I don't think anyone's posted this yet, but Taiwan's GDP grew 13.7% in Q1 this year, and their GDP per capita is well ahead of both SK and Japan now. This is pretty insane to say the least and I honestly don't see any potential paths to peaceful reunification with this kind of economic growth. Even wanwanese people on BiliBili, who are probably the most mainland-friendly group of people on the island, are pretty damn smug about their economy and job prospects, so while their growth is obviously pretty unevenly distributed, they are growing at 2000s mainland rates (double digits!) which masks any problems with fair distributions of wealth.
I remember back in 2018-ish, there are people on Zhihu etc. claiming that peaceful reunification is possible if their economy stagnates, but with the way things are going, even if their economy hit a brick wall and the AI bubble completely bursts tomorrow like Japan's did in the 90s, I still don't see how their mindset can change to be open to PR. Even Japan, after three decades of economic decline, is still able to maintain a relatively high QoL and even an increasingly hostile stance towards China. I'm pretty confident that the same will happen to Taiwan, with a long denial phase and a longer anger phase, even if their AI-based economy crashes tomorrow, which is already a highly unlikely event in the next few years to say the least.
idk if anyone is a proponent of peaceful reunification here (as in believing that PR is a possible and likely path, not a unilateralist that is against the use of force unless provoked by principle), but I'd love to hear any arguments for PR being likely or even possible at this point (before the set timeline of 2049, otherwise we'd all be dead by then anyways like Keynes said).
