So Taiwanese allowed its president to speak for China instead of its own ppl

Politics Taiwan Politics
1

On Nov. 7, 2015, the president Ma met the China’s leader Xi, and emphasized the One China policy.

Not to mention, one China means eventual disappearance of the human rights and liberty from Taiwan.
Ppl would have to expect police braking into your house without search warrants, arresting and torturing ppl without any reason, all the information to be controlled by the central government including public school educations, no rights to travel outside the country freely, I guess there is no need to list what would go through (eventually) once the One China had realized.

The coming election will be an easy win for the opposite party Tsai Ing-wen, but what I worry about is the afterwards of her first term.
Taiwan’s economy is heavily connected and correlated with the Chinese economy, and so I think Taiwan’s economy is beyond the control of any political power in Taiwan, without regard to which party governs it.
In addition to the slowed economic growth, which directly affects Taiwan, I heard many capital, employment and ppl outflowed to China, which is one source of frustration for many Taiwanese, while there is an increase in incoming Chinese permanent residents in Taiwan with the voting right.

Since it is quite reasonable to expect that without a soaring in the China’s growth, the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)'s administration will get less and less supports from ppl as the time goes by, because in this semi-permanent down drafting of Chinese economy, not much economical improvements can be expected from the Tsai Ing-wen’s administration.

As a result, after the 4 years of Tsai Ing-wen’s term, the true crisis could be present in terms of One China policy.

Here is my questions to you guys. I also welcome your general views in this regards too!
(Please no pro China ad here. I know no one here supports oppressive government.)

  1. Why has Taiwanese ppl allowed to realize the meeting in the first place?
    To my knowledge, many young Taiwanese ppl do know once they loose their liberty it cannot be reacquired even paying it for his/her own blood, but I heard only a small number of ppl demonstrated against this meeting this time.

  2. It sometimes seems that for Taiwanese ppl, the economic growth and the ideology as a county is sth to weight against each other, which of course should not as an independent country. Also, I saw some ppl above 40 ish yo lacking the idea of freedom completely resulting to support Ma without much thoughts in this regards.
    What is your opinion about the ideology thing of Taiwanese?
    What kind of ideology do ppl or social group around you have?

  3. If One China could be realized, would you leave Taiwan?

2

Chinese permanent residents don’t have voting rights do they? Only citizens of the Republic of China have voting rights.

3

I’ve heard speculation that the meeting had little to do with Taiwan’s status per se, but a lot to do with China’s claims over the South China Sea. Don’t forget that Taiwan has a garrison on the largest natural island in the Spratley group.

4

Should be moved to Politics forum.

5

um … because Ma is, like, the president? That’s the sort of thing presidents are paid to do. The reality is that China is now an economic steamroller with a well-funded and (apparently) quite competent military. Talking is about the only possible option that Taiwan has under the circumstances.

You can’t possibly know what happened during that meeting. For all you know they sat there discussing the relative merits of chou dofu (if you think that’s unlikely, apparently the Palestinians and the Israelis found some common ground in the pisspoor quality of American hummus). Rapprochement meetings of this kind can have positive outcomes, even when the people involved are assholes. Think Nixon-Mao and Reagan-Gorbachev. You also can’t predict what the outcome will be.

My personal opinion is that China has little interest in taking over and repressing Taiwan. They have to throw that particular bone to the great unwashed to keep Chinese nationalism chugging along. They are far, far more interested in securing economically important territory in (say) the South China Sea, or Africa. Both of those are much softer targets and have large and immediate payback. Taiwan is probably No. 38 on their List of Countries to Oppress.

I’ll worry about that if or when it happens. But whereever you go, there China is.

6

“incoming Chinese permanent residents in Taiwan with the voting right”

It takes awhile for Chinese nationals to get the national ID card which would confer them the right to vote. These Chinese nationals are mostly wives of Taiwanese. Wives are not sex slaves or indentured servants and should get the right to vote.

