[tim333]

Well that's one take on it. From the western perspective Taiwan was part of China and when the communists overthrew the government in the mainland with military force it retreated to Taiwan. Now Taiwan is effectively an independent democracy and the commies want to overthrow its government militarily against the wishes of the locals as usual. The world's democratic governments generally oppose the overthrow of democratic governments by dictators who want to grab some place by killing the locals.

A civilized compromise might be a union like the EU with both governments continuing on an equal basis.

[krapp]

>The world's democratic governments generally oppose the overthrow of democratic governments by dictators who want to grab some place by killing the locals.

Not only do Western governments not actually oppose this, they have orchestrated the overthrow of democratic governments and installed dictatorships numerous times when it suited their interests.

The actual Western perspective is not to give a damn who runs Taiwan or how many locals they kill as long as we can do favorable business with them. Although the Red Menace rhetoric does play well at home.

[tim333]

Well some of them. I'm western and have friends in Taiwan and want the place to do ok and am not worried about the business side.

[krapp]

Fair enough, I'm mostly talking about governments not people.

[tenwz1]

If you go deeper, you will find that China's modern history is full of suffering. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Kuomintang's post-war activities of taking over enemy property exacerbated the Kuomintang's corruption, which was regarded as "robbery" by public opinion, and the issuance of a large amount of currency led to serious inflation. Against this background, the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek took the initiative to launch an armed attack on the Communist Party. At that time, the Chinese people were already very disgusted with the war. After fighting the Japanese, they had to attack their own compatriots. Therefore, the Kuomintang was very unpopular, and the people's hearts turned to the Communist Party.

[tim333]

I can see that and my Chinese friends seem happy with how it is in China, but I still don't think a takeover of Taiwan against the wishes of the Taiwanese people would be a good idea.

[tenwz1]

You are a kind person, and I admire you very much. At least before 2018, our general view was that there was nothing wrong with maintaining "one country, two systems" and we would work together for development. But the problem is that our relationship with Taiwan is always easily sown by other countries, who try to make Taiwan independent instead of recognizing "one China".