Hi everyone, this is Klaus.
If you have watched our previous episode about unification and independence,
then you will find this video even more profound.
It may change all your previous perceptions of unity and independence.
I hope you enjoy this video.
When we ramble on and on about "unity" and "independence",
have we ever stopped to think if we really know what those words mean?
We can all read, write, and make sentences with them.
We often hear people use those words.
But because of this,
we wrongly believe their meanings are clear,
and don't think about them.
So now I invite you to think about those two words with me.
What exactly is "unity"?
From 1406 to 1407 AD,
the 4th and 5th years of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty,
the Yongle Emperor attacked the Hu Dynasty in Vietnam and won.
Vietnam became a territory of Ming.
Was that unification?
Doesn't seem right, does it?
On July 1, 1997, sovereignty over Hong Kong was transferred to China.
Was that unification?
At that time, nothing changed in Hong Kong.
The transfer of sovereignty was merely a name change.
Only the words "People’s Republic of China" were added to Hong Kong passports.
Sovereignty is nominal.
That's why Deng Xiaoping opposed Britain's position of swapping sovereignty for governance.
What's the use of sovereignty alone?
It would be like having a wife who doesn’t sleep with you.
You can certainly say that you're taken, but your marriage is in name only.
That’s why China intervened after the Hong Kong handover.
If the US changed its name to "China" while everything else remained the same,
could you say that the US was unified by China?
It doesn’t sound quite right, either.
Through these examples,
we can see that there is no distinct definition of unification.
Unification can have the same meaning as invasion, annexation, merger, union, etc.
So what exactly is unity?
Let's consider how the word is used in reality.
We hear the phrase "unification of Taiwan" over and over again.
Why does the Chinese mainland want to unify Taiwan?
How about "Taiwan unifies the mainland"?
The meaning changes if the word order is different.
Therefore, unification involves a subject and an object.
As mentioned earlier,
unification can be the same as invasion, annexation, merger, and union.
But there is no active or passive voice indicated by merger and union.
"A merges with B" is the same as "B merge with A".
Both mean a "union of A and B".
Only "invasion" and "annexation" indicate active and passive voices.
Everything becomes clear now, doesn't it?
The two parties of "unification" are not equals.
"Invasion" and "annexation" indicate a conqueror and the conquered.
In other words, the conqueror takes advantage of the conquered.
"A unifies B" means "A takes advantage of B".
"B unifies A" means "B takes advantage of A".
So, in colloquial language, "to unify" is "to take advantage".
"Unity" itself is a neutral word, meaning "invasion and annexation", or "merger and union".
But in reality, it leans towards "invasion" and "annexation",
and has been promoted by those who want to take advantage of others
as a commendable term equal to "mergers" and "unions".
So, from a linguistic perspective, we can explain why Taiwan does not want to be unified.
Taiwan doesn't want to be taken advantage of!
If the narrative was "the mainland and Taiwan 'merge' or 'unite'",
I believe the Taiwanese would not be so strongly against it.
Okay, now let’s look at "independence".
I recently saw a video that has gained hundreds of thousands of views.
The YouTuber is more popular, but his fans are not as smart as mine. Why?
The video begins with a detailed historical analysis of conquerors in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang has been ruled by regimes such as Xiongnu, Gaoche, the Turkics, the Uyghurs, and Xiliao,
in other words, by different ethnic groups.
It's history, after all. Sounds objective, right?
Suddenly, he starts saying that the people of Xinjiang are descendants of the Uyghurs,
unlike the Turkic peoples in the Stans in Central Asia,
and that "we must have the right historical perspective"
and "not be national separatists because of our differences in languages or blood".
Sounds like the CCP talking, doesn't it?
I did my research.
The Chinese government says that the Uyghurs are not of Turkic descent from Central Asia,
but descendants of Uyghurs from the mainland,
and uses this as an argument against East Turkistan's independence.
