They don't call themselves part of China under threat.
Their official position is that they're the rightful government of all of China. Abandoning 'Taiwan is part of China' would mean abandoning that claim.
It looks quaint now, yes, but that's the official position. And it wasn't quaint when they were holding China's security council seat.
The fact that both countries have reasons to say 'Taiwan is part of China' while each claiming to be the rightful government of China is the most basic fact of the relationship. It's embedded in the names of the countries, even. ROC and PRC. I'd submit that anyone with strong feelings on the matter should really already know this.
Yes, that was the situation under authoritarian one-party rule, and there are no doubt still a few people in the ROC who dream of retaking the mainland under the KMT banner. Since then, China has added an explicit military threat under the Anti-Secession Law[1], and the ROC government has evolved into a two-party democracy. The official position has not changed, but the context has.
But we agree that that's the background and Taiwan hasn't reached consensus to change the official policy, right?
OP is getting dogpiled for pointing out the grade school history overview of the topic.
As for whether the threat of invasion is the deciding factor on the official ROC policy.. I think it's better explained by the fact that everything is going fine with two Chinas. They trade a ton, everyone's happy.
Why mess with that just because the diplomatic positions don't make logical sense?
>But we agree that that's the background and Taiwan hasn't reached consensus to change the official policy, right?
What part of China has threatened to invade them over changing their policy makes that policy a coerced statement and not an accurate representation of their intent do you not understand?
But do you think it's likely that the PRC actually invades Taiwan?
I'm not taking a side on PRC vs ROC, maybe you're misunderstanding me. I just honestly thought it was taken for granted that that's pretty unlikely. All the talk about who's sovereign has been polite fiction for some time now.
(and, I'll admit I haven't done a ton of research on Taiwanese public opinion, but unless/until I do so, I'm going to take 'taiwansecurity.org' in English's takes with a grain of salt - Ahmed Chalabi sounded good too)
Doesn't really matter what I think. It matters what the people making the decision and the people voting for them think. If they think the threat is real, they are being coerced. That's all there is to it.
The survey was done by a Taiwanese University in cooperation with Duke University. If you want to dismiss it without doing any research then have at it.
This seems like even more coercion opportunity on the part of China onto Taiwan, tbh. I doubt Taiwan has similar leverage over China to asswert its independence.
