2017-03-27

Nationalism Rising in China: Take Taiwan By Force

SCMP: Push to absorb Taiwan ‘is growing’ on mainland
Li Yihu, dean of Peking University’s Taiwan Studies Institute, said the mainland side saw Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen administration as trying to promote independence through tactical approaches, including culture and education and the appointment of pro-independence judges in 2019 to initiate constitutional interpretations.

“All those pro-independence moves will stimulate the mainland to take coercive steps to respond,” said Li, a deputy to the National People’s Congress.

...He stressed that Beijing had no “timetable for reunification”, but wanted “a route chart” of meet President Xi Jinping’s goal of reunifying with Taiwan as early as 2021, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding.
China and Taiwan have diverging education systems teaching two separate nationalist agendas. In the near-term of the next few decades, Taiwan and China will become more nationalistic. The odds of Taiwan falling fully within China's orbit over the very long-run are high, but the long-run might be a century or two. If Chinese leaders want reunification in the short-term, they may need a military solution. Then they'll have to contend with a nationalistic Japan. The U.S. might want to sit out a war over Taiwan, but the U.S. might also like the opportunity to do what England did to Germany twice.

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