Did an MBA in Hong Kong, just finished earlier this year. A lot of my classmates are mainland Chinese. Bunch of them would regularly talk with each other and say that military action was the only way to resolve the situation, China needs to send its military to Taiwan and overrun the Taiwanese defenses quickly. Baffles my mind that they're so ready to default to war.
Some other mainland Chinese people are more nuanced in their thoughts. I have no idea about population percentages for opinions. But this a world-class top 20 MBA school, and had one undergraduate student die while protesting (fell off a building). Bunch of these classmates are educated with masters degrees from American universities. If they default to war, I'm a bit concerned, I'd expect them to see more nuance in the world. For them, it's not really war of course, as Taiwan was always theirs in the first place in their eyes. Any foreign interference in the matter is a slap in the face of Chinese sovereignty, was the same for Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is a difficult situation because the entire world agrees that Hong Kong belongs to China. Taiwan is difficult in that most of the world has agreed that Taiwan belongs to China, that is the crux of the One China policy that China forces all countries to agree to if they want to have diplomatic and trade relations with China. If you break with the One China policy, you break diplomatic and trade relations with China. Don't see most countries willing to take that step. Big game of chicken.
For what it's worth, the Chinese government's official stance is that military action is a last resort option only if diplomatic negotiations fail.
Taiwan is in 'China' in the same way as both North Korea and South Korea are in Korea.
The difference is that the People's Republic of China (what 'China' usually refers to) has decided that the Republic of China has ceased to exist in 1949 (Taiwan is the last remaining territory controlled by the Republic of China) and that they are strong enough to largely 'enforce' this policy on the world stage.
So, of course for Chinese this is a domestic issue.
The West cares because the PRC is an adversary and Taiwan has a strategic location on maritime routes to East Asia.
Yes, but my point is that most of the world, including the US, has agreed to acknowledge the One China policy as correct in order to access China on a diplomatic and trade basis. Hence why it's not so easy to resolve.
The difference being that the world never agreed to the idea that France was a part of Germany. The world has for the most part agreed that Taiwan is a part of China. It is what it is. Whatever people's personal feelings might be, that is what most of the world has agreed to at an international diplomatic level. Only insignificant countries like Paraguay have decided to consider Taiwan an independent nation state.
Taiwan is factually an independent state and in practice recognised as such by everyone, including the PRC. "Nation state" has a different meaning and that's not really the case for Taiwan.
There's a lot of propaganda like for HK, which is popular with the Western public who is naive and not well informed (as all public)
We can go back and forth about this, but political feelings aside, although Taiwan acts like an independent state and has its own government, no important independent state treats it like an independent state, including the US. Donald Trump is the first president in four decades to even send a cabinet-level official to Taiwan when Alex Azar went to visit last month. It is what it is. Whether you like it or not, no important country has official diplomatic relations with Taiwan because they've all agreed to the One China policy. It is partially because of this One China policy that Taiwan's economy has deteriorated so much, they are not on equal footing with other countries in being able to develop trade agreements with other nations. China has them boxed in.
>Hong Kong is a difficult situation because the entire world agrees that Hong Kong belongs to China.
It's more nuanced than that. The reason for the one country two systems policy was that the rest of the world doesn't agree that the CCP should hold sovereignty over Hong Kong.
China is seen as only temporality under the control of the CCP and that it will transition away from authoritarianism given the chance. The idea is that Mainland China will become more like HK. That didn't happen at all. With the passage of the security law, HK looks more like China.
I think you misunderstand how much of the world's electronics are manufactured in China and how difficult it would be to relocate all that. Like I'm invested in a rare earth element company in Canada, and I still expect to see the world rely on Chinese rare earth elements for a few years yet, let alone manufacturing know-how. It'll take a few years, maybe a decade, to set all that up in other countries, including in the US. Obama once asked Steve Jobs why the iPhone can't be manufactured in the US, Jobs said the skills weren't there. https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20120123/News/60519... And it's not like the American education system is the greatest. Great universities, but what of the high schools?
edit: Similar case in Augsburg, Germany where Fujitsu-Siemens had a very modern and automated assembly line, even allowing small batches of "built to order" variations out of common bases. Didn't matter. Gone. Recently(as in about 2 years ago).
Some other mainland Chinese people are more nuanced in their thoughts. I have no idea about population percentages for opinions. But this a world-class top 20 MBA school, and had one undergraduate student die while protesting (fell off a building). Bunch of these classmates are educated with masters degrees from American universities. If they default to war, I'm a bit concerned, I'd expect them to see more nuance in the world. For them, it's not really war of course, as Taiwan was always theirs in the first place in their eyes. Any foreign interference in the matter is a slap in the face of Chinese sovereignty, was the same for Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is a difficult situation because the entire world agrees that Hong Kong belongs to China. Taiwan is difficult in that most of the world has agreed that Taiwan belongs to China, that is the crux of the One China policy that China forces all countries to agree to if they want to have diplomatic and trade relations with China. If you break with the One China policy, you break diplomatic and trade relations with China. Don't see most countries willing to take that step. Big game of chicken.
For what it's worth, the Chinese government's official stance is that military action is a last resort option only if diplomatic negotiations fail.