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Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

Stories like this make me wonder if people in Taiwan and Hong Kong have some serious concerns about the future for themselves and their children. I haven't picked up much sense of concern from anyone in the West, but if China's long term behavior pans out to resemble that of the USA in terms of forcing its will upon others I'd think they'd be first in line for reeducation.

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Hong Kong is probably kind of screwed, but Taiwan and China are still two separate countries (regardless of their constitutional claims as well as other countries diplomatic relations). But yeah you're right this sort of thing is unlikely to help any arguments for potential future unification.

The US has not done border-expanding territorialism like China has in a very very long time. Perhaps the US should, since everyone apparently thinks it is happening anyways.

I thought I read something in the newspaper once suggesting the US had applied some "diplomatic influence" to a sovereign nation one time. Perhaps I'm misremembering.

What major territories has the US annexed, or tried to annex, since it became the global superpower post WW2?

Germany? No. France? No. Japan? No. South Korea? No. South Vietnam? No. The Philippines? No. Canada? No. Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Mexico? No. Panama? No. Grenada? No.

China just violently annexed territory 4x the size of France from its neighbors. Nobody did a thing about it (and nobody is going to do a thing about it), the world just stood aside and watched. The UN barely wagged its finger at them.

The US doesn't need to annex them, it just violently installs a capitalist government and then US companies buy everything.

One might argue that "forcing its will" can manifest in forms other than annexation of land. There is a bit of a rumor going around about the US meddling in the affairs of other countries, but maybe that's just another one of those conspiracy theories.

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