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Comment by FooBarWidget | Hacker News Reader

It isn't that easy. It's not just China's government that believes Taiwan is part of China — China's people also believe that. There is a saying that if China is democratic, they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. Or another saying: if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow.

Another factor that complicates things is the fact that Taiwan is a strategic location for the US's military containment of China. The whole "first island chain" depends on it. The US knows it, China's life depends on it.

There's a reason why this issue has persisted since 1949 and why it's China's "reddest of the red lines".

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I don't buy this. If the government would stop making "reunification" so prominent in official rhetoric, eventually there would be room to back down from the hardline view on Taiwan. Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly in 30 or 50 years. The government is feeding the flames of nationalism by making Taiwan such a prominent issue. The reason the CCP won't back down on Taiwan is not because they can't, but exactly because it's an issue which encourages nationalism and internal unity.

Saying that Taiwan is merely a nationalism and internal unity issue, and that people's views are merely a result of propaganda, ignores the very history of how Taiwan came to be and how the Chinese civil war developed. Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.

But more importantly, you dodged the military strategic significance of Taiwan. Telling China to give up Taiwan is like asking China to give cut off its lifeline.

At the end of the day, your point boils down to that China ought not to think that way, for reasons that you believe are the only legitimate reasons. But that is useless: Chinese do view things that way, and if foreign forces pressure China to let Taiwan go, then they will fight to the end.

Then there will be a war. Sad.

> Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value

It seems to me that you are saying that a contemporary political position (that Taiwan should be ruled by the same government as mainland China) is in fact a "core value". Unity can be a value, but the political position that the island of Taiwan is an integral part of China, and China can't be unified without it, is not. That's the position which is encouraged by propaganda and government rhetoric, and mirrors similar positions with regards to, for example, Tibet.

That is correct. But as I said: Taiwan is being used by the US as a strategic military location to contain China. As long as this situation persists, China can't accept any other situation than Taiwan being part of the same state.

Were this danger to disappear then I foresee much greater chances of Taiwan emerging as a independent state, probably as one that is aligned with PRC in the same manner Canada is to the US.

The US _removed_ troops from Taiwan when they recognized the PRC. China has had every opportunity to bring Taiwan into its orbit by simply having enough sense to not threaten Taiwan so much as to to force it to seek out allies against it. Taiwan has shown that it clearly considered business interests to trump any differences in political philosophy. If China would simply declare that it wouldn’t attack Taiwan, then the US wouldn’t have an in any longer. The fact that Taiwan can be used strategically against China is due to China’s shortsighted thinking and nothing else. It’s complete inability to treat neighboring countries like Taiwan as anything but vassals is mind blowing. The PRC government is playing a dangerous game.

The US removed troops as part of the One Child Policy. That policy is now being undermined by the DPP, US and Lituania, where "undermining" includes selling weapons to Taiwan, sailing more warships near China, and AUKUS. It's not exactly a peaceful situation right now where China's worries are completely made up.

> The US removed troops as part of the One Child Policy.

Say what?

Can you give some background (and, especially, evidence or documentation) for this? Because that sounds completely insane.

He means the One China Policy. But CogitoCogito is right. China is only be "contained" by Taiwan in the hypothetical circumstance of a war; during peace time they obviously have no trouble sending ships around the world and are not contained in any sense. And the only reason they haven't been able to bring Taiwan into the fold is because they keep making psychotic violent threats. All China needs to do to completely resolve any problems with Taiwan is stop being nuts.

China obviously doesn't want the matter resolved peacefully, if at all, because they use this conflict for internal control.

Yes it was a typo. My bad :(

Hope your social credit score doesn't get dinged for this.

Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.

>unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.

I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols).

> I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols).

This is not true, Mongol rule only lasted for about 100 years.

Han dynasty lasted 400 years. Tang about 300 years, Ming and Qing together lasted about 550 years. All of that adds to about 1250 years of unified times. That did not count Qin or Sui or Northern Song, which are unified that just happened to be short lived.

I don't know where you got your numbers.

Why are you counting Qing dynasty into that?

