Is Taiwan a Country?

I'm sure some of you remember John Cena apologized for calling Taiwan a country. The reason appears to be that he and the Fast and Furious chain of movies stood to lose a rather substantial sum of cash as much of their recent sales were in China. I'll stay away from how much of a cowardly move this was, and focus more on the claim at hand- the state of Taiwan being a country, and why we can't budge on this issue.

First off, let's get this straight so there is no doubt on my position. Taiwan is a country. That should be enough, but with the WHO not acknowledging their statehood, and China pressing harder and harder to control the public discourse around the island nation, it can be easy for some to just nod along and agree with the loud and bothersome CCP and their media mouthpieces here and abroad.

But we really need to address this issue head on. To take the CCP to task over their malfeasance regarding Taiwan and elsewhere. The more the CCP can get away with shaping the discourse around these issues, the harder it will be to keep them from, say, invading Taiwan or just moving into the Sea of Japan to take what they want. China's ruling elite don't operate by our rules, though they may appear to. They operate by their own rules, and their own rules have their own set of ideas and notions that need to be accepted by others for them to succeed.

Among these is the idea that Taiwan is actually a break away province of China proper. This isn't true. It's more true to state that the government of Taiwan is the legitimate government of China and that Hong Kong should be under Taiwanese rule, not CCP rule. Why do I say this? Because the government of Taiwan was formed by the former government of China after they fled Mau's successful revolution.

"The Nationalist government and armies fled to Taiwan, again resulting in the separation of Taiwan from China. In the ensuing years the ROC claimed jurisdiction over the Chinese mainland as well as Taiwan, although in the early 1990s Taiwan’s government dropped this claim to China. The Chinese government in Beijing has maintained that it has jurisdiction over Taiwan and has continued to propound a one-China policy—a position that few countries in the world dispute. There has been no agreement, however, on how or when, if ever, the two entities will be reunified." -Britannica.

This "one China policy" is, in my mind, a tacit admission that China knows what's up. They realize that so long as Taiwan exists, the CCP is an illegitimate government formed by radical communist revolutionaries and nothing more. In order for the CCP to have total claim as the undisputed rulers of China as whole, Taiwan- and their upstart little government- needs to be brought to heel. Much of the world already agrees with the "One China Policy" which takes some of the wind out of Taiwan's sails regarding their sovereignty, but this doesn't mean that this position isn't correct.

What's more, everyone should take anything that the CCP says with a healthy dose of salt. The same goes for any institution that supports them <cough> the WHO <cough>. Any claims made by the CCP- which is well known for it's propaganda regarding a whole host of contentious issues like, you know, that the US military spread Covid-19, or that the concentration camps where the Uyghurs are currently being held are nothing more than "education facilities" or some such nonsense- should be treated as false until proven true. Sure, this runs counter to our "innocent until proven guilty" ideal, but we're talking about an authoritarian state in this instance. Governments- especially governments that will run over their own citizens with tanks for wanting freedom- should not just be blindly trusted.

Same with any "news" organizations that work for those governments. The US has a problem with trust in the media, but we should take that distrust and magnify it about 300x when dealing with state sponsored information sources from the CCP. So when the state sponsored news channel says that Taiwan is a province of China (and by extension the CCP) we should reject it out of hand until they prove that is the case- which they can't.

Which leads to what we should do. The answer isn't easy, especially as it will mean facing off against the nation that for years has kept us supplied with cheap goods potentially made by slave labor. But every good deed has a cost, and every virtuous fight has, at it's core, hard choices that need made. This is no different. The real question is, does the current administration have the gonads to do the right thing, or are they going to do the "politically safe" thing and cower like fools?

Only time will tell.