Cheng Li-wun’s visit to China, expected to take place in April, would be the first by a sitting leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party in a decade.
The leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party is set to visit China in April after accepting an invite from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In a statement on Monday, Kuomintang (KMT) said its chairperson, Cheng Li-wun, was “grateful” for the invitation and had “gladly” accepted it.
Cheng “expressed hope that the two parties (the KMT and China’s Communist Party) would work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, strengthen cross-strait exchanges and cooperation, secure peace in the Taiwan Strait, and enhance the well-being of the people,” her party said.
Declares independence?
Isn’t that a threat of military violence today?
How do you figure? Taiwan has never had a politically significant independence movement.
To my understanding Taiwan has been governed by the Republic of China since 1949 and they’re independent of the People’s Republic of China (although the People’s Republic of China claims Taiwan). Since the Republic of China also claims mainland China this independence isn’t codified formally but the government is functioning autonomous and independent.
That seems like more than enough for the document to be used as a threat since your argument seems to precariously sit on one pedantic reading that is hasn’t “formally” happened yet and any group in the People’s Republic of China could at any time take the different reading that this already happened in 1949 and they were just being kind by not invading.
I am going to be charitable here and assume that you’re curious about this stuff and that this is why you choose to make that comment. I hope I am not wrong in making this choice. Too many people choose to expose their ignorance and then when confronted choose to double down and deny that they’re ignorant of the situation and that I am just a propaganda bot or paid shill. Please take this in the spirit of constructive discussion.
There is one country that we call China. That country has a continuity that spans at least 3,000 years. That one country recognizes itself as a single country. The official positions of all other countries recognizes that there is one country they call China and that it is continuous with the 3,000-year country we call China.
Two political factions within China had a civil war - the KMT and the CPC. The Republic of China was the official government of China starting in 1912. Before that the country of China had a different government known as the Qing Dynasty (or Qing Empire). The government changed. The country was always China.
The CPC fought with the KMT and won. The CPC founded a new government called the People’s Republic of China. A new government in the same country of China. The KMT fled and refused to acknowledge that the PRC was the legitimate government of China, instead claiming that the ROC, which was founded in 1912, still existed and still was the legitimate government of China.
None of this was separatist. None of this was secessionary. None of this was independence. The single country of China is having a civil dispute over the government of China. In particular, the Province of Taiwan, a municipal subdivision of the country of China, has a local government that compromises the remnants of the ROC and their official government position is that they are still the ROC and the legitimate government of the country known as China. Far from being secessionary or independent, this is a condition we generally call “in exile”, as in, the ROC is the government-in-exile of the country of China, much like Juan Guaido claimed to be the president-in-exile of Venezuela.
Independence would require the creation of a new country, the request by that country to be recognized as a country by other countries and all the rights, privileges, and obligations of being an independent country, which includes, for example, the right to become part of another country. Equivalently, an attack on an independent Taiwan-as-a-country by, say Japan, would NOT be considered an attack on China, whereas an attack on the province of Taiwan today would be considered, internationally, as an attack on China.
Hopefully this helps clarify why the CPC’s statements of use of force in case of a declaration of independence is not an imminent threat simply because of the 75-year civil dispute. Neither the CPC’s position in this, nor the status of the province of Taiwan, has changed in that time. Meanwhile the US has destroyed over a dozen countries in wars of choice, crimes against the peace, and international crimes of aggression.
Mate, looks like you can’t read my last paragraph and are repeating dogma
You rewrote my first paragraph by using four paragraphs but largely talked around the fact that the geographical region that we call Taiwan has a government that doesn’t fold into the PRC
Agreed that the way both governments claim to control both the mainland and Taiwan complicates things. If you want to simplify that complication take a flight from the mainland to Taiwan and if you actually go to the domestic airport and don’t pass through immigration and customs then let me know. It’s pretty direct messaging from both that they’re independent of each other. (Admittedly as I remember it, the Chinese side had a sign saying something like “International flights and Taiwan” when I was there and thats a pretty weak way to save face.)
