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Well, France meddled in the American Revolutionary War to hurt Britain. That's just the reality of what rival states do.

Taiwan has symbolic value. The CCP has made "reunification" a major part of its "platform" for decades, and a leader who accomplishes that will go down in history in the pantheon of Chinese leaders alongside Mao. So, a CCP leader seeking glory would attempt unification if he judges that China can win. On the other side, the US is Taiwan's security guarantor, and if the US lets China take Taiwan, the US will lose credibility with its Asian allies. Asian countries wary of China may recalculate the power calculus and feel the need to acquiesce to China. Taiwan is also a symbol of the democratic ideals of China's founding and proof that democracy is compatible with so-called "Asian values." Destroying Taiwan eliminates an ideological threat to the CCP's non-democratic legitimacy.

Strategically, Taiwan is an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that China wants.

I'm sorry. HN attracts a certain audience, and so do cryptocurrency companies, and some people from this audience tend to immediately pivot to "culture war" issues whenever allegations of racism arise. The priorities of some commenters on this submission are very misplaced.

For example, people can disagree on the merits of e.g. affirmative action, but if former CoinBase employees are alleging that lower-qualified white employees are being promoted in favor of higher-qualified black employees, then that's a serious matter that you ought to address before pivoting the conversation to other topics. Hiring bias is institutional racism, and allegations of such bias should be thoroughly investigated. But, it's probably easier for some people to talk about affirmative action, but harder for the same people to discuss promotion practices that are biased against black employees. I hope that people who feel eager to talk about the former are also prepared to address the latter.

Also seeing some of the comments, I would like to remind some people not to make racial equality issues into black versus Asian. Both groups experience racism (often different kinds of racism), racial equality is not a zero-sum game, and surely we can find good-faith solutions that help one group without pushing down another.

I didn't realize this when I wrote my earlier comment, but something that I found disturbing was that you seemed okay with the prospect of your own children being discriminated against, since you merely "expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people." I certainly don't want my future children to be discriminated against. Why do you think that a future where your progeny are second-class citizens is a morally acceptable one?

Even if we suppose that America and China are morally equivalent (which I strongly disagree with), just out of the self-interest of yourself and your family, why would you prefer China over America?

My comment doesn't contradict anything that you're saying. I pointed out that America has made many grave mistakes, such as slavery, and that we can still improve America today. The words of the Declaration of Independence are an inspiration and mandate to work towards the goal of equality.

Our founding fathers were certainly hypocrites and flawed men, but that doesn't invalidate the truth of their words.

I agree with you that people in China deserve a standard of living similar to the West. I also think that people in China deserve to have more freedoms and a representative government, as opposed to a closed one-party bureaucracy. Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized, in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Now, China is also trying to expand its territory. I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples. I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.

This is a false moral equivalence. The US was founded on the idea that "all men are created equal." The US has made terrible mistakes, such as not immediately banning slavery and not extending voting rights to women, and the US still has room to improve today. However, the founding ideas of the US provide a mandate and inspire people to work towards a more equal society. I would greatly prefer the US over China as the world hegemon.

I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me. However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.

Another person replied to your comment and criticized you for interpreting my post in a certain way. (The reply is now flagged and dead.) I would like to make clear that the ACA-5 is absolutely one of the political issues that I am concerned about.

Thank you for your support. I do not know where you live, but one issue that I am concerned about is California's ACA-5, which seeks to bring back racial preferences to public universities and will be on the ballot this November. It is being framed as being pro-equality, but I am concerned that it will also enable universities to discriminate against Asian-American high schoolers.

One idea I've heard proposed is to instead ask a yes-or-no question, "Are you black?", so that universities can help increase black representation, but the important part is that they should not be able to find out whether or not you're Asian-American. At the very least, universities should not be able to distinguish between Asian-Americans and the white majority. The understanding I've heard is that WASP elites aren't necessarily concerned about other minority groups eating away at their influence, but they know that in a meritocratic system, Asian-Americans will outperform them, and therefore they use the "holistic admissions" system to keep Asian-Americans out of top universities (e.g. Ivy League schools) and therefore prevent Asian-Americans from reaching leadership positions and endangering their influence.

Furthermore, college applications ask where you were born and where your parents went to university. Although there is an option to select "prefer not to disclose" for race, my parents were educated in China, and I was born in Japan (despite not even being Japanese anyway!), and I couldn't hide this information. Colleges should not ask this, as it allows them to discriminate against immigrant families, namely Asian immigrant families. China-related xenophobia may make such discrimination worse.

Right now, I'm in college. My dream in HS was to study programming language theory, and I wanted to get into a good university strong in type theory and constructive math. However, the admissions officers were laypeople who wouldn't have even heard of PL theory, and furthermore they negatively stereotype Asian-Americans who are interested in math or programming, or who have an academic focus. I want to make sure that other Asian-Americans in the same position that I was will get a fair shot at a good education.

If the justification of affirmative action is to "correct the harm caused by previous institutional bias," how is it justified that it discriminates against Asian-Americans when we've never held institutional power in America?

(I'm not sure if you're defending affirmative action or if you're just outlining its supposed purpose.)