Joel at Far Outliers is doing a series of posts with quotes from Face[t]s of First Language Loss (yes, the title has the bracketed letter), by Sandra G. Kouritzin (see the “Recent Posts” sidebar at the link for others, which are all of interest); I thought Losing Your First Language: Polish was particularly worth bringing to the Hattery:
Alex is a borderlander who is also the son of borderlanders. His mother was born to Russian immigrants in Chicago, but moved to Russia when her parents returned there after the Revolution. She moved into a border town that had once been the southwest part of Poland, just north of the Ukraine, but which had become part of White Russia. Living in such a linguistically diverse region, Alex’s parents spoke Polish and White Russian (a dialect) and standard Russian, depending on the situation. When Alex was born, they adopted Polish as the home language. They moved to a vibrant Polish-speaking community in the United States when Alex was 3 years and 3 months old. They later moved to northern Canada where several of their relatives lived, and where they were able to communicate in Ukrainian, another language spoken by both of his parents.
Alex remembers beginning school, and he remembers the day when his Polish first name was changed to Alex so that his teachers could more easily pronounce it. Like Kuong, he has no recollection of Grade 1 and 2, though he has clear memories of Grade 3 and following (after he could speak English) and of playschool and kindergarten (when he played and had fun in Polish). While Alex was growing up, his parents relied on him to translate English into Polish for them; his father worked in a foundry and did not require English, while his mother stayed home. When I met him, Alex could speak only a little, broken, Polish, and could follow a very basic conversation in Polish. He remembers being much more fluent, and he feels like he is losing Polish bit-by-bit, day-by-day.
Everybody’s situation is different, and it doesn’t make sense to try to generalize about these things.
“White Russian (a dialect)”. I’m a bit surprised to see this quoted from a book published in 1999.
Interesting fact: in Russia, all dialects are color-coded.
It was weird to use “White Russia” instead of “Belarus” by 1999. But the author – Sandra Kouritzin – is a specialist in education from Canada, not a linguist or a historian. My guess is that she was just repeating fairly uncritically what her interviewees told her.
Dan Milton, if it were English (a dialect) or Russian (a dialect) I would have understood it as “local vernacular, possibly different from what you see in textbooks”. This is how I understand it with White Russian.
As for White Russian, I only noticed that it is different from Belarusian when I typed it:)) (I’m slightly surprised).
P.S. in case it is not obvious, Belarus literally means “White Rus'”.
I think the real reason why Belarus stopped being translated in English is the cocktail.
A vile concoction, if you ask me.
Belarus literally means “White Rus’”.
Thanks @drasvi, I’m all good with that now, but …
When I first started reading Russian revolutionary history (in the 1970’s when ‘Belarus’ wasn’t commonly used), I got terribly confused with the ‘White movement’/’White Russians’ counter-Bolsheviks.
And my then-girlfriend — who was studying Russian Language — went for a term’s immersion experience in Minsk.
There was no wikipedia at the time. We had to use — gasp! — maps printed in books, which mostly left out Belarus/Minsk all together as being neither Europe nor East-of-Europe. Or swallowed anonymously as part of U.S.S.R.
Oh, I’m old enough to remember learning the names of the republics of the USSR when they declared independence one after another till only Kazakhstan was left*. Being a nerd who already knew the names of all other countries at that age (9), I found that a notable experience!
* …though that fact I only learned a few weeks ago.
A vile concoction, if you ask me
Yeah, well, y’know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Take it with a grain of salt (my opinion, not the drink): it was for a time my kid brother’s favorite drink, and you know how brothers are. I also sneered at the Beatles when he came home with their first 45 (though I got over that antipathy).
A wholesale change like “Leningrad” to “St Petersburg” I accepted with good grace. But each of Byelorussia, Azerbaidzhan, Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia, Moldavia, and the Ukraine changed just a little bit from the name I had learnt, which caused me ((varyingly) slight) degrees of annoyance.
it doesn’t make sense to try to generalize about these things
I would have thought there were specialists in sociolinguistics, migration studies, etc. whose job is to try to generalize about these things. If you mean it doesn’t make sense for us amateurs to try, I agree.
