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Comment by Aperocky | Hacker News Reader

> patriotic

Be careful for what you wish for. Taiwan’s formal name is Republic of China, the older generations does not exactly share the younger generations wish of independence. In fact, they are often patriotic .. to China.

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I think the last elections argue against that https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/world/asia/taiwan-electio...

Yes but the election prior to that argues against you as well. The reason for the most recent shift was because of Hong Kong protests and mainland action there. Prior to that there was a massive shift in favor of stronger relations with Mainland China.

Then the trend seems to indicate that Taiwan is moving away from a pro-PRC stance.

It has never had a pro-PRC stance. That's a gross misrepresentation of the KMT view. At best, the KMT is a pro-status-quo party that simply thinks it's bad for business to start WW3 over the Chine issue.

There is no pro-PRC stance in Taiwan.

In fact Taiwan is split from the mainland because of the civil war between the KMT and the communists...

Parties do change over time. The Republican party used to to help black people...

This certainly hasn't changed, though.

I think you might need to interpret "China" in the grandparent to this post as literally the land and people, instead of the more common meaning of the current government.

Taiwan's official view, as I understand it, is that they are the rightful government of the land and those people, and that the people currently reigning are illegitimate.

Yes that's the "official" view but relatively few people actually believe that.

Look at the Straits Communiques to understand the KMT position. The DPP which won the election is far more likely to declare independence and ignore the history entirely.

Keep in mind there were 5 million votes for the opposition. Where does the leadership of TSMC fall under? We won’t know, are they more likely to support independence and change than young people in college? We can only make educated guesses.

The election doesn't tell you much. The young voters continue to prefer independence, while the shrinking older population prefers eventual unification with China. As more young people become eligible to vote, the independence crowd simply gets more votes.

KMT = economy party, they talk about "eventual reunification" in public statements to appease PRC so that cross-strait relations can remain good, which they think is crucial for the economy (since PRC is Taiwan's biggest trading partner). Pretty much nobody actually cares about reunification in and of itself, and KMT's current stance is that it won't happen until PRC becomes a democracy.

DPP = in addition to defying PRC's bullying about Taiwan government's statements regarding independence, DPP believes it is crucial to expand trade with other countries to reduce economic reliance on PRC.

So I would say there isn't really a huge generational divide regarding actually supporting re-unification, but certainly younger generation may not be as concerned about the potential economic ramifications of defying PRC.

It's not that the KMT wants to appease the PRC. Of course the KMT wishes for eventual reunification: they were kicked out of the rest of China by the communists but that does not mean that they should give up hope off regime change on the mainland.

Most of taiwan doesn’t want to be part of mainland.

They are not patriotic to the mainland government. There are few people in Taiwan that want reunification. Both greens and blues want to maintain autonomy, it's just the level to which they want it that differs.

country == government? older-generation == most? In fact all of the comments under this is equating these 2 things and I'm puzzled.

Patriotic to "China," yes, but those in ROC who believe in "one China" in general don't support the PRC. There is some talk of reunification but even among the pan-Blue, it is generally assumed that reunification would only be possible if the communist party in PRC collapsed.

Even older generations do not support reunification, at least in any specific sense, if I understand correctly.

It's more complex - essentially the people in Taiwan who's politics descend from the nationalists who escaped ahead of Mao's and took over the country are different from those who's politics descend from Japanese invasion and occupation from 1895-1945, ~1 week of independence, followed by occupation by those self same nationalists. They literally speak different languages.

The weird thing is that the Nationalists, the arch-anti-communists who believe they still rule one China are the ones who have been cosying up to the mainland over the past decade or so, making big bucks doing so - they're the ones who are against Taiwan as an independent country ....

The kids? they love j-pop/k-pop are much more citizens of a wider Asia rather than China.

So the people who have won this latest election by a landslide aren't the descendants of the Nationalists who believe they rule China, but they do believe in a Taiwan in a wider Asia, what's happening in Hong Kong scares the shit out of them.

IMHO we should happily recognize "Taiwan", but not the defunct "RoC"

As somebody said, both Taiwan and continental China want a single China with a government in Beijing, as it used to be for centuries.

But they differ drastically in what government they want to see (along with the rest of the political system).

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