
Xi Jinping says Taiwan “must and will be” reunited with China - happy-go-lucky
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46733174
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gedy
The "our government represents ALL of China" that both the PRC and ROC gov'ts
proclaimed is/was a mistake. China and Taiwan are in practice and reality now
two countries, and the people in each don't benefit from the saber rattling.

It would be the same as North or South Korea being the only "Korea" recognized
by other governments or UN.

~~~
dogma1138
Taiwan isn’t a member of the UN and is officially recognized by only 16
countries as the most fear pissing off China.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan)

They lost their UN seat in 1971 and haven’t been able to regain it since.

With China’s influence especially in Africa and the Middle East growing there
is less and less chance of Taiwan being recognized as an independent country
without a global conflict or a massive political shift in China.

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ccvannorman
I used to believe China could easily swallow Taiwan in military conflict, but
the actual numbers are surprising considering their relative landmasses.
Taiwan is not such an easy target to overthrow, and I doubt they'd lay down
without a fight.

I found this article to be particularly enlightening:

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-
wi...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-with-china/)

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dingaling
Tangent: 'lay' is transitive and requires an object e.g. 'lay themselves down'

Otherwise use intransitive 'lie' e.g. lie down without a fight.

~~~
throwmeback
Thanks, IntelliSense!

/s of course, I actually learned from the parent comment lol

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yumraj
Sounds like empty rhetoric to distract the population from economic slowdown,
trade war with US and general negative sentiments related to China both
internally and externally.

~~~
toasterlovin
On the other hand, most armed conflicts are preceded by rhetoric of some kind.

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tails4e
Taiwan has some leading tech companies, most notably TSMC who fabricate a huge
portion of all ICs (chips) in the world. China has been investing a lot in
building up it's own fabs, with some success - but still well behind TSMC. I
wonder is part of this goal to take a strangle-hold on the world's technology
manufacturing?

~~~
slowmovintarget
Yes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025)

Helped along by consulting from McKinsey, of course.

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Reason077
Right. Chinese policy regarding Taiwan hasn’t changed then. Not really news.

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gammateam
Never a dull moment to talk about the twilight zone that is Greater China

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emmelaich
I would be happy to have Taiwan rule China.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _I would be happy to have Taiwan rule China._

So convince the Chinese in mainland China and we can solve this without a shot
being fired. Boeing etc will profit from this but Taiwan isn't going anywhere.
Eventually a pro-China party will win and via...

I wonder if USA has a way to brick the weapons we sold /are /will be selling
to Taiwan if China takes over? No doubt Chinese spies are in all branches of
Taiwan politics and military.

~~~
digianarchist
Pro-Bejing parties are now the majority of the legislative in Hong Kong. It's
only a matter of time before the same happens in Taiwan and they fall under
the S.A.R system.

The fact that the KMT are considered China-friendly is hilarious considering
the history of the Republic of China.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-politics/taiwan-
re...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-politics/taiwan-rebukes-
ruling-party-emboldens-china-friendly-opposition-idUSKCN1NU01L)

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xupybd
Does anyone know the background here. Why is it that the Chinese government or
people want to rule Taiwan as much as they appear to?

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wallace_f
ROC (Taiwan) is the defacto legitimate government of China. They were defeated
in war by communist forces and fled to Taiwan. At the time (1949-onward),
America acknowledged ROC as the legitimate government of China, but only
intervened to protect them in the Taiwan strait. You can simply read more
detail on Wikipedia, etc(1). Then after Mao won control of China, he went on
to oversee arguably the manslaughter and murder of more people than any other
tyrant in history.

1-[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_retreat_to...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_retreat_to_Taiwan)

~~~
amaccuish
> ROC (Taiwan) is the defacto legitimate government of China. They were
> defeated in war by communist forces and fled to Taiwan.

They were defeated, and yet still considered the "defacto legitimate
government of China"? How does that work? I would think very few people
consider the ROC the "legitimate" government of Mainland China.

> America acknowledged ROC as the legitimate government of China

Why is this relevant?

~~~
wallace_f
I'm just stating what the historical facts are. Even the UN charter still to
this day lists ROC as the legitimate government of China, but in the 70s they
started letting the PRC sit in that seat.

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Mikeb85
It'll happen eventually, and likely without force. Taiwan (like HK) enjoyed
relative economic success versus China because of their ties with the west,
beneficial strategic location and relatively small population. Now that
China's an economic superpower, still growing and liberalizing (albeit
slowly), theres less reasons for Taiwan to oppose reunification. I doubt it'll
happen in the next decade, but it likely will within 50 years.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I don’t know much about Chinese people’s mindsets, but keep in mind that the
Scottish and UK independence referendums were split about 50/50\. Scotland is
5 million people, the UK is 65 million. A Taiwan/China unification makes as
much sense to me as Canada merging with the United States.

~~~
Mikeb85
Canada is ideologically quite separate from the US. Our histories diverged
quite early, and we have fundamentally different ideas concerning governance.
Linguistically and ethnically there's differences too.