I guess I mean that you can generalize about these things to achieve some kind of generalization, which is of course useful in scientific contexts, but the more you do that the more you lose sight of the actual experiences of actual people (sort of like climbing the Stairs).
Listen, mollymooly, I’m sorry if your stepmother is a nympho, but I don’t see what it has to do with…. Do you have any Kahlúa?
“…the southwest part of Poland, just north of the Ukraine…”
In the east of Poland, in the southwest part of Belarus, north of Ukraine.
Kouritzin’s PhD dissertation, on which the book is based, is available online.
What do you need that for, Dude?
In the east of Poland,
Yeah, I meant to mention the (surprisingly common) confusion of east and west, which has come up here before.
Is “Standard”/schoolbook Belarusian (or however you want to spell it) one of those artificial nationalist confections that doesn’t actually mirror the native “dialect” of any real group of L1 speakers and is spoken in “standard” form exclusively by urban-or-diaspora nationalist intelligentsy who learned it as an L2? (I don’t know if Nynorsk is a good parallel or not, although we were recently discussing that.)
@JWB: The status of Belarussian was discussed here in these august halls two years ago.
“Byelorussia, Azerbaidzhan, Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia, Moldavia, and the Ukraine changed just a little bit from the name I had learnt, which caused me ((varyingly) slight) degrees of annoyance.”
Azerbaidzhan, Tadzhikistan – transliteration from Russian (cf. Dzhon “John”).
The modern native spellings are Azərbaycan, Tojikiston.
Azerbaijan and Tajikistan look like meaningful adaptations (if you treat Tajik and -stan as English spellings of these two words) and transliterations from Persian/Arabic script (if you note that in Persian you actually write ا , â here)
Byelorussia, Kirghizia, Moldavia – here they removed Latinising -ia (cf. R. Irlandija, Armenija, Rossija “Ireland, Armenia, Russia”), replacing the Occidental -ia with Oriental -stan in Kyrgyzstan.
And not only….
@drasvi: as I’ve remarked before, it’s the switch from Kirghiz to Kyrghyz that particularly bugs me, because it thoughtlessly attempts to mimic a change in Cyrillic spelling that is meaningful/helpful for a Russophone (i.e. tells them “pronounce with this vowel instead of that one”) but then results in a change in romanized spelling that is meaningless/unhelpful for an Anglophone. I don’t know that e.g. the change from “Moslem” to “Muslim” as the conventional one in American English resulted in AmEng speakers actually uttering something that sounded any closer to a “proper” Arabic pronunciation versus just being off in a slightly different direction, but it did successfully convey a “pronounce with this vowel instead of that one” message that could be successfully implemented.
I am BTW amused to see that Belarus is apparently still calqued into Greek as the local equivalent of “White Russia” (Λευκορωσία / Leukorosia).
The Norwegian government switched officially from Hviterussland to Belarus as late as last May, apparently upon request from the Belarusian opposition.
@mollymooly
Were Belarus tractors a thing in Ireland already in the 1980s? Of course it was pronounced BelAHrus and probably not connected by the owners with Byelorussia or even with the SU.
@JWB, it is not helpful for a Russophone (but certainly meningful). The sequence “Russian velar and ы” is difficult, ugly and thus absent in Russian (other than some interjetions and foreign words like this one)…
Kyrgyz /qɯr.ɢɯz/, [qɯr.ɢɯs] and /qɯɾʁɯːˈstɑn/ (copied from Wiktionary) are different sequences of entirely differnet sounds (and I absolulely comfortably say Arabic -qi-).
When still Soviet Kirg[h]izia renamed itself as Kyrgyzstan my feelings were complicated. Russian pronunciation is largely determined by spelling. There is no tradition of using Russified pronunciation with foreignised spelling, conversely, we often retain [for some time] foreignising prononiciation in combination with Russified spellings. The word looks as if it were designed for breaking Russian tongues.
