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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

At the end of the day, laws and authority are just a bunch of humans playing make believe with each other.

It all comes down to enforcement. Without enforcement, laws and authority are meaningless.

Take the USA and England as analogous to Taiwan and China.

In the 1700s, England had a "One-England policy" and claimed authority over the US colonies. The US colonies disagreed. Some of the international community acknowledged the One-England policy. Some didn't.

At the end of the day England tried to enforce their authority/laws and lost. Thus, England actually didn't have authority over the US colonies.

I suspect something similar may happen someday with Taiwan (though hopefully with less violence than the American Revolutionary War).

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A key difference is that the governments of the British colonies in North America were officially installed by, and reported to, Britain.

cf. the Taiwanese government, the KMT, which at one point controlled the mainland, but was pushed into exile on Taiwan by the communists. The existence of a free Taiwan threatens the legitimacy of the communist government on the mainland: the PRC, like most propaganda-fueled authoritarian regimes, does not like anything that suggests there's an alternative to their system.

It's also just not a good analogy because Britain didn't have missiles pointed across the strait, or a humongous military that Taiwan has even acknowledged they can't contend with. Diplomacy is the only thing that's kept Taiwan free in the current state of affairs.

Well, the threat of nuclear war with the U.S. also helps with stability a bit.

And a US carrier group in the region

Another key difference is that Taiwan Strait is much narrower than the Atlantic Ocean.

I think the PRC is less bothered about taking extreme measures than the UK was also less incompetent.

If George III had had as big a bee in his bonnet about reclaiming the colonies as the PRC has about Taiwan I doubt that America would have remained independent - compare the Uk Army of 1770's vs Wellingtons Army circa 1812.

At the same time Taiwan is so small that any invasion would destroy anything of value. It is so dense, urban, forested, and mountainous that it would combine the worst parts of combat in Syria and Vietnam.

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