Has the regeneracy arrived?

[Warren Dew]

(01-25-2017, 07:49 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-24-2017, 10:19 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-24-2017, 07:30 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: The majority of Taiwanese don't even identify as Chinese anymore.

I find that hard to believe.  Do you have a reference?  Even the Taiwanese language is dying if not dead.

There are multiple "Taiwanese" languages: various aboriginal languages, the Hakka and other dialects brought over by the first (Southern) Chinese settlers in the early Modern period, and then the huge influx of Mandarin speakers after the Civil War.  But yeah, largely Mandarin, at least formally.

The references for the shift in identification from "Chinese" to "Taiwanese" are here.  It's more like the shift in colonists' attitudes from being "British" to being "American" even though they still spoke the same language.

So we're talking more about political identification than cultural identification.  I can see that.

Your survey says "18 percent of respondents said they would like to see the “status quo” maintained in cross-strait relations, while 5.9 percent said they would prefer an immediate declaration of independence ... respondents supporting unification with China dropped to 9.2 percent".  That leaves a heck of a lot of undecideds, and more supporting reunification than independence.

While I don't think "an offer they can't refuse" would go over well, it might be possible for China to reach an agreement that allowed Taiwan to retain their military.  Of course, everyone except Trump is pretty happy with the status quo as well.

If everyone acted rationally, the US would agree to return to the "one China" policy, China would abandon their artificial islands, and the US would acquiesce in China's commercial agreements to develop oil sources in the South China Sea.  The problem is whether the politicians could sell this as a victory to their respective supporters on both sides.

Militarily, what's enforceable is for the US to start basing in Taiwan and for China to control the South China Sea through artificial islands.  That would be a worse result for both sides, since Taiwan would become a realistic existential threat to China, and Chinese control of the South China Sea would become an existential threat to the US control of the global maritime trade regime.  That result is ripe for escalating missteps.  Unfortunately, given it's a crisis period, maybe that result is also the most likely result.