO military aggression" when the reality is that Westerners just severely underrated Russia's own stated reasons.
China says they want to reunify Taiwan with force to restore a pan-Chinese empire. Western observers go "that seems like a weak reason to actually invade a country, so really they must be worried about US military aggression/encirclement" when the reality is that Westerners just severely underrate China's own stated reasons.
To extend it even a little farther, at risk of diluting my point, Dick Cheney and co say they want to forcibly export democracy to the Middle East. Western observers go "that seems like a weak reason to actually invade a country, so really they must be wanting more oil" when the reality is that Western observers just severely underrated the idiocy of neocons. This is a little post-hoc but I think it works.
To be clear, "historical legitimacy" is a matter of feelings. "National identity" is a matter of feelings. Politics, abstractly, are feelings. At least in the sense that they only weakly and indirectly correspond to the fundamental physical prosperity of a country.
I absolutely agree with you that it's actually of critical importance to understand that "hurt feelings" are powerful and need to be understood as valid - or at least, if not valid, then necessary to understand - and indeed are common motivations for conflict throughout history. I'm very aware of the seriousness of some of those feelings in the China-Taiwan issue. Ignoring and downplaying them is often the result of hubris and/or ignorance. But if we zoom out a little bit, that's still all they are, feelings! Whether strategically deployed or entirely organic, that doesn't change their nature.
From a moral perspective, I would further advance the argument that however understandable the above reasons might be, these are still bad/insufficient moral reasons to invade an effectively sovereign and separate country. That wasn't my main point however. Hope that clears things up.
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I am curious how you feel about the
War of Northern ImperialismCivil War: the American founding documents talk a lot about "just consent of the governed" but when some of the (state governments as proxies for) regions decided they no longer consented, Lincoln sent in troops. My own thoughts are complicated: I think the US is, for a variety of reasons (ending slavery, combined economic power) better off for the Union winning, but it does seem against the general principle of self-governance. It's not even hard to find takes today justifying curtailing the rights of the region on the basis of the actions of their forefathers.I agree that it’s one the more philosophically tricky questions around. However, time and circumstance are hugely important factors here. The Civil War is worlds apart because it happened, in historical terms, more or less immediately. A better analogy would be, would either North or South Korea be justified (or heck, forget justified, would it even be rational) in finishing off the unification, today? Obviously not. Time and ability to self govern strongly determine ‘legitimacy’ as an independent state, and Taiwan and South Korea have demonstrated both. It’s not even close. Most of the original combatants are dead! it’s truly intergenerational now. Wars of reunification within a few years of the split wouldn’t bat an eye - and didn’t, really. If the PRC had actually gone through and invaded in the decade or so after WW2 the US would maybe have been annoyed or supplied arms or whatever but on some level that’s still an “understandable” war. The only thing that weakens these protections is when a state effectively goes into collapse. For example, I am on record as being decidedly “meh” about Israel grabbing Syrian land in the civil war period (not to get into a big discussion there but just as an illustration).
If we did get in to the Civil War philosophy, I think the important point is that American political philosophy (with the Declaration of Independence as an example) generally held not quite that it was only a consent of the governed thing, but also that subjects needed to have been oppressed or have some notable grievances on order for rebellion to be justified - to the best of my knowledge the consensus was not as simple as “anyone can revolt at any time for any reason if the people support it”. Under that logic, the South would only be allowed to secede for “good reason” or something like that - simply seceding because a president they thought they wouldn’t like won, and on fears of what he might do, hardly rise to that level.
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This matters - in no Confederate state did the pro-secession majority of whites represent a majority of the whole population. The Confederate states were (in most cases explicitly) seceding in order to prevent self-governance by numerical majorities of their multiracial populations.
You can argue that secession was legal based on respect for actual existing sovereignty, but that gets you into the obscure historico-legal argument about the de jure division of sovereignty between the Feds and the States and whether the 1789 Constitution was intended to be irrevocable.
To justify Southern slavery at all, you need to start with a position of "No Good, only Law" which means you are arguing about what rights the South did have under the Constitution, not what rights they should have had. The only rights the southern slavers should have had under the general principles we believe in in 2025 were the right to a fair trial and the right to execution by long-drop hanging or some other civilised method.
