> Among nations with at least 10m people, Taiwan ranks around #21 in GDP per capita with a very respectable $25k. They've built something nice for themselves over a long, difficult climb.
The Taiwanese are aware of what waits for those who cooperate with the PRC. Look at Hong Kong. Where’s their freedom now? Look at Xinjiang, at the treatment of Falun Dafa. Taiwan will be colonised, again. First the Dutch, then the Japanese, then Guomindang and finally the CCP.
> After the Party seized power in 1949, Mao would systematically apply the same techniques to one group of Chinese after another: “landlords” and village leadership; gamblers, gangsters, and criminals; Christian congregations, Daoist temples and the Buddhist sangha; business circles, corporations, and stock-jobbers; universities, schools, and intellectual clubs; hospitals, aid workers, and relief organizations; minor political parties and independent political groups; workers associations and unions; clan groupings and ancestral schools; martial artists and Confucian hold-overs—any set of organized and self-governing citizens was soon a target of a struggle campaign. In time each would be destroyed or brought into a subservient relationship with the Communist Party.
...
> Today The Cause has flipped—officially—from socialist revolution to national rejuvenation. The Party works under the same schema but has shifted the “people” that Mao identified with specific economic classes to the nation at large.[6] Mass mobilization campaigns have been retired. But struggle and united front campaigns have not. Xi’s great corruption purge, the Uyghur labor camps of Xinjiang, the attack on Christians across China—these all follow the same methods for crushing and coercing “enemies” developed by Mao and the Party in the early ‘40s. “One Country, Two Systems,” interference campaigns in the Chinese diaspora, the guided, gilded tours given to Musk and his ilk—these all follow the same methods for corrupting and controlling “allies” developed by Mao and the Party that same decade. The tools have never changed. The only thing that has changed is the Party’s assessment of who is an "enemy" and who is part of the "people."
You’re quite right that if China puts conquering Taiwan above all other aims they can do it, if the US and Japan let them. If they back Taiwan up it’s not happening. The US is quite capable of defending Taiwan all by itself and if the US doesn’t back Taiwan up its credibility as an ally is dead.
The Taiwanese are aware of what waits for those who cooperate with the PRC. Look at Hong Kong. Where’s their freedom now? Look at Xinjiang, at the treatment of Falun Dafa. Taiwan will be colonised, again. First the Dutch, then the Japanese, then Guomindang and finally the CCP.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/01/reflections-on-ch...
> After the Party seized power in 1949, Mao would systematically apply the same techniques to one group of Chinese after another: “landlords” and village leadership; gamblers, gangsters, and criminals; Christian congregations, Daoist temples and the Buddhist sangha; business circles, corporations, and stock-jobbers; universities, schools, and intellectual clubs; hospitals, aid workers, and relief organizations; minor political parties and independent political groups; workers associations and unions; clan groupings and ancestral schools; martial artists and Confucian hold-overs—any set of organized and self-governing citizens was soon a target of a struggle campaign. In time each would be destroyed or brought into a subservient relationship with the Communist Party.
...
> Today The Cause has flipped—officially—from socialist revolution to national rejuvenation. The Party works under the same schema but has shifted the “people” that Mao identified with specific economic classes to the nation at large.[6] Mass mobilization campaigns have been retired. But struggle and united front campaigns have not. Xi’s great corruption purge, the Uyghur labor camps of Xinjiang, the attack on Christians across China—these all follow the same methods for crushing and coercing “enemies” developed by Mao and the Party in the early ‘40s. “One Country, Two Systems,” interference campaigns in the Chinese diaspora, the guided, gilded tours given to Musk and his ilk—these all follow the same methods for corrupting and controlling “allies” developed by Mao and the Party that same decade. The tools have never changed. The only thing that has changed is the Party’s assessment of who is an "enemy" and who is part of the "people."
You’re quite right that if China puts conquering Taiwan above all other aims they can do it, if the US and Japan let them. If they back Taiwan up it’s not happening. The US is quite capable of defending Taiwan all by itself and if the US doesn’t back Taiwan up its credibility as an ally is dead.