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PEOPLE OF TAIWAN DO NOT LIKE TO BE RULED BY CHINA

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 9/25/2021 12:06:39 PM

T K NANDANAN China has become overly meddlesome with Taiwan these days and Beijing said on Thursday that it opposed Taiwan joining a major trans-Pacific trade deal just days after Beijing said it wanted to become a member of the same agreement. It may be noted that in 2018 11 Asia-pacific countries signed a pact for the region’s biggest free-trade ‘Compressive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’(CPTPP), which hugely accounts for around 13.5 percent of the global economy. It may be recalled that Taiwan has lobbied for years to join and announced on Thursday it had officially applied. But China swung into action and claimed that Taipei should not be allowed to join. People of Taiwan don’t like to be governed by the authoritarian regime from Beijing. Though China offers Taiwan freedom as it enjoys now, it wants to take control of its external affairs, a la model Hong Kong rule. But people of Taiwan have seen the true colour of the dragon over there in Hong Kong and they never want to surrender Taiwan to China. As regards the people of Taiwan, they love freedom like Americans and this love for freedom alone makes them livewire, go-getters and pragmatic. Its economic miracle is amazing. Rapid industrialisation and economic growth during the latter half of the twentieth century truly made it a nation to be highly reckoned with. Its information technology and electronics sector have been responsible for a vast supply of products since the 1980s. Many leading start-up companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) were set up in Taiwan and it is the leading country manufacturing motherboards, LED monitors, Notebook PCs, and MediaTek company, the biggest smartphone chipset vendor in the world has more than 25 offices worldwide. It is true that China opposes Taiwanese independence since it believes that Taiwan and mainland China comprise two portions of a single country’s territory. Earlier, Taiwan was known as the Republic of Formosa. In 1949, the Chinese government fled to Taiwan when the Communist Party of China took control of the mainland during the Chinese Civil War, leading to the current situation. While Taiwan is a multi-party democratic state, China is a unitary one-party socialist republic. Regarding the trip made by the second high-ranking US diplomat to Taiwan last year, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that such trip only encouraged the arrogant attitude of Taiwan independence separatist forces. It may be pertinent to note that the relations between the US and China are at their lowest point in decades, with the two sides clashing over a range of trade, military and security issues as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. So, considering Taiwanese advancement in many technological spheres, it is quite natural for China to keep its interest alive in Taiwan. China somehow wants to take complete control of Taiwan at its earliest. But how can the democratic and freedom-loving people of Taiwan accept an authoritarian regime? Thus, ceding Taiwan to China by the people of Taiwan is just like a pie in the sky, and if it is ceded, it will be like a hara-kiri for them.