Taiwan’s newly inaugurated president William Lai has called on China to stop threatening the island and accept the existence of its democracy.
He urged Beijing to replace confrontation with dialogue, shortly after being sworn in on Monday.
He also said Taiwan would never back down in the face of intimidation from China, which has long claimed the island as its own.
China responded by saying, “Taiwan independence is a dead end”.
“Regardless of the pretext or the banner under which it is pursued, the push for Taiwan independence is destined to fail,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at the daily press briefing on Monday afternoon.
They treat Taiwan that way because the Chinese civil war was never fully resolved. The US interfered to prevent the communists from taking Taiwan and ousting Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist KMT. As such, the CPC sees persistent US support for Taiwanese independence as an implicit threat against their sovereignty.
Taiwanese living in Taiwan here. We have been removing Chiang Kai Shek monuments from everywhere because he doesn’t represent Taiwan anymore. We are not old China. We are Taiwan.
Man is it refreshing to hear a Taiwanese perspective in the mix. Every post, every comment is a bunch of armchair “experts” talking about an issue they clearly haven’t the slightest personal experience or context for. Not to come off as a jerk but it sure would be nice to hear what the actual people involved think instead of rank speculation. Reminds me of all the infectious disease experts during covid and military strategists in Feb 2022.
Sure but the tensions between China and the US never went away. You may not have Chiang Kai Shek seeking US support in order to invade the mainland. That much is true. However, the US is still very much interested in keeping Taiwan within its sphere of influence as part of a militaristic strategy of containment aimed at China.
I don’t think the US state department cares much for the welfare of Taiwanese people in all of this. If you have any doubts about how the US operates all you have to do is look at its relationship with Israel today.
Honestly, Japan and South Korea will be like Estonia with Ukraine.
Xi isn’t planning on stopping in Taiwan. They are already aiming for the countries in the south China seas and Korea and Japan.
It’s not a Taiwan problem. It’s a global problem.
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Then I’m not sure you know much about the motivations of Xi, the CPC, or the US for that matter. Since the 80s both sides only real interest has been economic growth. The US was fine with Chinas growth for decades as long as they provide the US a source of cheap labor. However now, China’s economy is actually larger than the US’s in terms of purchase power parity. If left unchecked China would become the economic center of the world without firing a single shot.
The US is clearly worried about losing it’s economic dominance as the worlds only superpower. That’s why it’s made contingency plans for how to confront China militarily. If they tried to subdue China through an invasion it wouldn’t work. China is a nuclear power and that would spell the end of the world. What they could do instead is use islands off the coast of China to enforce a naval blockade of the mainland. From South Korea, to Japan including Okinawa, to the Philippines the US is stationing military assets all the way down the coast. Taiwan would serve as the linch pin to that plan.
Again I have to repeat the US is not the defender of liberal democracy that they claim to be. The people of Taiwan should be clear eyed about that.
Nobody knows Xi’s true motivation.
The UK was once a super power and we didn’t need to form some sort of blockcade with the UK. Because their interest aligned with the US. Along with Taiwan and Japan and all the other NATO countries.