Another thing that some pro PRC campists do is bring up the White Terror done by the KMT even though the party currently in power is the one that overthrow the KMT one party state due to it’s authoritarianism and the KMT is the party which is in favour of closer ties to the PRC
The strategic vulnerability that currently binds Washington to Taipei has an expiration date. In December 2025, US imports from Taiwan exceeded those from China for the first time ($24.7 billion versus $21.1 billion), driven entirely by demand for AI chips. Current demand outstrips supply by a factor of three to five. But this window is temporary. TSMC's Arizona fabs reach Phase 1 production in late 2027, meaningful output by 2028, and 20-30% of advanced capacity will be US-based by 2030. Taiwanese self-determination cannot depend on a silicon shield that American policy is actively dismantling.
Thanks for this. From a historical perspective Taiwan is something like Iceland - settled-invaded by people largely seeking general freedom from the dominant power back home (Norway and other parts of Scandanavia; China) and then pulled back into the formal authority. It is also something like an Australia and New Zealand for being later an outpost where many people settled and developed a local world. Only for China do people seem to give credence to the idea that if your background is X then you ought to be part of the major country of people whose background is X. Even then I rarely here the argument that Singapore should be part of China since its people mostly have Chinese ancestry.
Thanks Conor. The Singapore comparison is sharp and worth keeping - it exposes the absurdity of "ethnic Chinese ancestry = Chinese sovereignty." Nobody seriously argues Singapore should be absorbed into the PRC, or the US into Britain.
But I'd gently push back on the Iceland/Australia framing. Taiwan wasn't primarily settled by people seeking freedom from China. Han migration was driven by colonial economics: the Dutch East India Company imported Chinese labourers for sugar and rice extraction in the 17th century; the Qing then encouraged settlement for tax revenue and frontier consolidation. It was extraction and empire-building, not flight from oppression.
More importantly, both comparisons risk erasing Taiwan's indigenous Austronesian peoples, who inhabited the island for thousands of years before Han settlement. They weren't "settled" - they were displaced. This is why the article takes care to acknowledge the real history of indigenous dispossession while arguing that the "settler colonial state" framing doesn't justify PRC annexation (which would make things worse for indigenous peoples, not better).
The better comparison might be Mongolia: also a former Qing territory, also never ruled by the PRC, but whose independence Beijing recognised in 1949. If Mongolia can be independent despite "Chinese" historical claims, why not Taiwan? The answer is geopolitics, not principle.
It is hard to find good historical information about Taiwan in English. Most people assume Taiwan has long been a part of China. What I learnt suggested the initial Chinese influx was across 1200 to 1500 and essentially individuals taking an opportunity, not a State led initiative. That gave me the Iceland comparison, without meaning that there were no inhabitants of Taiwan.
The Australia comparison was about an external power choosing to push aside the existing populace as unimportant and then outnumbering through immigration. I should have included ‘invasion’ in the Australia sentence not just the Iceland sentence, since as an Australian that is what it was.
The relevance is that the UK let go of those colonies which are now the combination of the original inhabitants, those who initially followed and people from across the world (30% of Australians are born elsewhere; a further 20% have at least one parent born elsewhere), creating their own societies. China avoids the decolonisation question.
Thanks for the clarification, Conor - that's helpful. You're right that early Han migration (pre-Dutch period) was more diffuse and individual rather than state-directed. The historiography is contested: some scholars emphasise this earlier settlement wave, others argue significant demographic transformation really began with Dutch colonial labour importation from the 1620s onwards. Either way, your broader point stands that this wasn't a Beijing-directed project.
And your final observation cuts to the heart of it: China avoids the decolonisation question entirely. The UK (eventually, under pressure) accepted that former colonies could become independent nations with their own trajectories. Beijing refuses to entertain this possibility. The "imperial successor doctrine" that Au Loong-yu identifies treats everything the Qing held as eternally Chinese by right - Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang - regardless of what the populations themselves want.
This is why the Mongolia comparison remains so useful. Mongolia was Qing territory. The PRC recognised Mongolian independence in 1949. Decolonisation happened. But Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang are treated differently - not because of any principled distinction, but because of strategic calculation. Mongolia had Soviet protection; the others didn't.
The question Beijing cannot answer: if decolonisation was legitimate for the British, French, and Portuguese empires, why not for the Qing's successors?
Campism is the tendency to see Western capitalism as the main enemy, and on that basis to refuse solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed people in other countries for democratic freedoms, national self-determination, and workers’ control.
It works with steps: the tendency firstly to divide states according to their alignment to one of two camps: a hegemonic and reactionary pole of the dominant imperialisms (the US and EU, for example); and then the counter-hegemonic sub-imperialisms (China, Iran, Russia, for example); then secondly to give blanket support to the sub-imperial ruling elites, since the hegemons oppose them, and finally to not support the masses in those sub-imperialisms when they mobilise against state-endorsed exploitation and national oppression, since workers and oppressed people must suspend their struggles against counter-hegemonic states.
In the WhatsApp thread that led to this post, there is a range of views. However, if someone held _all_ of the views that I'm disagreeing with, then yes, I could call that campism.
The only way to have that debate is rationally. That's why I try to describe the logical steps in the campist reasoning, and why the article is so extensive, balanced and is based on extensive referencing.
