Only time will tell, doesn't matter what people on basketball bbs believe. Remember it took Israel 2000 years to come back. :grin:
In regards to Ireland I'm talking more about the desire of independence of Ireland from Britain. Let's not act like British wasn't heavy handed in getting N. Ireland into the fold. Regarding Palenstine I do agree that it's a different thing. I just think that if you're supporting Taiwan independence, than you must support Palenstine being recognized as a country, otherwise it's hypocritical. As far as differences between written Taiwan and Mainland, if the simplified and traditional are the biggest difference then it ain't even an issue. Mainland teaches simplified because it's easier to learn and will result in a larger literate population. Given the rise of computers, who really writes any more (I'm comfortable reading and typing both, and I grew up in the states).
That's terrible reasoning. There's a large population of US expats in Shanghai too; what does that say about the US? Absolutely nothing.
Actually it's saying that the economies improving and financial opportunities are becoming more abundant in China. So when you say Taiwan >>>>> China, that's five >'s, do you even know what five >'s represent?
China's economy improved so fast because of the huge supply of labor who's quality of life was so low that working long hours at mindless, dangerous jobs for sweatshop wages was an improvement. Industry in a one party system has not been required to provide for public safety or worker benefits. It is an orwellian dichotomy that a system sold on "communism" is actually the world's biggest plutocracy.
It is funny when so many people in the US refer to China as "Communism" when it haven't been any where close the old system in decades. No one in China believes in that communism stuff these days.
Yeah, it's basically just a system with an amazingly large disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Feudalism without the titles? At least the middle class is growing in the cities.
Sounds suspiciously like the US during industrialization. In fact, sounds suspiciously like any nation going through the throes of economic development. Pulling a nation of a people out of poverty is not always pretty. Why would anyone expect China to be different, especially when you take into account its size and population? I'm not saying these are not legitimate concerns, but things are not as simple as you make them seem.
According to opinion polls the majority of people in Northern Ireland want to remain part of the UK. That is the main reason why those 6 counties were not handed over with the other 26 counties to make the Republic of Ireland. Anyway my point is that the situation isn't that comparable because of the nature of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. That is very different than Taiwan and the PRC. I am for a two state solution with a viable Palestinian state and while not outrightly supporting Taiwanese independence don't think it is that big of deal. The situations though aren't similar enough that I would call someone a hypocrite for supporting one and not the other. The difference regarding the language is just one difference but it does illustrate the divide. From what I have heard from several Taiwanese is even if they recognize that simplified Chinese characters is easier to learn they refuse to do so as that would be a recognition of PRC culture. Even in Minnesota, a state with a relatively small Chinese population, the local Taiwan group runs their own Chinese language school where they only teach traditional characters.
The same was true for Taiwan for a lot of its history. The PRC is slowly changing and in recent years there have been a lot of protests and strikes to improve working conditions.
For egalitarian evolution, societies need free speech, free press and fair elections. Though, you may argue that democracies will always vote themselves into default giving themselves public monies and must live with legislative chaos.
That is only after a society have reached a certain level education level and economic prosperity. If you just do that in Somalia today, do you think it will make a bit of difference there? Check out middle east currently as well.
Seriously. I consider myself a moderate liberal, but it is embarrassing how some of the more liberal/left-leaning posters here just spout rhetoric without stopping to do any sort of nuanced thinking. On the topic of Africa, back in the 90s, many of the nations that officially recognized Taiwan as a nation and supported their attempts to join the UN were African nations. However, this support dried up in more recent years as more and more begin accepting aid money from China. I find it interesting that African countries who previously followed the "western" model of development that Dubious here advocates, mostly because UN and US aid money carried those strings, stagnated for decades. Yet, a decade or less of borrowing from China has brought unprecedented growth to these same countries. To be sure, there are many problems and grey areas, but you can't really argue with results.
Exploiting cheap labor with poor and dangerous working conditions is basically the road map to success for every developing nation. This is what South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore did fairly recently and what US and UK etc did even earlier than that. It has nothing to do with a one party system or an autocratic government.
Free speech, free press, fair elections etc are all wonderful things that every country should strive for, but it's not some kind of magical solution for a developing nation. In fact democracies actually have a quite terrible track records for developing nations. Even though India and China basically started out from a similar economic level in the 50s, by just about any meaningful measure China is give or take 2 decades more advanced than India now(GDP, income level, poverty rate, life expectancy, literacy rate, nutrition etc). Having the vote or a free press is a very poor consolation prize for the 800 million + malnourished Indians living with on less than $2 per day.
like the poster below you said.. that's HORRIBLE REASONING and doesn't say a thing.. Also I said overall Taiwan > China.. China is huge! so of course there will be areas that are nice. Shanghai I agree is a nice city, but you go out side of Shanghai and the place is a dump with people living in extreme poverty and trash. There are just too many poor areas, factories, abandoned cities, ghost towns, pollution, smog, and people living in some extremely unsanitary conditions. Overall you won't find that in Taiwan where most of the population lives a lot higher standard of living than the avg citizen in China. Of course the rich are getting richer and a small portion of the population enjoys extreme wealth and lives in the nicer cities.
also it's just wanted to say it's just my opinion. I have traveled extensively to areas in China and Taiwan the past few years for business and it's just my personal observation.
Right now China is basically three delta triangles accounting for vast majority of the GDP. one is centered around shanghai, one is centered around beijing and the third is centered around guangzhou. The rest of the country is not very developed yet. They could push for develop the other parts of the countries to sustain the growth.
