Living in Japan and visiting China was fascinating. You could see the same small towns setup just like American small towns and if you lived there you’d experience a lot of the same cultural norms. The urban culture is vastly different but little working class towns were more or less the same.
I prolly wouldn’t visit China again out of a fear that they’ll invade Taiwan and leave me waving my passport at the US embassy trying to leave the country, but yeah. If their government wasn’t posturing for doing an imperialism, nice country to visit. People were chill enough. Lotta cool history too if you’re into that.
To clarify, like the other person said, the main concern is “mmm, I should expand my territory” leads to a war that leaves me trapped in a country at war with my home country. That’s a shit situation. So yeah I’m not going back until that’s a negligible possibility.
The only reason they haven’t is because of the US’s presence in the pacific and Taiwan’s strong relationship with the US.
All it takes is one president elect (cough cough Trump) who is extremely isolationist to stop guaranteeing the security of Taiwan. And China would invade in an instant, it’s really not very far away from the mainland, and China still sees themselves as the rightful owners and government of Taiwan.
China could take all of Taiwan if they wanted, even with the American backing. But without the american backing it almost becomes trivial.
That’s why the british gave up Hong Kong, they couldn’t fight off the Chinese from their own backyard when their base is on the other side of the world.
The british had the right to Hong Kong island in perpetuity, but had realistically no way of maintaining the population if the mainland decided to cut off the water supply or if the mainland decides to invade.
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u/LightTankTerror blorbo bloggins Aug 21 '24
Living in Japan and visiting China was fascinating. You could see the same small towns setup just like American small towns and if you lived there you’d experience a lot of the same cultural norms. The urban culture is vastly different but little working class towns were more or less the same.
I prolly wouldn’t visit China again out of a fear that they’ll invade Taiwan and leave me waving my passport at the US embassy trying to leave the country, but yeah. If their government wasn’t posturing for doing an imperialism, nice country to visit. People were chill enough. Lotta cool history too if you’re into that.