Loose Lips Sink MIPS

If we are talking about international law, governments are free to recognise or refuse to recognise whichever foreign states or governments they want.

PRC tries its best to bribe and threaten other countries into not recognising ROC, and mostly succeeds. But that's realpolitik, not international law.

Recognition of a state does not imply recognition of all its territorial claims. (For example, the US recognises Australia, but the US doesn't recognise Australia's territorial claims in Antarctica.) So a state could choose to recognise both PRC and ROC simultaneously, while not recognising PRC's claims to Taiwan nor ROC's claims to the mainland. There is nothing in international law which prevents such a policy. The problem is political not legal.

ROC doesn't even seriously intend their territorial claims on the mainland any more. The only reason they don't drop them is that PRC would interpret that as an "independence move" and threatens to invade in that case.

The political reality is any country announcing recognition of ROC, even if it insists it still maintains its recognition of PRC, is going to have diplomatic relations withdrawn by PRC, and PRC will also try to retaliate in trade/etc.

> The one China policy was accepted when the UN removed the ROC in favor of PRC.

The UN's policies are not binding on its member states. The UN Secretariat has to follow the will of the majority of its member states as expressed in General Assembly resolutions. But each UN member state is free to choose a different position if that's the decision of their government.

That's like saying cheating in school makes you smarter and more capable. That might sometimes be true, for example if it helps you reallocate resources more efficiently, but its highly context dependent.

There exists a biased, Western narrative that casts Chinese and East Asians in general as incapable of originality or novelty; that all they do is copy the hard work of Westerners. This is less true of Japan or Taiwan today, but it was very much true of Japan throughout the 1970s and of Taiwan throughout the 1990s.

If we stand back and take an objective look at how industrial and scientific "copying" actually works in practice throughout the world, including among the leading industrial nations, I think it would show the China narrative to be exaggerated. Moreover, the narrative, whether true or not, is dangerous. It causes us to underestimate their prowess, and to the extent we assume that by disengaging and preventing copycat behavior we'll stave off a rising China, we're in for a huge surprise. Not only will China continue to rise, but in setting up an Us vs. Them world we'll have accomplished part of their Divide & Conquer strategy that China will inevitably (and, indeed, already has begun to) employ. And the risks will be greater as without strong bilateral ties--including ties that appeal to the self-interests (e.g. money) of powerful domestic organizations--resort to military aggression becomes a more prominent and easier option for both sides.[1]

[1] Why did the U.S. invade (a 2nd time) and then conquer Iraq, and is constantly on the verge of war with Iran? Because sanctions don't just cut off a country from the U.S., they cut off the U.S. from that country, which means there's no domestic political pressure to avoid war beyond the enlightened beliefs of a diminishing minority. That's why Saudi Arabia constantly gets a free pass--because of the strong U.S. business interests in Saudi Arabia, not merely because of oil, per se, of which there exists plenty of alternatives around the world. Similarly, it's also why Saudi Arabia has always been much more circumspect with their support for terrorism, which is something worthwhile as Saudi Arabia might otherwise provide much greater support for terrorist organizations if they weren't so concerned with protecting their American relationships.