The fine folks at Gadling.com, which is an interesting, new-to-me travel Weblog, have some nice things to say about this site and its creator. (Though it should be noted that I am not a woman; my name is gender-ambiguous, yes, but is my prose not muscular and testosterone-infused?)
Anyhoo, they say I should talk more about relations between China and Taiwan. Okay. Here goes. This is the condensed version.
Taiwanese people think of Taiwan as an independent country. China says Taiwan is a renegade province and that it has the right to use military force, if necessary, to reunify the island with the mainland.
But would that ever happen? Would China ever invade Taiwan? It seems unlikely, but analysts say China’s moving closer to launching some sort of attack–mostly because Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, proposes “officially” declaring independence and re-writing the island’s constitution. China threatens to take action if either of those event occur.
Both China and Taiwan, though, are mostly intersted in maintaining the status quo, referred to as “one country, two systems.” This allows the Chinese government to claim Taiwan is part of China (even though it operates as an independent nation), and it allows Taiwan to remain free and democratic.
The best analysis of the situation I’ve read is “Strait-jacket,” an article by by Trevor Corson in the December, 2004 Atlantic Monthly. (Sadly, only the introduction is avaialble without a subscription.)
To be sure, the issue is extremely complicated, and it involves notions of ethnicity, culture, and statehood; I feel I’m only beginning, after nearly a year in Taiwan, to understand it.