Do the Taiwanese want independence?

[prontospyder]

<<West Germany and East Germany reunited peacefully... i hope China and Taiwan as well as the Koreas can do that peacefully, too. >>

Only if China and North Korea have a drastic change in leadership.

 

[dexvx]

Huh? American women only get 1 day off? My manager had a kid and was out for 2 months, and she could've stayed out for another month, but is coming in half-days now.

Your *manager* had a kid. Oh please, I'm talking about your normal blue collar worker. HMO's only cover 1 day of hospital expense (sometimes its in and out on the same day). Yes, if you are rich you can get the best health care in the world here in the United States. But unfortunately, I'm not rich.

China has a rating of 57? Higher the ranking the less corruption? I dont know what that guy is smoking, but China has a very high corruption rate, mostly on the local level where it is impossible to report. Which is another thing thats bad about China, there is a lack of centralized control. National laws are almost nullified at the local level because local officials have way too much autonomy and just ignore the national laws. Now if you have too much ignoring (like that mining incident), there will be an execution or two.

 

[Pepsei]

Lots of good posts here... the thing is, most people made up their mind pretty much... its hard to convince the others....one of the poster brought up a good point there are 3 groups of people in taiwan now...which sprouted from the beginning...

beginning...
1) Nationalist lost the civil war - retreats to taiwan, 5 year plan to regroup and retake mainland. maintains there are only one china and ROC is real china.
2) Native taiwanese people

this is where the problem started i think. nationalist were chinese by blood, there's no way they would give that up. native taiwanese people had no saying in this versus nationalist's guns (there were some uprisings that were brutally put down). if at this point, nationalist declared indepences, and disregard the one china policy, we probably wouldn't have this problem now. as the civil war just finished and taiwan were under american's protection back then... and were also recognized by other countries at the time.

and then....one party system
1) kids are educated the nationalist way. no commies and talk of indepence is treated as a commie as well! the map of the country shows mainland china as part of republic of china. majority of the politicians belong to the nationalist party. The only way to rise in politic is to be in the only party.

currently there are
1) people who wants to have Republic of Taiwan (very few people will be in this group... few will admit to this... i'm one, but its easy for me to say this since i' don't live there and i'm an american citizen).
2) people who wants to have Republic to China, leave the things as they are ( The way nationalist set up taiwan when they took over. Many people were bring up with this mind set. if i didn't leave taiwan, i would probably still be brain washed by what i was taught when i was a kid.)
3) people who wants to join PRC eventually (many people are also here... and an off shoot of natioalist, who's goal were the eventual unification of all china.. except the part of who's ruling )

my point
1) only people of taiwan should decide what's best for them. China shouldn't have any saying in this. why reunify if they were not joined in the first place?
2) mr. lee backstabbed his party? only if you're nationlist you would think that's a bad thing. he did what he could to raise to the rank of where he was by being in the only party one can belong to. and at the appropriate moment, shows that he's a real taiwanese at heart. not a nationalist.
3) all this talk about politics is very boring (probably) to other people and we probably won't convince eachother if your mind is already made up.
4) if i was still in taiwan... i'd be fearful of saying i want independence because of those damn chinese war ships.... yes i'm ashame of myself.
5) i heard CIA is hiring... i would have no problem working against chinese....