I didn’t say it goes anywhere, I’m saying the issues they got doesn’t bode well in the long term and I don’t think Taiwan should tie itself to China
Also, with all this union talk, what makes you think China will not reneg on any deal that is made ? They have reneged on the join declaration, scs, seventeen point agreement, etc
Hence why I said Taiwan needs international recognition as a new type of political entity in the UN.
Im trying to find the middle ground between full independence and blindly trusting China.
Taiwan IS tied to China already. Republic of China cannot disappear without a war. We cannot even change the Constitution in any real way.
Economically we are massively intermarried with China.
Geographically we are 70 miles away.
Militarily we are their number one target.
Culturally there are close links.
The world knows Taiwan often as Chinese Taipei or Taiwan China and there is NOTHING we can really do about it as far as I can see from what has been happening and the constitutional bind along with the membership of the olympics etc.
My own country has almost no official links with Taiwan and that situation is pretty common unfortunately. It’s a real pain in the ass for me for many years and it’s gotten worse and worse. To my homeland Taiwan is ALREADY part of China in many ways.
It’s only some big countries really that maintain good links with the Taiwan government .
It sounds defeatist but it’s the reality. So we should negotiate something but not one country two systems…
So, I guess I could be open to negotiate something. But, serious question, why do you think they will uphold whatever is agreed upon when they haven’t done that in hk ?
Hence not one country, two systems.
Very good point. This is why I think the only way any kind of agreement could work is if it is a purely symbolical change, but mostly keeps the status quo. Like a country name change (“Free area of the Republic of China” comes to mind 
), and an agreement about how to present the new entity internationally.
Anyway, I hope whatever happens, the China government would not gain any real world power over Taiwan (Laws, currency, armed forces, mass immigration of mainlanders, …). As we can see in HK, they can not be trusted to stay true to the spirit of any arrangement.
That would imply that an area of the ROC is not free.
ROC = Taiwan
PRC = China
Free area of the PRC?
They would never consent to that. Never.
Oh…
I see what you did there. Ha!
At this point, China is China (PRC) and Taiwan is Taiwan. I wish Taiwan would drop the whole ROC thing
Isn’t this really just a stab at concessions from the west along the same lines as what the Kim family has been doing for decades? Do they really want a war they can hardly afford, politically and economically? Do they really want 25 million democratic people causing them a rash? They already have their hands full with their western borders as it is.
I know the only limey in Kinmen.
To be fair, Kinmen and Matsu are really a different story—right next to China’s coast, and in many ways the genuine leftovers of the civil war (they were not, for example, part of the Treaty of San Francisco, as they were of course not ever formally Japanese colonies).
If/when Taiwan finally ditches the burdensome ROC shell, Kinmen and Matsu residents should have the right to a referendum or some other mechanism to determine what they want in the future.
Guy
Don’t know which thread to put this in. Behind a paywall, so I pasted the lot:
Taiwan mobilises forces to thwart Chinese invasion
Everything from cyber attacks, blockades to full scale war is being prepared for
On Friday, Taiwan’s top military brass gathered in secure rooms within the fortified walls of the sprawling ministry of defence to prepare for war with China.
Computer screens in front of them likely displayed the island nation’s F-16 fighter jets taking to the skies, precision-guided cruise missiles blasting China’s west coast ports, and its Tuo Chiang-class corvettes, dubbed “aircraft carrier killers,” deployed to pick off high value targets in the Taiwan Strait.
But outside the gated compound all was quiet. Welcome to Taiwan’s virtual war room, where decorated generals and officers this week are being tested against the most chilling scenarios – from a full-scale invasion to cyberattacks and blockades of critical infrastructure.
The highly classified annual “Han Kuang” military drills come under the shadow of very real threats from Taiwan’s hostile superpower neighbour.
Recent months have seen an uptick in warmongering rhetoric from Beijing matched by intensifying air force and naval activity around the island 110 miles off the Chinese coast.
China’s Air Force has made sorties into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on a near daily basis since last September, hitting a record high of 25 fighters, including nuclear capable bombers, on April 12.
The daily screech of jets has alarmed the United States and nearby Japan, prompting Washington to warn China it would be a “serious mistake” to take Taiwan by force.
While there are no signs of an imminent Chinese attack, China appears to be setting the stage to make good on a long-promised threat to annex the island, by force if necessary.
The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan - a democracy of 23 million, which functions like any other nation with its own government and military – but it claims the island as its own territory.
Military strategists warn Taiwan does not have the luxury of time to practice defending its shores.
China could invade within the next six years as Beijing rapidly steps up its challenge to American forces in the Indo-Pacific, Admiral Philip Davidson, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific command predicted in March.