But the slaves weren't citizens. Non-citizens don't get to be part of a ruling majority.
You might have a point if the Confederacy had suddenly deprived the slaves of citizenship after secession in order to gain a majority of voting citizens, but that's not what had happened--it was already accepted, even by the north and even before secession, that slaves weren't and didn't need to be citizens. When the south seceded, the secessionists were a majority by this preexisting, accepted, standard. The north can't just change their mind and decide that slaves have to count as citizens in order to deprive the south of legitimacy.
And women couldn't vote either. That doesn't mean they are not part of the whole population, or the voting minorities were not preventing self-governance by numerical majorities.
You are arguing by a different standard. I can appreciate why, but it is a different standard. The political legitimacy of the Confederacy derived from claiming to represent the legitimate will of 'the people' is certainly up for dispute when 'the people' is retroactively gerrymandered to exclude people who might disagree after making a claim to represent them.
But it wasn't "retroactively gerrymandered", that's my point! It was accepted at the time, and by the north, before secession, that slaves weren't citizens and couldn't vote. Nothing changed retroactively.
Ah, so the north's government wasn't legitimate either?
Is the current US government illegitimate because illegal aliens can't vote, and if they could we probably wouldn't have elected Trump?
And the point that people who were denied representation don't get to have the legitimacy of their implicit support invoked remains. As does the point that they are, in fact, part of regional population majorities.
Franchisement and representation of non-voters was a significant aspect of the foundational american political disputes. The 3/5ths compromise resulted from the slavers wanting slaves to count as much as a citizen for legitimate representation in the political system.
Sure, why not? It's not like Union (il)legitimacy affects whether the Confederacy was or was not legitimate. Independent variables.
We could question whether legitimacy is a binary state (legitimate or not legitimate), or a status of degrees (more or less legitimate), but if you don't want to stake a position I won't force you.
If you define the scope of legitimacy to include illegal aliens, certainly. Hence why various pro-migration coalitions support things like giving Congressional representation based on non-citizen (and thus including illegal) residents, and why other parts of their coalitions are very uninterested in proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections that are routinely popular with the electorate that opponents claim to be defending against disenfranchisement.
Sure, why not?
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While this wasn't exactly the language used at the time, it doesn't seem incoherent to say that the Civil War amounted to "well done, you've exercised your right to self-determination to become a nation of your own. unfortunately, judged as a neighboring foreign nation, we find you guilty of crimes so intolerable that we have no choice but to declare war on you and annex you".
You don't get to annex a nation because they do bad things. You can invade them, but that's not the same thing. The US did not annex Germany after World War II.
It also leads to the question of when the 13 colonies seceded from Britain, could Britain find some act that the Americans have committed that they decide is an intolerable crime, and annex the colonies again?
By your standard could the British invade and annex Zimbabwe?
Not to mention that the Union maintained the institution of slavery in multiple states throughout the war, including the practice of denying them the vote.
This argument is a bit like invading someone for their heinous crime of capital punishment, while continuing to hang your own criminals.
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The US Civil War might have also gone very differently had the Confederacy not initiated various engagements, giving Lincoln a stronger basis to send in the troops. Had the civil war started not with the South bombarding Fort Sumter, but with the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, Lincoln would have been in a very different political position.
In some respects, the opening of the civil war was a boundary dispute, and the South had no shortage of reasons to try and set / maximize expected gains, but those proactive efforts placed a greater political onus on them as instigating the violence that followed.
Would bombarding Fort Sumter have been different if the Confederacy had first insisted that the residents at the fort give up their unregistered weapons, pay property taxes on the fort, and allow building inspectors in to make sure it's up to code, and only bombarded the fort when they refused to do that?
If the delay of bombardment for the claims of process had allowed other events to occur first, sure.
The mid-19th century was a period where the telegraph was changing the political evolution/initiation of conflicts. 'How' a conflict started becomes more and more important the more people can know about it before and during the fact, rather than have it summarized for them afterwards.