It was a mistake, -ы- /ɯ/ is good in Kyrgyz Cylillic but they should have left Russian Киргизия as is.
I still owned an issue of the magazine Literary Kyrgyzstan: the rumour was they were going to publish science fiction (either they did not, or not in my issues:(). It was before the epic printing boom and book paradise of early 90s, when everyone published everything and Moscow was a sea of booksellers.
@drasvi: I apologize for “helpful” which seems to have been an ill-chosen word. But the point is that the Cyrillic respelling conveys an intelligible instruction re intended/preferred pronunciation to literate Russophones even if it is one they may find objectionable for various understandable reasons, where English orthographic conventions do not provide any guidance whatsoever about how to pronounce “Kyrghyz” differently from “Kirghiz” other than perhaps a vague implication of “uh, try to sound more exotic.”
It is the confusion of left and right.
…continues to use its Soviet Cyrillic alphabet; even an attempt to reform it (in 2010) by unifying the spelling of /j/ apparently went nowhere. Тоҷикистон it is.
BTW, it’s an interesting experience to be confronted with an Iranian language and being able to just read the text. (Not for understanding, but enough to recognize words here and there.)
Were Belarus tractors a thing in Ireland already in the 1980s?
I must admit I had never heard of them till now. My knowledge of tractors in general and the Irish market in particular is small. I would have said Ford and Massey-Ferguson were the longtime market leaders, with John Deere and Asian brands as recent upstarts.
Checking the Irish Times archive, I see a Belarus T-40 was included in a 1987 estate sale at Balsoon House, while in 1990 Soviet ambassador Gennadi Uranov is quoted as saying, “Ireland imports Soviet oil, a certain amount of coal, timber, Belarus tractors, Vaz motor vehicles, and some other commodities.” Vaz would have been the Lada brand, which I do remember finding a market in Ireland’s 1980s recession.
@DM, sorry, yes, “Tojikiston” is a mere transliteration from Cyrillic, not “native spelling”….
“an intelligible instruction re intended/preferred pronunciation to literate Russophones even if it is one they may find objectionable for various understandable reasons, ”
@JWB, I’m not sure, maybe they didn’t think about pronunciation at all. They changed the text of Kyrgyz constitution (and used this new spelling in Russian-language texts, like the above mentioned title).
@J.W. Brewer: “I am BTW amused to see that Belarus is apparently still calqued into Greek as the local equivalent of “White Russia” (Λευκορωσία / Leukorosia).”
Compare Baltarusija (Lithuanian) and Baltkrievija (Latvian; Krievija = Russia). Both countries support the opposition in Belarus, of course.
BTW, it’s an interesting experience to be confronted with an Iranian language and being able to just read the text.
Ossetic would be another case. In addition to the Soviet Cyrillic and its predecessor Georgian, here’s the oldest known Ossetian inscription:
ΣΑΧΗΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΧΟΒΣ
ΗΣΤΟΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡ
ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝ
ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΛΑΚ
ΑΝΗ ΤΖΗΡΘΕ
‘K., son of S., son of I., son of B., son of A.: their monument.
The prior thread on the Belarusian (or whatever you may call it) language that Hans averted to has the interesting point (which makes perfect sense but I had forgotten) that it has had at least two different artificial/confected literary standards: one developed under Soviet auspices and the other was at least historically popular in non-Soviet-controlled areas and the broader diaspora. The latter is said to be more dependent on western dialects, which makes sense since those would have been those located (on the 1921-39 borders) in Eastern Poland rather than Soviet territory and thus more accessible to non-Communist standardizers. Whether that standard has more Polonized features or was to the contrary rigorously cleansed of Polonisms in common actual use by actual speakers of the western dialects by the nationalist intelligentsia who confected it is not clear to me. If you want to demonstrate your anti-Stalinist (and/or anti-Lukashenkist) bona fides, you can also continue to use the pre-1933 orthography, described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara%C5%A1kievica
“Both countries support the opposition in Belarus, of course.”
