But undoubtedly this is NOT the vibe of how Mr. Li would have wanted it said to him 🤣

Yeah, people when talking politely to their taxi driver, or any skilled trades worker really, would call them “师傅” as well. The term generally has a strong connotation of the traditional culture and all the types of works and environments that passed on knowledge via apprenticeships.

Well, the DPP has been advocating for more than a decade that Taiwan has nothing to do with China, or Chinese culture, not historically, not now. Even when the KMT were in power for decades, due to its own history of “fighting” against the CPC, they implemted full-on propaganda about how crappy Mainland China was, how horrific was the communist system there, how oppressive, how Mainlanders hate them and always only want to oppress the Taiwanese, etc. Etc.

Honestly the Taiwanese people are pretty innocent folks mostly, not very interested in political nuances, but after all these decades of propaganda from every single party, separatism is basically politically correctness there now. The constitution, along with the “ROC” name, alas, might as well just be a piece of paper

China also has a more efficient energy transfer system than elsewhere in the world, so the loss is a lot less than you would expect, lower than, for example, it would be in US.

deleted by creator

Look for seller with longer history and good ratings. I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of random little items there, 100+ packages, and only 2 or 3 had issues or lost due to lost in transit after reaching my local area. If broken upon arrival, received refund, etc.

If that’s still the case, then PRC wouldn’t feel any urgency regarding Taiwan. But decades of anti-Mainland China public education - which included writing China out of Taiwanese history, so Taiwan seemingly popped out from nowhere as an island that birthed itself LOL - there are fewer and fewer ppl in Taiwan who believe they are Chinese. The current party in power is openly separatist and intensely propagandizes everything anti-China, so even mentioning the ROC as a concept these days has became politically incorrect. If they could change their constitution to cross out ROC and become the Republic of Taiwan instead, they would. But they dare not as yet.

Hence you’re seeing things like these where the PRC is stepping up efforts to emphasize everywhere they can, and in all their foreign policy interactions, that Taiwan is part of China etc. Etc.

It appears China and Russia are visa-free for each other’s tour groups since 2023.

Actually, they haven’t, lol.

The focus on one word has to do with how the CPC announces its policy. George Yeo has described interpreting the CPC’s policy announcement akin to interpreting the Catholic Church’s proclamations. Each year they announce their current updated position, and everyone (including all the party bureaucrats who will be executing policy, the Chinese ppl, media, etc.) compare the current version with last year’s version to see what is the change that is now being promoted by the central government. That is, the differences between the 2 texts IS the policy change xD

So, in fact, they are doing the right thing by this narrow focus on a word or two. What they are doing deliberately WRONG, though, is to interpret it only for their own fearmongering purpose.

In fact, the very vagueness and ambiguity of broadcasting policy this way is deliberate: doing so allows local officials to (1) implement policy changes in ways that fit local situations, and (2) have some creativity and flexibility in coming up with potential ways to implement the policy change.

So really, the CPC’s policy changes are always a direction to move toward, a general result aimed to be achieved, by a certain time line, without any specific steps as to how.

And in the specific case for Taiwan, (3) this is the CPC itself allowing themselves the ambiguity and flexibility to change policy on Taiwan depending on how things work out as this year goes on. All they’re saying is, things are going to change now so everyone, be prepared to change.

They may have omitted this word in the past but currently it is a reflection of a meaningful change in policy.

This change is a recognition that, only giving benefits to Taiwan (ECFA; allowing practically zero import tax of Taiwanese goods sold into mainland China; all kinds of respecting Taiwan’s one-sided political assertions at the expense of the mainland’s positions, etc.) without ANY teeth, is a bad policy that need to be updated.

What had worked to preserve peace 15 years ago no longer work, when the DPP is actively engaged in separation tactics, deliberate provocations (to the point of complete silliness–an incident ongoing right now, where Taiwanese coast guards caused the deaths of two mainland fishermen, with ongoing refusal to apologize, recognize any fault, outright lies that keep getting discovered in embarrassing ways a day or two after the lie , claiming no video evidence existed though the ship + 4 guards are all supposed video all incidents, refusal to give up the dead bodies or allowing the mainland to participate in examination/dissection for cause of death, etc.), and continuation of anti-China education in their public school system.

What this is not, however, is a sign of imminent invasion or whatever, which seems to be the main implication whenever Western media wrote about Taiwanese things. They deliberately fail to point out that there are like 100 steps the mainland can take, going from inconveniencing Taiwan to outright economically devastate Taiwan, before reaching any kind of hot conflict.

In the tier-1 cities most people, especially younger, can manage a few words in English (although many are very accented and may be hard to understand) and all public transportation and facilities will have English translation accompanied.

Outside of those, English REALLY isn’t a lingua franca here, people will not even be able to guess what you’re trying to convey in English. Also, many of the wordless assumptions behind design, procedures, and how things work that many travelers can rely on in countries with more Western influence are also different, which can be challenging.