Agreed though that your view is one way of interpreting these documents and generally agreed upon history. Strongly disagree that it’s the only interpretation or that there was anything you said that strongly prohibits (not some weak implication from a quirk of history) a faction in the PRC interpreting the geographical region of Taiwan as being too independent. That interpretation is clearly a risk to a lot of people
You’re also using circular logic: Everything you said holds because Taiwan hasn’t formally declared independence but everything you said prohibits Taiwan from declaring independence due to the risk of military force.
But lastly, I’m no longer going to be charitable: you’re defending threatening military force on a geographic region thats been functionally autonomous for 70 years if it has the audacity to formally declare itself independent and regardless of if there are political movements with momentum to do that its fucked up! There are so many bug tickets for services online from individuals that want to identify and being from Taiwan but they can’t because the PRC strong armed in ISO 3166-1. The world is fucked up and complicated so there are many disagreements but stop jamming your very one-sided view that aligns very heavily with the PRC down other people’s throats
There is a non-zero chance China has bots or staff on western media and social spaces with pro China positions to shape the battlefield for the hostile annexation of Taiwan. Taiwan is already an independent state, it does not require China’s permission to exist. There is no reason to engage with hem and help them learn how to be more convincing. Every argument you make is practice for the propaganda machine. Engagement provides training for hostile actors. Please don’t engage, don’t train their AI to better convince you of an alternate history written by the Chinese government.
Bot or not, the response was very unhinged and went from persuading to basically talking about brimstone and ashes. The effort in the poke was almost worth it
The US fought a bloody civil war due to secession. It still would not accept secession to this day and it would kill lots of people if a secessionary movements gained steam. The problem is that no other nation is going to come in and foment a secessionary movement in the US, but the US sure as fuck does that all over the world.
That’s the problem. The US created the conditions for this separation of the governance of the province. Truman decided that if China was going to help it’s Korean neighbors that the US would protect the fascist KMT and let them torture,m and mass murder anyone, and their families, that dared talk about reunification. You think that’s a legitimate situation? One where until the 90s you could be killed for even discussing reunification?
The secession of Taiwan as an independent nation cannot happen in a vacuum. It will be part of a 75 year process of being an imperial protectorate, 50 years of being a fascist dictatorship, and an active US military base. There are no conditions under which a Taiwan secession would be anything except a strategic threat to mainland China by the US military.
And the Chinese people on Taiwan know it. That’s why they are still ambiguous about it. They like being a junior partner to the psychopath empire, it makes them rich. They like being protected from all possible violence and they like being used as key military strategic location because it means they get the absolute best treatment from the empire.
But the empire will fall. It’s falling now. And so long as the empire dies in West Asia, and never actually gets a chance to attempt to mass murder the Chinese, Taiwan may yet see peace. But if the empire decides to attack China in a final bid to stay at the top of the heap, Taiwan will be treated like all other US proxies - the residents will die, the US will arm them and train them and lie to them to get them to fight and die for the empire, the US will launch attacks from residential areas and civilian complexes to force China to target them there in an attempt to turn the tide of public opinion against them.
No matter what you want to be true, Taiwan is not and cannot be independent. It is a Chinese province full of Chinese people who are under the aegis of a psychotic and dying empire. There is no path to autonomy except through One Country Two Systems. Maybe one day Taiwan will be decolonized and the indigenous population will get their island back.
But just because you want your moral conclusions to match reality doesn’t mean they do. Taiwan is a province of China according to all systems of defining what is and isn’t a province. It is not a country according to any of the systems that define what is and isn’t a country. It is not an independent nation according to any systems that define what is and isn’t a nation. It is a protectorate, it is a proxy, and it is entirely dependent on a larger country for its continued existence economically and politically.
It is a fundamentally dependent polity. The only question is who will it depend on. Today it depends on mainland China for its economic base and the West for its economic superstructure. And today it depends on the US for its military defense. This contradiction will eventually resolve, and the most peaceful resolution will be for the US to fall and for Taiwan to choose to have the PLA provide for its military defense. It will never have a military capable of defending itself without a larger country to be it’s protector.