I don’t know what this change (Hviterussland > Belarus) means for (a) Norwegians and their willingness to support the oppositon (b) those members of Belarusian opposition who proposed the change.
For me it is difficult to make a connection between this and Belarusian politics.
The Norwegian government switched officially from Hviterussland to Belarus as late as last May, apparently upon request from the Belarusian opposition
In Germany, something similar happened, probably for the same reasons. German WP says:
In Deutschland hingegen galt auf offizieller Ebene die Regelung, dass im zwischenstaatlichen Verkehr Belarus, im innerstaatlichen Verkehr und auf Landkarten hingegen die Bezeichnung Weißrussland verwendet wird. Die Regelung zum innerstaatlichen Verkehr wurde Anfang Oktober 2021 gestrichen. Seither wird in Deutschland im amtlichen Gebrauch ausschließlich Belarus verwendet.
Translation:
In Germany, on the other hand, the official rule was that Belarus should be used in international communication, while Weißrussland should be used in domestic communication and on maps. The regulation on domestic communication was abolished at the beginning of October 2021. Since then, only Belarus is used officially in Germany.
As usual with these things, unofficial use often does not follow the official prescriptions, and the change is recent, so you still find Weißrussland used frequently in online sources.
If “Ukraine/ian” had not come into vogue circa 1900 as the alternative toponym/ethnonym preferred by nationalists, that set of nationalists would presumably be campaigning to get various Western governments to stop using their language’s version of “Little Russia(n)” in favor of the more opaque-to-outsiders “Malorosia(n).” What you want, nationalismwise, is a label that gives the most contrast possible with unmodified “Russia(n)” even if it’s just an uncalqued Slavic word that doesn’t provide much such contrast if you know the relevant language(s).
At least in Germany, “Ruthenisch” seems to have been the pre-WWI term for “Ukrainian”. Stephan von Smal-Stockyj, Ruthenische Grammatik, Berlin/Leipzig 1913:
Belorussian opposition is not just nationalism. Some people just don’t like Lukashenko and his regime….
I guess they don’t like Putin either. For a long time there was a conflict between Putin and Lukashenko (which does not mean they would love Putin) but now, they are each other’s supporters:/
My current nation-renaming peeve is that Swaziland seems to have stopped at Eswatini rather than going all the way to eSwatini.
I think there’s been a prior thread (maybe more than one) about “Ruthenian,” which is maybe still in some degree of use (at least in diaspora) among those whose ancestors lived in the Trans-Carpathian corner of Hapsburg-ruled Hungary (a/k/a Rusyns, Carpatho-Russians, and various other demonyms) as opposed to those who lived in Hapsburg-ruled Galicia (taken by the Hapsburgs from Poland in the 18th century and returned to Poland in the post-WW1 settlement). Ever since Stalin took the formerly Hungarian-ruled “Ruthenian” homeland away from inter-war Czecho-Slovakia and amalgamated it into the Ukrainian SSR, its inhabitants have generally been taught to self-identify as Ukrainians rather than some separate-if-related thing (not a policy the post-Soviet Ukrainian regime sought to reverse …), but things have to some extent been otherwise in the diaspora.
@drasvi: I think one of many grievances against the Lukashenko regime is that he is insufficiently nationalist, meaning both insufficiently hostile to the legacy of the Soviet past and insufficiently, let’s say, arms-length toward the current Muscovite regime.
Well. Putin needs there to be a dictatorship in Belarus, because if there’s a functional democracy with “Russians” in it, there’s no justification left for his own rule.
Lukashenko simply isn’t in a position to say no to Putin. But he’s much smarter than Putin, so he often gets away with saying “yes” when Putin tells him to do something – and then just not doing it, or only doing a part.
