Taiwan is already independent and sovereign as it elects its own president, the self-governed island’s presidential frontrunner said.
Vice president William Lai, who is leading in opinion polls to be elected the next pesident in the January elections, had previously said he could keep the peace with China if elected.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be a part of China and has pressed on the island to reunite with the mainland, by force if necessary. Taiwan has been self-ruled since it split from the mainland in 1949 following a civil war and maintains official diplomatic relations with 13 small nations.
In an interview with Japanese media, Mr Lai said he does not seek to change the status quo or Taiwan’s name, which is formally the Republic of China.
He said Taiwan regularly elects leaders at all levels of government from the grassroots to the president, which shows the island is “sovereign and independent”.
They lost a civil war. The Kuomintang (KMT), a right wing nationalist party basically made of regional warlords who rose from the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912, former controllers of most of China, fled to Taiwan after losing to the Maoists because their blatant incompetence at economic management, widespread corruption, brutal oppression, and poor performance against the Japanese invasion pissed off their people enough to make them broadly embrace communist rhetoric.
The KMT had kept control of their small navy, however, so the CCP could not chase them to Taiwan, and as a member of the WW2 Allies and not technically fascists the other Allies were willing to stop the USSR from loaning the CCP an invasion fleet to finish the job.
This meant that as the former ruling party who weren’t killed to the last man the Kuomintang could claim to be the legitimate “China” despite the popular contempt for their rule.
This is where it becomes a bunch of diplomatic double speak.
Both the CCP/PRC and KMT/ROC agree there is One China, they just don’t agree about which China is legitimate.
However, one of them has control of well over a billion people and one of the largest countries on Earth, the other has an island with 20 million people.
On the other hand, the CCP was once in a very similar situation before the Japanese invaded and distracted the KMT from finishing their genocide, and history is funny, so anything can happen.