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US approves potential $500m sale of military equipment to Taiwan
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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I can accept you claiming that Taipei is a city in China, but the Wikipedia article you link to does not seem to agree.
But it does? I mean it's a long article, I'm not going to read the whole thing for something this uncontroversial, but I'll back up my very factual assertion with evidence from the opening paragraph.
This implies Taipei exists, thus backing up my assertion that "Taipei is" and "is".
Since it's named Taipei city, this is circumstantial proof that Taipei is a city.
Capitals are cities, this backs my assertion that Taipei is a city.
Taiwan is a location in China, this backs my assertion that Taipei is a city associated with China if you combine it with the rest of the sentence. Technically it could still be somewhere else.
This means that Taipei is on Taiwan, so now the information presented has changed from being associated with to being inside of.
This provides specificity in case there are multiple places named Taiwan, since we now also know it's close to Keelung which is also in China.
This doesn't provide additional information for my purposes, but they reiterate that it's a city and in proximity to locations in China.
Notice the preposition of. They did not say in. If they used in that could mean that they think Taipei is in China. But they used of, implying that Taiwan is a country. They also used the word capital, meaning a city where the political center of a country is, not as in a "city". There is (generally) only one capital in each country. Also, the text did not at all say that Taipei is in China. That Taipei is in China is what you (incorrectly) inferred from the text.
Ah but Taiwan is a special municipality and has it's own government. So this is expected actually. China is actually in a weird situation where there is a rebel government that controls a portion of the country, and they claim their capital is Nanjing. But because the regular government controls Nanjing they have a temporarily administrative centre in Taipei, since it's the only large city under rebel control. So Taipei is just a capital in China, specifically the capital of Taiwan municipality, but isn't the capital of China. China actually has many capitals. Hohhot, Lhasa, Nanning, Ürümqi, Taipei, Yinchuan and Beijing. (According to the rebels, it's only Nanjing).
This is kinda besides the point of whether Taipei is a place or not though. You're right, it didn't say it's in China. You need to click on the article for Taiwan or read further down for that. That's why I mentioned that it has multiple place-names, so you could look those up on a map. They really should've mentioned where the city is, I think that's pretty standard for an encyclopedia article on a city.
Those multiple capitals in China you mentioned are actually capital cities of first-level administrative divisions (省會). They are not what people think of when they hear capital. When people hear capital they generally think of the biggest city in a country (首都). Saying that the capitals of China are Hohhot, Lhasa, Nanning, Ürümqi, Taipei, etc. is not wrong, but it's as weird as saying that the capitals of the US are Jackson, Lansing, Springfield, Albany, etc.
I actually am not quite sure what we are even debating about at this point lol. Not that the points you made were bad, it's just that the matter is kinda trivial. I couldn't come up with more arguments besides nitpicking your errors. Can we just agree to disagree?
ps. the overall experience I had debating with you was actually not bad, unlike the ones I had with some people who resort to ad hominem attacks.
You wrote "Chinese Taipei is not a place name." and I hadn't noticed your name appear multiple times in the comments so I figured someone just genuinely didn't know Taipei is referring to the city rather than being some random Olympics-only moniker. And then with that second comment I just enjoyed being a pedant. Then when I did notice you had multiple comments I decided I should stop being rude because you weren't being rude.
There isn't really anything to disagree on. We (leftists) aren't oblivious to the fact Taiwan has (not full but significant) practical independence from China, and many of us are not even against them receiving de jure independence as long as they aren't allowed to host USA-controlled weapons. What I was trying to stress is that Chinese Taipei is a fine descriptor whether you support the PRC or ROC, since it's the Chinese city of Taipei, or even if you want Taiwan independence, it can still currently represent a team of Chinese people living in Taipei.
The hostility you see in the comments isn't because people want to deny Taiwanese their agency. Independence is stupid, and reunification under the PRC is absolutely what's best for the proletariat on Taiwan, and the rest of China, but it shouldn't happen without their popular support. What we're against is rocking the boat or god forbid, a war starting. The situation is currently workable for everyone. China gets their forced security guarantee because they legally own the land and the government on Taiwan is mostly left alone. The PRC doesn't blockade or sanction Taiwan over trade or financial issues. Every time they sanction them it's because of a direct military transgression and they've all been temporary. The PRCs whole strategy for reunification is just outpacing them in quality of life. Despite what western media claims, China is not being provocative. So stories creating the conditions for military conflict scare and anger us.
On the capitals. They're not equivalent to US-state capitals. They're supposed to be the centres of political power for the people who live in each autonomous region. While undoubtedly Beijing is the capital, or centre of political power for the whole country, that doesn't negate the regional governments' power. You said the biggest city is the capital, right? But the biggest city financially in the USA is New York, and culturally it's Los Angeles. And in terms of population they're #1 and #2 too. But the capital of the USA is the centre of political power. China aims for a higher level of autonomy than the USA does, partially because they're more committed to democracy, but also because the material conditions necessitate it. Beijing just isn't as good at administrating autonomous regions as they are themselves.