The British parliament has for the first time referred to Taiwan as an “independent country” in an official document, breaking a political taboo as Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visits China this week.
The new language, adopted in a report published Wednesday by the influential foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons, risks a stinging backlash from Beijing and comes as Cleverly becomes the first top British envoy to visit Beijing in five years amid a frosty relationship.
Beijing has long denied Taiwan’s statehood, insisting the self-governing democratic island is part of its territory. Only 13 countries around the world recognize Taipei instead of Beijing diplomatically.
The thing about that is when those rebels have held the territory for nearly a lifespan, gotten international recognition and diplomacy, built one of the strongest militaries and armies in the world, and quite frankly it’s unthinkable to imagine a situation in which they lose the mainland without a world war level conflict then they’re just like a country. It doesn’t matter that neither is willing to cede the other’s existence. The ROC can be the ROC all it wants, but from an international perspective the country that has the most claim to mainland China is the People’s Republic of China. Both are runner up in claim to the territory the other holds, but boots on either’s ground is closer to a cascade to worldwide MAD than anybody seems comfortable with.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve always figured taiwanian independence not to mean a name change but a mutual agreement of the other’s sovereignty over the territory they each hold and have for decades. Or in practical terms, the ROC admits it isn’t getting Beijing back and the PRC agrees to not try to conquer the island of Taiwan. Really calling it this and not a Chinese peace treaty is mostly just an acknowledgement of how ludicrously lopsided this conflict is without international support for the ROC