Nancy Pelosi to meet Taiwan’s president on Wednesday
ft.com
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If California and its inhabitants decided to be its own country and Mexico visited California President Newsom would this be accepted?
The whole thing seems arbitrary and silly to me. I guess that’s politics for you?
Not exactly. China says there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of it, and the CCP is the government of all of China. Taiwan says there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of it, and the government of Taiwan is the legitimate government of China - all of it.
De facto, of course, they are two separate countries.
So the analogy would be something like a revolution in the US, the revolutionaries winning, President Biden fleeing to Hawaii with his cabinet, and then the rest of the US having a hissy fit because the president of Mexico visited Hawaii.
China is really insecure about Taiwan, and they show it every time anybody shows any bit of recognition to Taiwan. Maybe the issue is that Taiwan claims to be the legitimate government of all of China, and the CCP doesn't feel that their legitimacy is all that solid...
[Edit: "Would this be acceptable?" Acceptable to who? In that analogy, would it be acceptable to the rest of the US? Why do you think that's a relevant question? If California has truly separated from the US, then the only way the US thinks they have any say is if they have refused to accept that California has separated. And even then, they only think they have some say. They don't actually have it, and they have no moral grounds for saying that they should have it.
So China can buzz off. They have no right to decide who can be allowed to visit Taiwan.]
The irony there is transcendant.
Taiwan’s indigenous people remind Xi Jinping that it has “never belonged to China” https://qz.com/1518787/taiwans-indigenous-people-remind-xi-j...
The First Nations of Taiwan: A Special Report on Taiwan's indigenous peoples https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survi...
Taiwan’s Han Chinese seek a new identity among the island’s tribes https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/04/taiwan-indig...
A future for Taiwan's indigenous people https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co9UD89J_1g
That's not true. The official stance of the current government is that Taiwan is an independent country and has no need to “declare” independence. This contrast with the longtime position of the KMT which ruled during the long effective one-party era and has had varying influence during the more democratic period of the last few decades, but is currently the main opposition party.
It's kind of weird that so many people seem to have their idea of Taiwan stuck in the KMT one-party-rule era.
> That's not true.
"The ROC constitution, meanwhile, still claims Taiwan, China, Mongolia, and the entire South China Sea as its territory..." https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/ta...
Taiwan’s constitution challenge https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/05...
So I'm a little baffled that in the west the talking point is about who owns who but we all know it's not the point but maintaining or breaking status quo is.
Your analogy makes no sense.
The only reason we’re discussing this is because in the case of Taiwan China is trying to scare people from acknowledging Taiwans claimed sovereignty.
This is the part you're oversimplifying, the CCP does not say "fair enough." Taiwan has the highest democracy index in Asia, and the 8th highest in the world trailing only Scandinavia, NZ, and Ireland right now. It's not arbitrary or silly to the people of Taiwan if the CCP wants to take that away from them.
Your comparison doesn't bear any resemblance to reality.
The only time in history that a U.S. president visited Taiwan was when President Eisenhower toured the country and met with former ruler Chiang Kai-shek in 1960. President Trump's phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen was the first time a U.S. president-elect had directly spoken to a Taiwanese leader since former President Carter severed diplomatic relations in 1979.
A presidential visit to Taiwan would be such a big deal that it might just prompt China to attack, or do something short of it, like freezing US assets in China or banning all electronics exports to the US.