I will never understand why China is so extremely outraged over Taiwan's moves toward indpendence. They have 1.3 Billion People and over 3 million square miles of land. Why do they need more of either one? China's behavior on this issue is one of their worst qualities.
Read up some on the Chinese Civil War. The mere existence of the ROC would be similar to the Confederate States of America being allowed to remain in power in South Carolina (ignoring that South Carolina is not an island).
I understand. But what if they changed their name. Instead of officially being the Republic of China, they would be just "Taiwan", and drop the ROC title. I know this would piss off the Kuomintang, but if they didn't call themselves Chinese anymore, Red China would have less to get hysterically angry about.
It just seems silly and pointless for both countries to be playing a semantic game 58 years after the fact. We all get it, the Commies won. Let Taiwan go its own separate way.
And as to the comments that these moves would encourage ethnic separatism within mainland China, I see how it could be interpreted that way. But there's a big difference in Taiwan's case, in that its been under other governments for over 5 decades, all the other groups have been under the direct control of Beijing the whole time (for Tibet, since 1959).
