xpost from China threat thread:
RaviB wrote:Cross posted from Border thread
Relations with Taiwan
I see several people have proposed recognising Taiwan in retaliation to the current situation.
This would be absurd because:
1. The ROC (Taiwan) has the same claims on Tibet as the PRC. So it does nothing for resolving the Indo-Tibetan boundary
2. Chinese have a philosophy of "suck up - kick down". It's good for us if Taiwan stays below us, sucking up. There's no point in giving them equal status.
3. The possibility of recognition at some future date is a very good carrot to dangle, there's no point in handing it to Taiwan because we are angry at China. Taiwan has done nothing to earn it. Not to mention that even USA doesn't recognise them
4. We already have good relations with Taiwan. They have a de facto embassy (called Taipei Economic Council I think) in Delhi. We should definitely reciprocate a bit more but they already do a lot for us.
5. We should deepen our relations with them, most importantly in the economic sphere. Automatic visas for Taiwanese businessmen, while delaying or denying visas for Chinese businessmen will go a long way towards addressing the economic imbalance. A lot of business relies on personal contact, and personal presence and visas are an excellent way of making it more difficult for the Chinese to do business. If the Chinese retaliate by doing the same to our businessmen, then it's a plus. Most Indian businessmen are not there for any other reason than extracting profit for themselves and importing cheap rubbish into India. Our nation has no duty to serve the import of golden plastic lamps into India at the cost of more important interests.
6. The Taiwanese invested in China when it had nothing, no infrastructure, no educated workers, nothing. They are used to getting things to work in less than ideal conditions. They will have less hangups about getting things going in India.
7. The Taiwanese are heavily invested in the PRC, and would definitely like to move out some of that investment. We should do everything possible to help them do that. China doesn't have much leverage on Taiwan, other than military threats. Plus it needs those Taiwanese investments. Plus just as India wouldn't forbid Arunachal Pradesh to have economic activities in India, PRC cannot prohibit economic exchanges with Taiwan without tying itself into knots
8. Exchanging intelligence. They have very good intelligence on PRC. The HUMINT is exceptional, SIGINT is obviously an Uncle thing. They were the first ones to learn of the Wuhan Virus and slam their doors shut. Their paranoia about China and of course their experience with previous outbreaks is what helped them move so quickly on the CV. We have some very basic intelligence exchange, but we need to deepen this much further (maybe in exchange for automatic business visas or relaxed FDI rules?).
Your sequence of posts have been incredibly cogent and have explained China to many here. Though familiar with a lot of this myself (mostly from past friendships and relationships spanning the Taiwan Strait
) I've learned a lot too.
However, I have a point to make here regarding this argument:
1. The ROC (Taiwan) has the same claims on Tibet as the PRC. So it does nothing for resolving the Indo-Tibetan boundary
This has been quoted here before. Always by mainlanders who support PRC. This argument takes advantage of a nuance of the statement that people aren't quite familiar with. I'm more familiar with Taiwanese than mainlanders, so I got to learn about their view of this. My own sources are multiple 60-80 year ex ROCN/ROCA retirees in the bay area; I'm not their age though, just half that old.
Fundamentally there are two differently entities here and it's best to view them as such. Let's start with geographical entities: Mainland China and Taiwan island. Taiwan has three major cities TaiPei, written by mainland Romanization as TaiBei - north Taiwan . Same Bei as Bei Jing (north capital). Then there's Taichung, written by mainland Romanization as TaiZhong - central Taiwan. Same Zhong as ZhongHua (middle Kingdom, what they call themselves), and TaiNan or south Taiwan, same as NanJing which means South Capital (it was a former dynasty capital of mainland).
Now there are the governmental entities, and these owe themselves entirely to the Chinese Civil War era. There's PRC, which rules the mainland and asserts Taiwan is part of it. There's ROC, which was the former governmental entity of the mainland, that moved over and ran a government in exile in Taiwan, while desiring to rule the mainland as well. The names of the political parties running PRC and ROC were respectively Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party).
The above distinction is clear when you consider that the CCP that runs PRC, always asserts that Taiwan is a renegade entity. It never says that the ROC is, since that makes no sense.
Fast forward to present day - CCP still runs the mainland as PRC. Kuomintang is no longer the one party ruler of Taiwan's ROC governemnt. In fact Kuomintang is no longer in power in Taiwan. Kuomintang no longer even espouses ROC, which is deeply unpopular within the younger generation in Taiwan. In Taiwan, the older generation are Kuomintang supporters far more so than the younger ones. I have been to a Bay Area KMT fundraiser as someone's significant other at the time. And I have been face to face with ex Taiwan president
Ma Ying Jeou as well as seen
Tsai Ing Wen the current President, in person at a gathering, though not interacted with either of them. Interesting experience. They probably asked their minders who's the Indian spy.
So it may be true on paper that 'Taiwan (ROC)' had the same territorial claims as PRC. But here's the reality. There is no Taiwan (ROC). It hasn't existed for a long time. There's a Taiwan. There's a desire of one of Taiwan's parties (KMT) to re-establish ROC. That is the past fantasy of a collection of 80+ year old people. The younger Taiwanese generation is very prickly about the use of the term Chinese or China. They don't like using ROC, and they're vehemently against 'Chinese Taipei' at the Olympics or other sport events - they assert they are just Taiwan.
So there are wheels within wheels of this topic to consider.
3. The possibility of recognition at some future date is a very good carrot to dangle, there's no point in handing it to Taiwan because we are angry at China. Taiwan has done nothing to earn it. Not to mention that even USA doesn't recognise them
The other part of this is that they don't want it. If New Delhi stated tomorrow morning that they're giving Taiwan full diplomatic recognition, Beijing and Taipei would be equally horrified, for different reasons. Beijing would be furious. Taipei would be frightened about the huge foreign policy headache and anger from Beijing directed at them.
The hard reality is that the Taiwanese don't know what they want. They 'don't want the present', but they're quite literally by their own admission not keen on demanding full recognition. The most direct answer I've gotten from them (both younger and older folks) is that they are chicken. They know the source of their wealth and prosperity, and unlike Pakistanis, aren't stupid enough to want to shoot themselves in the foot when they have a good thing going. They prefer to evolve an independent identity and are aware they themselves don't quite know what they want/are - they have an internal inter-generational conflict between really old folks with ROC fantasies, somewhat younger folks who are pro-KMT, and much younger folks who want nothing to do with KMT.