Maps in United States Classrooms

[Milo]

I don’t think “disputed” is anywhere as clearly defined or as desirable a designation as it might casually seem. From Taiwan’s perspective, it is Taiwan that has the legitimate claim to governance of mainland China. Does that mean maps ought to mark all of China as disputed territory?

What of all the colonized territories that the indigenous predecessors never voluntarily ceded and still refuse to recognize as not theirs?

This comes back down to "facts on the ground" logic (which you opposed?).

Considering my position some more, I would say that there are two major ways to determine land ownership:
(A) De facto ownership, i.e. who actually exercises control over the territory. (This is almost always someone, barring completely uninhabited areas or active warzones, although these exceptions still warrant some attention.)
(B) De jure ownership, i.e. who the majority of world nations officially recognize as the rightful owners of the territory. (This is complicated by the facts that sometimes, nations without a personal stake in the matter just refuse to have a stance, or acknowledge both claimants in an "I believe that you believe" way.)
In cases where de facto and de jure ownership agree (as is currently the case for mainland China), it might be reasonable to regard the territory as effectively undisputed, and whatever dissenting claimants may still exist as having no leg to stand on. In cases where they disagree, however, the territory can be fairly unambiguously said to be disputed.

I do not think it is unreasonable for me to argue that "this government has been in control of this territory for the past several decades" is sufficient grounds to justify that their control over the territory should be acknowledged in most political maps somehow, either with or without also acknowledging other claimants.

From Argentina’s perspective, the Falkland Islands are Argentine territory, and Argentina turned it into a matter of war in 1982. Does that mean we should mark the islands as in dispute?

Again, the map that started this discussion did mark them as in dispute.

The legitimacy of any given dispute lies on a sliding scale, and so different thresholds can be used to decide which ones are worth mentioning. However, the only logic I can see under which the Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands could be considered more legitimate than RoC claim to Taiwan is that unlike the RoC, Argentina is a UN-recognized nation that at least has the capacity of officially making territorial claims, whether or not other nations agree with them. But as noted, this rule wasn't applied consistently either, as North Korea and South Korea are both UN-recognized nations but their claims to each other weren't mentioned.

I think we each have a notion for how realistic a dispute is, and someone’s judgment there is what gets used to decide whether a territory ought to get marked as disputed on any given map. However, I don’t see any natural calibration for that judgment. It’s further complicated by the truth that acknowledging a dispute brings with it a sort of legitimization that you may not favor for moral or political reasons.

Yes, there are political reasons. This conversation got started when I made a rather snarky observation on what those political reasons probably are.

Mind you, most of this snark wasn't aimed at the CIA map specifically, but rather at the more general refusal of most nations in the world to officially recognize Taiwan. As the CIA is a US government agency, it is not all that unreasonable for it to depict the official US government position on the matter. But I do not have much respect for official US government positions.

That is obvious to the governments of countries that require specific world views to be shown on maps produced or sold in their jurisdiction: You are not permitted to sell or produce maps in China that show China’s territorial claims to be in dispute. Same in India.

The fact that they practice such censorship is an excellent argument against respecting those countries' territorial claims.

I would be quite happy if something I made got banned in China, as it would show that I'm doing something right. And enough Chinese citizens know how to use proxies to bypass the Great Firewall, so I'd still have an audience.

In the case of Taiwan, I could argue that showing it as in dispute is more damaging to Taiwan’s interests than simply leaving the status unmarked.

And I say, again, that you cannot leave its status "unmarked", unless you are making a physiographic map that does not show political borders at all. (Or, at best, only shows land borders without indicating ownership of islands, as sometimes seen on maps that include borders for aiding readability without being intended primarily as political maps.)

If you are making a political map, then you cannot avoid making political statements. Every choice you make, including completely ignoring the issue, is expressing a political stance of some sort.

Of course, if you actually believe that the PRoC deserve to be considered the rightful owners of Taiwan, that is a valid political position that you are entitled to take regardless of whether I agree with you. But you're still expressing a stance that can then be subjected to analysis and criticism.

[daan]

To be clear, I’m not talking about any particular map. I’m talking about cartographic principles. I mentioned Taiwan’s claim over all of China as one extreme of “dispute”, where practically no one would consider it to be reasonable to show on a map, versus the Falklands, where the argument is very gray and you can find many examples of both “in dispute” and not.

