Hello, I'm Nathan Rich, AKA Hotpot King.
Today, I'm going to just get right into it.
I want to once and for all clearly spell out exactly why Taiwan isn't a
country. And it's not because I feel like it isn't a country, it's because it
literally isn't one.
Taiwan, it's a beautiful island.
But in the political context, when people say "Taiwan," what they mean is the
government called the Republic of China, or the ROC.
That's the government in Taiwan and a few smaller islands in southeast China.
Traditionally Chinese, the island itself has a very interesting and unique
history, including being partially or fully ruled by China, Japan, the Dutch
Empire, the Spanish Empire, and even a short-lived Ming-loyalist breakaway
empire. But in the 1940s, that all changed when the losing side of the
Chinese Civil War retreated to Taiwan Island and began a nearly 40 year
oppressive martial law.
The right wing nationalist ROC government lost the war, but they never
technically surrendered.
And that's when the confusion began that still persists to this day.
People I've spoken to in the US and Europe tend to be understandably quite
lost on the subject.
So I want to clear it up today.
First of all, there's only one China.
There's always been only one China, even when China was divided into warring
states. That's because China is, traditionally speaking, not exactly the same
as a country. It's always been more like a civilizational state, which, for
the sake of this conversation, means it has always had regions, states and
provinces within it.
And that's something that the PRC, or People's Republic of China, and the ROC
or Republic of China, both tend to agree on.
Both of these governments claim the land area of China.
The PRC generally claims all the current area of China, with some disputes
along borders. The ROC generally claims all the same land, with different
disputes along borders, plus all of Mongolia and parts of Russia.
Didn't know they also want Mongolia?
Why not? Anyway, the answer to if the ROC or "Taiwan" is a country actually
starts with these fundamental pieces of information.
One, as I mentioned, there is and always has been only one China.
Two, in the modern context of what countries are, everyone agrees that China
is a country. Three, there are multiple governments in China, for example,
the Hong Kong local government and various other special administrative
region governments. Four, there can only be one sole government of China.
There cannot be two legitimate, competing top-level governments.
So the real question isn't about Taiwan or the Republic of China being a
country; that's already been answered.
It's not a country. The country is China.
What people actually mean when they tell you Taiwan is a country is either
the ROC is the sole government of China, or that the ROC and the land they
control is a separate country than China.
Those are the two claims, which are actually quite different than each other.
And usually the people who make those claims haven't thought enough about the
subject to even realize how different these two claims are.
But it doesn't really matter because neither of them are true.
So, again, one claim is that Taiwan's ROC is the government of China.
It's not a different country.
It literally is China.
And the other claim is that Taiwan's ROC and the land it currently controls
is a separate country than China.
This would be called a breakaway state.
Let's examine.
First, we need to define what is meant by the word "country." According to
this definition, a country is any place or group of people that is being
controlled, whether or not it's sovereign, even if it's part of another
state. So Microsoft is a country.
Dallas is a country inside another country called Dallas County, which is
inside another country called the United States of America.
Disneyland is a country.
These are completely valid countries, by that definition.
But obviously, no one uses such a vague definition in this context.
No one means that when they use the word country.
So what do people mean when they say country?
A country is a sovereign state.
But what does that mean? What is a state and what exactly is sovereignty?
A state in this context is any political body.
Hong Kong is a state in the general sense.
Taiwan is a state in this general sense.
So is China itself, and California.
But Microsoft isn't.
And neither is Disneyland, sorry.
A state is a political government of people and/or land.
It does not make any difference if it's legitimate, legal, temporary or
anything else like that.
Being a state is not the same thing as being a country.
Not at all. A country is, again, a sovereign state.
Sovereignty is a little more complicated.
There are two unequal types of state sovereignty - de facto, and de jure.
De facto sovereignty means you have actual current governance of the people
and/or the land.
You have the armies, the legal system in place, the passports, that kind of
thing. De jure sovereignty means you have the official, internationally
-recognized right to govern the people and/or land.
In order to be fully uncontroversially considered a country, you must have the
majority of both of these things.
But if there's a conflict, disagreement or competing claims, the most
important factor by far is de jure.
De jure sovereignty is the legal right.
It's so important that sometimes you only need de jure sovereignty to be
considered a country.
The majority of China is actually, or de facto, governed by the People's
Republic of China. But like I mentioned, the ROC claims the same land.
So we cannot use de facto governance to determine who is the actual
government. Some regions within China do have a level of their own de facto
sovereignty. For example, Hong Kong has its own passports, police, government
laws, currency, all that stuff.
It has at least some level of de facto sovereignty.
That doesn't change the fact that the one single officially internationally
recognized country of China has one primary de facto government called the
People's Republic of China.
But again, just having that de facto governance doesn't make China a country,
nor does it make the PRC the real government of China.
There are many states in the world with de facto sovereignty, and yet we
don't call them countries.
We don't call them countries without de jure sovereignty.