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Not to forget that the Confederacy claimed several states that never formally seceded from the Union, seated their representatives in the Confederate Congress etc.
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Is it? The US spent two trillion dollars trying to spread liberalism to Afghanistan. Americans would rather bomb a village half way around the world to pieces than accept that they have a different view on feminism, transphobia or lgbtqaxzypdfsdfsffw than Americans have. If a country doesn't have McDonalds, Coca cola and tinder Americans become so outraged that they want to invade it before they even can find it on a map. There is no country or group that is as obsessed with ensuring the rest of the world follows their rules as the US.
The US can't accept that countries in Latin America aren't copies of the US.
Isn't this typically the excuse not the reason? It's the kayfabe of diplomacy or war mongering.
It's like Putin
GaddafiSaddamOsamaKim Jong Ilhates our freedom.Has the US ever bombed a country with a state endorsed pride parade?
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That is how they justified it to themselves. But what the US was actually doing in Afghanistan was spending two trillion dollars to (unsuccessfully) spread not-the-Taliban, in order to punish the Taliban for harbouring Osama Bin Laden pre-9/11. The not-the-Taliban the US spread included a bit of liberalism, but rather more drug dealing, bacha bazi, Pashtunwali, and stealing of US aid money. This was not a problem, except for the Afghans, who quite sensibly brought back the Taliban at the first reasonable opportunity.
I remember the pre-9/11 days when the treatment of Afghan women under the Taliban was a big deal (a fake petition against it was the first big viral fake e-mail) among Blue Tribers who wrongly considered themselves to be elites (undergraduates at top universities and suchlike), while the actual Blue Tribe elites of the US Deep State was turning a blind eye because friends of friends of the Taliban were on our side against Iran. Counterfactual (but obviously true) premise: The US would not have bombed Afghanistan without a 9/11-scale Al-Qaeda outrage. Conclusion: The US did not bomb Afghanistan for feminism.
The US power elite remains entirely comfortable with the treatment of women, gays, and journalists in Saudi Arabia for crissake. Because the al-Saud keep the oil flowing and hand out the DC largesse on a grand scale.
Hey, what's wrong with the Pashtunwali?
Ask the Afghans (very much including the women) who would rather live under the Taliban than under Pashtunwali. But my understanding is that Pashtunwali is a goatfucker culture honour code similar to the Albanian Law of Lek and is bad because it institutionalises all the pathologies of goatfucker cultures, including blood feuds, bridal kidnapping, goatfucking etc.
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So why did they force the king of Afghanistan to abdicate, instead if putting him on the throne?
I wouldn't say the US forced him to abdicate - he was couped in the 1970's by his Prime Minister. But if the question is "why did the US not put Zahir Shah on the throne as part of their policy of building not-the-Taliban?" then per Wikipedia the answer is that Pakistan vetoed it. That the US deep state still (wrongly) considered Pakistan an ally who might have a better sense of Afghan politics than they did was obvious if you were paying attention in the noughties.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that their assessment of Pakistan was wrong. They knew Pakistan was unstable and unreliable, but it was a much better option to keep Pakistan a nominal ally and de facto neutral, then to let them tip over into being an adversary.
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Then you'd be wrong, and that's not the question. They forced him to renounce all future claims the throne.
Please, no.
Maybe, but given this, and the decision to rebuild Iraq as a democracy seems to indicate ideological commitment, and your theory that it was all cynical is far from obvious.
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Thank you very much for offering another perspective. However, regarding the part about Taiwan and China, I would like to offer some corrections and additional context.
While Taiwan may not have been historically as integrated with mainland China as Ukraine was with Russia, Taiwan was formally incorporated into Qing China’s territory in 1683 and remained so until it was ceded to Japan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War. Thus, Taiwan does have significant historical connections to China.
In more recent history, during World War II, the Kuomintang (led by Chiang Kai-shek) and the Chinese Communist Party (led by Mao Zedong) temporarily cooperated to resist the Japanese invasion. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, a civil war broke out between the two sides, ultimately resulting in the Communist Party’s victory and the Kuomintang’s retreat to Taiwan.