7

[quote=“CactusXP”] Not to mention, one China means eventual disappearance of the human rights and liberty from Taiwan.
people would have to expect police braking into your house without search warrants, arresting and torturing people without any reason, all the information to be controlled by the central government including public school educations, no rights to travel outside the country freely, I guess there is no need to list what would go through (eventually) once the One China had realised. [/quote]

Why is that? Hong Kong is not perfect (and hasn’t been perfect under British administration!), but I do not see these things happen there. Education being under firm control of the government is a problem in many democratic countries.

There are Mainland spouses of Taiwanese who gain voting rights after 4+ years and establishing household registration in Taiwan. In fact, the conditions for them are stricter than for foreign spouses.

[quote=“CactusXP”] 1. Why has Taiwanese people allowed to realize the meeting in the first place?
To my knowledge, many young Taiwanese people do know once they loose their liberty it cannot be reacquired even paying it for his/her own blood, but I heard only a small number of people demonstrated against this meeting this time. [/quote]

What exactly should “the Taiwanese people” have done? Mind you, 1,000 or 2,000 or even 10,000 people protesting does not constitute a democratic mandate. And those acting in absence of a democratic mandate - possibly even breaking laws while doing so - should not demand democratic conduct from their opponent.

This can be explained in a simple way: students receive income from their parents. The money is simply there. People who are 40 years old usually have responsibilities reaching beyond themselves, such as children and a mortgage. Obviously you wouldn’t want too experiment for the sake of symbol politics if your livelihood depends on a good economic relationship with China.

[quote=“CactusXP”] What is your opinion about the ideology thing of Taiwanese?
What kind of ideology do people or social group around you have? [/quote]

  1. Like to shout “We are Taiwanese, not Chinese!” into the foreigner’s face
  2. Like to call Westerners “waiguoren”, wouldn’t do that in the case of Mainland Chinese. Even pro-DPP Taiwanese behave like that. Obviously this is to receive preferential economic terms.
8

[quote=“hsinhai78”][quote=“CactusXP”] Not to mention, one China means eventual disappearance of the human rights and liberty from Taiwan.
people would have to expect police braking into your house without search warrants, arresting and torturing people without any reason, all the information to be controlled by the central government including public school educations, no rights to travel outside the country freely, I guess there is no need to list what would go through (eventually) once the One China had realised. [/quote]

Why is that? Hong Kong is not perfect (and hasn’t been perfect under British administration!), but I do not see these things happen there. Education being under firm control of the government is a problem in many democratic countries. [/quote]

I am not well informed about the situations of Hong Kong but some ppl already have arrested for acts allowed under democracy. If you ask any friend from Hong Kong about what you wrote above, I wonder how they would respond to you. Education is the key for democracy, you can ask this to those Taiwanese student activists. If the government controls it (actually you are intentionally distorting the meaning here) ppl will not have the idea of democracy like ppl in current China (only small fraction with access to information aka education have the idea and arrested and tortured you see?).

I wonder you have any critical stake in China reading your responses.
Living in China means that wives with second child (now third) were forced to kill the babies. It looks you do not care much about the situations. Do you have your children already grown ups and no stake in this issue don’t you?

There are Mainland spouses of Taiwanese who gain voting rights after 4+ years and establishing household registration in Taiwan. In fact, the conditions for them are stricter than for foreign spouses.[/quote]

Ppl from China keeps their faith toward China regardless of where they belongs at least for the first 2-3 generations. I specifically meant the increase in the OP of the spouses from China. For example, the ex candidate 洪 has her origin from the era of administration by China. The inevitable outcome will be an increase in share of those ppl in ppl with voting rights, which is more towards the One China, right?

[quote=“hsinhai78”][quote=“CactusXP”] 1. Why has Taiwanese people allowed to realize the meeting in the first place?
To my knowledge, many young Taiwanese people do know once they loose their liberty it cannot be reacquired even paying it for his/her own blood, but I heard only a small number of people demonstrated against this meeting this time. [/quote]

What exactly should “the Taiwanese people” have done? Mind you, 1,000 or 2,000 or even 10,000 people protesting does not constitute a democratic mandate. And those acting in absence of a democratic mandate - possibly even breaking laws while doing so - should not demand democratic conduct from their opponent.[/quote]

Here I meant a scale comparison between the past demonstrations. Your point here is off from my question, sorry for my English.