Putin needs there to be a dictatorship in Belarus, because if there’s a functional democracy with “Russians” in it, there’s no justification left for his own rule.
The West believes it’s easier to deal with a democracy (especially when the present dictatorship is anti-Western) and it is stronger economically, Putin knows how to find common language with dictators.
An economically more successful Russian-speaking democracy could be a bad example but until recently this scenario did not look very realistic. Ukraine remains a poor country. If anything changed, it is that Belarus is making progress, but I’m not sure if it will be easy now when either Putin or Europe is going to sanction them.
Already in 2018 Tunisians were almost missing Ben Ali.
What I expected: they will keep having economic problmes and now they will also have clowns in the governement. Because removing Ben Ali does not solve their economic problems and building a successful democracy is a matter of decades as well. But hopefully they won’t slide back to a dictatorship, if they won’t it is a success.
Weirdly, they expected something else.
The scenario that you are speaking about exists: East and West Germany, North and South Korea…. which was not democratic at all until 90s.
(My earlier comment seems to have vanished, so I’m prepending it here.)
But he’s much smarter than Putin
I’m not so sure. Lukashenko vs. Putin looks to me a lot like Franco vs. Hitler. Franco survived the war, so his propaganda presented him as a crafty fellow who was able to dodge Hitler’s plan to bring him in as an Axis power. But more modern interpretations tend to show that Franco didn’t care about Hitler’s war (though he was convinced Hitler would win it), and Hitler had less than no interest in Franco’s grandiose plans for Spanish Empire Part II, especially because it would involve transferring French Africa to Spain. This would certainly alienate Pétain, who was much more important to Hitler than Franco was.
ObHat: Exactly what Hitler mumbled on his way out of the conference at Hendaye remains unclear. The only written record we have is by a Spaniard, who heard it as “mit diesem Kerle ist nichts zu machen”. His autograph corrections show him trying to make sense of this: he changed it to “diesem Kerl” and then to “diesen Kerlen”.
The West believes it’s easier to deal with a democracy
That’s part of democratic peace theory, which is the idea that democracies think more than twice before making war on other democracies. There are counterexamples given at the article, but many of them are about “anocracies”, countries where the democratic government does not control its military, or ancient democracies, which tended to be imperialist (on the false theory that you can’t make money in trade unless you have political control of both ends).
Ukraine remains a poor country.
Its gross national income per capita was about US$4000 in 2021 (the last year for which we have data), putting it right between lower-middle-income countries ($1K-$4K) and upper-middle-income ones ($4K-$12K). These are in nominal dollars; in PPP dollars Ukraine’s GNI per capita is about $13K.
Ukraine, on the various GDP/capita metrics (which have all sorts of problems but are pretty much the only thing we have that is applied even semi-consistently across space and time to enable such comparisons), is in a tight battle for Kosovo for poorest country “in Europe.” A little poorer than Moldova and quite a bit poorer than Belarus, just to note some of its neighbors not generally regarded as wealthy places. Most anti-Putin discourse focuses on the Europeanness of Ukraine, so pointing out how much wealthier the Ukrainians are than the denizens of Laos or Cameroon isn’t really salient because neither the Ukrainians nor their Western supporters think those are relevant comparators. Nor is “we’re almost exactly as rich as Paraguay!” a comparison they would think they should be proud of. Among the 12 or 15 formerly Soviet nations, only Kyrghyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are poorer.
I should perhaps note that I don’t know how the GDP calculators deal with economic activity in the territories regarded by the non-Putin-aligned as de jure Ukrainian but which have not been de facto Ukrainian for some years now and which direction that might skew the results if it’s even material.
EDITED TO ADD: I see John C. was focused on GNI/capita rather than GDP/capita. That may be a better metric for some purposes although I don’t know that we have the same historical depth of calculations of it for use in contexts where change over time is what you want to look at. In any event it doesn’t change the relative status of Ukraine versus the various other countries I mentioned.
Ukraine is not very different from Russia, but it does not have natural resources.
