[legitster]

Per capita income? Percentage of people with education/clean running water/out of poverty? Things that actually matter to the daily lives of people?

Yes, China has lifted millions of people out of poverty over the last few decades, but the median person in China is still vastly worse off than the median person in Taiwan.

[coliveira]

Chinese people know that Taiwan is only what it is because of money pumped by the US into the little island. It has always been the strategy of Western countries to support little states in the vicinity of enemy countries as a way to contain and divide the nation.

[dangus]

So when people in the US buy stuff and it's made in (mainland) China is that not considered money being "pumped by the US?"

U.S. Imports from Mainland China: $438.9 billion

U.S. Imports from Taiwan: $116.3 billion

Please explain how your logic survives this basic analysis.

[legitster]

I mean, we are also going to brush past the infrastructure development done by the Japanese when they occupied Taiwan during the Meiji period that made it a valuable island to begin with. Or that Taiwan did a better, more equitable and less violent version of land reform than Mao did. And that Taiwan never expelled academics and didn't attempt the Great Leap Forward.

If so, it would sound like the Chinese people are being mislead about the economic history of the island they supposedly claim.