Mick,
Not to be flip, but I cannot accept that the ROC=Taiwan, because it does not. Have you ever sat in a bar in Taiwan and cheered “Zhonghua Taibei”, just for laughs?
I believe words are elastic, and in given instances over time can become infinitely so, to the point that a word comes to mean the opposite of its original meaning, but I don’t think anything like that occurs here. “Taiwan, Republic of China” is just another way to refer to “Taiwan”, in that case.
I think you are failing to make an important distinction here. No countries recognize Taiwan, but a couple dozen or however many recognize the Republic of China.
Taiwan is a society with a distinct history. The Republic of China is a political entity, a state. At the political level, Taiwan is a province of China, either the Republic of or the People’s Republic of, or perhaps just China in general, and I strongly suspect, after living in Taiwan for a while and talking to Taiwanese people and looking at the polls, etc, that a large body of those people, likely a majority, would prefer Taiwan were to replace the Republic of China. But, that is not enough. Americans prefer that their country be out of debt, but they do not wish the pain that that would entail. Although Taiwan’s condition was not freely chosen the way Americans chose to go into debt, to achieve statehood, which Taiwan has not yet done, it has to make something like an existential leap, to say, we are willing to have our blood shed to speak our name and to insist that others call us by our name. Someone once said that no country is not born in blood, and the Taiwanese have either shed their blood or risked doing so for a number of noble causes, particularly the end to dictatorship and corruption and the establishment of democracy, but they have chosen not to take that final leap.
As for your insistence that the international community does not recognize anyone’s claim to Taiwan, I don’t think that is quite correct. As far as I can recall, the United States, for example, regularly recognizes that China is one and that Taiwan is a part of China, but that the current ‘internal’ dispute should be resolved by diplomatic and peaceful means.
Vorkosigan,
I would rather avoid a discussion about “conventional constructions” although I brought it up. I think that everything, my identity and yours and the meaning of words, are all conventional constructions, but I did not mean to raise a complex and troublesome philosophical issue.
So, I will try to speak in concrete terms. If we should somehow discover a piece of international jurisprudence that said Taiwan is a part of China, would that be decisive for you or anybody else likely to care about this topic? Would you say, Whoops, I guess Taiwan is a part of China? I am sure that you believe that there are such things as unjust laws that can be justly refused. Don’t we accept laws because they are a necessary evil rather than a positive good, which we challenge when we believe they no longer serve some higher purpose? I just cannot see how the fate of the people of this island can hang on clause three of paragraph A of section B of Convention X in reference to the Treaty of Y, which brought a conclusion to the bloody war between Empire Z and Dictatorship O.
As for the history of Taiwan and East Asia and what bearing it has on the question, I cannot see how we can divine whether or not Taiwan is an independent country solely or primarily from its past. If Taiwan had been ruled by China since Shun with complete acceptance by every other sovereign power on Earth and the explicit blessing of God Almighty Himself, I cannot see what bearing that has on whether Taiwan should be an independent, sovereign state today or tomorrow.
The issue is fundamentally a moral one and secondarily a practical one (e.g., how much should Taiwan risk in pursuit of statehood? how should it pursue it? what does it risk by acquiescing in a condition that it dislikes and maybe even detests?), and the legalities and train of events that led up to it are, if not inconsequential, only prologue to the fateful decision that the Taiwanese people make every day, to accept the status quo.
I do not know if the Taiwanese in their heart of hearts want independence or if they are so sick and tired of being told by the Chinese that the matter has already been settled for them. In one hundred years, if Taiwan is a part of China or Japan or the United States, or is divided into a hundred statelets, I don’t really care, as long as the question is settled democratically. Again, I don’t see how it is up to anybody else to force others to “recognize” the supposed existence of a nation of Taiwan that the Taiwanese have themselves not yet ventured to declare. I suspect that if the Taiwanese people took to the streets with a sufficient degree of intensity to demand the right to choose, the rest of the world would sit up and take notice.
Finley,
As for Western politicians and bureaucrats being hypocritical about democracy, I would suggest again that they are making the same compromises that the Taiwanese people themselves are making every single day. They do not press the matter because of the price. For anyone to expect foreign countries or other organizations to take the lead in the matter is like wishing for the lottery. It is up for the Taiwanese people to decide, and since it is not my country, I cannot tell them that they must risk all to gain full sovereignty over their lives.
Sorry if I can [edit: not] respond to everybody’s objections. My head is swimming.