Amid heightened tensions between China and Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a former Taiwanese president who supports unification that the countries “belong” together.
“Differences in systems cannot change the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to the same country and nation,” Xi said.
“External interference cannot stop the historical trend of reunion of the country and family,” Xi said, in comments reported by Taiwanese media and published by Reuters.
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Beijing claims the independent island of Taiwan is a Chinese province and has threatened to use force to achieve unification. China frequently sends warplanes and naval vessels to circle the small island democracy and has been mounting an increasing number of military drills over recent years.
To me, the Taiwanese people have already silently made that choice of independence. Even if independence isn’t loudly proclaimed, Taiwan is still silently at war with China. Otherwise why spend so much money on war equipment from the US, and why have mandatory military service?
To me, the rest of the world powers, the G7, can jointly recognize Taiwan. At that point China will loudly complain and declare hurt feelings, but they will back off. Because there will be nothing they can do unless they want to become the world enemy.
What do you mean silently made the choice? The Taiwanese people have never really had a say. Taiwan existed under a far right wing dictatorship for decades after the Chinese civil war was left unresolved. Local opposition to the KMT government were massacred. The current democracy is still incredibly young and very flawed. It’s not surprising that they still have militaristic holdovers from the dictatorship. They still operate with the same constitution!
This is not some gotcha as you think it is. Its just a bullshit talking point.
Changing the constitution would be perceived as an official declaration of independence and a potential ignition point for war. Recognize that its a catch 22 situation. No one is going to change it until the threat of war is over.
I don’t see how you think that’s a gotcha unless you ignore everything else I mentioned. Also your assessment is just incorrect. The DPP (the pro Independence Party) made an effort to push for a new constitution but that failed because they never had enough legislative votes. The opposition wasn’t against it because they felt threatened by the mainland. Rather Chinese nationalism is still very much alive and well in Taiwan.
Only a small minority identify themselves as “Chinese not Taiwanese” nowadays. According to the latest public surveys (News article, Survey source, has English in the graphs), only 2.4% think that way (declining), 61% identify as Taiwanese (rising), and 32% as both (declining). And then you compare it to the unify-indipendence survey and see that a combined 60% still prefer the status quo, with independence behind at 25%, and unify at 10%. KMT may still have a large voter base in TW, but Chinese nationalism isn’t the only reason people vote for them. You would want to look at 中華統一促進黨 for true Chinese nationalism and PRC sympathisers.
“Chinese Nationalism” is not even what you think. Very few people would even want to be a part of PRC.
There’s no denial that Taiwan is a predominantly ethnically-Chinese nation. There used to be some prestige in being Chinese and “中華”. The PRC and the CCP and its goons and tools has been quickly eroding that on the world stage with embarrassing acts one after another. When the PRC was closed, all of that shit was enclosed and isolated from the rest of the world. It should have remained that way.
When “Chinese Nationalism” is being discussed in Taiwan, it is more about retaining the ethnic Chinese identity and culture. (In fact, Taiwan has done a way better job in preserving the real Chinese culture than the PRC.) It is definitely not about re-unification and definitely not re-unification under the PRC.
Not all politics in Taiwan is about national politics. Even though the DPP won the presidency several times, they have narrowly won the legislative seats and didn’t get the majority this round. That means there are definitely people who voted DPP for president and KMT for local seats. There are many reasons for that. Local politics come into play, economics is also an important issue (low wage jobs is an issue for young people), compulsory military service is definitely not popular, and also the KMT, being the incumbent (and only party) for decades prior, has a much strong political machinery and financial backing (all that old corrupt KMT money) than the DPP. Not to say there’s no corruption in DPP.
Personally I don’t understand how any benshenren would vote for the KMT, the party that has massacred and disappeared many of our older generation relatives. Maybe there are some politicians who joined KMT because the DPP side of the ticket was already occupied and they want to still try to run for the office. When my dad gets together with his brother, they still recount which neighbors on the street they used to live on has suffered a loss during those years. There’s a lot of silent suffering and sadness. The younger generations don’t even know because people were afraid to talk about it for a long time. Many has sacrificed to wrestle a free and democratic country out from the authoritarian KMT. For me and my family, we’re allergic to the KMT brand.