World News

Note: The following is what I heard from a friend who lived there for decades. I have visited Taiwan but I don't have roots there, as such this is all I have to go on.

But as far as I'm told the drive for Status Quo is mainly because the Taiwanese people don't want to pull out the red flag. They'd love to have independence and be recognised as a state but the status quo is good enough (because it de facto offers them independence in all but name) and less likely to lead to a major war. So basically right now they already have what they want and trying to formalise it will only put more pressure on the situation.

China was using their Taiwanese propaganda group, KMT, to threaten voters prior to the election.

China and Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), have cast the election as a choice between war and peace. [...] KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih said on Saturday a vote for the DPP was equivalent to "sending everyone out to the battlefield" because supporting Taiwan independence would touch off a war.

And this is what China's military aggression against Taiwan looked like between March 2022 and March 2023:

This is blatantly provocative and threatening.

China has been doing everything they can to manipulate the outcome of this election, and they didn't get the results they wanted so now they're whining about it, and making more threats. China is behaving like an abusive ex.

An independent public opinion poll conducted in 2022 found that 50% of Taiwanese favored independence, while only 12% favored unification and 25% preferred maintaining the status quo.

But that goes against your narrative so I'll bet you downvote me and ignore the actual [data] that do not support your argument.

Cool, uh, anyway, in Taiwan the President is directly elected by popular vote.

So the majority of Taiwanese voted for a President who opposes greater integration/interference/subservience to, whatever you wanna say, with or to China.

In fact this would seemingly necessarily mean that the only way this could happen along with the DPP not also winning a majority in Parliament is that a good chunk of Taiwanese support the KMT and TPP for domestic affairs, but prefer a president, who has more power and relevance specifically to foreign affairs, that opposes integration/interference/subservience with/from/to China.

But please do go on about my narrative while you are either knowingly or unknowingly misrepresenting the most fundamental basics of the situation.

What is still being debated in Taiwan is if it should declare independence officially, or accept the status quo of factual being independent without declaring it. This is where the three major parties have a different stance, because the DPP kinda tends to the declaration, while the KMT still declares that Taiwan is the legitimate China.

About the vote: All three major parties say publicly that they are against re-union in terms of being ruled by China's CCP. Today, even Taiwan's KMT continues to view Taiwan as the free, democratic and legitimate China. So no, no-one voted "pro mainland China" in terms of how the chinese CCP wants to rule over Taiwan.

Status quo is: Taiwan has its own from China independent border control, independent military, independent health care system, independent education system, independent currency, independent law system which is derrived from Japanese and German law, and independent political system, which is democratic.

This is not an opinion, but just the facts. It's only CCPs rethoric that pretends the opposite.

It’s just the 2 more pro-China parties got their vote split.

If this was such an important election and Chinese relations were the major issue on the table, why would the two pro-China parties not ally themselves? Are coalitions not a thing in Taiwan?

I'm not sure if voting for an another party can be seen inherently as voting against someone else. I suppose that's what it is but voting against seems like it would take an active part in the reason you're voting, rather than just preferring another party.

Hi, welcome to this community. Downvotes are not allowed here, and the main rule is to bee-nice, so no need to worry about Reddit-esque shenanigans.

They don't even consider themselves Chinese anymore, why would they want to reunite?

I actually had a tankie tell me that Chinese is not actually a bunch of what us Americans would actually more properly call different languages altogether, when I told a story about a friend I knew from Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese and a little a English, had to actually go through me (Cantonese, English, capable of translating Cantonese to Vietnamese, but not Mandarin, because my phone waa bugging out), and a nearby Vietnamese shopkeep (Vietnamese, some Mandarin) to communicate to someone who only spoke Mandarin, and effectively nearly no English.

We did this comical routine of my friend typing Cantonese into my phone, translating it to Vietnamese, then to Mandarin via the shopkeep, then to the Mandarin speaking woman, then all the way back the other way, for about 20 minutes, to have a conversation that probably could otherwise have been had in 3 minutes.

There are in fact many regional /dialects/ of Chinese (beyond just Cantonese) that are actually so different that it is very common that one who can only speak one /dialect/ cannot actually communicate nearly at all with someone who knows only a different /dialect/.

I am putting /'s around dialect because actually a growing number of translators who know one or many of these /dialects/, as well as English, think it is more accurate to describe them as being different languages to those who speak English.

Anyway, yeah, had a tankie chew me out for pointing this out and call me a 'gusano', which is incredible because this is an insult popularized by Castro against counter revolutionaries.

I am an anarchist, and gusano is Spanish for maggot or worm.

It was truly a ludicrous exchange.