China and Taiwan both believe in only one China, and both believe in
reunification, albeit with differing ideas on how to accomplish it (Taiwan
still calls itself the Republic of China).

~~~
CathayRe
I am not even sure you really meant it or you are trolling, but if you really
believe what you wrote, I suggest you read up more about Hong Kong and Taiwan
past and current status.

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yarg
One country, two systems - so the same as Hong Kong?

~~~
emmelaich
Not remotely. Hong Kong was only leased from China.

~~~
Reason077
Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula were ceded in perpetuity by the
Qing Dynasty to the British Crown. It was only the New Territories that were
leased, for 99 years beginning in 1898.

However, it was agreed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 to
return all of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty upon expiration of the New
Territories lease on July 1, 1997.

~~~
onetimemanytime
what ifs...would have China eventually attacked Hong Kong, like Argentina did
to Falklands Islands?

NATO doesn't cover faraway islands...

~~~
robjan
The parts of Hong Kong that were owned, and not leased, have basically no
infrastructure to support people's lives. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are
basicslly residential and commercial only - there is no agriculture and the
majority of the water and electricity comes from China and the New
Territories.

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jbigelow76
You gotta figure if the Chinese Politburo handicaps each US president on the
odds of no US military response to a forceful re-unification attempt Trump is
definitely going to be their horse.

Happy New Year, cross your fingers 2019 doesn't go down in history books as
the start of World War 3 :)

~~~
fipple
Can’t think of any recent US President that would start a war with China over
Taiwan. China will take Taiwan when it feels like it.

~~~
yellowapple
A US President will be unlikely to (voluntarily) start a war with China
directly, but the US and Taiwan stand to mutually benefit from the US beefing
up its military aid to Taiwan (the US because Taiwan is a massive allied
economy that's enough of a threat to China for China to want to assert
control, and Taiwan because they probably don't want to be steamrolled by a
dictatorship).

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known
Is there a "Berlin Wall" between Taiwan and China?

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gaius
70 miles of strait?

~~~
throwmeback
doesn't it seem to be more effective than a wall actually?

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nutcracker46
We will soon notice whether the populist West will support government with the
consent of the governed or stand by while Taiwan is thrown under the bus.

The history of Crimea indicates that Taiwan's only hope is to aggresively
apply violence as necessary for its independence.

~~~
kace91
> We will soon notice whether the populist West will support government with
> the consent of the governed or stand by while Taiwan is thrown under the
> bus.

That's unfair, I think. There's a huge gap between "I don't agree with what's
happening" and "I'm willing to risk nuclear war defending this cause".

~~~
candiodari
But the west didn't just agree to risk nuclear war defending Crimea, the west
actually agreed to _cause_ nuclear war to defend Crimea, if necessary:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances)

Hell, Russia went as far as to actually raise the issue in the UN general
assembly that the west hasn't lived up to it's obligations under that treaty.

So not only has the west proved it won't defend anyone, it has shown no
diplomatic assurances of western states (or at least of the US, UK, France and
China, and of course of the United Nations) are of any value whatsoever to
smaller countries.

The only open tactic remaining is for all states that fear territorial
annexation is to develop first strike capability with nuclear weapons. If you
don't have that, you're at the mercy of Russia, and frankly, China and any
western country. If one of them decides to attack, no help will be
forthcoming, not _even_ a UN security council protest.

All the comments here forget one very basic thing: if you aren't willing to
serve in a war with China, you don't recognize Taiwan sovereignty. It doesn't
take 2 countries to go to war, after all, it only takes one, and China is.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But the west didn't just agree to risk nuclear war defending Crimea, the
> west actually agreed to cause nuclear war to defend Crimea, if necessary:

No, it didn't; the _only_ thing Western powers (as well as Russia!) promised
(per your own source) to do to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine was
“Seek immediate United Nations Security Council action”. Which the Western
Powers did (Russia, of course, vetoed the action supported by 13 of 15 UNSC
members.)

They did not promise to use military force, much less nuclear arms—especially
not outside of the context of UN action—in the event of an attack.

Now, admittedly, given that any problem any of states protected by the
Budapest Memorandum would face would almost certainly also involve a deadlock
between permanent UNSC members who were signatories of the agreements, it
should probably have been an obvious critical defect that there was no
fallback position besides mutual consultation in the event of UNSC deadlock;
particularly, the protected states could have demanded that the guaranteeing
states each individually committed also to seek UNGA action under the Uniting
for Peace (A/RES/377A) umbrella in the event of UNSC deadlock.

> Hell, Russia went as far as to actually raise the issue in the UN general
> assembly that the west hasn't lived up to it's obligations under that
> treaty.

Different obligations than the (weak tea) defensive one.

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nutcracker46
Xi should consider the effect of vastly reduced foreign trade after an attempt
to take Taiwan by force.

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wallace_f
All of my responses got what seems like an equal number of downvotes (4)
sometime in the last hour, and this thread got ejected from the front page
well over an hour before this happened.

Smells like the product of small little online brigaide.

~~~
latch
-4 is the lower limit that a comment can be downvoted to, so the fact that they're all the same isn't particularly telling.

~~~
wallace_f
They were all positive, and each reduced by 4 points. Currently the lowest
sits at -1.