Massive upsides: everyone is comfortable if you use translation apps or devices to communicate; people are friendly and approachable and pretty social culture-wise, and will go out of their way to help you. It’s also extremely safe everywhere, well organized, easy to travel to wherever you care to go, and everything is accessible digitally (although sadly you’d have to be able to read Chinese for most of apps and websites, but it’ll be easy for other ppl to help you out by just pulling out their own phones to do xyz).

So yes, you absolutely can go as a tourist without knowing the language ;D

It used to be pretty interesting to read people’s questions with genuine attempts at answering. I paid the $5 to be able to post… Haven’t been back in years though

Sharing borders with China, they have culturally-held reservations /anger /fear /disgruntledness about China’s influence and effects reaching within their lands, and believes China had invaded them or ruled over them unfairly at various points from ancient times to the Vietnamese Communist era, etc etc. All the typical love-and-hate between lands that were side by side for thousands of years with endless cycles of good times and bad. Relationship status: it’s complicated.

So Vietnam geopolitically aims to find other great powers—USA in this case, USSR in the past, etc—to counter balance China. Simultaneously, they have been part of the sinosphere for centuries and does know the need and the how of working WITH China too.

K that’s beyond my knowledge level to answer xD I mostly know what Huawei want it to become and how they likely can make it happen compared to Google Home and Apple versions of the same dream but badly realized, give the more friendly environment to Huawei in China, its relationship with more companies and branches of products, and ppl being more used to doing literally everything already via their mobile os and very willing to be even more immersed

No, so far as I understand it it’s a separate system that may not be compatible with android. HarmonyOS is intended to be a cross platform operating system from the ground up linking phone, car (electronic vehicles growing exponentially in China), desktop, household electronics, household AI, etc, completely seamlessly. If you aren’t part of that entire ecosystem as Huawei visualize, which is likely the case if you’re not in China, you probably won’t experience the benefit of HarmonyOS, it’ll just be another system running another set of apps. But ppl in China will if it rolls out as intended.

Outside of China, HarmonyOS will probably eventually need to be compatible with Android to be competitive.

What Ma Yingjiu was able to do 10 years ago is no longer as feasible today. The wealth disparity and military disparity between the two regions has grown much greater so Taiwan is now in a even worse position and unlikely to get what it had been offered then. Taiwan itself also has been undergoing 10 additional years of anti-Mainland propaganda, the DPP has been actively cutting off engagement between the people, as compared to 2014 when relations had been quite friendly with open policies to visit, tourism, and business etc.

While the KMT is at least prepared to acknowledge that permanent separation is unlikely, and while it is the most pro-“Chinese culture” party (as in, willing to admit they are Chinese but not that PRC is the representative of China), the KMT is not ready to officially active engage in reunification. They have their own deeply entrenched interests and benefits in keeping Taiwan separate, which they know they will lose if Taiwan becomes a part of China.

Finally, the KMT has crap reputation with the younger generation, as their authoritarian rule for decades had tortured a lot of Taiwanese citizens with horrible policies, and to this day they haven’t found the words nor policies to attract a younger crowd.

In the election that’s just happened, NO candidate dared even to mention the fact that separation is probably impossible, that Taiwan should probably have some contingency plans to prevent a conflict with China, or for negotiation in face of what is factually inevitable. The KMT didn’t even dare to mention that Taiwan had Chinese origin, or that they are Chinese under ROC. Everyone is all acting like ostriches–though the non-DPP supporting citizen knows better and hence the DPP only had 40% win out of the 70% turnout. But the political rhetoric was all unbearably hypocritical and not based on anything realistic.

The KMT is not pro peaceful reunification. There are no reunification party out of all 3 parties vying for power. KMT is at best pro “saying the right things to placate the Mainland so they can maintain the current situation for as long as possible, probably indefinitely if they can” , while making no real efforts to change the anti-Mainland propaganda and education that’s been going for the past few decades.

There are very little internal forces within Taiwan that actively wants reunification. Those who support it are majority an elderly generation who are increasingly dying out. The younger generation, especially the past 15 years, have been educated to believe Taiwan is not Chinese despite speaking/writing Chinese and having all the same traditions. It’s politically correct there to despise the Mainland despite watching Mainland TV shows and pop culture, and engaging in Mainland’s social media.

Of course the PRC leadership knows that there are no political faction in Taiwan that will move toward reunification. They also understand that Taiwan’s so called independence exist only due to US keeping it as a chesspiece to poke PRC whenever it likes. So they will exert some pressure but mostly leave Taiwan alone for now (unless they do something unbearably provocative) but will prepare to fight if necessary to push US power out of the South China Sea. Once that’s done, Taiwan will have no ability to maintain its separation and will fall into the orbit whether it wants to or not.

This is a law in many places in USA. Unenforced, but still on the books

I only realized it’s NOT an armband after you pointed it out x)

deleted by creator