Everybody knows about the backstory, there was a civil war, KMT fled to Taiwan creating two Chinas sort of, maybe, neither recognises the other, whole thing. ROC (Taiwan) ended up transitioning from military rule to a multi-party democracy, while the PRC (mainland China) didn’t do that (they did reform economically, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and all that, but still a one-party state, not a multi-party democracy). The status quo right now is that Taiwan is in the grey area of statehood where they function pretty much independently but aren’t properly recognised, and both sides of the strait are feeling pretty tense right now.
Taiwan’s stance on the issue is that they would like to remain politically and economically independent of mainland China, retaining their multi-party democracy, political connections to its allies, economic trade connections, etc. Also, a majority of the people in Taiwan do not support reunification with China.
China’s stance on the issue is that Taiwan should be reunified with the mainland at all costs, ideally peacefully, but war is not ruled out. They argue that Taiwan was unfairly separated from the mainland by imperial powers in their “century of humiliation”. Strategically, taking Taiwan would be beneficial to China as they would have better control of the sea.
Is it even possible for both sides to agree to a peaceful solution? Personally, I can only see two ways this could go about that has the consent of both parties. One, a reformist leader takes power in the mainland and gives up on Taiwan, and the two exist as separate independent nations. Or two, the mainland gets a super-reformist leader that transitions the mainland to a multi-party democracy, and maybe then reunification could be on the table, with Taiwan keeping an autonomous status given the large cultural difference (similar to Hong Kong or Macau’s current status). Both options are, unfortunately, very unlikely to occur in the near future.
A third option (?) would be a pseudo-unification, where Taiwan becomes a recognised country, but there can be free movement of people between the mainland and Taiwan, free trade, that sort of stuff (sort of like the EU? Maybe?). Not sure if the PRC would accept that.
What are your thoughts on a peaceful solution to the crisis that both sides could agree on?
Sadly the current status quo is the best solution.
China blockades Taiwan (or economically chokes them a different way) and Taiwan gives in. No one else steps in coz we want dat lithium for da AI centres from our China Daddy boi
Realistic? The current status quo of everyone pretending Taiwan isn’t a country and China not invading.
China isn’t going to accept an independent Taiwan for a variety of reasons. That likely won’t change unless there is a war.
Let’s cut the bullshit: a lot of what’s being said here is just garden-variety racism dressed up as “concern for democracy.” The way some of you talk about mainland Chinese people(like we’re brainwashed bugs, NPCs, or extensions of the state) is dehumanizing. Full stop. You don’t speak this way about Americans living under mass surveillance, police violence, and corporate rule. You don’t speak this way about Europeans crushed by austerity. Somehow it’s only Chinese people who get stripped of agency.
IWe’re not a hive mind. We argue, complain, adapt, survive, organize families, build lives, same as anyone else. Reducing 1.4 billion people to propaganda victims just so you can feel morally superior is chauvinism. You can criticize the Chinese government without pretending the population is subhuman or that fuck x is legitimate criticism.
And this Hong Kong nostalgia is especially grotesque. You’re romanticizing a British colony run explicitly for banks and property tycoons. No elections for governors. Workers packed into coffin apartments. People waiting decades for public housing. Extreme inequality baked into law. But because it flew a Union Jack and spoke English, suddenly it becomes a paradise of “freedom”? That tells me everything about whose suffering you care about.
You also keep pretending Taiwan exists in some magical vacuum. It doesn’t. It’s the unresolved end of a civil war, frozen in place by US military power, and now functions as an unsinkable aircraft carrier pointed at the Chinese coast. Any major power on Earth would see that as an existential threat. The US would lose its mind if China parked missiles off California. But when China objects, suddenly it’s “authoritarian aggression.” (who remembers the Cuban missile crisis)
If you actually care about peace, stop parroting racist bullshit narratives. Stop flattening Chinese people into stereotypes. Stop acting like Western militarization of East Asia is neutral or benevolent. You don’t have to like the CPC. But if your worldview starts from “Chinese people are brainwashed and inferior,” even if you phrase it with better pr you’re a racist.
This thread is wild. All these “freedom and democracy” lovers apparently don’t know anything about China or Taiwan. Give Taiwan nukes? Insanity.
When does saying that “Taiwan should have the right to self-determination” require making any xenophobic or racist claims about Chinese people?
You tell me. Why do so many feel the need to use the Chinese civil war split to push racism, xenophobia and chauvinism against the Chinese? Saying Taiwan should be independent isn’t what I’m taking issue with even if I disagree with that statement personally. It’s the racism that you(general you not you specifically) accompany it with.
