Meanwhile, elsewhere…

New Bloom describes how China’s ‘soft power’ has failed to work in Taiwan. Essentially: Chinese popular culture has become politicized and alienating to Taiwanese; punishment of Taiwan companies that fail to endorse Beijing’s line has similarly alienated public opinion; and Taiwan’s sense of identity has strengthened…

The 2019 crackdown on Hong Kong was a turning point. Many in Taiwan had once considered China’s “One Country, Two Systems” model. But after seeing Hong Kong’s freedoms stripped away, support for that idea collapsed. China’s promise of peaceful coexistence lost credibility. Unification with China now looks like a direct threat to Taiwan’s democracy…

…China’s failure in Taiwan exposes a deeper flaw in its approach. Soft power is about attraction, not coercion. Unless China dramatically rethinks its approach, reunification will remain as distant as ever.

China File looks at Taiwanese people’s view of themselves as non-Chinese as the KMT increasingly sees the CCP as an ally…

In a recent interview with Japanese media, senior KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling was frank about her party’s objectives. She told Nikkei Asia that “the peaceful unification of this country is of course our ultimate goal.” Even though there “may be no way to achieve this immediately,” she continued, “cross-strait communication and interaction” can help achieve this objective.

In her interview, Weng asserted that all Taiwanese people are Chinese. Yet poll after poll by National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taiwan, originally founded in China a century ago as the KMT’s party school, show that Taiwanese respondents see things differently. In the university’s most recent survey, 94.4 percent of respondents said they identified as either Taiwanese or Taiwanese and Chinese. Of that supermajority, nearly two-thirds said they viewed themselves as Taiwanese exclusively. Only 2.4 percent of respondents said they felt they were Chinese only, with 3.2 percent declining to answer.

NCCU polling has also found that Taiwanese overwhelmingly reject unification with the PRC. Only 1.1 percent of respondents to a similar poll from late last year sought unification as soon as possible, with 5.8 percent favoring maintaining the status quo and moving towards eventual unification. On the other side of the lopsided spectrum, 34.1 percent favored maintaining the status quo—effective independence—indefinitely. Another 26.4 preferred keeping the status quo and deciding later, while 22.5 percent said they wanted to keep things as they are for now, with the eventual goal of doing away with the ROC and establishing a Taiwanese state.

Recall that the bulk of Taiwanese are descended from Fujianese who started settling on the island around the same time the English began colonizing Massachusetts and Virginia. It’s not as if there was even much of a window of opportunity in the 1980s-90s, when it seemed 1C2S could work in Hong Kong and even encourage liberalization in China. Prior to democratization in the 80s, the KMT denounced China’s government as ‘communist bandits’. Following democratization, Taiwan people became free to openly reject the KMT line that they are Chinese. 

As these articles suggest, there is no way Taiwan will accept Chinese rule peacefully. That leaves Beijing with two choices: use violence – which would prompt global sanctions and crash China’s economy – or just forget it.