That said, I do not read the map you refer to the way you read it. The name of the entity is China, not People’s Republic of China. That map, then, represents either side’s claims ambiguously. Taiwan does not, in fact, proclaim itself as independent for two distinct reasons: They prefer the status quo over antagonizing China, and they do not want to formally relinquish their claim as the legitimate government of all of China. (Formally asserting independence would mean their claims for all of China imply conquest of a separate state.) The map marks Beijing as the capital of China, but even that is “okay” for Taiwan’s purposes: If they should ever regain control of China (fat chance, of course), the seat of government would surely return to Beijing from exile.

Sovereignty is not binary: it has many mixes of components, making it unwieldy to represent “the truth” in all its forms on a map. To wit, Scotland and Wales are “countries” and have a large degree of autonomy but are part of the UK as a sovereign nation. The US indigenous peoples have a large degree of autonomy; I cannot even tell you which US laws do and don’t apply within their territories because they have selective jurisdictional sovereignty. Protectorates, “autonomous regions”, “overseas territories” — each of these have their various mixes of passport control, representation, benefits, independence, and self-identity.

And so, yes, the “legitimacy” of a dispute depends strongly on the facts on the ground, but since I reject facts on the ground as sole arbiter of how a map ought to show situations, I reject how realistic a disputed claim is as the sole arbiter of how a map ought to show situations. Facts on the ground are an important component in a decision that ultimately hinges on sociopolitical considerations.

— daan

[PeteD]

The map marks Beijing as the capital of China, but even that is “okay” for Taiwan’s purposes: If they should ever regain control of China (fat chance, of course), the seat of government would surely return to Beijing from exile.

Not necessarily. The Kuomintang's capital before their retreat to Taiwan was Nanjing ("Southern Capital"). Mao moved the capital to Beijing ("Northern Capital") at the end of the war, though Beijing had also at times been the capital of Imperial China, along with many other cities.

[quadibloc]

I reject facts on the ground as sole arbiter of how a map ought to show situations,

I can agree with that, and your example of Crimea shows why.
But I do see facts on the ground as very important, since often the purpose of a map is to advise people what to look out for when going to the places shown on it.
So considerations of moral right might lead me to show an area as disputed instead of merely belonging to whoever is in control of it - in most cases.
Showing Crimea as belonging to Ukraine without dispute would seem to still violate my general principles. But in this case, the war is too recent; everyone is aware of it; so engaging in "propaganda", as it were, for our side in this war doesn't really risk misleading anyone.
In the case of Taiwan, not only is the government of the Republic of China in control of it, but no moral right argues for things being otherwise. So I have no reason to dignify the PRC's claim by showing it in dispute. However, if parentheses and a period in the right size of the right typeface (and preferably with the right color background) were available, I would have put TAIWAN (R.O.C.) on the map instead of just TAIWAN, to show that Taiwan is part of the historic nation of China, so I would defer to political sensibilities to that extent at least.
EDIT: I found I hadn't looked hard enough. It turned out the text in question was in Verdana, so I had no difficulty in making that change; therefore, I did so.

[daan]

Not necessarily. The Kuomintang's capital before their retreat to Taiwan was Nanjing ("Southern Capital"). Mao moved the capital to Beijing ("Northern Capital") at the end of the war, though Beijing had also at times been the capital of Imperial China, along with many other cities.

My supposition is that the expense and disruption of moving what has become an enormous machine of state would make no sense in a country that is already overbuilt. I doubt the Kuomintang would view historic capitals as having any value. The sole argument I could see for moving the capital from Beijing would be to fracture cronyism in the bureaucracy — but that doesn’t happen from moving the capital; it happens by displacing people in key positions, which you could do without moving.

— daan

[Milo]

But in this case, the war is too recent; everyone is aware of it;

I would not underestimate people's ability to fail to pay attention to geopolitical events happening further away than their backyard.

There are probably a few people out there who watch so little news that they've missed the fact that there is a Russia-Ukraine war right now, and considerably more people who know that there is such a war but not that Crimea is a major focus of it, or who have heard that "Crimea" is important but wouldn't actually be able to recognize it on a map.

Further complicating the matter is that Crimea's Russian annexation happened all the way back in 2014 and was relatively quiet (a coup supported by local pro-Russian sympathizers rather than an all-out war), after which there was a stalemate for a while where Ukraine moped but didn't want to escalate by starting a war over it. The recent Russia-Ukraine war that most people are aware of (as it's louder and had a much bigger international impact) started in 2022 when Russia attempted to invade other Ukrainian territories, and didn't actually have much impact on Crimea, which was already under Russian control when it started.

Many Ukrainian people, angry about the situation, insist that this war is their opportunity to not only defend the territories Russia invaded in 2022 but also to reclaim Crimea, and claim that they won't accept peace for anything less than a full restoration of their pre-2014 borders.

So no, the situation is not particularly obvious or clearcut.