You tell me. Why do so many feel the need to use the Chinese civil war split to push racism, xenophobia and chauvinism against the Chinese?
I don’t know. Am I doing that when I say that Taiwan should ideally be an independent state because that’s ultimately what they want?
Taiwan should ideally be an independent state because that’s ultimately what they want?
What they actually want, according to polls, is to maintain the status quo.
And you’d be foolish to think China’s rhetoric and threats doesn’t impact how people vote on that. In any case, “Reunification” is very much the least favourite choice from all of them.
And Taiwan is already a de facto independent state.
Well, fortunately I have Westerners to tell me what the Taiwanese people want so I don’t have to worry about what they actually say.
And Taiwan is already a de facto independent state.
Right, which is why throwing the situation into chaos to force a non-issue is completely absurd.
I can literally read their polling on this and in a binary choice between official independence and “reunification”, the former wins out.
Right, which is why throwing the situation into chaos to force a non-issue is completely absurd.
I didn’t say anything should change. Just that they do not want to be incorporated into China.
No? I would question it being what they want as a whole I’m not sure it’s that clear an issue. But if that’s all you said then my comment obviously doesn’t apply to you. ???
I’m not saying it’s a big issue, but status-quo or status-quo with a view to independence (combined constitute a majority of polling on the matter) very much indicate wanting to maintain independence de facto - combined with a majority of pro-Taiwan identity in polling.
“Reunification” scores very badly.
The way some of you talk about mainland Chinese people(like we’re brainwashed bugs, NPCs, or extensions of the state) is dehumanizing. Full stop. You don’t speak this way about Americans living under mass surveillance, police violence, and corporate rule.
I’ve definitely seen this type of rhetoric being directed at Americans more and more as our current president continues to fuck up everything.
Maybe, but it’s nowhere near the same scale or normalization. Say something positive about China(from infrastructure to poverty reduction)and it’s instantly “propaganda,” “brainwashed,” “you can’t trust anything from there.” Americans don’t get treated that way as a people. US media is taken as baseline reality despite massive corporate and state influence, while Chinese society unfortunately often gets dismissed wholesale as incapable of independent thought.
To be clear, the stereotype of the dumb American is at least true since at least the Iraq War.
Or there is the “send a bunch of PRC soldiers to the ROC and let’s see what will happen”
They won’t run out of people for the meat grinder, that’s fò xiù as would sunglasses-man say
Freedom for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Tiber and Xinjiag too
Taiwan need to stop claiming they are the legitimate government of China.
China need to recognise that Taiwan isn’t part of China anymore.
Neither will happen.
Or one of the two collapses and the other one assumes power. Taiwan could concede which I don’t hope they do but technically its possible.
its kinda wierd how they claim it, when initially they were just as brutal as the ccp early days.
Taiwan would stop claiming it tomorrow officially, but China would see that as a declaration of independence and justification to invade.
just as brutal
Theres a difference between brutality in response to millenia of oppression and brutality against anyone who might not want to continue that oppression.
Thats not to say the CPC was some perfectly just machine, but the two are qualitatively different. Would you say the French og revolutionaries were just as brutal as the bourbons?
Peaceful or fair?
For peaceful, I think that China needs to make it so the world doesn’t depend on them for high end chip manufacturer, so the USA stops caring about them because they’re not a critical strategic national interest.
Then they just invade.The world isn’t doing shit about Gaza, the world is barely doing anything about Ukraine. I think the world sits by and watches it happen, if they’re not a critical strategic interest.
Are you suggesting that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a peaceful act? What?
China should accept Taiwans sovereignty as a separate Chinese country, and stop being such a little bitch. The end.
Lets be realistic. If the confederates ran away to Key West after the civil war, would the US accept a hostile state, backed by a hostile super-power, claiming to be the government of all of USA right off their coast?
It’s not even key west it’s more like they ran away to Maine
They did even worse, they let them stay!
No? But then Taiwan doesn’t actually seriously maintain this anymore. It’s all a front. They have to say this because repudiating the ‘one China’ system could be interpreted as a declaration of independence, which would be interpreted as a green light for China to invade.
Someone who threatens war to acquire land is not the good guy. Fuck them.
Yes I realize this also references you know who as well.
Given human history, I think it references everyone. That’s not a dig, more acknowledgment that this isn’t actually new.
While I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, the only peaceful outcome I can see is actually just a continuation of the status quo, where mainland China uses “reunification” messaging as little more than a show of strength and patriotic political rhetoric, and where the Western world continues to treat Taiwan’s independence with “strategic ambiguity” while hinting to China that any attempt to take Taiwan will be met with a large scale Western response from the US and allies.
