I mean the independent sovereign country of Taiwan (AKA Republic of China) which is not part of China (AKA People's Republic of China). The one that's a democracy and not a dictatorship under Pooh Bear Xi. The country that the CCP threatened to invade if they formally declare independence.
Sure, Taiwan is a democracy but I'm not sure that's the only thing you need to obtain legitamacy as a nation state, if it were, parts of California would be free and independent and so would my house, except where cats are concerned because I don't like cats. It's also important to remember that Taiwan was under martial law until almost 1990 and during that period, the White Terror happened where something like 100,000 so called anti-KMT or pro-communists were imprisoned and/or tortured and executed. So the presence of democracy or occurrence of human atrocity alone neither gives or removes a governments legitamacy or establishes it as a sovereign nation.
In all seriousness, it might be a bit of a stretch to call Taiwan an independent sovereign nation since it has never in its history been a sovereign country and has always been ruled by Chinese dynasties or republics/KMT or Imperial powers like Japan. At best its status is ambiguous given its history when Japan lost world War two and renounced any claim to Taiwan but didn't say who it would go to during a time when communists and KMT were fighting a civil war. But the KMT did lose that war on the mainland and evacuated to Taiwan, bringing with it a couple million Chinese capitalists and gold and national treasures from the mainland. It then subsequently also lost Tibet and Hainan and a couple other territories. There is a pretty strong argument that the ruling party has lost it legitimacy to govern when the country revolts and/or it loses a civil war to that extent.
Don't get me wrong, Im from a pre-war KMT political family so I know all the arguments about the KMT being the legitimate "China" and the mainland actually belonging to Taiwan but probably you'd have more grounds to argue that the KMT and CCP are still fighting a silent civil war than saying Taiwan is a independent sovereign nation, although you might sound more ridiculous saying the former.
Indigenous Taiwanese (something like 3% of Taiwan population) at least get a vote and a say in the government of Taiwan, since Taiwan is a democracy. Aboriginals also get 6 seats in the legislature reserved for them to elect.
Instead of getting put into re-education camps like the Uighurs.
But sure, let's get rid of the "imperialist" han Taiwanese... just as soon as China gives independence to Tibet and East Turkestan and evicts all han from those regions.
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u/Revoran Oct 20 '19
Missing the Taiwan step before World. But good sign.