Although the PRC initially emphasized the goal of peaceful reunification, over time, shifts in domestic public opinion and strategic considerations have led to increasing support among the general populace for the use of force if necessary. That said, the official position of the PRC still emphasizes “peaceful reunification” under the “one country, two systems” framework.
I’m someone who grew up in China and have just recently reached adulthood, so there may be gaps in my understanding due to my environment and limited experience. If there are any inaccuracies, omissions, or misinterpretations in what I have presented, I would genuinely appreciate any corrections or further discussion. Thank you!<3
I believe you misunderstand.
The Kievan Rus' (or Kyivan Rus', I guess, now) is the first East Slav state founded in the 9th century, and the histories of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus start from this point (East Slavs having had no language prior to this point). This state was literally dominated by Kiev during its inception. The names of both Russia and Belarus are etymologically derived after this medieval state, and all three East Slavic nations claim descent from it. Ukraine is literally where Russian civilisation starts*.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is first settled by Austronesians and was relatively untouched by the mainland; the first real attempts at settlement beyond that actually came under the Dutch (who encouraged Han migration over to the island), then the portion of Ming remnants led by Zheng Chenggong who founded the Kingdom of Tungning, until its conquest by the Qing. Taiwan's prehistory lasts well into late Chinese imperial history, it was first properly settled under a European banner, and up until the Japanese invasion it remained a pretty marginal borderland — nobody would think much about it if there wasn't another straggler "Chinese" government trying to set up shop there!
A more analogous comparison to Russia and Ukraine, for (a state of) China, would be if it no longer controlled large swathes its cradle of civilisation — if it "lost" parts of the North China Plain including Anyang and Luoyang, say. Maybe consider an alternate timeline where the Ming somehow doesn't reconquer the North China Plain and the Northern Yuan end up setting shop there indefinitely, or the Southern Song don't fall to the Yuan and no Han-dominated state ever is able to claw back land above the Huai river, or the Northern and Southern Dynasties doesn't end with the Sui, or the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms permanently entrenched a north-south split, and now a modern alt-Chinese government based in the south, claiming descent from those alt-dynasties, is engaging in a little taste of revanchism some few centuries late by appealing to how northerners and southerners are actually one people and should be ruled together.
Edit: better examples. None of those really match exactly; Moscow actually came into prominence during/after the Mongols, so an even better example would be if somehow the Yuan got pushed into a rump Southern state and centuries later the descendant states of the Southern Yuan decide to march back up, but this is a bit too ludicrous
*also where Ukrainian and Belaroussian history starts — I am not making a case that Kyiv is especially Russian, or that Russia has a good case for invading Ukraine
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I did not mean to imply that there were no historical ties between Taiwan and China, only that Taiwan is not thick with collective memory for Chinese people the same way that Ukraine is for Russians or say Kosovo is for Serbians. No Warring States philosophers, Three Kingdoms generals, or Tang Dynasty poets ever lived, fought, or even set foot there, and Han settlers only arrived in Taiwan in large numbers at about the same time the US (i.e. a country "with no history" according to most Chinese) was being colonized by the British.
For what it's worth, while I feel the need to point out that the cultural, linguistic, and political differences between Taiwan and mainland China are already greater than those between the 13 colonies and England on the eve of the American Revolution, I don't have any firm position on Taiwanese independence, only that fighting a major war in East Asia would be a catastrophe and probably lead to at least a half dozen of the greatest cities in the world being blown to pieces by missiles and drone strikes, since Japan, Korea, etc. would likely be dragged in. However, I can tell you that my relatives in Taiwan have in the last five years gone from being dyed-in-the-wool Chinese nationalists (as in they would be insulted if you called them Taiwanese) who wished for reunification to basically the exact opposite position (China is the enemy, we are not the same). I don't consume enough Chinese language media and news to be able to tell if this is based on an honest assessment of PRC statements and positions in recent years, or whether they have been sucked down a social media/propaganda rabbithole of some sort, but presumably the latter is at least a contributing factor, and this does not bode well for the future stability of the region.
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