A Dangerous Game Over Taiwan: For decades, China has coveted its island neighbor

It goes without saying that Taiwan is internationally recognised as part of China. This is true even in the constitutions of both parties in the dispute, the PRC in the mainland and ROC on the island.

This legal fact, which New Yorker article simply ignores, is root cause of the tension between those two governments.

We can recognise today that the people of Taiwan may well covet formal dependence - we will see if and when this is ever put up as an electoral goal by the DPP - whilst also understanding the motives of the PRC to maintain technical territorial integrity, however theoretical the claim.

The entire thing is a fudge of course, but kicking intractable disputes into the long grass is not a bad strategy to keep the peace.