“Taiwan is not a colony à la Hong Kong, and it has everything to lose and nothing to gain from agreeing to it,” Professor Sullivan said. Even so, Mr. Xi had political motives to show that he was working to absorb Taiwan, Professor Sullivan said. “The former is becoming more difficult to deliver, and so the latter becomes more important.”Few experts believe that Mr. Xi’s speech augured an eruption of conflict over Taiwan. Taiwan and China have been at loggerheads, sometimes close to full-scale war, since 1949, when Kuomintang forces defeated by Mao Zedong’s revolutionary armies retreated to the island. In November, the opposition Kuomintang, which favors closer ties with China, won mayoralties in Taiwan’s three most populous cities.

Source: New York Times January 02, 2019 12:13 UTC