Part of it is brainwashing on the PRC side - they are taught from elementary school that Taiwan is a part of China.

And are they not in the RoC?

The problem is that any such reunification would presumably be on the PRC’s terms, and that didn’t turn out so well for Hong Kong.

That’s some dangerous speculation for a country that spent 20 years fighting terrorists in the Middle East whose main demand was, “Yankees go home.”

They would almost certainly lose today, though it’d be costly to everyone involved. Provided the Philippines doesn’t elect another Duterte-type government, their nearby position will likely be enough to keep Taiwan supplied with air cover, if nothing else.

They don’t have a lot of carriers, or the long experience of the US Navy with them, and they’re still ramping up production of fifth generation fighters (the J-20). Hypersonic missiles give them an edge, but they’re not the wonder weapons they’re sometimes made out to be.

Ukraine has had two Patriot missile batteries for most of the past year–they just got a third–and they practically shut down Russian missile attacks. Taiwan has seven, and they need to cover a much smaller amount of land.

It’s more a question of where the Chinese military will be in 4 years. However, after 8 years, demographics in the country–long term effects of the One Child policy–are likely to strangle their ability to have a military on equal footing. Too many old people and not enough young people to take care of them. It’s possible this window of opportunity is already closed.

There’s a lot of classic US sandbagging going on. “We’re falling behind, we need a 1,000 ship navy to keep up with China”. Truth is, we only need to lay out the right pieces and the invasion will never happen. We don’t need to fund an even bigger navy and feed all that more money into the military-industrial complex.

How is Taiwan crucial for China? Locality? There’s nothing there of value aside from subjugation and a raw land grab.

The terrain makes it fairly defensible on the west coast. The economy would tank. Businesses of real value would implode.

The people don’t want to be “reunified” and will not tow the line so easily. China has never had to endure longterm modern asymmetrical warfare.

I just don’t see how it would benefit them vs the cost in the short and near term. If they could pull it off over 50 years then maybe but I don’t think it would play out that way.

But if you’re israel and say GOD gave you that land thousands of years ago, then here’s $100+ billion in addition to the billions already given annually to you to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Were the people saying they were going to reunify dipshits in that case?

And Russia is trying reunification with Ukraine. What’s your point?

Yeah but they actually both wanted it.

Taiwan, judging from the enormous amounts of military material it has invested in, doesn’t really want to be friends with china, let alone be conquered by it

Right, you’re saying that in hindsight.

When a tyrannous dictator preaches reunification as a descriptor when outlining their future plans the context changes a bit. Hope that helps :)

If they’re using a false term but quoting someone they should use quotes:

Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will “reunify” Taiwan with China

report what is true and verifiable

if they did that there wouldnt be much news, a lot fewer journalists, less jobs overall, and much less advertising revenue.

never gonna happen

The nation wasn’t developed by the people who escaped. That’s an ahistorical way of framing the issue

Taiwan was developed by the overthrown proto-fascist military junta who just lost the civil war. After taking the island, they didn’t tell the people of Taiwan that the war had been over and they were no longer China until 1991. The first labor laws outlawing slavery were introduced to the people of Taiwan in 2006. The people of Taiwan still consider themselves China (it is afterall the name they go by, not Taiwan) and full Taiwanese independence is still a minority held belief on the actual island.

Just to be clear, I am a supporter of their independence, but this is a very messy situation in which the political party who comrade the country is the same fascist party who lost the war in the first place and still maintains to the UN that they are the legitimate government of the mainland. Full separation is convenient for the West, but neither side actually wants that, they just don’t want to be ruled by either fascists or communists, and I think that is incredibly fair for all people actually involved to want.

Even before that Taiwan did not belong to the rest of China.

There were some settlers from the main land, but the indigenous population always controlled most of the island and the Chinese settlers were careful not to antagonize them.

This lasted for hundreds of years, pretty much until a brief period at the end of the 19th century when the Chinese government decided to send troops to brutally subjugate the indigenous population, only to shortly after lose control of Taiwan to the Japanese.

It’s a historical fact but how is it a tautology? Territory can change hands during a civil war as evidenced by the RoC no longer controlling China. Unless I’m misunderstanding something. Either way I don’t think that changes the point, if that’s a tautology then claiming that it can be reunified is a contradiction.

The status quo is Taiwan having de facto independence without seeking de jure independence.

It’s not that complicated.

yeah thats like saying hong kong normalized into china

China could just fuck off, leaving them alone and then no one has to die. But people supporting sovereign self defense are the baddies?

They aren’t. They’re trying to reform their military, and they’re in a better position to do so. But if they invaded today it would be really bad for them.