Because you are using "Qing" -- A Chinese pinyin word to refer to that dynasty?

I'm not the original poster. Anyway, the point is that Qing dynasty was also "foreign" because it was reigned by Manchu.

It was foreign, but they sinicized and they claimed to be representatives of Chinese civilization, so in the course of history it was eventually accepted that they were legitimate successors. This is in contrast to imperial Japan, which explicitly did not claim to be a successor of Chinese civilization, which was one of the reasons why they continued to be viewed as foreign.

Also the landmass referred to as “China” has constantly changed throughout history. For example today China _is_ unified, but Taiwan is not a part of it.

There is no need for Mr. Xi to formally give up on Taiwan. He could just kick the can down the road for another few decades, like all his much smarter predecessors did.

> China's people also believe that.

Only because that is what they learn and hear (literally) daily, starting with kindergarten. Just reduce this crab step by step, and it will fade away. The same is true for this even more stupid 7-dash line. They draw this stuff only really, really every map you see in China.

He cannot kick the can down the road if the West forces a point of no return by suggesting the above.

Chinese people initially saw Taiwan as part of China for historical reasons as well as a result of the civil war. Propaganda slows this from stopping, but the problem very much is not manufactured.

Saying that viewing Taiwan that way as purely a consequence of propaganda is like saying that American patriotism, and the fact that Americans believe that the South's cecession is illegitimate or unrighteous, is purely a consequence of having taught people so since childhood.

Yes education is a contributing factor. But it is my no means the only factor. Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.

> unification is Chinese core value

Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.

My point is that whether the west thinks the Chinese ought to think that way, is not very important. People can debate that all day long, but at the end of the day the Chinese do think that way, and they are willing to fight for it.

This has strategical implications. Do we want to grandstand or do we want to actually solve a problem? If we want to grandstand at all cost, then we have to wage war with China and force them into submission. If we want an actual peaceful resolution then something has to give.

> If we want to grandstand at all cost, then we have to wage war with China and force them into submission.

Who is we and they? Based on your Twitter profile, you're Chinese and your views seem perfectly aligned with the official CCP position.

Then you clearly either haven't read enough of my tweets, or you don't know official CCP positions as well as you think you do in order to differentiate my views with official CCP positions. Do I need to copy a few links where I disagreed with CCP official position?

If you think my views are too much like CCP's, you should talk to more mainlanders. There's a way deeper rabbit hole out there.

Yes I have a different opinion than the mainstream western one. So what? I can have my own legitimate, independently researched opinion, of which some parts may or may not align with other actors because that's what I happen to believe in based on research results.

Who is "we" and "they"? The west vs China of course. This was, after all, the context to which I was replying to. Not sure how you missed that context.

Taiwan is already an independent nation by all measures that anyone really cares about; the status quo is to their advantage. If China wants to change this, they are going to have to wage war by sending ships across the strait.

Maybe the Taiwanese can defend their nation mostly by themselves; amphibious assault is not easy, even for major world powers. Even more difficult with satellites watching your (extensive) preparations. Even more difficult with hostile submarines prowling the seas. The PLA can't march to Taiwan.

China does not have that much of a problem with the status quo. The status quo with the One China Policy has worked very well for decades. In fact, 2015, right before the DPP got to power, could be regarded as the height of cross-straight relations. Things only started going sour after the DPP started making moves towards true independence, and after the US sent increasing numbers of warships to China's back yard.

It is not China that is deviating from the status quo.

You are possibly the dumbest person on HN.

The rest of the world has been giving on this issue for at least 30 years. How's that going?

> and they are willing to fight for it.

No, they aren't. China has been making empty threats for literally decades.

Yes, I am sure they will throw around more empty threats and not follow through on them.

But this "red line" thing is just internal propaganda that they never actually follow through on.

It is time the rest of the world stops pretending.

That's because Taiwan had maintained the One China Policy. This worked very very well for decades. It's only recently when they are becoming more serious about true independence that things are souring.

Furthermore, China can no longer afford to use empty threats when US warships are inceasingly sailing in China's backyard. Things weren't so militarily contested before.

