It's good that you ask the question that most of people get information from English media.
Taiwan as many people mentioned here is a democracy. It has freedom of speech. So it's easy to get the information from the source inside Taiwan.
Long story short:
It's very mixed. There are people want to re-unit with China and even expect the mainland using military means. Pro-independence group is much larger but majority like to keep the existing status while tend to independence.
Here are some media that show views against Western perception which seems originated from MSM .
There are much more. But again as I mention they are minority
(Claim: I'm not saying that MSM is trusted by Western audience. On the contrary a lot of people especially young generation don't trust or even disdain MSM. However the Taiwan issue is an exception.）
How do the Catalonians feel about being part of Spain, or the russophone Ukrainians about being part of Ukraine? Not great. Do you care? If the answer is no, then what you are concerned about is not Taiwanese independence.
Well, how do the Catalans feel about being part of Spain? Seems like none of the referenda that were held had close to 100% participation, since anti-independence votes boycotted them. Certainly Catalonian nationalism/sovereignty shouldn't be discounted, but is it as comparable as you'd say? Maybe somewhere like Palestine would be a better analogy, as that is also a case where a long-standing autonomous government has actually existed.
A people should have a right to self-determination. I can believe that just fine regardless of which people it's applied to. The current focus is in this discussion is about Taiwan, so naturally discussions about Taiwanese self-determination are going to be the focus in this thread. Maybe we'll get a thread about Catalonia sometime. When that happens we can discuss that. For now, let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism.
> let's bound our conversation to the article topic please, and stop trying to derail discussion with whataboutism.
There's been no actual discussion about the self-determination of the Taiwanese, because the Taiwanese have not been asked whether they want to be separated from China, and any indication that they don't has been scrupulously ignored.
Polls indicating support of the status quo are obviously in response to the threats of war, and doing one's best to avoid it. Support for reunification however has fallen off a cliff.
