Great approach, and a smart minister. Living in Taipei I can only congratulate the country for this lively and young democracy. If you consider moving to Asia, Taiwan is the most forward, fair and open society.
I was there during the sunflower protests. Student activist sat in the parliament building for a couple days. The entire country rallied to their cause. Restaurants sent food, small shops (Taiwanese equivalent of Bodega) donated water, businesses sent pillows and blankets.
If you tried that in China,you'd be sent to a xinjiang reeducation camp. At the very least.
A common PRC propagandic trope is that the ten thousand years of Chinese history doesn't lend the culture to democracy. That the culture is simply incompatible with the concept - the people need autocracy. Taiwan is a shining and obvious example otherwise.
Not to mention the absurdly low cost of living, one of the best public transit systems in the world, socialized healthcare, strong education system churning out competent professionals, and mountains... My partner and I are preparing a semi permanent move in the next few years.
Edit: if anyone is curious, I documented my cost of living there back in 2014. Fair warning, I did so as a much younger, relatively naive dude, but the data's there anyway: http://ablate.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-does-it-cost-to-live...
Totally agreed. The sentiment appears on HN regularly and it's extremely annoying when there's such an obvious counterexample.
My hunch is that it's a cornerstone of neoreactionary theory that is slowly seeping into public discourse.
My hunch is that it's a cornerstone of neoreactionary theory that is slowly seeping into public discourse.
My hunch is that it's a cornerstone of the newest progressive agenda to give more power to the federal government and to California and New York. What's been slowly seeping into the public discourse is, "Freedom? Meh."
Don't like someone's speech. "F Free Speech!" The trend is to give either the government or big corporations more control over people's interactions at work, how employers pay employees, what information we receive, and how much privacy we have in commerce and the information we consume.
The people must always fight the power and speak truth to power. What we have forgotten in recent years, is that the insurgents need to amass power to do so, and by amassing power, they often become the established power. I remember a quip about Postmodernism by a PhD student -- how it started out as something disruptive and edgy, then ended up as the stuff you had to spout to get your degree. The edgy, subversive media and academic movements of the 60's are now the media and academic establishment of 2019.
When in doubt, always go to first principles and universal principles. Be skeptical of feelings -- governments and corporations have long been using emotions to manipulate people. Governments for thousands of years, and corporations started in earnest well over a century ago.
I'm not saying this means democracy is impossible, but if you work in tech I'd hope you'd be able to at least recognize that doing democracy in Taiwan is not even remotely comparable to doing it in China because of scale issues alone.
That's not a federal system as generally understood.
Generally, the distinction between a federal system and a unitary state with somewhat-autonomous subdivisions is that in a federal system, the powers of the subnational entities are constitutionally entrenched, whereas in a unitary state, the autonomy of a subnational division is at the will of the national government.
The overwhelming majority of countries have some form of autonomous regional government, because it's impossible to run any sufficiently large country any other way, but the majority of countries are not federations.
Don't be so smug, the US and EU are only getting a small taste of the sort of problems that China has been facing for several thousand years as a diverse centralized state, and are already resorting to the sort of things that China ended up having to do with respect to social control and stability.
Not saying it's better or worse in the end but at the least, the experiment goes on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/world/asia/india-toilet-m...
Regarding peeing specifically, India has a Nationwide push for increasing toilet infrastructure. The change over the past five years, let alone ten, is dramatic. Possibly faster than anything in human history.
I also don't understand why you think nobody is doing anything about people using the restroom on the streets of SF - new bathroom trailers are being added. It's not much but it's something, and more are coming.
If you have other ideas, would you like to join me tomorrow at 2pm for the next board of supervisors meeting to present them to the city?
Yet the USA and EU have democracies with close to a billion people combined. India is an example of a developing democracy with a population close to China and all the issues that come with a huge population. Yet India is a democracy and the people have gone from a population ruled by the British to a democracy.
The people of anywhere should get to decide what they want.
I don't dispute this. I dispute people in their comfy first world homes pontificating about how China should have democracy, when they haven't been to China and experienced: 1.) the kinds of problems China faces and 2.) the difficulties facing solving those problems in China
It smacks of arrogance and youthful naivety. Yes we have a democracy in the US and how is it doing? We have garbage voting machines that are easily hackable, rampant gerrymandering, and coordinated disinformation campaigns that contributed to Trump of all people being our president.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have it than not have it, and I think we can solve these problems. I'm optimistic. But those are just the problems WE have in a developed country one third the size of China, and with better infrastructure, education, and quality of live overall. I can't imagine trying to implement an _effective_ voting system in a country like China where many people do not even have clean water or basic sanitation yet. Not to mention the fact that they don't have division of powers, so before democracy was implemented they'd require a whole bottom up restructuring of their entire governmental apparatus.
One big issue unique to China is related to fallout from the cultural revolution, which affected a huge number of people. Read this section of the Wiki about education to get some idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Education
Another is the lack of a separation of powers. The geography of China carries a lot of challenges as well. One of the advantages the US had was being able to develop in an extremely protected place in the world. China has had pressure from a wide variety of neighboring states for almost its entire history.
Second, China actually does have a voting infrastructure in place - locals "elect" their prefecture "representatives," who go on to elect upwards further government officials.
But yeah, the Party is not going anywhere without a fight. The obstacle to democracy in China isn't size or culture, it's Xi Jinping and his cronies.
I'll not talk about all the positive things about Taiwan, just read the other comments.
https://foreigntalentact.ndc.gov.tw/en/Content_List.aspx?n=6...
As a European I think Taiwan would be one of the easiest and best places where I could relocate in Asia. Mainland China on the other hand would be a nightmare.
When I read about it, technically ROC should be the real china in the international law sense, but de facto it's PRC. (I think so, correct me please) I dont think it's officially resolved at all, even how many chinas are there...
From the middle of europe I am not afraid of Chinese (mainland ofc) army but close there, when PRC says the island is PRC, and ROC say it's ROC while they don't lost UN recognition, I consider it a serious risk. Unless one fancies fighting for freedom at some point.
Also looking from the middle of europe I am skeptical in the general international reaction, when even much stronger mandate, it achieved no practical result with Ukraine/Russia dispute.
All above saddens me deeply, because otherwise I find it hard to argue.
If China invades Taiwan while I'm there, I will deal with the situation, or perhaps I'll be killed. That's life, and that's life no matter where I am (maybe I'll get hit by a car tonight, maybe I'll get killed in a freak sparring accident, maybe I'll crash my motorcycle). I won't let these concerns stop me from living, while taking reasonable precautions when I do partake in risky activities.
As for international law - the USA de facto recognizes the sovereignty of Taiwan in many ways. For example, Taiwanese citizens can apply for an ESTA visa waiver - Chinese cannot. The USA sells arms to Taiwan, not to China. Taiwanese citizens are eligible for Global Entry, Chinese aren't.
There's also the Taiwan Relations act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act
>The act further stipulates that the United States will "consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States".
Taiwan is a sovereign nation, but the whole world has to tip toe around a fragile PRC ego about it. I'm not afraid of living there and shouting to the world that the ROC is the superior version of Chinese government.