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Comment by lacampbell | Hacker News Reader

Any ideas of it's authentic? China is hyper nationalist so I'm initially skeptical. Might be as fictitous as their GDP figures or sovereignty over Taiwan.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13952573 and marked it off-topic.

The first question was fine of course but the political flamebait in the rest predictably took over.

> Any ideas of it's authentic?

It is. And it's nothing new and well-known[1]. OP is Fermats library's high resolution picture of the 17th century reproduction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhoubi_Suanjing

2100 years is still younger than Pythagoras's proof, so I don't see an obvious motivation for fabricating it.

Making sweeping statements like this on controversial topics without substantiation usually leads to flame war, as evident here.

When you want to like Taiwan more but then notice their view of Tibet is just as twisted

District 13

Both sides of that conflict were chock full of assholes.

> hyper nationalist

Says Americans, biggest lovers on this planet for their own national flag. /s

Swing and a miss.

> sovereignty over Taiwan

This is the claim that China and Taiwan should reunite since the PRC drove the Nationalist Party out of mainland China. It isn't fictitious, it's merely a political wish to merge the two from the PRC side. Similarly, some Nationalists in Taiwan are happy to take back mainland China, as much as the country is divided on whether Taiwan should remain as it is, or should declare its full independence.

Doesn't the PRC's claim on Taiwan boil down to a combination of right-of-conquest ("Taiwan belonged to the Republic of China, we beat up the Republic of China, therefore Taiwan is ours") and Just Because? ("The PRC is the only legitimate Chinese government because the PRC says so")

I'm very skeptical of purely historical claims of sovereignty. If the people of Taiwan legitimately vote to join the PRC, that's their right, but the PRC has no legitimate right to demand it.

Descriptions of all possible points of view are presented in the Wikipedia article "Political status of Taiwan" [1]. Among these is the (fringe) theory that based on various post-WWII treaties, the US currently holds sovereignty over Taiwan [2] (a view not endorsed by the US government, by the way).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Arg...

It must be clarified that mainland of China is also part of ROC according to ROC government[1]. In fact, the mainland and taiwan are in war, just like the Union and Confederacy in American civil war, even if there is not military conflicts right now. More interestingly, ROC actually claims larger territory than PRC (for example, part of Mongolia). It is ROC's constitution, not PRC's government, demands taiwan is part of China. Though it's not the People's Republic of China. And guess what, according to ROC's constitution, mainland China is "enemy occupied area". Therefore people in mainland China does not have right to vote, or legitimately declare independence.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ROC_Administrative_a...

It would be rather peculiar if during the American Civil War the Confederates had retreated to something like Cuba and remained there to this day.

There's a community of Confederate descendants in Brazil. Most of them have assimilated but a few live in ancestral lands. There's an annual festival and everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederados https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/welcome-to-americana-braz...

There were also settlements in Belize and Mexico apparently. None of them lay claim to being independent nations and owning mainland US though.

The ROC as I see it retreated into an enclave of the former whole China and was never fully vanquished from Chinese land. So it's really more like if the Union stopped fighting after the Confederacy was defeated in all but one breakaway state. Even more accurately, since the PRC were the rebels, it'd be like the Confederates took over all the Union states except, say, Pennsylvania and then the war came to a halt. The Pennsylvania redoubt of the US would still be the US and may or may not make claims to the rest of the formerly united United States.

But what do I know about the situation? I'm just an American.

There's a lot of political will in Taiwan to change the constitution, but China has threatened war if that occurs, and the US is very lukewarm on it.

So it's not as if the ROC is free to amend their own constitution - as doing so would negatively affect their national security. It's safer for them to keep up the ridiculous notion that they have sovereignty over Mongolia and parts of the Russian far east.

China lodged a formal complaint and warned of the "destr[uction of] Sino-US ties" because the US president admitted that the Taiwanese president spoke to him. If there's a reasonable party in all this, it is definitely not China. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/china-donald-t...

We are incredibly off topic, but I think it's a bit reductionist to call China unreasonable. China is, above all, pragmatic. The Taiwan situation is a farce, but the Communist Party has reasons to believe it necessary. Party sovereignty and legitimacy are based on defending Chinese independence and restoring national grandeur (强国梦) after colonial humiliation. Any change on the Taiwan issue could cause both separatist and nationalist forces to escalate out of control, potentially destabilizing the entire country.

China really doesn't want to find out what might happen if countries start recognizing Taiwanese independence, so the US president poking at that bubble is seen as a threat. China responds with assertive words because fighting with words is better than fighting a war.

The GP is talking about the straight-faced lie that the PRC peddles in international circles that Taiwan is a province of the mainland government. It is the international equivalent of putting their hands on their ears and shouting "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!", and about as legitimate as Mexico's claim to Texas.

I've ended dates over this with Chinese girls. Inevitably they condescend to me about how "I'm just an American" that "can't understand the complicated situation," but that I should rest assured that "Taiwan is not a country, it is a Chinese province." Never mind the fact that I lived there, documented the sunflower protests, speak the language... As opposed to these girls that hadn't even visited the nation. Because they can't. Because you need a special visa. To enter this "non-country."

Did you say "prove it, take the plane there", and how did they respond to the fact that you need a special visa?

"it's complicated" usually. At that point I'm usually already done though.

I've just told older Chinese that the Taiwanese don't want to be a part of China and they tend to give it another thought.

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