Not necessarily. The Kuomintang's capital before their retreat to Taiwan was Nanjing ("Southern Capital").

My supposition is that the expense and disruption of moving what has become an enormous machine of state would make no sense in a country that is already overbuilt. I doubt the Kuomintang would view historic capitals as having any value.

These are both plausible guesses, but we won't know for sure unless it actually happens.

There's even a small chance that they would choose to keep their capital in Taipei on the basis that they've gotten settled in and there's no point in moving. There's already a precedent for at least one nation having its capital city on an island despite controlling a larger mainland territory: Denmark.

It would be pretty amusing if the Republic of China were to regain control of mainland China and move their capital there, only just in time for the actual indigenous inhabitants of Taiwan to declare independence. Although highly unlikely, given they're only 2.5% of the island's current population.

They could even decide to have multiple capital cities. South Africa officially has three capital cities for the three branches of its government (administrative, legislative, and judicial), and even then it can't keep them straight, because the actual supreme court is located in a fourth city entirely. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam is officially recognized by the constitution as the capital city and is unambiguously listed as such on practically all maps, but basically all national government buildings are actually in Den Haag. Palestine maintains that Jerusalem is their capital, despite not actually controlling any part of the city. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? If this was an alternate universe fiction, I would probably decry it as unrealistic.

[daan]

If this was an alternate universe fiction, I would probably decry it as unrealistic.

Fiction has the unfair burden of having to seem realistic, while reality suffers no such constraint. Practically a day goes by that I don’t wake up, read the news, and say, “You couldn’t make this up.”

— daan

[PeteD]

My supposition is that the expense and disruption of moving what has become an enormous machine of state would make no sense in a country that is already overbuilt.

Possibly not, though there have been cases of a new regime moving the capital to symbolize a break from the old regime when it would have been more convenient to keep the capital where it was. In Imperial China, it seems most new dynasties did this, and although the machine of state wasn't as enormous as it is today, the state bureaucracy was still huge compared to that of other countries at the time.

Atatürk moved the capital to Ankara to symbolize the end of the sultanate and the start of democracy. It's a pity that that democracy is now being eroded.

And while German reunification didn't involve a regime change in most of the new country, the capital was still moved for symbolic reasons despite being inconvenient and costly.

Of course, it's a moot point because they'll never regain the mainland anyway.

There's already a precedent for at least one nation having its capital city on an island despite controlling a larger mainland territory: Denmark.

And Equatorial Guinea.

[Milo]

Of course, it's a moot point because they'll never regain the mainland anyway.

Eh, "never" is a strong word for hypothetical events that are decades or centuries into the future. We can't know what time will bring.

Not many people saw the collapse of the Soviet Union coming before it happened. Of course, it clearly didn't fix all of Russia's problems, but it was still an embarrassment to United States politicians who were justifying propping up fascist dictatorships on the grounds that they were a lesser threat than communism.

I do not expect the People's Republic of China to retain its iron grip on power until the sun goes red giant. There is certainly plenty of resistance from internal protestors and pressure from international human rights organizations. For now, their oppressive police state policies are sufficient to maintain power and suppress dissent, but any number of things could happen in the future to undermine their position and allow true reform.

Of course, it's quite possible that even if mainland China transitions to a true democratic government, this will take the form of building a new one from scratch and not giving power back to the already-existing one over in Taiwan. But I wouldn't say the latter outcome is completely impossible, either. Though, yes, it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

There's already a precedent for at least one nation having its capital city on an island despite controlling a larger mainland territory: Denmark.

And Equatorial Guinea.

Cool. I didn't know about that one. It's an even better example than Denmark, since the difference in size between the island the capital is on and its mainland territory is much bigger.

It appears that they're in the process of contructing a new capital, though, so they might not count for much longer?

Still, I did say "at least one".

[quadibloc]

Of course, it's quite possible that even if mainland China transitions to a true democratic government, this will take the form of building a new one from scratch and not giving power back to the already-existing one over in Taiwan.

Particularly as the Republic of China that the current Beijing regime overthrew on the mainland... in a sense no longer exists. There are two major political parties in Taiwan. The one currently in office, the DPP, mainly represents, and is concerned with, the Hokkien-speaking people who are descended from those who lived on Taiwan before people fleeing the mainland arrived. The other one is Chiang Kai-Shek's party, the KMT. But it's very different from what it was in the days of Chiang Kai-Shek - his successor as leader of that party made Taiwan a genuine democracy, so that the DPP could win.
Today's KMT is, if anything, friendly towards the mainland, and more likely to respect its concerns about the one-China policy.