Pratica di Shadowing: Can there ever really be “one China?” - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
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Take a look at Taiwan's passport covers through the years.
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You'll notice that in the first few iterations,
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the word Taiwan never actually appears on the passport cover.
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In fact, the word Taiwan doesn't even appear until 2003.
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And that's because, well, Taiwan didn't always identify itself as Taiwan.
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It originally identified itself as China, the Republic of China.
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But this is also China,
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the People's Republic of China.
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So when did Taiwan emerge as an identity of its own on this passport?
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And if the People's Republic of China is insistent on the one-China principle,
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is it even possible for Taiwan to maintain its autonomy?
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The story of how two Chinas emerged started in 1927 with a bloody civil war between two political parties,
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the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party.
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This war lasted over two decades.
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By October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party claimed victory,
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and the Nationalists retreated to the island of Taiwan,
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which had previously been a Japanese colony,
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but was handed over to China when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.
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Beginning in December 1949, on his island sanctuary,
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Zhang worked toward the day when China could be freed from the communist yoke.
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From 1949, 1950 onward, you have two separate jurisdictions.
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They both claim legitimacy, so they both claim that they are representative of China.
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On the mainland, the communists declared their country the People's Republic of China.
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On Taiwan, the nationalists kept the name, the Republic of China.
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There are multiple claims of what China is,
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what it ought to be,
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and it's confused by the fact that they used the same term.
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And you can see that reflected in the design of the first passport from Taiwan in 1949.
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The cover only says, passport of the Republic of China,
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with no mention of Taiwan.
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To add some more complexity to the question of who is the real China,
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the ROC, not the PRC,
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got a seat as the founding member of the United Nations in 1945,
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before the Chinese Civil War had even ended.
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This seat went to Chiang Kai-shek,
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the then leader of the ROC,
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because he was the one who brought his army onto the side of the Allies against Japan during World War II.
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Because the ROC was one of the allies,
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it had an important role in establishing the United Nations,
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the basic institutions and the UN Charter.
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From 1945 to 1971, the United Nations recognized the Republic of China on Taiwan as the real China.
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But come the Cold War,
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the concept of China shifts.
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Essentially, the Soviets and the PRC have a falling out.
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The U.S is looking for an opportunity to put the Soviets in a tougher position.
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So one of the things that they decide to do is to move closer to the PRC.
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And how the U.S triangulated itself between the PRC and the ROC became more and more significant.
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Henry Kissinger, then the U.S.
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National Security Adviser, secretly visited China in 1971.
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Following his trip, President Nixon became the first U.S president to publicly visit Communist China after two decades of diplomatic isolation.
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During this time, the UN passed Resolution 2758,
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where it recognized the PRC is the only legitimate representative of China.
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And with that, the ROC lost its seat at the UN.
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Beijing and Washington, they get closer because they both see a common enemy in the Soviet Union.
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The decision to move closer to the US remained actually quite contested within the PRC.
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The US was seen as the leader of this imperialist capitalist world.
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So it takes Mao dying in 1976,
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and also Deng Xiaoping coming to power
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and being able to sideline his rivals for the U.S and the PRC to move closer together.
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A new beginning in U.S.-China relations.
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Three years after Mao's death, the U.S formalized its own recognition of Beijing as the sole government in China.
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This birthed America's version of the One China policy.
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The government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position
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that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.
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All right, I know it looks like it's just me out here,
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but producing stories like this takes a whole team.
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Reporters, editors, fact checkers, animators,
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camera people you don't even see right now,
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so much more, all working together to make journalism that's accurate,
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nuanced, and hopefully fun to watch.
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then you would love our Vox community on Patreon.
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For a few dollars a month,
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you can get access to exclusive video reporting,
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new shows we're developing, and a chance to chat directly with our journalists, like me.
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And if you're not able to support financially right now,
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which is totally understandable, you can follow us on Patreon for free to stay connected and see what we're working on next.
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And now, let's get back to the video.
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Come the 80s and 90s,
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the concept of China evolved again as a new Taiwanese identity began to emerge,
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especially as their government started to democratize.
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Taiwan was under martial law for 38 years.
