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Comment by Ultramanoid | Hacker News Reader

Every decade, and it's been several now, the proportion between the population that considers itself Chinese-Taiwanese versus only Taiwanese shifts closer to only Taiwanese. It is 'inevitable' as well that as more generations live and work in a de facto independent nation, 'reunification' becomes an impossible objective for the mainland, unless force is used.

No need to look farther than the Sunflower movement when the previous Taiwanese president ( from the KMT ) tried to build stronger economic ties with China. The young movement literally occupied government, and on the next election the DPP swept to power.

Edit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement

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Here's some evidence backing your claim: https://theasiadialogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/fig1....

It's hard to look at that chart and argue in good faith that reunification is somehow inevitable. We don't even have to go into the obvious cultural differences that exist between a successful, progressive (in an Asian context) democracy and a repressive single-party state.

> evidence...

It seems so obvious to anyone in touch with Taiwanese society it didn't occur to me the need to provide it, my mistake.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/28/20...

Identifying as a Taiwanese only does NOT equal support for independence, by the way. Things are not that simple.

And beyond issues of identity, the vast majority of Taiwanese, however they identify themselves, overwhelmingly support the 'status quo', meaning no declaration of independence, no reunification. No one wants war, which seems assured with either of those two options.

Edit : Just seeing now that the article claims 51% for independence, but that can't be right, maybe a typo, both independence and reunification are always on the extremes, shifting anywhere from 10 to 25%, and status quo is consistently the preferred option by far.

As an outsider, what's the difference between the status quo and independence? The status quo is that Taiwan has its own government, miltary, economy and diplomatic relations: is independence just about making a political declaration and changing the name of the state?

Taiwan is formally the Republic of China. Its government used to be the government of China as a whole until forced to retreat to Taiwan by the communists, during the civil war.

In fact, formally they still claim the whole of China since that's the constitution of the Republic of China, founded in 1912.

You'll note the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, first President in 1912 in the Taiwanese Parliament. And obviously the flag.

Based on this I believe that 'independence' means writing this off and declaring that Taiwan is not China but an independent "Republic of Taiwan" only.

> Based on this I believe that 'independence' means writing this off and declaring that Taiwan is not China but an independent "Republic of Taiwan" only.

This is exactly what I mean by political declaration and name change.

Short answer, a declaration of independence means war with China.

The status quo allows for what are effectively two separate nations to keep face and avoid disaster -- for both. It is a unique and somewhat absurd state of affairs for sure.

Long answer is... Long. Probably reading on the history of China and what happened after the Communists won the war and the KMT retreated to Taiwan would be a good starting point to understand what's going on with Taiwan today.

( Edit : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263049 )

Also, no country in the world can have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan if they have them with China. ( Most do unofficially. ) Taiwan is consistently blocked by China from international organizations starting with the UN, etc. Not everything is as it should be in a 'truly' independent nation, with the status quo. A declaration of independence would therefore also affect every other country and the international order of things.

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