taiwan and the "one china principle"

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in today's chicago tribune there was a letter written by the head of chicago's chinese consulate. he was responding to a recent editorial which alluded to "taiwanese independence." the diplomat spent perhaps 800 words explaining that there is only one china, over which there is uniform sovereignty, and any notion of "taiwanese independence" is not only (he implied) heretical but nonsensical.

the article made no allusion to the realities, of taiwan being--whatever the shifting claims of its government and of the PRC--de facto independent of mainland china, with its own military and trade agreements (albeit no formal diplomatic recognition, for the most part), etc.

the brio with which this minor diplomat aped the "party line" in defiance of basic realities was disturbing. it read like a rather brazen manifestation of the "big lie" approach to politics.

so what does the prc stand to lose, exactly, by recognizing de facto taiwanese independence? will such a recognition provide an ideological beachhead for nationalist movements inside mainland china? or what? and are there basic contradictions in taiwan's role in the world--i.e. the de facto political and military independence coupled with the absense of de jury political recognition--that are untenable. things seem to be going ok for both countries under the current circumstances.

do you think the two "countries" (or whatever we want to call them, given the confusions alluded to above) will be unified in some meaningful way in our lifetimes?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 18 June 2004 00:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Your last point I hope not since whatever gains Taiwan's made so far might be wiped out to some extent à la Hong Kong.

My pet theory is that it's an obstinate ethnicity issue, that the emigres/exiles in Taiwan are Chinese, thus live under the aegis of the PROC. (Maybe similar to Cuban expats in Florida?)

And hearing my old man complain about Taiwan, things have gotten dire, politically, there.

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Friday, 18 June 2004 01:04 (twenty-two years ago)

the article made no allusion to the realities, of taiwan being--[...] de facto independent of mainland china, with its own military and trade agreements (albeit no formal diplomatic recognition, for the most part), etc.

Governments often choose to publically endorse a fantasy version of the world, if it appears to serve their interests. This is basic.

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 18 June 2004 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Aimless OTM. We've been living it since Jan '01.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Friday, 18 June 2004 02:37 (twenty-two years ago)

yes, i agree there is a limited parallel there. the bush administration appears to deny certain aspects of reality that do not serve their (momentary) interests, but they do so in a context of constant criticism which often keeps them on the defensive, and necessitates a constant need to alter their tone. now perhaps they have not been as flexible as all that, but i think that could perhaps be their downfall.

beijing, on the other hand, seems to take this line without anything in the way of acknowledgement of alternate realities, or points of view. and what scares me most, perhaps, is the appeal made in the aforementioned letter to "one china," immutable and unchanging, for which no explicit historical appeal is rendered. it's as if *everyone* understands this idea of "china" and everyone knows that events of the past 55 years have done nothing to render it irrelevant or even in question. this frightens me because it is the sort of rhetoric that leads to war: witness saddam hussein's rationale for invading kuwait (they are a "part of iraq," nevermind the current realities).

i mean, this is not news i suppose. there has been a kind of freezeout, resembling a march to war, in place ever since 1949, between taiwan and the prc. but it still scares me that such rhetoric is considered appropriate, even necessary, despite all the reforms and other changes that have taken place in china over the past 25 years.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 18 June 2004 03:17 (twenty-two years ago)

"one china principle" sounds like a likely band name. but soon the fans would start calling them "ocp" and no one would remember what it originally stood for. this is also around the time they made the transition from artsy sound collage to a poppier sound.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 18 June 2004 03:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Taiwan is important to the PRC's government, because reunification relates directly to the communist party's legitimacy.

China is a communist country in name only, after more than 20 years of economic reforms. Now that the communist ideology is no longer relevant to contemporary China, the communist party has searched for a new ideology to fill the void. The party decided on Chinese nationalism.

Taiwan is an important component of Chinese nationalism. It is the final piece in China's manifest destiny.

So the communist party's rhetoric on Taiwan is closely related to its desire to maintain legitimacy. The rhetoric often has more to do with playing to the home crowd and Taiwanese domestic politics than geo-political gamesmanship.

― Debito (Debito), Friday, 18 June 2004 04:10 (twenty-two years ago)

And that's why it doesn't reflect reality.

― Debito (Debito), Friday, 18 June 2004 04:13 (twenty-two years ago)

eight years pass...

http://i.imgur.com/7fqgo.png

― USADA Bin Dopen (dayo), Friday, 7 September 2012 11:32 (thirteen years ago)

providence, rogue island

― A.R.R.Y. Kane (nakhchivan), Friday, 7 September 2012 12:12 (thirteen years ago)

seven years pass...

Just browsing around, looking at bridges, when suddenly I see for the first time a map of the G3 Beijing–Taipei Expressway.

https://i.imgur.com/l7jWlpb.png

And yet, they still won't build a bridge to Sicily, what a world.

― pplains, Thursday, 28 May 2020 03:40 (six years ago)

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