Why Taiwan "Sorta" Claims Mongolia and More

this video is made possible by expressvpn start browsing the web securely with three months free by going to expressvpn.com real life lore taiwan is a pretty small island right off the coast of mainland asia mongolia is a pretty large landlocked country on asia sandwiched between russia and china these two countries are located over 2 000 kilometers apart and despite taiwan being an island their government sort of claims all of mongolia's territory as their own and it goes way beyond just that because taiwan doesn't just sort of claim mongolia they also sort of claim all of these parts of russia kazakhstan kyrgyzstan tajikistan afghanistan pakistan india bhutan myanmar north korea and have overlapping maritime claims with japan the philippines malaysia brunei and vietnam oh and they also claim a hundred percent of mainland china's territory too that means that despite being an island who technically doesn't border anyone taiwan has active border disputes with 17 other countries across the world the most of any single country and not only that but taiwan actively claims an area that's 372 times the size of the territory that she actually controls this means that taiwan has let's just say the most ambitious territorial claims of any modern country on earth but the reason why this situation exists is complicated because it isn't really taiwan's choice to do all of this it's china's whatever that means you see the government of taiwan's official name is the republic of china which was founded way back over a hundred years ago in 1911. it's going to be helpful to think of china as a concept or a realm from here on while we also need to explain a lot of recent chinese history in order to give you some context immediately prior to 1911 the realm of china was controlled universally by the qing dynasty who over centuries had greatly expanded china's territorial control but the 19th century was not a very good one for the qing in the 1830s the british attacked them in the first opium war and won gaining hong kong in the process just eight years after that war the taiping rebellion exploded in the south of china where some guy claiming to be the brother of jesus christ developed into the biggest civil war in human history and the bloodiest war of the entire 19th century the war lasted for 14 years and claimed more lives than the entirety of the first world war did and as it was raging the british and french attacked the qing once again in the second opium war and took even more land around hong kong the russians also threatened the qing with another third war unless they ceded the entirety of outer manchuria to them which the qing reluctantly did the taiping rebellion resulted in the deaths of tens of millions inside of china and the loss of a massive amount of territory to external powers but the chaos wasn't over yet 30 years after it ended the rising japanese empire attacked the qing and defeated them once again gaining control of korea taiwan and the shandong peninsula at the beginning of the 20th century the chinese revolted against their regime and against the imperial powers who had taken so much from them and lost once again when an eight nation alliance put them down and this time forced the qing to pay out steep war reparations for the following 39 years the qing empire was facing defeat after defeat and by 1911 the entire system was in collapse that year the army revolted against the qing government and through a chaotic few months forced the emperor to abdicate and replace the empire with the proclamation of the republic of china as massive revolutions tend to do however it resulted in massive and widespread instability for china that lasted for decades during the chaos of the revolution the provinces of outer mongolia and tibet declared their independence and in the following years the rest of the former qing empire shattered between land controlled by the roc land controlled by the chinese communists and various different warlord-controlled areas called cliques to clarify this is all a massive oversimplification of chinese history during this period but i'm limited by time here so here's where we get back to why the modern country located on taiwan claims so much external territory you see when the republic of china was founded in 1911 they claimed to be the successors to the qing empire and laid claims to all of the lands which the qing administered just prior to the revolution of 1911. the republic of china has always believed and there only being one china and this was important when the concept of china was broken between various different warlords and outside powers the roc refused to recognize mongolia or tibet's independence and spent years invading and attempting to assert control over the mongols steps however they were thwarted by a new power born from another revolution on the same continent the bolsheviks in the mid-1920s mongolia was fighting for their independence from the roc and the only support they could get was from the soviet red army which they were all too happy to give the soviets helped kick the roc out of mongolia and declared the mongol people's republic in 1924 which the roc basically never recognized as being legitimate now while the roc continued to claim mongolia as part of the realm of china under the claim of being the successors of the qing dynasty they couldn't exactly overpower the soviet-backed communist regime that had been established there especially when the rest of the former qing empire was divided between actual roc controlled area the various regional warlords the chinese communists additional secessionist states like tibet and the foreign powers of japan and britain the roc was a bit occupied and the process of putting china back together again from the broken pieces would prove to be a very long and very difficult task eventually the roc overpowered most of the warlords and opposing governments and established a sort of unified china again in 1928 when just three years later the japanese empire would attack again this time taking over the entirety of manchuria and transforming it into the puppet state of manchu the roc was dealing with continued outside attacks from japan and continued internal rebellion from the chinese communist party and obviously couldn't hope to reclaim any of her perceived lost territory finally in 1937 the japanese launched an all-out invasion across the entirety of china with the goal of total conquest the nationalist roc government and the communists agreed to temporarily set aside their differences and end the civil war to join forces against the outside invaders and for the next eight years the chinese people struggled enormously in the war against japan nearly 20 million chinese would die in the struggle but in the end the japanese would be defeated by 1945 and all the land that the japanese had taken from china over the decades would be returned to the roc and now we enter the final stage of historical context by 1945 34 years after the 1911 revolution the roc had still not recognized the independence of either mongolia or tibet from their country however as part of the peace deal of world war ii the soviets insisted that the roc recognized the independence of the communist mongol people's republic which they did shortly thereafter though the civil war between the nationalist forces of the roc and the communists resumed and that war would rage on for another three years until 1949 when the communists ended up emerging victorious nearly everywhere the nationalist government of the roc evacuated the mainland to the freshly returned from japan island of taiwan