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pastacacioepepe

Taiwan is part of China. The USA also hypocritically recognize that.

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No, the Taiwan Relations Act specifically does NOT recognize that.

It recognizes the CCP's claim to Taiwan as part of China.

Recognizing that Taiwan is part of China is not part of the act, and was deliberately written as such.

There's a vast difference between diplomatically saying "this land is yours" versus "we understand that you claim that this land is yours".

Night and day. The deliberate vagueness was the whole point of the language used in the act.

This suggests that the position of US about of the issue is that "This land is yours" is debatable.

However the majority opinion of western world which is shaped by MSM has another view that "(A) This land is not yours and (B)it's not debatable". They only mention the issue is "debatable" when the position of US official position is against their opinion. Underneath they still believe there's no controversy that Taiwan is not part of China due to their hidden ideology.

Decoding hidden part of people's mind based on their output is more interesting than the original topic and also itself is quite controversial.

"This suggests that the position of US about of the issue is that "This land is yours" is debatable."

Fair point. The wording is intentionally vague and up for interpretation - because as you say, we all know US's opinion is that China is China, and Taiwan is Taiwan, but in order to avoid pissing off China, we keep things as ambiguous and vague as we can.

Strategic obfuscation, if you will.

I wonder how the residents of Taiwan feel about this.

How do the Catalonians feel about being part of Spain, or the russophone Ukrainians about being part of Ukraine? Not great. Do you care? If the answer is no, then what you are concerned about is not Taiwanese independence.

Well, how do the Catalans feel about being part of Spain? Seems like none of the referenda that were held had close to 100% participation, since anti-independence votes boycotted them. Certainly Catalonian nationalism/sovereignty shouldn't be discounted, but is it as comparable as you'd say? Maybe somewhere like Palestine would be a better analogy, as that is also a case where a long-standing autonomous government has actually existed.

A people should have a right to self-determination. I can believe that just fine regardless of which people it's applied to. The current focus is in this discussion is about Taiwan, so naturally discussions about Taiwanese self-determination are going to be the focus in this thread. Maybe we'll get a thread about Catalonia sometime. When that happens we can discuss that. For now, let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism.

> let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism.

There's been no actual discussion about the self-determination of the Taiwanese, because the Taiwanese have not been asked whether they want to be separated from China, and any indication that they don't has been scrupulously ignored.

Polls are clearly trending in a specific direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Taiwanese_i...

Polls indicating support of the status quo are obviously in response to the threats of war, and doing one's best to avoid it. Support for reunification however has fallen off a cliff.

It's good that you ask the question that most of people get information from English media.

Taiwan as many people mentioned here is a democracy. It has freedom of speech. So it's easy to get the information from the source inside Taiwan.

Long story short: It's very mixed. There are people want to re-unit with China and even expect the mainland using military means. Pro-independence group is much larger but majority like to keep the existing status while tend to independence.

Here are some media that show views against Western perception which seems originated from MSM .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6ep7auypk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvACcb9qrt4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UEz3CyD1ME

There are much more. But again as I mention they are minority

(Claim: I'm not saying that MSM is trusted by Western audience. On the contrary a lot of people especially young generation don't trust or even disdain MSM. However the Taiwan issue is an exception.）

You mean West Taiwan is part of Taiwan? The legitimate government in exile when the commies took over, I believe.

You should look up what happened to the native Formosans when the "legitimate government" (occupying army) went into exile.

What are native Formosans? The indigenous aboriginal Austronesian people of the island, or the Han and Hakka settlers who arrived from the mainland since the 13th century? And you should look up what happened after that occupying army relaxed martial law and the dictatorship fell away.

By legitimate government you mean those responsible for the White Terror[0] in Taiwan? By all means I'm glad the "commies" took over then.

.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

While killing a few thousand protesters is surely bad, it is a drop in the bucket compared to those murdered under the commies. So I am very glad the commies didn't get Taiwan, or it would've been a 100 times worse.

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