> China can no longer afford to use empty threats

And yet it keeps making them, and no actually doing anything about any of this.

It has been decades of empty threats. I am sure people said the same thing, the last time more empty threats for made.

Yeah, no. Thats the facts. They keep making empty threats, and not following through on them, and they are still doing that to this day.

> more serious about true independence

Well, Taiwan is already truly independent, and that has been the case for decades. They have their own laws, borders, and taxes. That is what an independent country is.

Furthermore, the official stance of the ruling party, is that they are already independent.

Nothing really needs to change, for them to become independent, because that is already the case.

> had maintained the One China Policy.

They have their own taxes, laws and borders. They are already an independent country, actually. There is nothing to be maintained, other than some fantasy make believe lip service.

Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.

But you seem to think that this trend can go on forever no matter what. That is a dangerous mistake. What's needed is deescalation, not more escalation in the faulty thinking that they will continue to do nothing no matter what happens.

> Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.

Exactly, I agree. They keep making threats, that they don't follow through on, and they will continue to not follow through on them.

Nothing is needed, to do anything, given the fact that Taiwan is already independent, and that has been the case for decades.

> What's needed is deescalation

There is nothing to de-escalate. Taiwan is already an independent country, and it has been so for decades, and that will continue.

They have had their own taxes, laws, and borders for decades. And they have those same things today. Nothing has changed. They are already independent, and that was the case before, and still is now.

And anyway, the only one who can choose to stop making those empty threats is china. Complain at them if you don't like their big talk, and no follow through threats.

Wait a minute, are you saying the US weapon sales to Taiwan, the US warships near Taiwan, and AUKUS, are not a thing?

> are you saying the US weapon sales

I am saying that none of this has changed. Taiwan is its own independent country, for decades, and we've been doing the same things, which is follow our defensive treaty with them, and have been doing this for decades.

That's the status quo. Nothing needs to change. Nobody is shooting down Chinese military assets.

All that is happening is the same exact, completely normal defensive treaty actions that we've been doing for a while.

And china isn't going to do anything about this status quo, of Taiwan already being an independent country, with a defense treaty with the US.

> What's needed is deescalation

So go tell the fucking PRC to deescalate.

This is naive. The government simply doesn't have that power. If they tried to downplay Taiwan people would be absolutely furious.

The extent of "mind control" is really not that great. The internet exists, and despite imperfect controls people have access to information. It would probably take Xi down to try to abandon Taiwan.

Then maybe Xi should take more interest in the wellbeing of his people than in his personal political dynasty.

The obvious implication is that he will be replaced with someone that cares about Taiwan.

Serious question: Why do the Chinese people care so much about Taiwan though? What do they want with it? What's the endgame plan?

If the vision is that everyone will be living happily ever after under the PRC umbrella, I could see some flaws in that reasoning. Like a whole population that will probably take up arms guerilla-style. I've visited Taiwan and even wearing pro-CCP colours is frowned upon. If they just want the territory and not the people and it'll end up another XinJiang style "re-education" camp, well that's obviously something unsupportable.

Also, of course Taiwan is so crucial to global supply chains that this has all the ingredients to become a world war in short order, which is pretty worrying.

> Why do the Chinese people care so much about Taiwan though?

They mostly don’t. It’s not that big of an issue outside politics and loudmouths, which sometimes converge.

Taiwan is an excuse to add fire to patriotic indoctrination.

> What's the endgame plan?

How about unification, under the government of Taiwan? Is everybody down with that? No? Oh, then maybe the mainland could see why Taiwan isn't down with unification on the mainland's terms.

But that's the problem. Neither side is willing to be unified "under" the other. That's not unification; that's subordination. Neither is willing to be subordinated. So no non-violent unification is currently possible.

Unification with an unwilling partner is basically the same as imperialism.

Ridiculous. People always bring up the secession of the south but a far more accurate corollary would be if the citizens of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, decided to formally declared independence and vote to become an autonomous nation from the United States.

I think if you asked the average American living in the continental United States, that they would not care one iota if Puerto Rico suddenly became independent. And frankly it's the same for people living in mainland China - their day-to-day lives would change zero percentage if Taiwan was formally recognized. It's purely a matter of conditioned education delivered as part of the party system.