where they have remained in opposition to the communist-controlled mainland ever since the chinese communists proclaimed the people's republic of china or prc on the mainland the same year in 1949 and the modern era of two different chinese governments claiming authority over the same country or realm would begin both the prc and the roc claim to be the successor state of the qing dynasty you see and if there's anything they both agreed on it was that there is only one china as a result you can think of both of these entities as different governments that both claim sovereignty over the same country they don't consider the other government to be a different country they merely consider them to be a rebellious and de-legitimate authority in effect this means that the prc considers the province of taiwan to be in rebellion since it's the only province controlled by the roc while the roc in turn considers every single province on the mainland to be in rebellion since they don't control any of them but the roc does take it a step further because they technically legally consider every territory that they claimed back in 1911 that doesn't belong to them currently to be in rebellion which includes mongolia here's why with just a tiny bit more historical context after the conclusion of the second world war the roc as one of the major ally nations was granted a permanent seat at the security council of the newly formed united nations even after 1949 when the roc was reduced to only controlling the island of taiwan they were still among the permanent members of the security council along with the soviet union the united states britain and france for decades and as time went on the prc on the mainland recognized the independence of mongolia as a fellow socialist state absorbed tibet themselves and generally settled the dozens of border disputes around the realm of china with other countries like the soviet union pakistan afghanistan and most of the others it's critical to note that the prc does continue to maintain some of these overlapping border disputes with countries like india or japan but meanwhile the roc revoked their recognition of mongolia as an independent state in 1953 and continuously used their status as a permanent member of the security council to block mongolia's mission into the u.n all the way until 1960 the roc continued to represent all of china in the u.n until 1971 when the prc finally took over the role from them and in the decades since the roc has found itself in an increasingly difficult situation politically as the prc has surged in global power and influence on a trajectory to becoming the world's second superpower most of the world's countries have chosen to recognize the prc over the roc as the official government of china only 15 countries remain who actively continue recognizing the roc and the most significant of them are nicaragua and guatemala both the prc and roc governments both officially still believe in the existence of one china and that taiwan is a core part of that china therefore if the roc ever abandoned any of their claims to the realm of china on the mainland it could be interpreted by the prc that they were abandoning the republic of china just temporarily stuck on the island of taiwan narrative and we're moving towards reforming the country into something a bit more taiwan centric and independent from the one china principle as a reformed taiwanese state taiwan could theoretically be free to seek actual formal diplomatic ties with the rest of the world and the moment that an independent taiwan gains admission to the un any claims that the prc still has on taiwan would be seen as illegal meaning that any subsequent attempt at reincorporating taiwan into the prc would have far larger diplomatic consequences the prc obviously doesn't want this to ever happen and seems to currently be pretty happy hoping that the government of taiwan will eventually come back around to beijing and seek reunification so in some ways it's beneficial to the roc to continue pretending that they're still totally a part of china and totally aren't seeking independence by continuing on with these ludicrous territorial claims further since the roc doesn't officially recognize the prc as a legitimate government they also can't recognize any of the treaties that they have ever signed which means that they can't recognize any of the borders that the prc has settled with places like russia mongolia pakistan or anywhere else and since none of the 17 countries who have border disputes with the roc recognize the roc as a legitimate government they aren't legally capable of settling their border disputes either so for these reasons the roc has effectively been incapable of ever legally revoking any of their myriad land claims that they've had since the year they were established over a hundred years ago and it's all been left up in the air of legal limbo but despite that the roc has done some things more recently to at least sort of recognize mongolia's independence prior to 2002 the government of taiwan refused to recognize passports from people visiting the island from the prc or from mongolia since the government of taiwan also claimed to be the legitimate government of all the land the prc and mongolia just were temporarily occupying but in 2002 91 years after mongolia's first declaration of independence from the qing the roc finally sort of recognized mongolia as an independent country again for the first time since 1953. that year the roc government finally announced that mongol nationals visiting taiwan would be entitled to visas rather than requiring entry permits and that their passports would finally be recognized the same as individuals visiting from most other foreign countries the roc ministry of foreign affairs officially recognized mongolia as an independent country they set up an office in the mongol capital and the ministry of the interior finally stopped showing mongolia as a part of the roc on official maps from 2002 onwards so in a way taiwan sorta doesn't claim mongolia anymore but in other ways they still sort of do despite the ministry of the interior no longer showing mongolia as roc territory on official maps the official policy of the roc government still does consider outer mongolia as a core province in order to fully legally renounce their cores on mongolia it would now require a national referendum across all of taiwan and to date that has still never happened the official status of roc recognition of mongolia is purposely ambiguous so as not to anger mighty beijing but in practice taiwan effectively treats mongolia just like any other foreign country today they sort of have open relations and at the same time they sort of don't just like how in modern day roc politics on taiwan taiwan is sort of a part of china and also sort of not it's all fairly complicated politics and global events like the drama between two different chinese governments has a direct impact on all of us for example this video is never going to be available to watch in the people's republic of china because the government is absolutely going to block it but the chinese government isn't the only world government that censors information and spies on its own citizens 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Channel: RealLifeLore

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Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, taiwan, china, republic of china, mongolia, Qing china, Qing dynasty, Chinese history, china history, history, why does Taiwan claim mongolia, Taiwanese claims

Id: uqNA7WW3YFE

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021