Lie? If it's a lie, then it's a lie promoted by the Taiwan government itself, on its official government website and even in its constitution. Taiwan, like mainland China, even still claims Tibet as its territory. They do mainland China one better, they claim Mongolia as well. See supporting references in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32358560
A link [1] referenced in your supporting evidence suggests it is but a remnant of the Chinese Civil War. But even then, Taiwan's constitution does state that a vote may be held in order to change such territorial claims. This only made it in the 7th revision, in 2004 [2].
I would also like to make it clear that mainland China is the only one that has ever put these claims (except for Mongolia) into practice.
Taiwan until around 1990 froze into place representatives from all the mainland provinces in its legislature, thereby effectively nullifying the democratic voice of the people who lived on the island.
Taiwan's "外生人", those born on the mainland and who fled to Taiwan at the end of the civil war, took over the government, suppressing the views and interests of the "Taiwanese", the Chinese who speak the local Chinese dialect and who lived there before. You know, kinda like what Russia wants to do with Ukraine.
The Taiwanese themselves previously took over the island, suppressing the view and interests of the aborigine people, who are Austronesian, not Chinese. Again, kinda like what Russia wants to do with Ukraine.
So if we're going to talk about democracy and freedom and sovereignty, we need to be less tribal/self-serving about it and more honest.
If we're going to castigate China, are you also going to castigate America about Hawaii? If not, then I don't think that's honest. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I recommend you read about what Native Hawaiians feel about America. There's also Puerto Rico. And the US taking the Southwest form Mexico, and then closing its border, treating migrant workers from south of the border like shit, all the while looking the other way as we can make them work for below minimum wage and no protections all so we can have cheaper produce and have cheaper restaurants and all the other things that depend on cheap brown labor. We can go further and talk about Europeans taking it all from the indigenous people.
I'm not defending China or Russia. I'm pointing out the huge amount of self-serving cherry-picking and hypocrisy.
I don't think you can compare this to Russia and Ukraine at all. Russia (at least the western part) and Ukraine is Slavic. Ukraine and Russia were one country for 450 years and before the beginning of the 20th century that current nationalist movement did not exist. Ukraine literally means borderlands in old Slavic language.
If anything, it was the Slavs in that region that expanded eastward and resettled conquered territories e.g. Tatars(Crimea) to the eastern parts.
Taiwan was inhabited by Austronesians, some of which were butchered by the dutch when they first drove them out, then by Portuguese, later by the Japanese (for a while a lot of Taiwanese considered themselves Japanese, while others on that Island fought of the invaders in the east) and sometime in between all that Hakka and other Han Chinese settled the island.
After loosing the civil war as you know Chiang Kai-shek settled there while running a brutal dictatorship where the first thing he did was take all the local currency and reissue his own. I think the biggest giveaway on how problematic Taiwans history with China is, is that some of the biggest treasures that Mao tried to destroy are in the national history museum in Taipei.
I agree with you that Taiwan never accepted changing it's own constitution(i.e. passports are still issued as RoC, not as Taiwan), but you absolutely cannot compare Ukraine to Taiwan. Neither in geography nor in history.
I didn't want to sound "tribal", just making it clear that Taiwan hasn't been as bad as mainland China. It's true that there's a lot of corruption inside the country, and I guess that even the USA has been hesitant thanks to that.
Originally, I didn't even talk about the USA's morally dubious nature, which I think it can certainly be pointed out. But try and formulate those points in a different way next time, don't imply something others haven't said.
Nevertheless, I agree. There's a lot of hypocrisy on this, even if I think that it's for different reasons (the USA just wants to make sure they have a way to choke out China's navy through another "friend").
> The Taiwanese themselves previously took over the island
That makes no sense.
From Wikipedia:
> Around 6,000 years ago .... Austronesian ... Han Chinese fishermen began settling in the Penghu islands in the 13th century.
That's 800 years ago.
Are you going to motivate an attack and invasion and war today, with what others did that far ago?
And then:
> In 1626, the Spanish Empire landed on and occupied northern Taiwan [...] 1642, when the last Spanish fortress fell to Dutch forces.[83] The Dutch then marched south, subduing hundreds of villages
That's Spain and the Netherlands, not Taiwan, occupying ... Taiwan.
You could have the whole world be at war with itself everywhere, by looking back some hundred years and motivating conflicts today with what you then find.
So what? That doesn't change the fact that, practically, Taiwan is Chinese. The language and writing system, if nothing else, kinda give it away. Taipei's "One China" position merely acknowledges this fact, without committing to any stance that the CCP is the legitimate government of any country.
Why would they? England itself is only a minor part of the British Isles. They would however have a chance of being part of a broader Commonwealth of Nations, were it not for a troublesome Declaration they circulated in 1776. This is why claims to "independence" should not be made carelessly, and why official U.S. policy is especially careful to avoid them wrt. Taipei.
You said that Taiwan's language and writing system made them Chinese. By that reasoning, the US would be English. But thanks for clarifying that sharing a language and writing system with another country, doesn't necessarily make you part of that country.
But this is not about "being part of a country"; it's first and foremost about sharing a common culture and history. Facile claims to "Taiwan independence" that ignore these nuances are tantamount to a denial of this shared past and common identity that is part of the continuing lived experience of many people in Taiwan. They are oppressive, dehumanizing and hurt the feelings of the Chinese people who live on the island.
What's the relevance of any of this? You originally said that Taiwan's language and writing system made them Chinese. I've repeatedly demonstrated that such reasoning is nonsense.
There may be other arguments that Taiwan is Chinese, but I haven't really given you my thoughts on those (hypothetical) arguments.
"Dehumanizing" to the Chinese people? You know, I was under the impression that total government surveillance, in-person monitoring of religious minority communities and regular internet censorship was the most dehumanizing part. Whatever the CCP calls 'oppressive' should be taken with a grain of salt.
China and Taiwan can share a history, but that doesn't entitle them to reconciling their differences. Much like the other commenters brought up, establishing Taiwanese independence is obviously the smartest path from here. China has had their feelings hurt for almost a century over Taiwan. Entire generations of humans have lived and died in the time Taiwan has enjoyed sovereignty. China knows it's time to let go, but they can't look weak or suffer the same fate as Russia. Continuing to threaten Taiwan is just part of their political-industrial complex, nothing more.