I do think that the West wants Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine to be a sign of what China should expect if they were to attempt to annex Taiwan. It won’t be easy, it’ll throw trade and supply chains into absolute chaos, and it’ll be met with harsh economic sanctions and large weapons deals at the very least. The West wants China to feel that there is very little upside to attacking Taiwan, and that it’s much more reasonable to maintain the status quo (though arguably, tariffs and trade wars needlessly remove some of the US’s economic leverage over China).
Rhetoric aside, how much chaos and bloodshed is China really willing to tolerate just for the pyrric victory of finishing what Mao started almost a century ago?
I think the main hope for peace is that Xi and the ruling members of the CCP feel that it’s in their personal best interest to talk a big game while doing the bare minimum to disrupt the systems that they currently benefit from.
China simply waits and maintains its current policy until pro-unification sentiment in Taiwan grows large enough. The balance of power in the Pacific is shifting away from the US and before this century is out they will no longer be able to offer security guarantees.
After what China did to Hong Kong that’s never happening.
What China did to Hong Kong?
You mean freed them from a council imposed by the British, elected by the crown and large businesses?
You mean freed them from a council imposed by the British, elected by the crown and large businesses?
And so what new representation rights did they provide them after they annexed them, exactly? Or did they round up and purge the pro-autonomy and independence activists?
Stole their autonomy, reduced social freedoms, and imprisoned activists creating an environment of fear and oppression.
What autonomy, they lived in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie imposed by Britain.
What Social freedoms? The freedom to die under bridges or in coffin apartments or to live in literal tinder boxes?
What Social freedoms? The freedom to die under bridges or in coffin apartments or to live in literal tinder boxes?
Sorry, what, you depict pre-CCP controlled Hong Kong as if it was Somalia, or something.
I depict it as living in a colony of Britain, which it literally was.
And the coffin apartments, homelessness, and lack of fire safety are pretty well known. Have you been to Hong Kong? There’s massive inequality and some of the highest rent in the world because the government blocked the expansion of housing for decades.
I depict it as living in a colony of Britain, which it literally was.
And what did the people of Hong Kong want exactly?
And the coffin apartments, homelessness, and lack of fire safety are pretty well known.
These are things all “well known” in lots of highly populated urban cities. Is Hong Kong supposed to be unique here? Are you referring to any data that specifically identifies Hong Kong being uniquely ailed by the worst excesses of urban blight in comparison to other similar cities? What does this have to do with cracking down on pro-independence movements and activism in the city?
All polling indicates that pro-unification sentiment isn’t growing though. If China is waiting until they have consent of the Taiwanese, then why would security guarantees from the USA be relevant in the first place?
Most likely the thought is that without US security support, Taiwanese sentiment will shift towards China by default.
This seems to be complete conjecture though.
Now you’re getting it. Security guarantees from the US are NOT relevant. They are rhetorical cover for military build up inline with the US policy of encirclement. Absent from all of these discussions is that the US has military forces stationed 4 miles of the mainland because Taiwan is not one island it’s a province comprising an island chain. The CPC’s consistent policy is peaceful reunification via waiting except in the case where a foreign military uses the province to threaten the mainland.
反攻大陆 (Counterattack the mainland) 😏
/just kidding
I think the only peaceful unification would be if CCP falls and mainland China becomes an actual democracy with free and fair elections, then mainland, HK, Taiwan can form a union, where Taiwan and HK remains autonomous regions for domestic politics (and this automony would be backed by a constitution) and have a common front for defence.
I mean another option would be complete sovereignty but a European Union type of thing where they do cooperate and sort of is like a country, but maintain the option to leave.
But regardless, I think it all comes down to what HKers and Taiwanese want, you need a referrendum for these types of things. I’d say to have legitimacy: Two consecutive referrendums in two separate regularly scheduled election with majority approval before any plan is enacted, to attempt to prevent a Brexit shenanigan.
I’m Chinese American so while I do support democracy, I am kinda leaning towards reunification assuming that there is actually democracy, but again it all comes down to what the people think, the will of the people is more important than my opinions.
A peaceful and realistic solution? Taiwan develops a strategic nuclear deterrent. They’re already a near-nuclear country and an industrial and technological powerhouse. A nuclear bomb is fully within their capability, and they already have abundant supplies of all the precursor materials in their possession. The most realistic solution to the Taiwan crisis is that Taiwan obtains nuclear weapons, and China is never able to threaten them with invasion again.
