Hacker News Reader

Comment by dawhizkid | Hacker News Reader

I was taken aback by a recent conversation with an very Americanized Chinese Harvard grad (grew up in Northern Cal) who genuinely asked me after having said my parents are from Taiwan whether it's true if the people of Taiwan think China is "a part of Taiwan."

I couldn't believe that any person in the West could believe such a thing, and the only explanation is that Chinese disformation spreads far and wide beyond China's own borders.

View on HN

Isn't that the official position of the Taiwanese government, though - that they are the only legitimate government of all of China and the current administration of the PRC are not legitimate?

I understand that there's a diversity of opinion among the people of Taiwan (and some mixed messages from the government itself) regarding the issue, but it doesn't seem unbelievable that someone might think that the people of Taiwan share a belief in their country's official policy.

Is there something I'm missing?

When the nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, they wound up killing a lot of the intelligentsia already there. So you had a huge divide between pre-1949 Chinese (mainly of fujian descent), who became the populous working class of the island, and the minority 1949 mainlanders, who became the richer factory owners and such (and also ruled the country in a dictatorship until the 80s). To add more kindling to the fire, the Japanese treated the Taiwanese pretty fairly before the war ended, with Taiwanese considered almost as full Japanese citizens (unlike the Koreans). So whenever these questions are addressed, it isn’t just antagonism against the PRC that comes through, but also a lot of antagonism for the ROC.

Now that the opposition can easily win elections, they have mostly become the ROC government, but they don’t buy those original tenants of mainland unity at all (though they don’t have the power to change them, nor do they want to antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could).

> though they don’t have the power to change them, nor do they want to antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could

I want to also add that the oppositions, although not antagonize the PRC as much as they would, is also antagonizing the PRC more than the nationlists; the PRC-hating original tenants died off (it’s been 60 years after all), and the nationalists transformed themselves to fully embrace PRC in the name of economy. You have the nationalists (Kuomintang) occupying both ends of the pro/anti-PRC spectrum, and this weird situation is arguably one of the prominent problems of Taiwanese identity.

The richer nationalists have lots of business interests in China now (think Foxconn), so they are firmly aligned with the PRC as a matter of interest. It doesn’t help that the opposition are primarily working class and their interests are actually hurt as the good jobs go to China (think republicans vs Democrats in the states without the Trump populism, and very counter intuitive to communism).

Do you have resource recommendations for learning about the Taiwan/ROC-vs-PRC situation? My father's side is ROC Taiwanese, and I'm looking for more objective perspectives on the conflict.

Yes. Even more weirdly, the PRC government is actually more tolerant of this position than they are of entertaining the idea of Taiwan as a separate country.

The official name of Taiwan is the Republic of China. That government used to control all of China. Then there was a communist revolution and the ROC government fled to Taiwan, still claiming to be the rightful government of China, merely having been forced to make a tactical retreat. This is still the official position of the ROC government, even if no one really believes that the ROC will one day return and reconquer the mainland. Now to be fair, Taiwan probably would have simply declared independence and given up on the mainland but for fear that this would lead to a PRC invasion.

The government even really acts officially as if it is the government of all of China sometimes, such as its support of the PRC in certain maritime claims. The ROC claims certain islands are "part of China" even though they would fall under the physical control of the PRC and thus don't really concern Taiwan.

I'm surprised you don't know that Taiwan never renounced their authority over mainland China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com