Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan during his televised New Year’s address, renewing Beijing’s threats to take over the self-ruled island, which it considers its own.
Taiwan split from China amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing continues to regard the island of 23 million with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary.
“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi said in his annual address, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
China has described Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.
Taiwan doesn’t want to be part of China. Not that hard to understand. Xi is afraid if he relents on this, the people of china will realize he’s a shit leader and will also revolt that’s the real reason he’s taking a hard stance on this. Can’t have people realizing they dint have to put up with his shit.
It is quite literally Taiwan’s constitutional vow and the opinion of every government theyve ever elected that they want to be part of China, or rather, are China.
This is not news, both sides have said they want a form of reunification for about 70 years now. But remarkable that you have made up a lovely little narrative for yourself to enjoy from this tired propaganda.
No.
Younger generations overwhelmingly want independence.
The issue is to renounce claims to the mainland is that China will invade, and as articles like this show that is going to remain a concern.
So status quo continues to prevail, but that’s got like 1 or 2 elections left before younger voters are too hard to ignore.
“Just 1 or 2 elections until the post you disagreed with might be correct” is the weirdest argument I’ve ever heard
No, the majority already support it and do not want reunification.
The election thing is until it’s official state policy.
Weird, you’re telling me the elected government aren’t representing the will of the people? What are they, communists?
Do you think every election runs solely on one issue?
If there’s a topic more important to Taiwanese voters than “should we rule China, Tibet and Mongolia”, I’d be interested to know what that is and why we don’t have have constant scare coverage of it blasted at us by American media every day.
Even if ey meant what you claim ey meant, that would’ve been a perfectly correct statement. If you need to wait until the post becomes correct, the post is now incorrect
What are you even trying to say? “If you need to wait until the post becomes correct, the post is now incorrect” is my point.
That doesn’t sound right at all to me, do you have a source?
Less than 12% of Taiwanese favour unification with China.
EDIT: Here are a few quotes from Tsai Ing-Wen, the president of Taiwan for the past 8 years. Maybe people can make up their mind on whether the claim that ‘both’ parties in Taiwan want to unify with China seems to hold water:
“We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan.” [source]
The consensus of the Taiwanese people … is to defend our sovereignty and our free and democratic way of life. There is no room for compromise on this [source]
Ever since 2016, my administration has kept its promises and maintained the status quo. We have adhered to the Four Commitments. We do not provoke, we do not act rashly, and we will absolutely not bow to pressure. [source]
It is quite literally Taiwan’s constitutional vow and the opinion of every government theyve ever elected that they want to be part of China
I have to admit that I’m uninformed about this point of the RoC constitution. Could you point it out? For your convenience: https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000001
I don’t know anything about a “constitutional vow”.
They are named the Republic of China and claim all (or most?) of mainland China in the claimed territories, (but where those are defined I can’t find):, I suppose it’s not really wrong to call that wanting to be a part of China.
Also in the amendments they talk about the free area and the mainland area https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000002
Of course it’s a very misleading claim because if they would claim anything else they risk war with the PRC.
All the discussion I’ve seen is also about independence vs the status quo, not independence vs joining the PRC. That’s not really on the table.
I’d say it is wrong to call that wanting to be a part of China and especially call that a want for unification. Both Chinas consider themselves the only legit China
How is that wrong? And I literally made the distinction in my post if you insist on it.
How is going from two Chinese administrations ruling China to one Chinese administration ruling China anything other than reunification?
At no point was it suggested they want to be part of PRoC.
Both sides want one China. Both sides claim to be the only China. Both sides say this in every official state policy. Just like this one. That’s why this story is literally not news, except where news can be defined as “things published to rile up American military spending”.
At this time is history reunification means joining the PRC, there’s no question about that. And support for that is very low in Taiwan.
The reason they don’t say that in official statements and prefer the status quo is because they are afraid of war.
And? Does “status quo” sound like a weekly news item to you?
I fully understand the situation. I don’t understand how the only thing that unites left and right in America is bring utterly terrified of China to the point where a literal unemotional reading of a statement that accords with both states’ policies is news, and someone saying it isn’t news must be suppressed as a bad actor or something.
