China's top envoy to Germany has warned the West against punishing Russia with sanctions

[Igel]

13. Firepower.

It's the same with the Chechen Republic. It was originally the Chechen-Ingushetia Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and granted autonomous status within the Russian SFSR (notice the "F" for "federal&quot .

After the USSR dissolved it broke into the Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia.

The Chechen Republic declared it wanted to break away from Russia.

Russia decided that self-determination wasn't for Chechens. There was a bit of a war, then a bit more of a war.

You'd think maybe this would be a precedent for the justifiable invasion of Crimea. But Putin's all "self-determination" when he makes the self-determination; firmly against it when it doesn't suit him.

Same for the Chinese. The Uighurs have no right to self-determination. They are part of the empire. Nice, abstract principles are always tempered by the needs of the power, by the potential application of force, and by the need for maintaining territorial integrity.

The Chinese in Taiwan have full rights to self-determination, as long as they self-determine what the PRC has already self-determined for them. And, really, they wouldn't mind (the PRC, that is), having it go the same way: Have a group of armed men surround the parliament and not let in any opponents as a representative to parliament that got 4% of the vote was decreed president. Then he can have a self-defense force sporting new PRC materiel occupy the island, have a large media campaign saying how horrible the nationalists (nationalist = fascist!!!, fascist = Japanese aggressor!) and Westerners are, with a snap vote while it's clear that the large country is both threatening, bribing, and occupying the island. It's very much a Russian way of doing things, but the Chinese have shown themselves adept at borrowing political "technology" and adapting it, and even improving on it.

Many here, no doubt, that find a security guard near a polling place in one place in a city and find it to be full-blown fascist and an attempt to force election results would do as they do now--find 30k "unknown" armed occupation troops a perfectly reasonable, safe election. And if only public money is spent--albeit, all for a given decision, using blatant propaganda techniques while controlling the press, outside access, and any dissidents--at least it's free from the taint of "special interests." They, on behalf of the Taiwanese, would welcome their (not "their own&quot Chinese overlords.