A generation of young Taiwanese, and any remaining hope of mutual reconciliation.
“As authorities in Hong Kong arrested pro-democracy supporters, including opposition politicians and newspaper editors, a growing number of people in Taiwan have reflected upon the island’s future relationship with mainland China,” CNN says.
And having watched Beijing crush the last trappings of democracy and freedom in Hong Kong, Taiwanese are turning their backs on mainland China; fewer than 8% of them now support unification.
In 2019, “Beijing proposed a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula for Taiwan, similar to that used to govern Hong Kong since its handover from Britain to China in 1997,” CNN said. All its promises of autonomy proved hollow. But Beijing’s heavy-handed treatment of Hong Kong did more than alienate the coming generation of Taiwanese. It’s also hardening attitudes in the U.S.
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Xi Jinping, the son of a first-generation communist revolutionary, is reversing China’s post-Mao liberalization and taking China back to Maoist-style dictatorship. He’s stamping out press freedom, ruthlessly suppressing dissent, conducting a genocide against the Uyghur people, embarking on a massive armaments program, and pursuing an increasingly belligerent and threatening foreign policy.
Most Western experts think the chances of China invading Taiwan are low. But Xi speaks of unification as “inevitable” and likely has given up hoping to achieve it peacefully. Last year, his top general said war with the United States is inevitable. China, by all appearances, is preparing for it.
Taiwan is a democracy. Its people have never lived under communism. At this point, America supports Taiwan in various ways, but is noncommittal about whether it would come to its defense. At some future point, the American people may have to decide whether the freedom of 23 million Taiwanese is worth sacrificing for.