Democracy is not a recipe for immediate prosperity. I (agian) disagree with DM for two reasons and one of them has nothing to do with Putin. Rather it has to do with Tunisia etc.
Let’s do without dictatorships. But let’s know what we are doing it for: recession and clowns in the government:) Recession because “not a recipe”, clowns because it takes time to build a political system (and you’ll have clowns anyway). I am glad that Ben Ali was overthrown.
Well, it does have natural resources in the shape of grain, but of course the Russians are mostly keeping them from exporting it. They certainly don’t have the oil/gas resources that are fueling the Russian war machine.
The second reason is that it all sounds as (unrealistic) advertisment of democracy and self-flattery in the form of criticism of Putin.
Yes, that’s an unfortunate aspect of the propaganda, but there’s no escaping it. (As of course you know.)
LH, i don’t disagree. Just saying that economic and political progress is a gradual process.
I didn’t mean the war year, but yes, the grain story caused a crisis in North (and not only) Africa as well, immediatley.
P.S. and yes, I was telling to my Tunisian freinds “do you remember what you were saying back then, don’t abandon your ideals” etc.
…huh. It has enough that “this whole war is just a resource grab” is a pretty well established trope; I saw the first maps in early March 2022. That said, the oil & gas fields, for example, haven’t been developed; there’d need to be fracking, and it would all take long enough that the EU will have a ban on new combustion engines by the time anything could come online. By that time, the lithium ores could be very interesting, but they can’t be exploited immediately either, and so on.
What do you mean? I didn’t even mention prosperity.
@DM yes, you didn’t speak about economy, sorry. Economy is what people notice. If we are discussing people disappointed in their own regime because their neighbours are more successful – it usually implies economic success. The difference between North and South Korea is shocking, it is one of leading economies versus famine (now not quite famine).
Without this making fun of functional democrates is easy, and we know too little about Ukraine: we know what they show in the news.. In 2014 they did not even know what language people speak in Kiev:/
But all right, I accept this point. Yes, if they have a democracy and don’t fall apart, it is a “bad example”.
I don’t think this is the primary motivation for our rulers: the Great Game and the West seem more important.
Still people building “functional democracy” in their own country must be prepared : it takes decades. Not an objection to your point.
Spoiler: both. It’s almost 50 : 50.
They’re all seen through the lens of whether Putin can stay in power (and alive). The least or second least unrealistic threat to Putin is some kind of revolution; once enough people think 1) democracy doesn’t automatically make things worse and 2) Russians aren’t incompatible with democracy, he’s in trouble.
That’s the same problem Xi has with Taiwan. The difference there is that Xi knows he can’t do anything about it, so everything he says about the topic is purely for domestic consumption. Putin thought he could do something: first by various sorts of influence on his neighbors, then by military action.
The difference there is that Xi knows he can’t do anything about it
You seem awfully confident. Plenty of people thought the same about Putin and Ukraine before he invaded.
China has not bothered to build any ships capable of amphibious assault.
The total size of the Chinese navy is claimed to be 400 ships; 7000 ships were used on D-Day, and the Strait of Taiwan is four times as wide as the Channel.
On top of that, Biden has made a whole series of “gaffes” stating that, yes, of course the US would defend Taiwan militarily.
In short, if Xi is as stupid as Putin turned out to be*, that war really would be over in two days. Or two hours more likely.
* And yes, I’m one of the people who was pretty certain Putin couldn’t be as stupid as he was trying to look.
After Crimea I simply decided that my prognoses can’t be reliable:)
@DM, I say “rulers” because I don’t understand who determines the course now.
Our propaganda (and people who share and spread its views) do react very nervously at revolutions.
Not quite the same as “fucntioning democracy”. Perhaps you know the situation better than me, but I still don’t know why they hated so much Armenian protests of 2018 (“obviously instigated by you know whom”). And of course everyone here believes that you know who artificially organised the whole Arab spring using their FB and Twitter…. to flood Europe with refugees.
