Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis
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The bill is not going to pass. Remember the status quo benefits America. The longer you can maintain the current status quo, the more it benefits Taiwan and America. Taiwan right now is already independent. No urgency to pass a bill like this.
It is going to pass with some amendments added
Don’t count on that…
Significant changes made.
I think Tsai would have still won. She wasn’t strong but her opponents were even weaker. 2019 was definitely not when the current tensions started. Tsai refused to affirm the 92 Consensus after she was first elected unlike her predecessor and that immediately led to some worsening of relations, but the real ramp up began when she called Trump after his election and Trump answered. Her language from day one was that Taiwan didn’t need to declare independence because it was already independent, subtly but firmly shifting the issue of Taiwan’s status towards recognition, which she pursued aggressively. The relationship was pretty bad even before Xinjiang or HK entered the news cycle.
No matter what you think about the details of the 92 Consensus, the point of it was that it allowed Taiwan and China to continue the ambivalent status quo. Beijing would have been much more patient, tolerant, and willing to negotiate and reason so long as they thought there was still an open path to peaceful reunification. The path didn’t need to be walked through. It just needed to exist in the background.
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Appreciate and welcome your sincere response. The topic is vast and complex. I'll respond with a few comments.
It's clear that Taiwan has evolved towards a new identity over the last decades. This is particularly pronounced among younger generation. Education and pro-independence brainwashing have played significant role, but Taiwan's prolonged isolation from the mainland, Taiwan's so-called democratic transition as well as the predominance of the US/Western ideology in the post-Cold War era, which ended until recently, all contributed to the process. In fact, the growing power and wealth of mainland China does not help and the effects might have been the opposite.
On the mainland China side, it has been the official policy since late '70s to appeal to Taiwan's Chineseness ("Blood is sicker than water"). It was coupled with economic inducements and incentives later as Chinese economy took off. That's the carrots. Increasingly, mainland China also started to wield the stick, as Taiwan has been clearly but inexorably drifting apart towards independence. It's pretty meaningless to argue about the exact wording and meaning of the so-called "92 Consensus," which was created to leave some grey area and is good-faith based and unenforceable anyway.
More recently, I think both the ruling elites and common people in China have come to the realization that neither appealing to the Chinese nationalism nor economic incentives works. In their views, Taiwanese have been thoroughly brainwashed. Lu Shaye's assertion that Taiwanese will go through re-education after unification reflects such realization, so does Major General Jin Yinan (金一南)'s declaration that Taiwanese who don't want unification can always leave Taiwan and China will still want the island -- so it's more about territory than people. All these may sound outrageous to Taiwanese. If you feel the same, just think about what former Singapore Prime MInister Lee Kuan Yew once commented about DPP's pro-independence brainwashing to create a new Taiwan identity. He basically said DPP is so cruel in doing that because once Taiwan is reunified, and it will be, they will have to go through the re-education process to re-establish their Chinese identity and that would be a painful process.
At this point, the fundamental differences between Taiwan and mainland China are huge and effectively unbridgeable. Only a great deal of pragmatism from Taiwan can avoid the fate, but that would be asking for something totally impossible from Taiwan. As a result, a forced unification is the only feasible and most likely outcome, as unpleasant as it sounds. In fact, I think it's actually the best solution for both mainland China and Taiwan in the long run. 1C2S a la Hong Kong has proved to be a bad solution to both HK and China, which was an unprecedented concession by China when China was poor and weak. It would not be a solution that today's China can accept. Taiwan will not be allowed to have its own military but it can have high-degree of autonomy similar to today's Hong Kong or Macau. That's what Taiwan will end up to be whether it's going to be a peaceful or forced unification.
Your views about Uyghurs and Hong Kong have been clearly influenced by your background and environment. If you're open-minded and willing to learn, you'll find the situations are totally different from what you imagine. But that would be another topic for another day.
A war act if I've ever seen one. "deterring China" I guess the same way the Japanese deterred the Allies at Marco Polo bridge and Pearl Harbor.
Another bonus from Pelosi's blunder is that China now has arrayed enough forces to defend Taiwan for whenever Biden goes on TV and does the American version of Putin's February 24 speech.
They know they're losing hard economically, so now they'll try fighting a war. It would be more convinient for China to fight US once it has several times more VLO platforms and more ships, but in practice, the defending party has never been able to count on to luxury of finishing all their moves.
Japan struck before America could come close to remotely finish their fleet program and before they had a comparable naval fighter. Germany stuck before USSR could finish its army reforms.
China's remaining next gen developments will probably have to be done midwar, but this will not be a huge setback. You fight with the army you have not the one you wish you had, and I'm pretty sure the government planned extensively for this.
The only hope for peace now lies on the US people, or more accurately, the pro peace faction in the US regime (as the people have clearly lost power) to stop the revanchists from going to war.
Peaceful reunification through economic enticement has failed despite the overwhelming success of the Chinese economy. Taiwanese enjoy a standard of living that is on par or higher than Chinese citizens from the costal cities.
And the real issue has never been about economy, but rather political. When people talk about their Taiwanese identify, they are in fact talking about their political system/way of life.
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