Everybody knows about the backstory, there was a civil war, KMT fled to Taiwan creating two Chinas sort of, maybe, neither recognises the other, whole thing. ROC (Taiwan) ended up transitioning from military rule to a multi-party democracy, while the PRC (mainland China) didn’t do that (they did reform economically, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and all that, but still a one-party state, not a multi-party democracy). The status quo right now is that Taiwan is in the grey area of statehood where they function pretty much independently but aren’t properly recognised, and both sides of the strait are feeling pretty tense right now.
Taiwan’s stance on the issue is that they would like to remain politically and economically independent of mainland China, retaining their multi-party democracy, political connections to its allies, economic trade connections, etc. Also, a majority of the people in Taiwan do not support reunification with China.
China’s stance on the issue is that Taiwan should be reunified with the mainland at all costs, ideally peacefully, but war is not ruled out. They argue that Taiwan was unfairly separated from the mainland by imperial powers in their “century of humiliation”. Strategically, taking Taiwan would be beneficial to China as they would have better control of the sea.
Is it even possible for both sides to agree to a peaceful solution? Personally, I can only see two ways this could go about that has the consent of both parties. One, a reformist leader takes power in the mainland and gives up on Taiwan, and the two exist as separate independent nations. Or two, the mainland gets a super-reformist leader that transitions the mainland to a multi-party democracy, and maybe then reunification could be on the table, with Taiwan keeping an autonomous status given the large cultural difference (similar to Hong Kong or Macau’s current status). Both options are, unfortunately, very unlikely to occur in the near future.
A third option (?) would be a pseudo-unification, where Taiwan remains as a separate country, but there can be free movement of people between the mainland and Taiwan, free trade, that sort of stuff (sort of like the EU? Maybe?). Not sure if the PRC would accept that.
What are your thoughts on a peaceful solution to the crisis that both sides could agree on?
Have you looked into the context of how they were able to do it and how difficult stopping them would have been?
If North Korea could do it, so can Taiwan.
When I clicked on this thread I did not anticipate one of the answers being “Taiwan just needs to adopt Juche.”
A large part of why the DPRK is the way it is is because it has oriented itself around not getting invaded by a much stronger foe. They made the choice to orient their economy around self-suffiency, so that they could survive a prolonged conflict even if foreign navies completely cut them off from the rest of the world.
In contrast, Taiwan has an export economy, producing highly specialized equipment to be sold all around the world. Taiwan’s economy is intimately connected to the rest of the world. Taiwan is a much richer country because of it. But it also makes Taiwan more vulnerable to trade disruptions, for example, if China imposed a blockade.
I don’t think that Taiwan has any interest in walking the path of the DPRK. I’m also confused on how bringing a historical reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis into a situation that has been stable for decades is supposed to, what, bring peace?
North Korea has a million artillery pieces and like 20 million people ready to call back to service, and China would probably get involved if the alternative is a hostile puppet state on their border. The calculus of invading NK is quite different than Taiwan.