This can be explained in a simple way: students receive income from their parents. The money is simply there. People who are 40 years old usually have responsibilities reaching beyond themselves, such as children and a mortgage. Obviously you wouldn’t want too experiment for the sake of symbol politics if your livelihood depends on a good economic relationship with China. [/quote]

You are absolutely right, at the same time in my opinion the past education is affecting their thoughts here too. You know what it means being 40+ for Taiwanese in terms of education. In addition, for example Brits never sell its independency for its economy, how about for Taiwanese? You clearly see here the differences. There is no need to realize the One China to keep the current peace.

[quote=“hsinhai78”][quote=“CactusXP”] What is your opinion about the ideology thing of Taiwanese?
What kind of ideology do people or social group around you have? [/quote]

  1. Like to shout “We are Taiwanese, not Chinese!” into the foreigner’s face
  2. Like to call Westerners “waiguoren”, wouldn’t do that in the case of Mainland Chinese. Even pro-DPP Taiwanese behave like that. Obviously this is to receive preferential economic terms.[/quote]

Thank you for your responses.

9

um … because Ma is, like, the president? That’s the sort of thing presidents are paid to do. The reality is that China is now an economic steamroller with a well-funded and (apparently) quite competent military. Talking is about the only possible option that Taiwan has under the circumstances.[/quote]

You are right, talking is OK. How about the Ma emphasized the One China policy? Was it really needed? Of course he needed it. But how about the Taiwanese?
The yahoo poll revealed that more than 50% of Taiwanese supported the One China policy declared after the meeting. I think this is the true reason behind the meeting, to boost the Candidate in Ma’s party. Without to mention, it is an easiest task to manipulate the poll from China, and this result surely affect the outcome of the election.

https://tw.news.yahoo.com/馬習會最新網路民調出爐--50-非常滿意馬英九表現-111645203.html)

You can’t possibly know what happened during that meeting. For all you know they sat there discussing the relative merits of chou doufu (if you think that’s unlikely, apparently the Palestinians and the Israelis found some common ground in the pisspoor quality of American hummus). Rapprochement meetings of this kind can have positive outcomes, even when the people involved are assholes. Think Nixon-Mao and Reagan-Gorbachev. You also can’t predict what the outcome will be.

My personal opinion is that China has little interest in taking over and repressing Taiwan. They have to throw that particular bone to the great unwashed to keep Chinese nationalism chugging along. They are far, far more interested in securing economically important territory in (say) the South China Sea, or Africa. Both of those are much softer targets and have large and immediate payback. Taiwan is probably No. 38 on their List of Countries to Oppress.[/quote]

Here I totally agree with you. Thank you for your views. Now China is eager to soak into EU for big projects to dispose surplus capacity.

I’ll worry about that if or when it happens. But whereever you go, there China is.[/quote]

China’s presence in the world is economically positive, so it is more than ok to exist China’s influences in the world, but only economically I mean.

10

Am I the only person who believes this meeting would have played out very differently if the polls for the upcoming general election were flipped the other way around?

If the polls looked favourable for the KMT, then Xi could have easily played hard-ball and held a lop-sided meeting with a list of unreasonable and strong demands. Xi has, afterall, emphasized that the status quo cannot be carried on from generation-to-generation indefinitely.

11

[quote=“andyj”]Am I the only person who believes this meeting would have played out very differently if the polls for the upcoming general election were flipped the other way around?

If the polls looked favourable for the KMT, then Xi could have easily played hard-ball and held a lop-sided meeting with a list of unreasonable and strong demands. Xi has, afterall, emphasized that the status quo cannot be carried on from generation-to-generation indefinitely.[/quote]

What Xi wants as the outcome of resolving the status quo should be clear.
Hence now it would be for the Taiwanese to express what they want as an outcome. Resolving the status quo means saying it into the face of China. And simply putting a “Taiwan Republic” sticker on a passport or renaming Chunghwa Post to Taiwan Post does not cut it - not while the ROC constitution is still in force and the government refers to itself as such. Will Tsai Ing-wen have the guts for that? Or will she continue to weasel her way out of it? What exactly is the status quo for Tsai and the DPP anyways - and I am not referring to the domestic status quo, such as rule of law and democracy. What is the status quo relative to China?