His warning is likely to weigh heavily on Taiwanese military chiefs over the eight-day Han Kuang war games, where computer simulations switch between mock threats of conventional beach landings and aerial assaults to electronic attacks and psychological warfare.
In July, the military will shift to live-fire exercises – landing fighter jets on highways and testing its tanks and artillery for combat readiness - to project a more overt show of force to deter Beijing from aggression.
Taiwan is not only crucial to the global supply chain of semiconductors but also lies at a strategic point of international trade routes. Control of Taiwan would grant China its much-desired open access to the Pacific coastline, presenting a challenge to Washington’s free and open Indo-Pacific strategy.
Global leaders are also being forced to consider the worst-case-scenario of a Chinese invasion that could draw the Indo-Pacific region and the West into armed conflict with China.
Joseph Wu, the Taiwanese foreign minister, said this month that Taiwan “will fight the war if we need to fight the war,” pledging that “we will defend ourselves to the very last day.”
But Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan business council, said he did not foresee an impending “D-Day-style” invasion.
“My own view of what’s going on right now is that Chinese operations around the island are primarily focused on psychological operations,” he said.
This had the twin goal of trying to “up the pressure on the people of Taiwan” and to “test the mettle of the US government” during the transition to the Biden administration.
Analysts have cautioned that China could also opt to target Taiwan’s infrastructure and economy or seek to cut off its energy supplies.
“To me the path for them is much more blockade, potentially taking an outlying island, something that ups the ante significantly but is not actually them shooting at Taiwan,” he said.
“I think that creates much more political problems for the US and Japan on how to engage than starting to mobilise forces.”
Kitsch Liao, a Taiwan defence analyst, said this week’s drills – which pit joint staff members against a hypothetical enemy “red team” of advisers and retired officers - will be key to training wartime decision-makers and predicting the pressures of battle.
The exercise also trials Taiwan’s war plan to protect its Air Force and deploy its Navy for “decisive engagement against [China’s] amphibious landing group,” said Mr Liao.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert on the Chinese military at Stanford University, said Beijing did not view the current conditions for invasion as favourable but she cautioned the international community against losing a “sense of urgency” to take timely measures to avert a military move in possibly 6-7 years.
Chinese confidence had been boosted by the restructuring and modernisation of its armed forces under President Xi Jinping, prompting a bolder strategic calculation about its ability to take Taiwan, she said.
“I think under Xi Jinping there has been a shift in mentality away from just preventing independence towards promoting progress towards reunification,” said Ms Mastro. “He has given the impression that this is going to be part of his legacy.”
Pentagon data estimates China’s defence expenditure is about 25 times larger than Taiwan’s and its active ground forces of 1,030,000 dwarf the latter’s 88,000. It is widely believed that without outside help, Taiwan could only withstand a full attack for days not weeks.
But despite its military dominance, China’s forces in recent memory have rarely been put to the test on the battlefield. “The main factor that imposes caution on the Chinese is that they don’t know how well they are going to perform,” said Ms Mastro.
China also did not want to risk its “rejuvenation process” or its economic rise through a protracted conflict or potential punitive sanctions, she said, referring to the Communist Party’s long-term goal of building the nation into a global and military power.
“I think the good news is that China doesn’t want to do this now. So they’re not going to be pushed by some low level slights…because they don’t feel like they are 100% ready,” she said.
Prominent local media coverage in Taiwan about the military drills has generated little sense of alarm among the public, which is largely inured to decades of Chinese intimidation tactics.
“There is general consensus on the existence and nature of the threat,” said Mr Liao, but he said the public was divided over the ability of the military to repel an invasion.
While many would be willing to step up to defend Taiwan, there was a poor perception of the military’s bureaucracy, but an overarching view that the US – the island’s biggest arms supplier – would help. “Belief in US intervention is quite strong,” he said.
This video might help with some sleepless nights.
More:
China is “preparing for its final military assault” on Taiwan, the island’s foreign minister has told Sky News, as he vowed to “defend ourselves to the very end”.
damn Xi is up for election next year ? shit is not looking good. I didn’t know about the whole mandate from heaven shit. Which means invasion is either this year or maybe in the next 20 years lol.
Don’t trust google translate?
I’m lost. Mandate from heaven saw it mentioned in the video you posted. then read it up on wikipedia. and cpc election is 2022. putting 2 and 1 together
I think the one guy was saying that Covid threw a wrench into the wheels of said mandate.
I can’t imagine an election where the primary campaign strategy is ‘vote for me or I kill you’ would be much of a nail biter.
See