Those lazy Taiwanese aren’t getting richer at all.” It is fashionable on the mainland to diss Taiwan, but – as I was too polite to inform my interlocutor – Taiwan residents have created a fine civil society and have learned to get along well with each other, tasks that are much harder than just getting rich. Taiwan residents who came from the mainland in 1949, and their descendants, called themselves Chinese, reserving “Taiwanese” to refer to the island’s indigenous tribes. Today, following Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Chinese aircraft are aggressively violating the midline of the Strait of Taiwan. Occupying Taiwan would help China with its blowing stuff up options, but would give it little added advantage vis a vis shutting stuff down. China’s repeated insistence that there is one China (including Taiwan) with capital in Beijing (even as Kuomintang adherents agree there’s one China, but with capital in Taipei!)

Source: Washington Post August 07, 2022 00:59 UTC