…which is about as farfetched a scenario as Trump getting elected POTUS, but let’s suppose it could happen…
How will Taiwan react? How will the government react? How will the voters react?
Taiwan is China’s Achilles heel and such action should have been taken long ago.
What really, really worries me, though, is all this talk about how things can be negotiated. What, exactly, can be negotiated? Give Trump what he wants with respect to certain trade issues and we go back to the one-China policy the way it’s interpreted by China?
Oh, I see all of what I wrote is being discussed in another thread! Oh well, consider this the renegade thread.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Xi refuses to give The Donald what he wants, and that The Donald is not bluffing. No negotiation, and no more One China policy. What does Taiwan do in response?
I think about all Taiwan can do in response at that point is hope to hell The US and others have its back militarily to deter invasion by China.
Personally, I think our best hope is that Trump forgets about Taiwan.
How do Taiwanese feel about this?
I think when the the POTUS of the US makes noise on the issue, people around the world pay attention. More awareness of how CCP controlled mainland’s treatment of Taiwan and how stupid the one China policy which is just a ticking time bomb of a foreign policy fuck up.
those with US passports buy plane tickets to LAX
POTUS elect said in the TV interview that “One China” is something to be negotiated. Whether any negotiation happens doesn’t matter.
All it matter is now the entire world knows One China is negotiable, despite China saying it isn’t. The whole world knows US and China do not agree on One China.
It follows that unless China is willing to renegotiate one China, then there is no one China.
This is the end of One China. It’s not a question of “if”.
The potency and the entire point of coining the mantra known as “One China” is that nobody would even question the definition. One is only allowed to utter the mantra. Once you question it, or even suggest it can be negotiated, you break the spell. This is the nature of every mantra. By simply questioning it, there is no One China anymore.
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So… it’s already gone. Let the new reality sink in.
It’s not a new reality. It’s just the illusion of a One China has expired.
The reality has always been that China was already unified in 1949 when the Chinese kicked the KMT RoC out of China.
China’s territorial claim on Taiwan (SFPT 2b) is no different than China’s territorial claim on the South China Sea (SFPT 2F), both of which have everything to do with the hundred-year humiliation (i.e., revisionism) and nothing to do with how many Chinas there are.
I fully accept the One China policy. There’s one China, and it’s on the other side of the Taiwan Strait (not the Chinese Taipei Strait).
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“One China” was always questioned, at least in the west. It was an intentionally vague compromise so that we didn’t have to declare which government was the “one China.”
A nation state is the ultimate social construct. It’s exactly as real as everyone says it is - no more, no less.
The minute a critical mass of world leaders stop believing in the existence of China, China goes poof. That critical mass, of course, must include the military commanders of the PRC. They’re not likely to withdraw their mind-energy without a fight.
Which is why it matters who wins wars. Including trade wars.
The Soviet Union went poof in a similar fashion. And don’t say it was economically weak and China isn’t, because most people didn’t believe it was weak, and now most people don’t believe China is weak. The world is full of Potemkin villages.
Why didn’t the US just call it a “One Taiwan” policy, and then invite China to agree or disagree on what exactly Taiwan belonged to, huh?
Let’s see, China claims X territory, and you disagree with China on this issue. Yet every time you mention X, you willingly say the mantra “something China.” This is stupidity at its best.
“One China” was always questioned, at least in the west. It was an intentionally vague compromise so that we didn’t have to declare which government was the “one China.”
You are describing Republican Nixon’s policy up to 1979, but not policy thereafter to the present. He was dexterous enough to agree with China that there was one China in a “vague compromise”, not attempting to pin it down to Taipei or Beijing as its capital so as not to create problems for Taiwan. Democrat Carter was the bumbling idiot who – I don’t know, for his own illumination I guess – recognized the Beijing government in 1979, and then it ceased to be vague. I would call it enigmatic and it causes people’s logic to be fuzzy, but it certainly isn’t vague.
Some of this goes back to Chiang Kai Shek. He never cared for Taiwan, it was a temporary depot from which to mount his campaign to take back China. But he never got around to it. Even so, his eyes were forevermore everything China, and he sent his wife and other emissaries to USA to militate for a one China, HIS China (which happened to be in Taiwan at the time, but that was ancillary). Then the communists easily appropriated the issue which redounded to their benefit.
Even the phrase “One China” can be understood by “de-Taiwanization (Bruce Jacobs).” Nobody calls the North Korean problem One Korea, or the Hong Kong problem “One China.”
The implication for calling the Taiwan issue “One-China” is preciously because the inventor of this term knows it is obvious that Taiwan is geographically Un-China.
Stating the obvious, that Taiwan is not geographically Chinese, would lead to the other obvious, which is that any Chinese establishment in Taiwan constitutes territorial expansion, which contradicts to the thinking in the field of Chinese study and IR that China has always been a peaceful nation and always the victim of foreign aggression.