China has said it will “never compromise” on the issue of Taiwan, in its first military talks with the US since 2021.
It urged the US to “stop arming Taiwan” and take its concerns “seriously”.
This comes just days ahead of pivotal elections in Taiwan, which could push the island further towards - or away - from Beijing.
China claims Taiwan as part of its own territory, but the island sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.
Some of the states suceeding might actually be a relatively peaceful way to get beyond the current political divide in the US. Though both of those states (and most of the others) are more purple than red or blue, so it’s complicated and would probably require a mechanism to separate from the separation, kinda like West Virginia breaking away from Virginia when it broke away from the USA. All or nothing referendums probably aren’t a great way to do something like this.
That’s not gonna go the way they think it will, and I doubt there’s enough public support for it to ever happen.
Honestly, I think the closest parallel to Taiwan in the 2020s is Cuba in, say, 1980s.
Their biggest sponsor is retreating from the world globally and can no longer really afford to support a full military detachment there indefinitely, especially after fucking up in Afghanistan for the last decade. There’s a ton of economic reasons to just drop this bullshit and be normal, but they’re too prideful to let the issue go. All their neighbors are increasingly hostile to the jilted-ex attitude their neighbor is displaying, but when you’ve got nukes who is really going to argue with you?
So the US perpetuates a blockade of the island for the next 40 years out of spite, hoping that one day the Cuban government will just kinda collapse and let the Americans back in.
And the Chinese will continue to economically love-bomb Taiwan, while picking fights with the US by running military drills around the island’s edges, hoping against hope that they’ll eventually get a better reception in Taipei than they did in Hong Kong.
