Your wish may have been granted. If my memory serves me correctly, I think Alleycat grew up in Capetown – n’est-ce pas Alley?
Yeah what I;ve heard before ShangHai is no example of China…
I just think the Taiwanese have enough of people taking them over and telling them what to do. If there’s to be some unification with CHina it has
to be state to state, economic with political parity. Then the Taiwanese can throw them an ancient Ming jug or too… 
You get to have two passports one PRC, one Taiwan, indpendent judiciary and parliament, council of state.
Those PRC commie money sucking two faced criminals need to jump in a lake too. What a bunch of phoneys. All their sons and daughters are millionaires and study in the US.
Shooting people in the back of the head so they can harvest organs
Beating people to death for practicing Tai Chi in the park and mumbling some meditation mantra
See what they do in Tibet. In Hong Kong…
Anyway I think taking over Taiwan could be one very big indigestible headache for China.
But China as a whole is not about to collapse. It’s got quite a large and growing middle class and its infrastructure is getting much better. They work hard and want money , not revolution. They’ve had how many revolutions in how many decades (including multiple under communist rule) i.e. they are not going to blow it now so easily.
You seem to want to establish terms of debate only within a framework that guarantees your side will win. In this, you are behaving exactly as China does toward Taiwan.
Anyway, your definition is absurd. Taiwan does function as an individual. For just one example, Taiwanese traveling to the United States, France, Brazil, etc. (none of which have diplomatic relations with the ROC) do so on an ROC passport, not some SAR or Chinese compatriots card.
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of peaceable assembly, the right to choose one’s leaders, the right to move freely… Those are, well, just talk in China. They aren’t in Taiwan.
I would also like to see Taiwan reunite with China, but I think eventually it must be up to the people to decide. I agree with Alleycat that, on the surface, China seems to be opening up more and more, however, Shanghai is not a true representation of the political situation in China, and there is still a lot of repression. When I was living in Xi’an, I had some Uyghur friends who had some ties to the independence movement in Xinjiang. When we went out together, we were followed by PSB agents. I didn’t notice them, but my friends pointed them out to me. There was also a listening device on the telephone in the foreign students’ dormitory where I was staying … no joke.
When was Taiwan ever actually united with China? Hell, the Dutch have a better claim on Taiwan than the Chinese.
Fresh from Boomers fortune teller service…
So long as China and the US sit on opposite sides of the table Taiwan will always be on the table. Will China become a free and democratic state? The answer is that they will try and fail. If the history of China is any indication of it
I don’t understand. What things were “hairy” in the US that caused the US to instigate the war on terrorism? What would be a similarly “hairy” instance in China that would cause the PRC to instigate a war on Taiwan? Are you saying that Taiwan might start to commit terrorist acts in China?
How about a Tianamen style massacre in Hong Kong.
But, how would that be similar to what happened in the US to cause the US to “instigate” its war on terror?
When was Taiwan ever actually united with China? Hell, the Dutch have a better claim on Taiwan than the Chinese.[/quote]
Someone hasn’t read their
[quote=“Col Kurtz”]Here’s a timely report from the BBC.
news.BBC.co.UK/2/hi/Asia-pacific/3105948.stm[/quote]
Poetic. 
And it’s a report by our very own ex-ICRT Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, to boot. He’s a good example of someone who seems to have transplanted happily and successfully from Taipei to Shanghai.
Another [color=red]commie[/color] stooge. 
Omni, that’s right, and he also mentions London–I lived there for two years! Who’s being spyping on whom?
On another note, a few people have mentioned Hobart, well Taiwanese independence makes as much sense as Tasmania being independent of Australia.
And if as most of you agree that Shanghai is not indicative of China as a whole, then what in the world makes you think Taiwan as an SAR will be? As it’s even further removed than HK is from Beijing.
Tiananmen Square happened 15 years ago. Kent State happened when? 35 years ago; and Soweto was in '76. I’ve been to all three places, so don’t accuse me of being naive and a sucker. I am not that easily impressed by neon lights and pretty girls. I’m more easily enthused by my Shanghai colleagues and their optimism.
[quote=“Alleycat”]You guys make some good points, and most of them are valid.
Still, I see the status quo, which almost half of Taiwanese favor, is not the best thing for Taiwan. Rather than wait around for things to collapse, a brave move by the Taiwanese–reunification or something similar–might just be what’s needed.
[/quote]
if you want to talk brave talk independence. how is reunification brave?
your definition of freedom is, let me say, unique.
take on another tack just for the sake of it? illogical. also i’m sure most everyone on here has had plenty of time to think this through, knows what they think and is not just winding you up.
[quote]
And a divided China? How silly. You mean you’d like a lot of warring states? For whose benefit? The US?[/quote]
not likely. a pandora’s box. i’d say you’d have to have ice in your veins to see through to the positive ramifications of that.
Oh I forgot this little pertinent piece of information: China has a legitimate claim for possesion of Taiwan. At Yalta at the end of WWWII, Taiwan, a Japanese colony until then, was given to China as a “spoils of war” by the Allies. Soon after though, things went just a little haywire and this was lost in the confusion.
I think more than a few of you may have been taken in by the DPP and its romanticism.
Time for pragmatism, I’d say, before everyone returns to China and the beautiful isle becomes, once more, a backwater.
Shit maybe that just wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Any room in your philosophy for principles? And that maybe a small but free, reasonably democratic country with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement and freedom of the press doesn’t want to be swallowed up by a barely functioning behemoth with none of those qualities?
Just because Taiwan belonged to China (the Qing empire) for a spell before 1895 doesn’t mean it should now. The age of empires has passed.
However, it’s something for the Taiwanese to decide; that is whether they are willing to shed blood for freedom. From what I have heard and seen(including talking to many military men) I think the Taiwanese would be falling over each over trying to be the first to surrender.
I’ve lived in Mongolia (which was also under control of the Qing). My god - they hate Chinese with a passion. They would fight.
It’s not a case of taking offense at any notion, it’s just that the way you put it is, as others have more eloquently put it, incredibly lame.