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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, I don't think we need Taiwan. I agree with the first part of the conclusion.

> The Taiwanese are some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. As a free and open democratic society, they would deserve our support for that alone.

Part of my family is Taiwanese so I'm biased of course. But it's really a tragedy that these people may get attacked and invaded by China in the near future. What drives me crazy is people who try to argue that it's right for some historical reason. "Taiwan belongs to China" like if an entire population's faith could belong to some dictator. Conflicts are not always clear, but it's really a good vs evil fight in that case.

I wonder what will be the US stance on this.

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> What drives me crazy is people who try to argue that it's right for some historical reason. "Taiwan belongs to China" like if an entire population's faith could belong to some dictator.

Like if it could belong to anyone but the Taiwanese, who are perfectly capable of knowing what is in their interest.

I keep on stumbling across this stupid historical argument as well, and I fail to understand... I think it's in part an heritage of the colonial mindset that was prevalent in Europe not so long ago.

Not an expert, but PRC claims Taiwan, and interestingly the ROC also claims the mainland? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#Political_and_legal_sta...

So it sorta seems like they both agree on 'One China', but not who should be running it.

I do think we need taiwan and TSMC is a big part of it. There is too much cutting edge tech in Taiwan, I think the US would go toe to toe to defend Taiwan if necessary. But we're trying to reduce that dependence by building fabs in the US, so that could change in the next 10 years.

> So it sorta seems like they both agree on 'One China', but not who should be running it.

"ROC claims the mainland" only exists because any change from the status quo would look like declaring independence. It's not taken seriously in Taiwan.

Not only it's not taken seriously, but afaik the political opinions basically range from "closer ties to China" to "closer ties to the rest", with "union" and "official declaration of independence" being at the fringe of both. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Taiwanese_presidential_el...

I think there's more than chips there. The US have a very strong military presence in the pacific. Giving up on Taiwan would send the messages to US allies there that they're on their own and that they need to change their allegiance.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's important too. But we have a lot of cutting edge hardware coming out of Taiwan that is important in basically every industry, including defense.

I’m not an expert either however I believe it is more nuanced. If taiwan no longer claims the rest of China officially, then China will see that as a formal declaration of independence and reason to initiate an invasion. It seems all the words, phrasing etc is very politically sensitive on all sides.

That does make sense, thanks for the context.

right now the US is catering to a people whose strongest talking point relies on the idea that a new national identity cant appear over the last century (unless it preexisted 2,000 years ago)

so thats going to be awkward for us to cater to a national identity that appeared over the last century, at the drop of a hat

obviously none of us actually care, but its fun to pretend to keep a couple of instagram followers and employment

Ahem I think you meant "no new national identities can appear after 1776".

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