Taiwan trying to develop nuclear weapons would be the fastest way to get themselves invaded. China would put a stop to it before it they could even say “nuclear deterrent”.
History has proven otherwise.
It turns out, that while everyone says that arms races and escalation lead to conflict… Actually, what we’ve seen is that waiving a big stick is the only true deterrent.
And yet, plenty of other countries have managed to do it…
Have you looked into the context of how they were able to do it and how difficult stopping them would have been?
If North Korea could do it, so can Taiwan.
When I clicked on this thread I did not anticipate one of the answers being “Taiwan just needs to adopt Juche.”
A large part of why the DPRK is the way it is is because it has oriented itself around not getting invaded by a much stronger foe. They made the choice to orient their economy around self-suffiency, so that they could survive a prolonged conflict even if foreign navies completely cut them off from the rest of the world.
In contrast, Taiwan has an export economy, producing highly specialized equipment to be sold all around the world. Taiwan’s economy is intimately connected to the rest of the world. Taiwan is a much richer country because of it. But it also makes Taiwan more vulnerable to trade disruptions, for example, if China imposed a blockade.
I don’t think that Taiwan has any interest in walking the path of the DPRK. I’m also confused on how bringing a historical reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis into a situation that has been stable for decades is supposed to, what, bring peace?
North Korea has a million artillery pieces and like 20 million people ready to call back to service, and China would probably get involved if the alternative is a hostile puppet state on their border. The calculus of invading NK is quite different than Taiwan.
Which ones were a small island country that had a massively more powerful hostile neighbour looking right over their shoulder when developing their nuclear weapons?
North Korea did it, and it had the United States, the nation with the most powerful surveillance capabilities in the world looking right over its shoulder. And keep in mind, we’re still technically at war with North Korea. And North Korea might as well be an island. But really, the island part is irrelevant here, as Taiwan already possesses all the nuclear material it would need. It has a well developed nuclear power sector. The island gets half its electricity from nuclear power. And they have several research reactors. It already has all the fissile material it needs to build a bomb.
plenty of other countries
North Korea
Unless Taiwan can spend the trillions upon trillions of dollars and fully complete enough MIRV ICBMs to be able to absolutely saturate the entire country of China leaving no inch of land unscathed from nuclear fire, essentially ensuring MAD doctrine to deter an invasion, all without China discovering this, China won’t tolerate a nuclear program and simply invade Taiwan so trivially with their unending human meat waves to destroy all hope of defense surrounding the island.
I don’t believe you actually need any of that. The thing is, nuclear weapons are scary. When it comes to fear, actually capabilities barely figure in. Because what if it gets through anyway? What if the west sells them a super advanced delivery system? What if they try something we didn’t think of?
Better not risk it.
Taiwan doesn’t need thousands of nuclear weapons to be a credible threat to China. A dozen bombs with delivery systems would be more than enough to make a credible deterrent. The goal isn’t to be able to wipe out the entire population of mainland China. The goal would simply be to make any invasion so costly that the cost would vastly outweigh any potential gains. I don’t know what all Xi hopes to gain by conquering Taiwan, but whatever it is, it’s not worth losing the dozen largest Chinese cities in a series of mushroom clouds. To the Chinese leadership, the conquest of Taiwan is not worth getting Beijing nuked. Maybe Mao would have made that trade, back when China was a rural peasant nation. But now? China is the workshop of the world. The entire economy and China’s place in the world are utterly dependent on its megacities.
I don’t know what all Xi hopes to gain by conquering Taiwan,
Might want to figure that out first, before trying to come up with a solution. Because I’d say the number one thing Xi would gain by conquering Taiwan would be, “Not having an island full of missiles pointing at us right off our coast.”
A dozen bombs with delivery systems would be more than enough to make a credible deterrent.
ALL of those can be trivially intercepted with military tech from the mid-90’s that China has in abundance (I love you internet armchair generals and the guile to be so wrong constantly), hence the modern necessity to create MIRVs which are impossible to track if enough are deployed.
unending human meat waves
You know China has been building their military for this singular conflict since like 1949 right? They have an entire branch of their military dedicated to missiles.
The idea of WWI-style human meat waves getting applied to communist countries was literally nazi propaganda. China didn’t cause the longest retreat in US history during the Korean war because suddenly WWI tactics started working against a military 50 years more advanced than the one that demonstrated human meat waves don’t work.
Not Nazi propaganda. Literally what Russia does to this day…
I’m garbage in history.
Can’t we just treat it as relationships. I mean the reunification should only be done if both sides mutually agree. Forcing by any means is not good