No, reunification isn’t the status quo, that’s ending the status quo.
Xijinping saying mainland China and Taiwan will reunite basically means he wants to invade Taiwan. That is newsworthy.
This is proof that anyone can just say anything on the internet.
Yes as I sit on -125 votes it’s very clear that all voices are heard.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that’s basically what they say in every address since forever? I’m not saying there are no tensions but this is not something new or even recent.
Yes, they’ve been saying that since forever.
They have the sabers so they might as well rattle them.
They know it would risk a war with the US which they know they can’t win.
Tbh I really dont see what could China possibly get with taking Taiwan. It’s wouldn’t be an easy hold and China would lose so much goodwill and international growth. People don’t want to believe it but China is likely to outgrow everyone else by not really doing anything drastic and continueing with the current strategy.
It does feel like a sabre rattle almost every rational way you look at it but it is still so uneasy to read threats like that.
I agree that Taiwan is probably more useful to Xi as a threat to rile up the nationalists than as a legitimate military objective.
I think the real risk, though, is that a mistake or overly aggressive demonstration of strength could very easily force China to commit to a full invasion once it begins to get out of control.
Massive control over the semiconductor market. There are 2 companies that have basically the entire market TSMC (Taiwan semiconductor) and samsumg.
That’s actually a myth. No way China is taking the factories in tact so the market would just shift even further away from China.
Aren’t they all rigged for sabotage in the event of an invasion? I feel like I read that at some point but maybe I made it up lol
My dude, she doesn’t wanna be wit you no more. Let her go.
Fuck the CCP
So, he admits they aren’t unified?
It would almost be worth getting disappeared just to ask that question in front of everyone.
It is time for the mainland to come back into the fold.
I agree the mainland should be allowed to maintain some amount of self rule during the transition.
What would you say, 50 years? Is that enough time to pinky promise?
I’d say, let’s have everyone brainstorm the best way to go about this, and let a thousand flowers bloom!
It’s like offering East Germany a 50 year transition after the wall went down.
Hey people climbing over the wall, did you want to go back and we’ll rebuild it again?
Probably be no takers.
Some squares on my bingo card for 2024 are China invades Taiwan and a fungus causes the next global pandemic.
Methane Clathrate anomaly is the biggie on my bingo card. When the ocean starts weirdly bubbling all of a sudden, then the end is extremely fucking nigh.
Man where have I heard that one before. Surely it’ll happen this time guys!
Considering that the amount of active wars seems to have grown recently. I sure hope China is bluffing 😢
Dejavu
I wonder when windows will become dangerous in Taiwan, gotta watch out.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Taiwan split from China amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing continues to regard the island of 23 million with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary.
“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi said in his annual address, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
China has described Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.
Beijing considers the presidential front-runner, William Lai, who currently serves as vice president from the ruling Democratic People’s Party, a “separatist” and has accused him and Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen of trying to provoke a Chinese attack on the island.
On Saturday, Chen Binhua, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, called Lai a “destroyer of peace” following a televised debate earlier that day in which Lai defended Taiwan’s right to rule itself as a democracy.
Chen said Lai’s discourse at the debate was “full of confrontational thinking,” adding that the vice president is “the instigator of a potential dangerous war in the Taiwan Strait.”
The original article contains 310 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 36%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Taiwan didn’t split from the mainland. The mainland was conquered in the Civil War and the communists declared themselves victor over everything.
Taiwan was never captured.
I mean, it’s more complicated than that. Both declared themselves victor. Mainland went communist. The west couldn’t live with that so they propped up to authoritarian govt of Taiwan and ignored the communist government for 30 years, funding the murder of hundreds of thousands of dissidents. They couldn’t “capture” it without dragging themselves into the US’s cold war fever.
It’s only been the last 40 years that Taiwan has become democratic, and only the last 10-20 that the parties who wanted unification started to lose elections. Even then they keep wavering back and forth in elections some trying to tie more to China and some trying to break off entirely afaict.
Yeah, yeah, he says lots of things