But Armenia is reasonably close to a functioning democracy and when they aren’t having a war or revolution, no one speaks about them.
@DM China has not bothered to build any ships capable of amphibious assault.
Your information is out of date. China is building amphibious assault craft at a furious rate. When it closed the seas all around Taiwan for live firing exercises (just after Pelosi’s visit), there was also an amphibious assault exercise on the coast of the mainland. “it is the second largest navy in the world in terms of tonnage which stands at 1,820,222 tonnes as of 2019” and has been growing hugely. Even that out-of-date page shows over 60 landing/landing support craft.
The Taiwanese are very worried, because the whole west coast of Taiwan is pancake-flat beaches. They couldn’t defend the whole length. Their best protection is the width of the Taiwan Straits, with the unlikelihood of being clear weather for long enough to bring craft across it.
that war really would be over in two days
I agree I don’t think Xi is as stupid as Putin. OTOH he might feel pressured to ‘deliver on’ the rhetoric that’s currently only for home consumption — that is, if the domestic economy collapses further and he has to find some distraction.
Two days? How long will it take to get a defence fleet from America/Australia/The Atlantic? And won’t Xi have already secured Taiwan by then? (Australia has been dilly-dallying with naval procurement for decades; they won’t have anything actually in service for another decade.)
@drasvi The difference between North and South Korea is shocking,
The great growth in South Korea’s economy was over a time there was very little democracy there. Indeed what the ‘Five Asian Tigers’ had in common beside their economic growth, was a kind of joke pseudo-democracy. Singapore still has the Li family dynasty joke-democracy (and quite a bit of suppression of free speech).
What’s limited their growth in more recent years is that from the very growth, they priced themselves out of the cheap labour market. Their (alleged) moving towards democracy was partly pressure from an increasingly unhappy populace (unhappy with the slowing of growth); partly pressure from the West in wanting access to their markets quid pro quo for their free trade the other way.
So there’s no evidence Democracy produces economic growth. Only that Democracy doesn’t stifle growth as badly as the incompetent/self-engrossed dictatorships in N. Korea, China, N. Vietnam of old.
How long will it take to get a defence fleet from America/Australia/The Atlantic?
It can happen pretty quickly. But the U.S. 7th Fleet is headquartered in Yokohama and has 18 forward capital ships that can interdict the Taiwan Strait almost immediately. The last time that happened was during the 1958 (Second) Taiwan Strait Crisis. Admittedly, that was while the US-ROC defense treaty was in effect, but the logistical capability is still there.
China is building amphibious assault craft at a furious rate. ‘RO-RO FERRIES AND THE EXPANSION OF THE PLA’S LANDING SHIP FLEET’, from a few days ago.
Search also for ‘The PRC’s Amphibious CIV-MIL Non-Divide’; ‘China Building Formidable Amphibious Fleet’, ‘Chinese Launch Assault Craft from Civilian Car Ferries in Mass Amphibious Invasion Drill, Satellite Photos Show’. These are from U.S. military/strategic think-tanks, so they’re hardly cool/non-partisan assessments. OTOH, RO-RO ferries and shipyards aren’t so easy to hide. There’s satellite photos of an exercise September last year bringing “amphibious landing craft to a Chinese beach near the Taiwan Strait” [USNI News].
The tactics are to load landing barges and hovercraft on to the ferries, to get across the rough seas. Oh and the ‘ferries’ have large helicopter landing decks. There’s joint exercises with Cambodia going on now/early next month, involving ‘PLAN Type 071 comprehensive landing ships’.
@JC the U.S. 7th Fleet is headquartered in Yokohama and has 18 forward capital ships that can interdict the Taiwan Strait almost immediately.
‘US Army has a ‘gigantic problem’ with logistics in the Indo-Pacific’ [reached via a piece in TaiwanNews — who are going to take some persuading Yokohama is close enough or 18 ships are comparable to PLAN forces.]