I'm not going to analyze blood relations here.
The YouTuber committed the "straw man" logical fallacy,
equating "independence" with "ethnic separatism",
in order to convince people who want independence to give up due to their "lack of Turkic blood".
Following that logic,
how do you explain voices advocating independence of Hong Kong and Taiwan,
whose people mostly came from the mainland?
We talked about this in a previous video.
Unification is not an end, but a means to an end.
It is the same with independence.
If independence were the ultimate goal,
then could the people of Xinjiang go home happily when their independence was recognized worldwide?
Independence is not an end.
People want independence because they oppose the tyranny and pillaging of resources by the CCP
whose ethnic policies are discriminatory.
They want an independent and fair government.
It is shameless to try to fool people with a "straw man" argument.
So what is independence?
In fact, there is no distinct difference between "independence" and "unity".
For instance, after 1997, under the framework of "one country, two systems",
China had only sovereignty over but not governance of Hong Kong,
whose status was between unification and independence.
"One country, two systems" was maintained by Hong Kong's Basic Law, namely, Hong Kong's constitution.
But only a country has what is called "constitution".
Since Hong Kong is not a country, the name "Basic Law" is adopted instead.
The protests in Hong Kong these years have been due to China's attempts to change the Basic Law.
Suppose there were 100 articles in the Basic Laws.
If all of them remained the same, we could certainly say that there is "one country, two systems".
If all of them got cancelled, then there is certainly no "one country, two systems".
What if only one article got cancelled? Would there still be "one country, two systems" or not?
What about cancelling 50 articles? How about 99?
At what point does a change in quantity trigger a change in quality?
Thus, there is no absolute distinction between even two opposite concepts.
There is no absolute independence in this world.
Absolute independence in theory means having no connection with any other country in the world.
The opposite of that is 100% cooperation in all directions, meaning a de facto federal state.
If a country can give people in a region enough freedom
and advantages that even independence can't bring,
then who would want to fight for independence?
Take Quebec, for example.
It was once a French colony. Most people there now speak French.
There was an independent movement.
But most people still thought it was better to stay in the Canadian Federation.
So after two referendums, Quebec remained a part of Canada.
The people of a region have the right to choose independence.
Some people label "independence movement" as "ethnic separatism". Don't let them fool you.
Alright, time to hear your comments.
In our last episode, we analyzed the massacres in Chinese history, and the changes of Han ethnicity.
Netizen J.P. Tan said, "It doesn’t matter who we are.
Being a rational and good person is the most important."
Netizen Anfisa Pan said he had promoted Han clothing in college.
Later, he learned that China had used Han clothing to oppress other ethnic groups.
Netizen Seele2015au replied,
"Han clothing is difficult to define, and the Li family in the Tang Dynasty was not Han.
When the Han nationality was the purest, perhaps clothes had not been invented yet."
In recent years, the CCP has been trying to revive traditional culture, what it once destroyed.
The Soviet Union, the leading communist nation, collapsed. China opened up to the West.
Now the CCP is using traditional culture's dead body to promote nationalism.
After all, both nationalism and communism can serve autocracy.
Netizens Mu Shui Yang and Mars Huang said,
"Many people in Communsit China rave about their indifference to hundreds of millions dying.
They have very well inherited China’s tradition of treating human lives as numbers."
Netizen Zhang Fei said that he used to feel lucky about his Chinese origin,
only to realize later on that he was a slave.
Netizens Love Freedon said,
"The Han people killed more Han people than anybody else.
Should the entire Han people commit suicide to atone for their ancestors' sins?"
Netizen Hacker said that the Chinese population was large and difficult to manage.
Indeed, China’s population is large, but so is the rulers' population.
There are nearly 100 million party members alone, which is more than Taiwan’s total population.
If these communists were to form a country, it could be one of the top 15 largest countries in the world.
Alright, that's it for this video.
Thank you so much for your comments.
This is Klaus. See you next time.