I agree that, in principle, the people of every territory should have the right to peaceful self-determination regardless of validity of other people's claims to territory. In practice, virtually nobody acknowledges that right, even though it's ostensibly the first article of the UN charter. The Irish had to make life hell for the English to get any concessions, Catalonia had its independence movement dismantled, Kurds are oppressed by every state they live in. The US itself is guilty of this; there was no particular reason the union of two completely opposite cultures had to be enforced, and in another timeline perhaps there was a peaceful national divorce. The hypothetical independent California was actually, in reality, an independent Confederacy of several states, and their independence movement was crushed. To that extent, I could agree China is in the wrong, but only insomuch as any other country is, and it should not be singled out as a particularly aggressive nation when it's playing by the same international norms as the rest of the world. That it wants to reclaim Taiwan is in no way indicative that it has any intention to invade Korea or Japan, as supposed upthread.