yogthos

My point was that China should start actively supporting independence in Hawaii, start doing freedom of navigation drills around there, fund political parties in Hawaii that promote independence, and fly native Hawaiian politicians to China for training.

And you can keep doing whatever mental gymnastics you like, but the reality is that that Taiwan is internationally recognized as being a part of China, and if China decided that it wanted to end the farce by force it could do that any time it likes. That's the real world that you should try engaging with.

US has basically committing a genocide in Hawaii, having annexed it after WW2. Here are just some of the atrocities US is committing there. There is an independence movement there that very much deserves support from the world.

China/Taiwan thing is silly only because Taiwan independence is a complete joke given that it's entirely reliant on mainland China economically. China is going along with the farce simply because they expect to end it in a peaceful way. In fact, that almost happened back in 2014 when KMT was about to officially repatriate. The deal was that Taiwan would be allowed to keep an autonomous government and have a representative on the mainland. US ran a color revolution in response that put the current DPP government in power. However, their popularity has recently plummeted and it's very likely that KMT will get back into power in the elections next year. At that point the talks of resolving the independence issue peacefully will likely restart. KMT officials have already travelled to the mainland this year for talks.

China really should start treating Texas and Hawaii as their own countries.

That's actually an interesting point, vast majority of students from China who come to study in the west end up returning home. This also completely disproves the whole narrative that life in the west is somehow better. If that was the case then people who got to live both in China and in the west would want to stay in the west instead of coming home.

• https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202012/1210043.shtml
• https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202209/06/WS63169212a310fd2b29e761ac.html

People's Republic of China to be exact.

Taiwan is a province of China. This is a well documented fact, and Taiwan's legal standing is not in question. This is the position held by the UN as well as practically all the countries in the world. This is also the fundamental basis for having diplomatic relations between US and China per Potsdam Proclamation that was signed 77 years ago between China, the US & the UK. This position has never officially changed. You can also read about it on the US state department site:

The United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.

That seems pretty clear cut to me.

You're just straw manning here since I didn't say a single thing about you. So, you're definitely right it's not going anywhere.

Amazing counter point there.

Not sure where anybody claims that what Russia is doing is good somehow.

PPP is purchasing power people have within their country. So, yes, PPP adjusted GDP makes sense and it means measuring GDP while adjusting for the actual purchasing power it represents. Stop using sophistry to pretend like you're saying something meaningful here.

As you finally admit, regardless how you measure, US spends a far higher portion of its GDP on the military than China does. However, the whole picture is that China is far more industrialized than US is, and has far more productive GDP. On the other hand, a lot of US GDP is fictitious, such as health insurance industry. This industry creates a ton of jobs that bump up GDP on paper, but produces no actual value for the people of the country. Hence why looking at US industrial portion of the GDP for comparison makes far more sense. That's the actual productive GDP in the country.

I'm also not sure what the budget deficit has to do with any of this.

Right, there has to be a transitional state from society the way it is shaped by capitalism to a different kind of society that's based on communist economic relations. Incidentally, I thought this was an excellent explanation of the relationship between socialist and communist phases of development https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3228-lenin-s-three-theoretical-arguments-about-the-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat

Are you seriously arguing that the portion of US military spending in terms of PPP adjusted GDP is comparable to China?