For moi, an important aspect of analyzing a situation concerning the right to national liberation and self-determination is considering oppressed nation and oppressor nation dynamics, and the history. The main oppressor nationalism involved in the history and origin of Taiwan as a separate nation was the U.S. imperialism, not China's. "Divide and conquer" or "divide and oppress" was the U.S. imperialist strategy in separating Taiwan from the larger Chinese nation. Disruption of Chinese national unity for national liberation was the U.S. imperialist gambit. This history still shapes the current situation. So, these status quo boundaries are a status quo established by imperialism in the neo-colonialist imperialist/Cold War period. This cuts against retaining those boundaries under national liberation/self-determination analysis. This cuts against presuming for the status quo boundaries and putting the burden on the oppressed nation, China, to give "good reasons". We should,on the contrary, presume against the neo-colonialist boundaries and put the burden on imperialism to give reasons for retaining the neo-colonialist boundaries.
The PRC has never headed a socialist country. The relations of production in post-rev. China were not socialist. This fact did not prevent the PRC from "being" communist in the past. The fact that the PRC headed a sort of feudal society with the landlords beheaded, a non-socialist country in the early years following the revolution, did not prevent PRC from being communist then. Clearly, the PRC is "saying" that China must go through some capitalism to be capable of being socialist; and that the role of a communist party in a country that has not had capitalism is to lead that massive process, with the intention of building socialism after going through capitalism. And they maintain that they are still communists in following this approach. This is an outline of how I think the PRC would respond to your claim that the PRC is not communist. I see no analysis that ,in this plan of _not_ bypassing capitalism on the road to socialism, China is acting as an _imperialist_ and oppressor capitalist nation, particularly vis-a-vis Taiwan. China's position is that the reunification with Taiwan is repair of a breach of Chinese national unity, a breach carried out by the true imperialists of this era, the U.S. imperialists. CB "Devine, James" : To me, I see no reason to change national boundaries (e.g., merging China and Taiwan) unless there are really good reasons. Preferably, whether these reasons are good or not is a decision to be made by the people of the two countries involved, in a democratic way. This kind of decision can't be made by foreign intellectuals living off in some other country. Charles refers to >distinct language, history, territory, culture, traditions, [etc., as] indicia of indigenous sovereignty and independence< Obviously, these are important indicia, but it's up to the people involved (the Mainlanders, the Taiwanese) to decide how distinct they are, in a democratic way. One thing that should be noted is that Taiwan has a "Formosan" (non-Han) population that the PRC lacks. The history since 1950 or so has been different, so that language, culture, traditions, etc. have not been parallel or converging. It's true that > This imperialist, oppressor nation [the U.S.] already played a main role in creating "Taiwan" as a nation separate from the larger Chinese nation, not because Taiwan had been a historically derived separate nation, but because the U.S. was trying to stop the development of communism in the world .< This is true, but seems irrelevant in a period when the PRC isn't communist except in the sense that an organization that calls itself a "Communist Party" controls the state. (Further, in a lot of ways, the PRC is an ally of the US, despite obvious differences on many issues. It's more distant than France, but may be closer to the US than Russia is.) And the CPC's rule isn't that different from the way that the KMT used to control the Taiwanese state. (Originally, BTW, the KMT was set up along "Leninist" lines, following advice from the USSR, though its goals were clearly different from those of the CPC.) Jim Devine, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/
