China claims that the South China Sea is its internal affairs too [0][1].

If China succeeds, soon it will claim every part of the Mongol empire (including almost all of Eastern Europe and some parts of Central Europe) is its internal affairs, because China considers the Mongol empire as merely one of its dynasties. Remember how China censored a French exhibition about Genghis Khan? [2]

Only a fool would believe their claim about “internal affairs”.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/21...

[1] https://www.js7tv.cn/news/201806_147250.html (in Chinese)

[2] https://www.france24.com/en/20201013-french-museum-halts-gen...

I found this to be a pretty good blog post summarizing China's geographical interests.

https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/what-china-wan...

Obviously they project soft power further, but it is based on economic leverage in the same way that the USA has been doing since WW2. For example, that French museum exhibition was dependent on a Chinese museum to do their exhibition. That dependency came with strings. Only a fool would think that means the Red Army is about to invade Eastern Europe.

Just as a note: the red army is (was) the soviet army.

D'oh! Thank you sir

My point was “internal affairs” is just an arbitrary excuse.

Are you trying to justify China’s claim about the South China Sea and surrounding areas as “internal affairs” with that blog post?

Whether or not the Red Army will invade Eastern Europe with the excuse of “internal affairs” has nothing to do with my point.

To be honest, if China succeeds in invading Taiwan because of “internal affairs”, they will likely go after Japan and Vietnam next (perhaps with other excuses), even though none of them fell to the Mongol empire.

I’m don’t want a lengthy discussion about what will happen next. I was just pointing out the arbitrariness of “internal affairs”. Sorry if you couldn’t get my point.

I get your point, I was just trying to divert the conversation away from an unsubstantiated "domino theory" that seems to be grounded in hysterics and towards analysis of history, geography and geo-politics.

Taiwan isn't a part of China, therefore it's not internal by definition. Of course the CCP doesn't like that, but it's a fact that won't be changed by just harassing media for showing the correct map.

Under One-China policy there is just one China which consist both of Mainland and Taiwan. Thus affairs inside these areas are internal affairs.

That policy is a nice PR name for the intention to take foreign territories, but it's not something anyone else has to respect. They can say One-China means the whole world belongs to them if they like, that still doesn't give their claims any more weight.

You may want to brush up on your international recognition history. Officially, for the UN and literally all countries bar a few microstates, Taiwan is a province of China. The fact that they are, for (almost) all intents and purposes an independent separate country isn't recognised by anyone officially, and that probably won't change unless a regime change happens in China.

Sure, because "literally all countries" made themselves dependent on China economically and so are more or less forced to go along with it. But I personally am not.

No, this dates to the 1970s when China was an underdeveloped country with a mainly agrarian economy, and it was just accepting the facts from the late 1940s when the Chinese Civil war ended with the RoC running away to Taiwan (up until the 1970s most countries recognised RoC as the China, even though it controlled only Taiwan - now it's the opposite, the PRC is recognised as the China, even though it doesn't control Taiwan).

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Though it often doesn't seem that clear-cut when e.g. the WHO ignores question even mentioning Taiwan or companies apologize for stupidly minor details - things like that don't make the chinese government look very confident in their status.

The WHO doesn't have much choice because, again, Taiwan officially doesn't exist, and it would be scandalous for a UN agency such as the WHO to recognise them by mentioning them.

> it would be scandalous

I can't think of a democratic, free country where the government started flipping tables because one TV station on the other end of the world showed the wrong version of a map. At worst the citizen of that country would make jokes and memes about it for a week.

The WHO didn't have to mention Taiwan...they pretended they didn't even hear a question mentioning Taiwan. That's self-censorship beyond reason.

> I can't think of a democratic, free country where the government started flipping tables because one TV station on the other end of the world showed the wrong version of a map

You think Ukraine would enjoy a map showing Crimea as a part of Russia? Poland with Danzig/Gdansk as German? France with Alsace-Lorraine as German? India with Kashmir Pakistani? Argentina with the Falklands as British and vice versa? Etc. Many countries' citizens and governments would be rightfully agitated by maps hitting open or old wounds, and depending on the country and desperation of the government it could escalate to table flipping as well.

> The WHO didn't have to mention Taiwan...they pretended they didn't even hear a question mentioning Taiwan. That's self-censorship beyond reason

If they did respond to the question, they would be talking about information provided by Taiwan's government, implicitly recognising it as an independent authority.

What about Chinese mistreatments of African workers (in Africa). That is not internal, clearly, and yet criticism gets you in trouble.