Congratulations on your newfound courage to finally engage a long-time superior debater.
The majority of people living in Taiwan are descended from those that had lived there for centuries, well before the Chinese civil war. They didn't steal the land, they already owned it.
Untrue. The Taiwanese aborigine population is estimated at only half a million on an island of 23 million Chinese speaking, obvious Han descendent people. Taiwan was also under Chinese control and ownership throughout much of history.
As for the KMT, if you've got a beef with them the sensible thing would be to pressure Xi to hold them account rather than treat them as China's best friends.
Don't care about them. They lost. That's history.
Why does that matter? Are you saying that people in Iceland are unhappy because they're part of a tiny country? Obviously not. Being a part of a small country doesn't make you poor or sad, nor does being a citizen of a large country make you happy or rich. I guess some people have strange priorities if their happiness is measured only in patriotism or national pride.
Some people want to be a part of something big and do big things with their lives as opposed to living a small and inconsequential, though comfortable existence. These people run the world. Pride and honor are the greatest luxuries in life; they are foreign to some.
Apart from the hundreds of billions of dollars of investment (trillions?) Taiwanese poured into China, especially during the early years when it opened up.
Private citizens and the government are totally different and even so, in any population, it is only a minority who can invest in businesses, much less those overseas. And while it is unfair that these people have, compared to the rest of the general Chinese population, done so little, probably had even a net negative effect on China's rise, and yet could become citizens equal to the most patriotic Chinese citizen alive, it's an unfairness I can live with because they are, at the end of the day, family.
Enjoy what? Lower living standards? Greater state surveillance?
What part of state surveillance scares you? I'm a law-abiding citizen and it doesn't scare me; to me, it means less potential for criminal activity that harms myself and my country. The PRC would not likely be interested in taking wealth away from the island at all; as a matter of fact, I would be surprised if they noticed any change in their regular apolitical lives.
Taiwanese aren't poor, they've got less inequality, better public healthcare and education, a cleaner environment, etc than Chinese have. There's nothing that Beijing would reasonably do to make Taiwanese better off than they are now.
When I said they were poor, I meant collectively too poor to muster up a mighty military. I know they are not poor per capita. The ROC is an old and mature society while the PRC is still growing quickly. Beijing could give the Taiwanese the thing they lack most, which is self-respect, pride, and honor, as I said, the greatest luxury of all, without which everything else in life is meaningless.
Huh. Weird that China's resisted being incorporated by neighbouring states throughout history then. If their neighbours had handed out big bags of cash would Chinese have gladly surrendered their independence? I find that a curious argument to advance.
Once united, China had the potential to become the most powerful civilization on earth. The pride and honor is already there. It makes no sense to be incorporated elsewhere. If China were a small powerless country without the hope to rising to the top of the world, and there were a large rising Asian power next to it stemming from the same ancestral roots, then incorporation would be a different story. I would surely consider it over being used as a political pawn by racist Western nations half the world away.