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And so by the early 1990s,
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Taiwan had moved from what was effectively a police state to a full-fledged democracy.
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A pivotal moment took place in 1995.
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The president of Taiwan, Li Tenghui,
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who had been appointed by his predecessor,
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so not yet democratically elected,
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spoke at his alma mater, Cornell University.
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His visit to the United States is the first by a
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Taiwan leader since the United States severed diplomatic relations with that country in 1979.
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The administration of then-US President Bill Clinton initially blocked Lee's visa.
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At that point in time,
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the US was trying to still improve its ties with the PRC.
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It was very wary of a potential upsetting of the relationship.
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But the Republican-led Senate pushed for his visit to be approved.
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They went around President Clinton,
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who was in office at that time,
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and approved an unofficial visit by Li Denghui to Cornell University.
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Today, the institutions of democracy are in place in the Department of China.
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Human rights are respected and protected to a very high degree.
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Democracy is thriving in my country.
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And that visit was seen as important because it raised the visibility of the ROC as Taiwan.
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So people in Taiwan saw that they had a degree of international recognition
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that Li Donghui was well received in the United States.
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It also marked a shift in the way the leaders of Taiwan viewed their claim on China,
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as one China, but open to multiple interpretations. and with careful planning.
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Essentially, the Taiwan side, even though they kept the ROC name,
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accepted that their jurisdiction is limited to Taiwan Island,
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Penghu, Matu, Jingmen and other outlying islands.
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They essentially accept the PRC as being the government on the mainland.
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But Beijing saw Li's visit as a violation of their One China Principle,
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the one in which reunification was the goal,
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and Taiwan was part of the People's Republic of China.
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The PRC became very uncomfortable with Li Denghui's increasingly pro-Taiwan independence rhetoric.
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He followed Taiwan public opinion,
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which generally was not supportive of eventual unification with the PRC.
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The PRC clearly didn't like that very much,
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and so what they decided to do was to launch a series of missile exercises in 95 and 96.
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Now, some of that was to show opposition,
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but a lot of it was also to scare Taiwanese voters from supporting Li Denghui.
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But the missile exercises had the opposite effect.
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The specter of China launching missiles near Taiwan's major ports led to a sort of rally around the flag effect,
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where Li Denghui became more popular than he was before.
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And in 1996, of course,
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there was the first direct presidential election.
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Li Denghui ran in and won that election.
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From there, Taiwan's position veered further from the one China that the PRC envisioned.
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By 2000, the people of Taiwan elected Chen Shui-bian,
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their first president from the Democratic Progressive Party,
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a new party whose charter included aspirations for independence.
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It's not necessarily a declaration of independence,
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but it was there because of the sort of coalition that they had to build.
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This marked a significant change since Lee's Cornell speech that still identified his country as the Republic of China on Taiwan.
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We've now got a Taiwan today where the large majority of people in Taiwan identify as just Taiwanese.
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And so that then shifts the incentives of politicians running for elected office.
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In 2002, President Chen pushed forward legislation to add the English word Taiwan to their passport.
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By 2003, the first passports with Taiwan on the cover were issued.
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Since then, the word Taiwan has remained on the Republic of China passport.
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And the text itself has gotten larger,
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a reflection of how design mirrors identity.
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And there's a pragmatic reason for this as well.
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It clarified that this was not the People's Republic of China.
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And as a practical matter,
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the Taiwan ROC passport today is actually relatively powerful.
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But as the word Taiwan became more prominent alongside Taiwanese high density,
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so has Beijing's calls for nationalism and its One China reunification goals.
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What happens is the PRC becomes the world's second largest economy.
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It has a lot more capabilities that it can bring to bear.
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So it really wants to further isolate Taiwan and bring it under its fold if possible.
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And so it starts trying to be more insistent on its One China principle.
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So many other countries which could safely ignore Chinese objections 25 or 30 years ago
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are now in a much more vulnerable position.
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The PRC has much more leverage economically over a lot of countries.
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As recently as May 2026,
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China removed tariffs on all African nations except for one,
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Eswatini, a country that still has diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
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As for the U.S., one of the largest trading partners of the PRC.
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President Xi stressed to President Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S relations.
