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by mafribe 3016 days ago
Taiwan did not seceed (or has been trying to seceed) from the mainland in any meaningful sense. It is questionable if Taiwan was ever legitimately governed by the mainland.

Moreover, there are plenty of examples of a peaceful handling of secession, the most famous recent example being Page move-protected the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 [1]. Here are some other examples:

- Saar Statute referendum 1955 [2]

- Gibraltar sovereignty referenda in 1967 [3] and 2002 [4]

- Falkland Islands sovereignty referendum 2013 [5]

- Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia [6]

- Brexit vote [7]

- The Catalan independence referendum of 2017 [8] is an interesting edge case: it was conducted peacefully, albeit without active support from the Spanish government.

In the 21 century, China should be leading by example, and demonstrate the ability for peaceful conflict resolution, rather than fall back into 19th century power politics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referend...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Statute_referendum,_1955

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_sovereignty_referend...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_sovereignty_referend...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_r...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_referendu...