CCP has a much greater control on its people than others can imagine. If they want to give up on Taiwan, they can do it without much trouble. Japan used to be China's mortal enemy. CCP has no trouble normalized relationship with Japan and built "Sino-Japan friendship" [1]. No citizen uprising over this in China, though CCP used Japan as a whipping symbol to flame up nationalism from time to time. Mongolia used to be part of China and it's an independent country now. No one in China made a sound. Vast vast area of Siberia including the city Vladivostok were taken by Russia from China. Under CCP no one made a sound again. In fact, CCP and Soviet/Russia in the 90's signed a treaty to recognize the ceded territory. Again no one in China made a sound, no one overthrowing CCP on that issue. The funny thing is ROC Taiwan doesn't recognize the ceded territory and still claims the land as part of China. Taiwan is a CCP issue; Chinese people really have no say in it.

[1] Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty

Having been to both Taiwan and China several times - this is a bit inaccurate.

Yes, there is a certain believe among Chinese that Taiwan is an inalienable part of their territory, but most don't believe that reunification should be achieved by force. There is also the idea that Taiwanese people are indeed different from mainland Chinese, but at the same time, any strong Taiwanese identity is the result of propaganda and indoctrination by the Taiwanese authorities.

In other words, it seems that Chinese citizens believe that Taiwanese are "misguided children", thus there is no reason to punish them militarily, and the Taiwan question should be treated as an internal conflict, like any other separatist movement.

The context of my post is that I replied to another post that talked about the west fighting China.

Hence, I did not say people believe reunification needs to be achieved by force. What I did say is that if foreign forces pressure China into letting Taiwan go, then China will fight back.

> I did not say people believe reunification needs to be achieved by force.

Then this line:

> if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow.

doesn't make much sense to me. Who would overthrow the CCP, if not the Chinese people? And if they would be willing to do that, why wouldn't they believe in achieving reunification by force?

Many accept the status quo in which Taiwan is de facto self ruled but at least there is an aspiration towards future reunification by peaceful means, and in which Taiwan identifies as Chinese (just disagreeing on the government). As one of my (Chinese) family members put it: we can be very flexible and patient in arrangements as long as you reconize you're Chinese; who is the government is not the most imporant.

Letting go of the reunification aspiration entirely, and letting Taiwan relinquish their identity as Chinese, is a whole different matter and would make lots of people angry. It would be seen as a sign of a weak government, one which is in collusion with foreign forces to destroy Chinese sovereignty; an extension of early 20th century efforts by the west to balkanize China. The CCP will lose legitimacy.

Once CCP is overthrown, who can say whether the new policy is peaceful? Maybe a populist will make use of the anger to incite people to call for an invasion.

The CCP are actually moderates. Be careful of what you wish for.

> Letting go of the reunification aspiration entirely, and letting Taiwan relinquish their identity as Chinese

There are different types of "Chinese", and as the PRC frequently does, you are blurring the difference between them.

Taiwanese are 中文 but not 中國.

Well there are many mainlanders who disagree with that. To many people, being Chinese is being 中国人, which doesn't mean belonging to the Chinese state (whether that's PRC or ROC), but belonging to Chinese civilization, which is a bigger concept than merely speaking Chinese (中文).

I don't place much value on what mainlanders think, but we have to care because they make us.

> being Chinese is being 中国人, which doesn't mean belonging to the Chinese state

I wish that were the case, but the CCP declare themselves the arbiter and they have all the guns. People's Daily says we are "race" traitors if we don't obey their government.

So we don't like calling ourselves 中國人 anymore. I can read OK but not speak their 國語 well enough with the Taiwanese I meet to understand what they prefer. It is not a simple question. 或者华人? Maybe they ignore the pinks and still say 中國人.

我叫自己唐人

If the PRC were as reasonable as the relative you quoted above, none of this would matter. But they are not.

> if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow

Haha, no. CCP will just present it as a victory for some weird reason, and everyone will just keep applauding. There might be some resentment, but not open one.