Hi Duncan. You might want to check out this article which I posted yesterday, as it deals with the campist views of Vijay Prashad on Bangladesh. A graphic example of many of the points you described above… ⬇️
Another thing that some pro PRC campists do is bring up the White Terror done by the KMT even though the party currently in power is the one that overthrow the KMT one party state due to it’s authoritarianism and the KMT is the party which is in favour of closer ties to the PRC
The strategic vulnerability that currently binds Washington to Taipei has an expiration date. In December 2025, US imports from Taiwan exceeded those from China for the first time ($24.7 billion versus $21.1 billion), driven entirely by demand for AI chips. Current demand outstrips supply by a factor of three to five. But this window is temporary. TSMC's Arizona fabs reach Phase 1 production in late 2027, meaningful output by 2028, and 20-30% of advanced capacity will be US-based by 2030. Taiwanese self-determination cannot depend on a silicon shield that American policy is actively dismantling.
Thanks for this. From a historical perspective Taiwan is something like Iceland - settled-invaded by people largely seeking general freedom from the dominant power back home (Norway and other parts of Scandanavia; China) and then pulled back into the formal authority. It is also something like an Australia and New Zealand for being later an outpost where many people settled and developed a local world. Only for China do people seem to give credence to the idea that if your background is X then you ought to be part of the major country of people whose background is X. Even then I rarely here the argument that Singapore should be part of China since its people mostly have Chinese ancestry.
Thanks Conor. The Singapore comparison is sharp and worth keeping - it exposes the absurdity of "ethnic Chinese ancestry = Chinese sovereignty." Nobody seriously argues Singapore should be absorbed into the PRC, or the US into Britain.
But I'd gently push back on the Iceland/Australia framing. Taiwan wasn't primarily settled by people seeking freedom from China. Han migration was driven by colonial economics: the Dutch East India Company imported Chinese labourers for sugar and rice extraction in the 17th century; the Qing then encouraged settlement for tax revenue and frontier consolidation. It was extraction and empire-building, not flight from oppression.
More importantly, both comparisons risk erasing Taiwan's indigenous Austronesian peoples, who inhabited the island for thousands of years before Han settlement. They weren't "settled" - they were displaced. This is why the article takes care to acknowledge the real history of indigenous dispossession while arguing that the "settler colonial state" framing doesn't justify PRC annexation (which would make things worse for indigenous peoples, not better).
The better comparison might be Mongolia: also a former Qing territory, also never ruled by the PRC, but whose independence Beijing recognised in 1949. If Mongolia can be independent despite "Chinese" historical claims, why not Taiwan? The answer is geopolitics, not principle.
It is hard to find good historical information about Taiwan in English. Most people assume Taiwan has long been a part of China. What I learnt suggested the initial Chinese influx was across 1200 to 1500 and essentially individuals taking an opportunity, not a State led initiative. That gave me the Iceland comparison, without meaning that there were no inhabitants of Taiwan.
The Australia comparison was about an external power choosing to push aside the existing populace as unimportant and then outnumbering through immigration. I should have included ‘invasion’ in the Australia sentence not just the Iceland sentence, since as an Australian that is what it was.
The relevance is that the UK let go of those colonies which are now the combination of the original inhabitants, those who initially followed and people from across the world (30% of Australians are born elsewhere; a further 20% have at least one parent born elsewhere), creating their own societies. China avoids the decolonisation question.
Thanks for the clarification, Conor - that's helpful. You're right that early Han migration (pre-Dutch period) was more diffuse and individual rather than state-directed. The historiography is contested: some scholars emphasise this earlier settlement wave, others argue significant demographic transformation really began with Dutch colonial labour importation from the 1620s onwards. Either way, your broader point stands that this wasn't a Beijing-directed project.
And your final observation cuts to the heart of it: China avoids the decolonisation question entirely. The UK (eventually, under pressure) accepted that former colonies could become independent nations with their own trajectories. Beijing refuses to entertain this possibility. The "imperial successor doctrine" that Au Loong-yu identifies treats everything the Qing held as eternally Chinese by right - Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang - regardless of what the populations themselves want.
This is why the Mongolia comparison remains so useful. Mongolia was Qing territory. The PRC recognised Mongolian independence in 1949. Decolonisation happened. But Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang are treated differently - not because of any principled distinction, but because of strategic calculation. Mongolia had Soviet protection; the others didn't.
The question Beijing cannot answer: if decolonisation was legitimate for the British, French, and Portuguese empires, why not for the Qing's successors?
Do you think that you can have a reasoned debate by immediately labeling anybody skeptical of your position as a "campist"?
Campism is the tendency to see Western capitalism as the main enemy, and on that basis to refuse solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed people in other countries for democratic freedoms, national self-determination, and workers’ control.
It works with steps: the tendency firstly to divide states according to their alignment to one of two camps: a hegemonic and reactionary pole of the dominant imperialisms (the US and EU, for example); and then the counter-hegemonic sub-imperialisms (China, Iran, Russia, for example); then secondly to give blanket support to the sub-imperial ruling elites, since the hegemons oppose them, and finally to not support the masses in those sub-imperialisms when they mobilise against state-endorsed exploitation and national oppression, since workers and oppressed people must suspend their struggles against counter-hegemonic states.
In the WhatsApp thread that led to this post, there is a range of views. However, if someone held _all_ of the views that I'm disagreeing with, then yes, I could call that campism.
The only way to have that debate is rationally. That's why I try to describe the logical steps in the campist reasoning, and why the article is so extensive, balanced and is based on extensive referencing.
Hi Duncan. You might want to check out this article which I posted yesterday, as it deals with the campist views of Vijay Prashad on Bangladesh. A graphic example of many of the points you described above… ⬇️
sorry here is the link: https://sergejordan.substack.com/p/against-geopolitical-fatalism-on
Also, appreciate the AI disclosure, it was ringing some alarm bells for me.
You might also like to read https://redmole.substack.com/p/a-critical-welcome-to-ai-for-radicals