12

[quote=“hsinhai78”][quote=“andyj”]Am I the only person who believes this meeting would have played out very differently if the polls for the upcoming general election were flipped the other way around?

If the polls looked favourable for the KMT, then Xi could have easily played hard-ball and held a lop-sided meeting with a list of unreasonable and strong demands. Xi has, afterall, emphasized that the status quo cannot be carried on from generation-to-generation indefinitely.[/quote]

What Xi wants as the outcome of resolving the status quo should be clear.
Hence now it would be for the Taiwanese to express what they want as an outcome. Resolving the status quo means saying it into the face of China. And simply putting a “Taiwan Republic” sticker on a passport or renaming Zhonghua Post to Taiwan Post does not cut it - not while the ROC constitution is still in force and the government refers to itself as such. Will Tsai Ing-wen have the guts for that? Or will she continue to weasel her way out of it? What exactly is the status quo for Tsai and the DPP anyways - and I am not referring to the domestic status quo, such as rule of law and democracy. What is the status quo relative to China?[/quote]

What utter nonsense. You would be the first to condemn Tsai for going further.

The truth is many would love to see her goaded into a foolish statement that might tip the election. But she won’t do that. Her successful balancing just eats some people up from the inside. :laughing:

13

[quote=“Mucha Man”] What utter nonsense. You would be the first to condemn Tsai for going further.

The truth is many would love to see her goaded into a foolish statement that might tip the election. But she won’t do that. Her successful balancing just eats some people up from the inside. :laughing:[/quote]

I would condemn her for her desired outcome, but not for daring to resolve the status quo.
If people claim Ma Ying-jeou is a “black box”, then what is Tsai Ing-wen?
She does not address the issue of cross-strait relations.
When asked to define the “status quo” she merely makes observations about the internal political system of Taiwan, i.e. rule of law, democratic elections, etc.
But when has she ever defined the legal framework for her cross-strait approach; when has she ever defined the status quo between Taiwan and the Mainland as two political entities?

Tsai Ing-wen is a greater black box than Ma Ying-jeou.

14

[quote=“hsinhai78”][quote=“Mucha Man”] What utter nonsense. You would be the first to condemn Tsai for going further.

The truth is many would love to see her goaded into a foolish statement that might tip the election. But she won’t do that. Her successful balancing just eats some people up from the inside. :laughing:[/quote]

I would condemn her for her desired outcome, but not for daring to resolve the status quo.
If people claim Ma Ying-jeou is a “black box”, then what is Tsai Ing-wen?
She does not address the issue of cross-strait relations.
When asked to define the “status quo” she merely makes observations about the internal political system of Taiwan, i.e. rule of law, democratic elections, etc.
But when has she ever defined the legal framework for her cross-strait approach; when has she ever defined the status quo between Taiwan and the Mainland as two political entities?

Tsai Ing-wen is a greater black box than Ma Ying-jeou.[/quote]

Ma’s polices are criticized for being failures and/or blatant lies; the methods he uses to implement them is what are frequently criticized as being secretive and of questionable legality. It defies logic to claim that Tsai is even worse than him in that regard given she hasn’t even been elected yet and thus has not implemented any policies, China related or otherwise.

It’s also illogical to act as if Tsai’s China policy is somehow more vague than that of any other politician outside of extremists on either side of the spectrum. Both parties have consistently paid lip service to the idea of the status quo while pushing the needle towards their preferred outcome once they gain power. In that regard, Ma is no different from Chen or Lee; he’s simply on the opposite side of the unification/independence spectrum. The core reason why his actions have caused an unprecedented upswell of public anger and have damaged the KMT to such a degree that its future seems in doubt is that mainstream public opinion is fundamentally anti-unification & anti-Chinese nationalism. His methods of doing so have also been questionable and have worsened things - that’s obvious - but in some ways it’s a chicken/egg deal; he wouldn’t have needed to be so shady in pushing closer ties with China if there was public backing for it.

15

In fact, Tsai Ing-wen hasn’t been elected by the people to anything. She’s very much a black box because there is no way to know how she will rule should she be elected.

16

By your logic, we should cancel all future elections because there is no way to know how all the candidates will rule should they be elected? :loco: