It was a joke.

The joke is that its not open source?

The headline should be changed because it was a joke: “Sorry folks, this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?) but I'll keep the issue open since there's some discussion here.”

It's a common term that comes with a lot of criticism in the vein of noticing the skulls.

I can see the argument for Hong Kong. I don't agree, really, but I can understand it. Under the strictest of definitions, perhaps it isn't.

But Taiwan is very obviously a totally separate country no matter what fictions anyone employs. If you are trying to talk about the thin veneer of everyone going "Uh huh, sure, China, yep Taiwan is totally part of you, wink wink, nudge nudge" as somehow making China not imperialist when Taiwan basically lives under the perpetual threat of a Chinese military invasion and having their own democratic form of government overthrown and replaced with the CCP, then... I don't really know what to say.

I suppose we could argue about imperialism being more of an economic thing - in which case this all still holds up - China's investments in Africa are effectively the same playbook the US has run out in developing nations for years. The US learned it from prior imperialist nations but belts and roads is nearly a carbon copy of what the US has done in other places.

But let's look at what the original poster was actually talking about - saying that China is safe because they don't have a military industrial complex because they're not imperialist. The proper word to use, if we want to get down to the semantics of it all, would be expansionist - but it's still not true. China has the 2nd largest military industrial complex in the world, and the gap is shrinking every day between them and the US. And if you were to look at wartime capacity, where China's dual-use shipyards could be swapped to naval production instead of commercial, a huge portion of that gap disappears immediately.

It wasn't that long ago that Taiwan claimed to be the legitimate government of China; given that China still maintains the reverse claim, it's not outrageous that it would consider an outside country's defense to be interference in an internal matter.

Whether or not that claim is legitimate, it is consistent with the concept of china having a non-imperialist foreign policy, and claims regarding that need to look elsewhere for supporting evidence.

While that rhetoric makes sense in the context of the history and politics of China and Taiwan, they have been independently governed nations for quite a while and have very different political systems, their own armies, etc. They are de-facto separate nations if nothing else.

I also note China's aggressive and violent colonization and expansive claims of the South China Sea.

Taking any nation/land/sea by force is imperialist, by definition.

that claim is really about not resuming a war.

taiwan saying otherwise would immediately trigger an attack from the PRC.

its still imperialism that china is dominating a neighbor to require it ro state a certain position, especially when its very far from the defacto reality on the ground, that taiwan is clearly separate

The democratic values I take for granted is under direct threat from the us. Your government is literally funding separatist movements in my country.

@dang doesn't do anything; email hn@ycombinator.com and they'll do something quite responsively.

Comment conversations are public; “everybody else” is part of the conversation.

“Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.”

--https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> While interesting […]

“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting” --also hnguidelines

Idk if that is a quote or a rule? but it is dismissive in a weird way.

It is fair to say dont post “this is turning into xyz” as it doesnt contribute to the discussion. And that is fair. i could have explained why rather than dismiss the post.

I make no good hacker claims but i didnt find this interesting. I am in the minority it seems.

Please read the link, which you can also find in the hn footer under “guidelines”

I did and every example used is pushin 20 years old. Platforms and communities absolutely change in that time span.

Is saying it is like reddit here useful and break earlier guidelines, yes. But again, the dismissal wording is weird. It is a, you are wrong because your opinion is wrong which ironically is pretty reddit back in 08 and today.

To be constructive, that rule about reddit could be removed with the earlier rules still catching the trope. Idk why it was added originally but I suppose it was a different time 17 years ago.

The point is that an or relationship was silently converted into an and relationship, which is a _very_ different relationship between two factors.