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Talk to me about that moment when that was discussed.
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Well, they certainly feel that way and they always raise that issue.
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And we understand they raise that issue.
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From our perspective, any forced change in the status quo and the situation that's there now would be bad for both countries.
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They do see value in the continued self-governance of Taiwan,
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although they are reluctant to do anything about Taiwan independence because they know that that's provocative.
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Though Taiwan does have its own economic bargaining chip.
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It's home to the company TSMC,
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which manufactured over 90% of the world's semiconductor chips in 2024.
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So Taiwan, in other words,
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is economically just as important to the United States as the economic relationship with the PRC.
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Despite the U.S.'s reluctance to recognize Taiwan as its own country,
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it still hedges defensively against Beijing in the Asia-Pacific region region and the U.S remains Taiwan's biggest weapons dealer,
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supplying more than 70 percent of its conventional arms imports.
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But the people caught in the middle of this geopolitical crossfire are the residents of Taiwan itself,
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especially those who were born and raised there and have no connection to the revolutionary past of the Chinese Civil War.
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They felt that their futures were just given away without their consent.
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The PRC is not a democracy.
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There's no signs that it's going to become a democracy anytime soon.
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The idea of an independent Taiwan is still anathema to the CCP in Beijing and is probably a cause for war.
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The majority of people in Taiwan just want the status quo.
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They are willing to live with this sort of very vague international status that they have because they essentially don't want war,
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even though they also don't want PRC or CCP control over them.
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This gets us back to the question of what is China?
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Should it be some political entity or can it be something that's more vague?
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Today, as these claims about unity and control become more important,
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that vagueness becomes more challenging.
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So as the People's Republic of China becomes more powerful,
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how it enforces its version of the one-China principle
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and where the U.S chooses to stand will have major impacts on global alliances, especially for Taiwan.
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Thank you.
Informazioni su Questa Lezione
In questa lezione, avrai l'opportunità di migliorare la tua pronuncia inglese mentre esplori la complessa identità della Cina e di Taiwan. Attraverso il video, analizzerai la storia delle due Chine, il ruolo delle loro identità politiche e le implicazioni diplomatiche. Imparerai a esprimere opinioni su temi storici e geopolitici, utilizzando un linguaggio appropriato e pertinente. Utilizzando il metodo shadowspeak, potrai ascoltare attentamente la pronuncia dei parlanti nativi e imitare il loro ritmo e intonazione per rendere la tua pronuncia più naturale.
Vocabolario e Frasi Chiave
- Cina - China
- Taiwan - Taiwan
- partito comunista cinese - Chinese Communist Party
- repubblica di Cina - Republic of China
- principio di una sola Cina - one-China principle
- civile - civil
- legittimità - legitimacy
- UN - United Nations
Consigli per la Pratica
Per trarre il massimo vantaggio da questa lezione e migliorare la tua pronuncia inglese, considera di utilizzare il metodo shadowspeak. Il video presenta un ritmo regolare, quindi sarà utile ascoltare attentamente ogni frase prima di provare a ripeterla. Ecco alcuni suggerimenti pratici:
- Ascolta attentamente: Prima di iniziare a parlare, ascolta il video più volte per familiarizzarti con il tono e l'intonazione dei relatori.
- Suddividi il testo: Suddividi le frasi più lunghe in segmenti più brevi e lavora su ciascun segmento, ripetendolo finché non ti senti a tuo agio.
- Imita l'intonazione: Concentrati su come i relatori enfatizzano determinate parole; cerca di imitare questa intonazione per rendere la tua pronuncia più naturale.
- Registra e confronta: Prova a registrare la tua voce mentre pratichi e confrontala con l’audio originale; questo ti aiuterà a identificare aree di miglioramento.
- Ripeti frequentemente: La ripetizione è chiave nel processo di apprendimento. Torna al video e pratica regolarmente per migliorare la tua fluidità.
Utilizzando questi suggerimenti e integrando il metodo shadowspeaks nella tua pratica quotidiana, sarai in grado di migliorare significativamente la tua pronuncia e comprensione dell'inglese, imparando l'inglese con YouTube in modo efficace e coinvolgente.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.