I’m a journalism student researching public perceptions of the Taiwan–China–US triangle, and I would love to hear real opinions from people living in Taiwan.
How do you personally see the future of the Taiwan Strait?
Do you believe the next decade will bring stability, escalation, or something completely different?
How do international actors (US, Japan, ASEAN) influence your perspective?
I’m especially interested in the personal angle:
What shapes your views — media, family, school, national service, friends, or everyday experiences in Taiwan?
Most of us here are not “ordinary Taiwanese”, by most definitions.
Probably half of our ethnically Taiwanese regular posters don’t live in Taiwan.
“Ordinary Taiwanese” aren’t on Forumosa in English, there is a similar forum in Chinese (PPP?) where you can get a similarly keyboard warrior perspective on things.
To get a sample of “Ordinary Taiwanese” you could stake out the front of a hot pot restaurant with a translator.
Can you change your demographic to online expats?
If the answer is yes, you could also feed our existing discussions in the topic (several threads) into an LLM to find themes over decades.
I am very much not ordinary Taiwanese, but I have spoken with some about this issue, and would summarize my recollection and interpretation of their responses as follows:
Thank you very much for your response, i really appreciate it. I would like to apologise for the incorrect wording and use of inappropriate terms. I did not intend to offend anyone. I am sincerely grateful for your response!)
The average Taiwanese person views invasion/unification the way most people deal with death…it’s this vague inevitability in the back of their minds that they do their best not to think much about, mostly successfully.
I think 2049 - the 100 year anniversary of the founding of the PRC - is China’s target date for taking control of Taiwan. Any saber rattling it’s doing now is just to tamp down any independence movement activities in Taiwan or encouraged by other nations.
China’s long view is that by 2049 it will be much stronger and more self-sufficient than it is now and the U.S. will be much weaker and more riven by internal divisions than it is now so asserting its control over Taiwan at that point will just be a matter of a show of force and then walking in and taking over.
Will they find it reassuring though? I don’t find it very reassuring. Basic human psychology though I guess. Stuff needs to be repressed so people can go about their daily lives.
yes, I’ll be done working and raising a child here by then. will go back to the USA (or maybe somewhere else) before that time. cash out my pension too.
