Didn’t they give up their claim on mainland some years ago already? Not sure, but wasn’t it 1989?
If you put any stock in Hartzell’s theory, Taiwan could ‘declare independence’ from the U.S. military. Now wouldn’t that be fun?
I recall that the renunciation was an informal thing done during the Lee Teng-hui presidency, but it would be great to have more info on that. Doesn’t the ROC Constitution still cover all the old territories? It was drafted in 1947 and only got some half-assed revisions in 1997.
The problem is that Taiwan needs to make an explicit declaration of independence – giving up on ruling the Mainland was a good start, but it didn’t include the magic words: “… and we’re not part of China!”
As with the 13 American colonies, the next step would then be defending that claim of independence. One wonders whether the PRC would offer up the nuclear threat – i.e., “if we can’t have it, nobody will.” Those PRC generals were ready to have a go at the U.S. in the absence of Jiang Zemin during the Hainan Island EP-3 plane downing. We’d better hope that Hu Jintao has a better hold on the guys with the guns.
I read your post and am very sad and angry. You foreigners should not interfer in China
Jiang Guangming, you and Jason should get together for drinks sometime. Now where’s that link to his site?
[quote=“Jiang Guangming”]I read your post and am very sad and angry. You foreigners should not interfer in China
[quote=“Kenny McCormick”][quote=“Jiang Guangming”]I read your post and am very sad and angry. You foreigners should not interfer in China
[quote=“Jive Turkey”]I have to read a lot of English emails from mainlanders, and judging from this guy
[quote=“Jive Turkey”]
Uh, actually dude, they do use words like motherland (
taiwan has always been part of china? in 1000AD? 1200AD? when does your “always” begin? show us the treaties. provide proof. spare us the emotion and relate the facts.
don’t intefere in china’s affairs? shoulda dropped that one on us in 1941. the only reason you see yourself as chinese today instead of speaking japanese is because we did interfere in the affairs of your kleptocratic, fratricidal warlords. look it up. you owe your very existence as “chinese” to poor saps like my uncle who got marched around baatan and ended up with a bullet in the head as his reward.
learn your history. not the stuff they teach you in your 'frog in the well" school. the real deal. i dare you. facts, not emotions.
[quote=“Jiang Guangming”]I read your post and am very sad and angry. You foreigners should not interfer in China
[quote=“ludahai”][quote=“Jiang Guangming”]I read your post and am very sad and angry. You foreigners should not interfer in China
I thought we already established the fact that Jiang is a non-Chinese troll. I’d give him/her an A for effort, though.
Well Taiwan was part of China probably 60,000,000 BC (literally).
Anyhow, if all these western hypocrite polticians didn’t put so much importance on China’s “economic wonder” they probably would renounce the “one-china” theory and accept Taiwan as an independent country.
BTW, anyone read the “The Comming Collapse of China”?
Interesting reading.
Actually, the UN should allow Taiwan to become an independent member state, this way, if a conflict arrises they can’t name it a “domestic” issue.
What would/could China do you think if the UN accepted Taiwan as a member and independent country.
O yeah, Jiang Guangming, FYI, not every westerner is American.
:x
[quote=“bottleneck”]BTW, anyone read the “The Comming Collapse of China”?
Interesting reading.[/quote]
The hypothesis is interesting, but the author generalizes a wee bit too much, is extremely repetitive (the book would have done well at one-third its length) and has a deficiency in the humor department: “How many people does the Communist Party think it takes to change a lightbulb in China? About 63.5 million, the number of its members.” I guess the title helps sell books though.
I know, a lot is being repeated throughout the book but it’s anyhow interesting.
Although a lot that’s mentioned in the book I knew already, also a lot I didn’t know.
But in the end there isn’t a real conclusion, we still don’t know how it’s going to happen. What we know is, it will happen. Or do we?
My wife used to work for about three at a Taiwanese owned company in Guangdong province. I visited the factory several times and had the chance to talk to some Chinese “white colar” workers and they all think Taiwan belongs to China and that they will “re-unite” some day in the future.
When I told them that for me and many westerners Taiwan and China are two different countries and that Taiwanese surely wouldn’t agree on unificatition with China, they couldn’t believe their ears.
The one virtue of that book was that it was a quick read because he kept hammering the same points over and over so that I was skimming the 2/3 of it that I’d read already. He’s contradictory in parts and though he has a few interesting things to say here and there, overall he comes off as a shrill fanatic on the soapbox - his book is to China as a certain poster who shall not be named is to the Muslim world.
Plus, his writing is extremely lame at times:
“This is Auto China 2000, a trade show in Beijing, and both young models are in front a new Audi sedan… Hearts pound and pulses race, and no one’s paying attention to the cars. Although the models may be stimulated, it’s not enough.” [Get it? The models are real, real sexy, so everyone’s looking at them, but no one’s buying cars. And the bigger point, of course, is that if no one buys cars, then China collapses and models don’t have jobs.]
Or: “In nearby Lan Kwai Fong, just a few blocks to the south, eighty thousand revelers greeted the new millennium in perhaps the most raucous celebration in Asia, but that gathering had nothing to do with politics – other than sexual politics, of course.” [Yes, sexual politics – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – if you know what he means.]
Gordon Chang’s thesis needed to be said by someone, but did it have to be said by him. I met the guy. He’s a little bit too much into himself and his one big idea.
I’m not even sure Chang speaks Chinese. Certainly, on the two shows on Taiwan TV that I caught him on, he only spoke in English.
Did I mention that I took the book to Shanghai! I realized, only after I started reading it that the content could easily upset some people in China.
Nobody checked my luggage at Shanghai airport, so I made it back to Taiwan…lucky me.