That's the legal, officially-recognized right to sovereignty.
And again, a state generally needs to have a majority of de facto de jure
sovereignty to be considered a country.
If there's a dispute, then the one which has international recognition has
the rights. But where does this de jure sovereignty come from?
In the modern international world?
Starting a little after World War Two, it comes from official international
recognition. It doesn't come from non-recognition.
It doesn't come from secret recognition.
It doesn't come from unofficial recognition.
It comes, and only comes from, the official recognition by other countries.
There are two main theories on how a state can obtain sovereignty, only one
of which is relevant to us.
But I will still point out the other.
The constitutive theory basically requires only that a state is officially
recognized by a country as being a country.
In the case of conflicting claims, the state which has the most other
countries' official recognition would be the de jure sovereign state.
The state which has the majority in China is, again, the People's Republic of
China. So according to the constitutive theory, the ROC is not the government
of China. The PRC is.
And China itself is not the Republic of China, but is the People's Republic
of China. The declarative theory is a bit different.
It seeks only to define which are de facto states.
It makes no attempt at describing de jure states, but I do have to mention it
so I don't get a million comments about it.
It asserts that any state which has a permanent population, a defined
territory, a government and capacity to enter into relations with other
states is itself a state - a de facto state.
Hong Kong is a de facto state by this theory.
So is the ROC.
But again, we've already established that the ROC is a state.
The question is, is it a country?
Does it have de jure sovereignty over itself or all of China?
The answer is still no.
The declarative theory is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with
official legal recognition - de jure sovereignty.
Since 1971, the vast, overwhelming majority of countries not only officially
recognize the PRC as the government of China, they specifically recognize
them as "the only legitimate representatives of China."
Just since I first came to China in 2012, six more countries dropped support
for the ROC. Since I've been making videos in the last two years, three more
countries dropped support for the ROC.
So not only is the ROC officially recognized by almost no countries in the
world, that number is rapidly declining.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming recognition of the PRC as the one and only
government of China continues to grow.
So what have we learned?
One, China is a single country.
We know it's a country because the overwhelming majority of countries in the
world recognize it as such.
Two, the PRC has the vast majority of the entire world officially recognizing
it as the only legitimate representative of China.
And that number continues to grow.
Three, Taiwan has the vast minority of the entire world officially
recognizing it, and that number continues to dwindle.
And we know that even if China were two countries, the island of Taiwan and
all the regions controlled by the ROC would still be part of the first China.
The ROC would need to find their own land somewhere else to build whatever
state they want to build. So that demolishes the first claim that the ROC is
the rightful government of China.
That's debunked. But what about the second claim - that the ROC and the land
it de facto controls is not part of China, that it's a totally different
country all together?
Again, there needs to be official international recognition that the area
isn't part of China.
Even if we took the vast minority of countries who officially recognized the
ROC as evidence that they are recognizing it as a separate country, which
isn't necessarily the case, but even if we do assume that, it still would not
be even close to enough to make it true.
There just is literally no chance at all that the ROC will ever legally become
a separate country.
And again, it's not even becoming more likely.
It's becoming less likely as the few remaining countries that do officially
recognize the ROC are dropping off.
But wait, I know what some people are thinking.
All this talk about official recognition, it's a trick!
Taiwan has unofficial recognition from dozens of countries - we've got you,
Nathan! First of all, unofficial recognition is not what makes de jure
sovereignty - only official recognition does.
But even if unofficial recognition did somehow magically equate to official
recognition, and even if we combined all the unofficial and official
recognition Taiwan has in the entire world, not only would it still not have
even close to a majority in the world, it also wouldn't have even close to
the PRC's official recognition.
You get it? Even if I grant you the most lenient, wide-open charitable use of
data possible and sway all the data in your favor, all of that combined still
isn't even close to Taiwan being a country of its own, nor of the ROC being
the government of China. It's just not even close, guys, no matter how some
people might feel about it.
This is why China fights back when any other country tries to sell arms to
Taiwan. It absolutely is a violation of China's sovereignty.
And they have every right to demand that it stops.
If we care at all about international standards and international law, Taiwan
isn't its own country.
Nor is the ROC the government of China.
Taiwan is part of China and there can only be one top-level government in
China. There really is only one top-level government of China - the People's
Republic of China.
There are activists, separatists, secessionists, whoever.
There are always people with differing opinions.
But when you ignore everyone's feelings and just look at the facts of the
case, it's actually surprisingly clear.
Taiwan is not a country in any way.
I have a couple more videos coming up about Taiwan, so stay tuned because
there's a lot more evidence to provide.
I'll leave some of you to wonder how you got so confused as to think that the
situation was any different in the first place.
For the rest of us, we'll continue to fight for facts, even facts that hurt
people's feelings, which is not my intention.
Nevertheless, I'm sure I'll be receiving more hit pieces and threats from
those who disagree with facts, very soon.
In the meantime, thanks, everybody.
Xiexie