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Comment by guai898 | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan is probably the largest "invisible" country. 23 million people Army personnel : 290,000 Tanks: 2,005 Total aircraft: 804 Submarines: 4

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Greetings from Taiwan. :) It's pretty much a "let's pretend we cannot see you" sort of diplomacy one the side of most countries (including my birth country in Europe) - most just set up a "trade office" and conduct things almost like an embassy.

Living here for ~7 years and thinking quite a bit about it, I believe statehood defined by membership of "club" that is the United Nations is quite laughable. There was no such thing a hundred years ago, and while the UN does bring a lot of good things to the table, this misrepresentation of reality (for obvious powerplay reasons) is just awful...

Some change this week:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Taiwan&tbm=nws

(I don't pretend to understand how meaningful it is, but it was the first such meeting)

Many people (including my friends here in Taiwan) believe it's an attempt by the PRC to influence the elections which are being held here in about two months. The KMT (Ma's party) are going to get annihilated according to polls.

The political situation here is interesting, to say the least. There's also this funny video about the meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEn3xqrMasc

>Many people (including my friends here in Taiwan) believe it's an attempt by the PRC to influence the elections which are being held here in about two months.

How would that even work?

1. Most people in Taiwan hate the Community Party of China

2. KMT and CPC arrange a meeting to show that they're frenemies with each other

3. KMT loses in the election, which hurts both the KMT and the CPC

So it's conspiracy to between the CPC and KMT to sabotage themselves?

I honestly have no idea. There were some thoughts in English by a Taiwanese I found here: https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/quick-reaction...

Ma promised when he was re-elected that he would never meet with the PRC as head of state. It's also likely this meeting is unconstitutional (Chinese text): https://tw.mobi.yahoo.com/home/%E7%AB%8B%E6%B3%95%E9%99%A2%E...

It will be dangerous if Taiwan attempts to put its plan of independence into action, even though in reality it effectively has one.

Once CCP still controls mainland China, Taiwan has no chance to get this working without military response from the other side. It is for the best interests of both sides to just keep things as it is.

I don't think there's any kind of formal independence plan. KMT is pro-"eventual reunification". DPP is pro-"eventual independence" but could never campaign with that or PRC would get very angry.

I think it's well past the point for a peaceful reunification. Only a very small subset of the population here identifies as "Chinese-only" and an even smaller subset want to reunify. Young Taiwanese increasingly identify as "Taiwanese-only" and want eventual independence.

I have no skin in this fight (other than that I like Taiwan and dislike the actions of the Chinese government), but it's interesting to watch as an observer. I think things will remain as they are for a long time.

I lived in Taipei for a year.

I loved it, but I could never find a suitable startup to work with. So ended up moving back to HK.

I'll be back some time. But I fear for Taiwan's future.

I'm curious, why do you fear for its future?

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