China peoples believe what the ccp tell them to believe with their indoctrination, military containment story included Taiwan is a free and democratic coun3tey and a quite decent one in recent history.. bullying a country for for fake historical reunification purposes is not different from religious motivation and the world should take stance

I haven't found anybody actually who would care, only for recent nationalistic voices. If that would be lowered, they wouldn't care less.

And even for those who "cared" I've explained, that imagine yourself as a Taiwanese, who had and always will have a better life than any mainlander. Would they want to have a dictator above themself who beat them up like they did with HKese? So far, I've found no mainlanders yet who would still insisted to take them over. (of course personally, in chat it might be different)

The Chinese people have been indoctrinated by the CCP for decades. So to just chalk it up to the Chinese people demanding invasion is absurd and completely contrary to the facts.

Chinese Communist Party has tied it's legitimacy into uniting China. Xi has doubled down on it. Giving up would destabilize the party. It's and identity question for China. Chinese law ways that China must go to the war if peaceful unification is not possible.

Even Chinese people seem to think that Taiwanese want to be part of China. In reality support for unification is about 4% of the population. The official One China Policy exists to prevent immediate start of war.

It's not that the Communist Party ties itself to unifying China. It's the culture. It's because that the only way to claiming yourself a legitimate Chinese government is to become the conquerer of all China. All dynasties who did not have reign over every parts of China, like Jin and Song, are considered shames in history by the Chinese people.

There is nothing to do with the Communist ideology or any particular party or people. If it were KMT on the mainland and Communist Party on Taiwan, they would do the same.

You are also missing the part where the Taiwanese have always held an ambiguous stance towards reunification/independence.

I would bet that a Scottish-style ref in Taiwan (which would be tantamount to declaration of independence and hence, dead on arrival) may yield a surprising similar response: no majority support for independence.

Nonsense. The only reason why some Taiwanese do not want _formal_ independence now is because China is threating with war.

If China would allow a referendum in Taiwan (accepting any outcome peacefully), there would be 90%+ majority for independence.

Actual survey results are a bit more mixed: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7805&id=6962 Support for moving towards independence has clearly increased a lot since 2018, but many people still haven't made up their minds yet.

That is because formal independence - as used in this survey - means a considerable risk of war with China. It is no surprise that people hesitate going to war when the current status quo is somewhat ok.

This might have been true 10 or even 5 years ago but certainly isn't anymore.

> You are also missing the part where the Taiwanese have always held an ambiguous stance towards reunification/independence.

You are also missing the part where the ambiguous stance is mostly a consequence of China's threat of immediate violence if independence is ever declared. Taiwanese support for reunification is under 15% or so - and even lower among Taiwanese who were born in Taiwan. Why would they, when their living standards are way higher than China's and they live a free country?

If China went democratic then Taiwan wouldn't have much issue with becoming part of it, right?

Once people taste freedom they tend to not want to give it up, no matter how messy.

Obviously they would. If China was democratic they would probably elect a more repressive and economically left wing government. At least that's until the private sector buys enough political influence.

Democracy != Liberal democracy.

Hey I notice you're getting downvoted a lot. Wanna get in touch? Find my contact details in my profile. Twitter preferred

Recruiting more pro-CCP shills out in the open? You're slipping.

Nothing wrong with talking to like-minded people.

I hope you are not seriously thinking true propagandists are recruited out in the open via HN comments. Are you seriously paranoid and naive at the same time?

There is a strong Taiwanese identity among younger people, and that's one of the reasons why the DPP is so popular right now. Older generations and KMT supporters may favor reunification, but that's a sentiment fading away.

So, no, I don't think Taiwanese would agree to become Chinese.

This is exactly right. The people that think China is going after Taiwan for no reason are greatly underestimating the realism of States.

I mean, it basically boils down to no reason though.

People in China are happy. People in Taiwan are happy. What moron would start a war over it now?

No, there are a lot of strategic reasons beyond that.

People in China and Taiwan are happy as it is right now, yes. But if the status quo changes, for example if Taiwanese independence is recognized, people will become unhappy.

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