Cantonese independence

Cantonese independence is a political movement whose goal is primarily to create an independent and sovereign Republic of Canton out of the lands of present-day Guangdong province currently occupied by the People's Republic of China.
This movement currently has minimal support, although it is very slowly gaining momentum. Due to a deeply ingrained worldwide view that Guangdong is an integral part of China and the fact that liberal ideas have failed to uproot this view, it is unlikely that this movement will develop into sustained open rebellion in the short to medium term.
Background
The Cantonese people are an indigenous people of Tai origin who have lived in what is now Guangdong since at least 500 BC. For the next couple of centuries, their society was that of a complex farming society. Their culture and language was completely different from their northern neighbours.
Not long after the founding of Imperial China under the Qin Dynasty, the Cantonese people's cultural identities came under serious threat for the first time. Determined to subjugate and enslave the Cantonese people, Qin armies, victorious from their earlier conquests, advanced on modern-day Guangdong and began what would be one of the world's worst genocides ever in recorded history.
For a short time, after the fall of the Qin, an independent state existed in Liangguang and Annam, called Nanyue. It was founded by a renegade Qin general who adopted the customs of the southern Yue peoples (the Cantonese being one of them). It was later conquered by the Han Dynasty.
For the next two thousand years, the subjugation of the Cantonese people continued under many other regimes to this day. Such is the nature of the subjugations that the Cantonese people, along with many other peoples brutally occupied by China almost completely lost their cultural identities and languages with the passage of time. Once this has occurred, the Cantonese ethnic identity became largely forgotten and ethnic Cantonese world wide have had to endure the humiliation of being labeled "Chinese".
DNA testing has shown that modern-day Cantonese people are not descended from ethnic Chinese. In contrast, it has been established that the Cantonese people share much similarities with some other South-East Asian peoples, particularly ethnic groups found in modern-day Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Emergence of the movement
In the late 20th and early 21th century, there has been a reemergence of awareness among ethnic Cantonese of their distinct ethnic identity rooted in South-East Asia. Influenced by liberal ideas, yet dismayed by, paradoxically, the inaction of human rights organizations, they are beginning to realize that they are in fact totally unrelated to ethnic Chinese. Determined to end their humiliation and suffering, some activists have put forward arguments for an independent Cantonese state, which would be founded the honour the rights of the Cantonese people to self-determination in much the same way as modern-day Israel was founded. In particular, they stress that the Cantonese people are not ethnic Chinese.
Current Status
Today, few people are even aware of the existence of such a movement. Although liberal ideas provided the inspiration for the movement, it is ironic that such ideas have actually enhanced the marginalization of the Cantonese people and the view that they are somehow ethnic Chinese. To make matters worse, Universities throughout the world have invariably rejected the ideas put forward by supporters of the Cantonese independence movement, claiming that their arguments are nonsense and have no support.
Supporters of Cantonese independence still continue to have an extremely difficult time convincing the wider community that the Cantonese people were victims of genocides at the hands of the Chinese.
It is expected that the movement will continue to enjoy gradually growing support, albeit at a very slow pace; however, it is likely that in the long-term, violent confrontations may result should the movement gain large support.
Cantonese independence in popular culture
Occasionally, an independent entity roughly where Guangdong province exists occurs in fiction.
In the instance of , a Cantonese-speaking Republic exists.

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