China is a place I am very fond of.
After travelling to both the People’s Republic and Taiwan, it’s almost obscene to make comparisons between the two. They both have great food, sights and experiences for the traveler – and they both have an unbelievable share of dirt, scams and unsavoury places.
They are both great societies but I am not very sure they would be great places to live in, unless it is somewhere in the countryside. The cities of both countries are, in general, chaotic and hard to love.
History would agree with this, as both places are the result of a civil war that ravaged China for decades, with the Generalissimo and the Eternal Helmsman jousting for control of the country after decades of indifference by warlords, courtiers, a weak republican movement, imperial decay and foreign intervention and humilliation.
They used to be poor and desperate. Millions wandered for work, food or simply, for a future; which filled pages of history with hungry refugees and political instability, but by the 21st Century both countries are well developed, efficient, politically stable and dynamic. The Mainland has become a super-power. Taiwan is the superpower in semiconductors, churning out the brains that power the digital age. They both have turned themselves into consumerist societies.
But the people are so different that it is a foregone conclusion to me that Taiwan will not “reunite” with the Mainland unless by malice and brute force, and this is the reason of this writing – the Mainland will not succeed without an inglorious action from its part that might trigger a nuclear exchange.
As I wrote in a public forum in an Asian newspaper:
You get fed what your masters want you to read. If Taiwan is so important for the future of the Mainland and for you, go for broke! There is nothing stopping you. Do what you need to do to reclaim what you think belongs to your people. Main, kill, bomb, reduce and obliterate the citizens of Taiwan that do not want to be part of your project. That will show the world the kind, generous and caring spirit of your country. And your ancestors will smile from the Heavens when the cores implode, the atoms split and your countrymen are reduced to a pile of ashes in a burst of light brighter than a thousand suns. But please, do not think of yourselves as "liberators".
After much complaining and hate mail, the post was not removed but I was banned indefinitely.