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Because they've incorporated this "reunification" agenda into the legitimacy of their regime. It's a decades-long propaganda that they can't afford to toss. That's the real reason.
This.
It exists as a sort of raison d'être fort the regime.
So long as Taiwan is wayward (ie, free) it serves as a demonstration that the revolution is incomplete. In classic Marxism, Taiwan serves as the counterrevolutionary boogeyman. Oppressive regimes need enemies. Where ones don't exist, they will be invented.
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Originally Posted by grega94
It also doesn’t help that Taiwan claims all of mainland China as it’s own (including some other territories such as Mongolia)
Taiwan does that because China demands it.
Were Taiwan to abandon such claims, it would be an effective declaration of independence. China wishes to perpetuate the fiction that Beijing and Taipei are locked in a battle for the control of all of China.
And while China cannot take over Taiwan without suffering repercussions it is unwilling to accept, being so large and influential it is powerful enough to make Taiwan's existence onerous enough that Taiwan complies with Beijing's fiction to avoid such an eventuality.
Taiwan is just better in everything and china is seething about it. Because china embraces its "butthurt" culture to the max. Its populace will eat up any propaganda their leaders (now the piggy named xi jinping) spew at them.
A little history (this is the History forum, is it not?):
[NOTE: the following is based on bachelors and masters degrees in Chinese history and two years spent in Taiwan in the early 1980s. Feel free to correct/update.]
The Republic of China came into being in 1912, its nominal head of state President Sun Yatsen, widely respected for his patriotism and efforts to transform the Chinese government from an archaic monarchy to a modern republic.
Sun was more of a figurehead than a real head of state, however; the power lay with the warlords who controlled the provinces. One of them, Chiang Kaishek, built a true national army that was trained in modern methods of warfare and indoctrinated with the ideals of a Chinese republic. Gradually, Chiang took control of most of the urban parts of the country. Mao's Communists grew in the countryside, strengthened by Chiang's elitism and brutal treatment of the peasants.
Japan's continued military incursions and crippling reparations greatly damaged Chiang's and Sun's attempts to unify and modernize China, however. In the mid-1930s, Japan finally launched its full scale invasion to conquer China. The Communists under Mao opposed both the Republic of China and the Japanese, gradually fighting both forces to a standstill.
When the Americans finally put an end to Japan's imperial conquests, the Communists were well positioned to battle the ROC for control of the urban areas. Chiang and his ROC forces by this time had lost much of the country, and by 1949 they were forced to flee to Taiwan, where they set up a government in exile.
The Americans refused to recognize the Communist "People's Republic of China", and continued to support the Republic of China as the legitimate government even in its near-total defeat. It was thought that the Communists could still be overthrown, and given America's military and economic supremacy in the world, one might concur that such could happen.
The Korean conflict put an end to the inevitability of an overthrow; the Americans refrained from using nuclear weapons, and despite inflicting massive casualties on the Communists, were fought to a standstill, unable to defeat wave after wave of Korean-Chinese forces aided by Soviet air power. Despite brilliant military leadership by MacArthur, it was decided that Korea was not worth the effort, and the Americans conceded half the peninsula. The Soviet development of its own nuclear bomb aided in this decision.
Now China consisted of Taiwan, the temporary seat of the Republic of China government, ruled with an iron hand by Chiang Kaishek, Hong Kong ruled by Britain, Macau ruled by Portugal, and the mainland ruled by Mao but not recognized as a legitimate regime by the U.N. and the U.S.
On multiple occasions, the U.S. sent the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait to protect Taiwan from Communist naval incursions. Stymied from defeating its ROC foes, the Communists consolidated power and attempted to remake China as a Marxist socialist society.
Taiwan, it should be noted, was controlled by Japan from 1895 until 1945. It had never known an ROC or PRC government. Prior to Japan, it had been a remote province of the Chinese Empire. After the Japanese left, Taiwan was "recolonized" by the Republican troops, who allegedly slaughtered quite a few Taiwanese (Chinese descended from colonists from Fujian 350 years ago) as they landed on the island, and proceeded to treat the Taiwanese as second class citizens. Gradually over the decades, Taiwanese numerical superiority and business success, combined with a modernized education system that brought all the people under one ideological umbrella, resulted in Taiwanese "reconquest" of their island and today the Nationalists or Mainlanders as they were called were intermarried and subsumed into greater Taiwan society.
The Republic of China, as Taiwan continues to call itself, has always maintained that it is the legitimate government in exile. It has a large and powerful military based on universal conscription, well stocked with American equipment, and is even reputed to have nuclear bombs either ready to use or in some partial state of readiness, as a kind of last ditch deterrence against the PRC's invasion. Whether or not nuclear devices exist, it's pretty certain that a Communist invasion of the island would result in millions of casualties on both sides and would be a catastrophe for the world economy.
Now overlay this situation with centuries of humiliation and bloodshed dating to the 1700s when Westerners first began incursions into Chinese waters. To most Chinese, the defeat of the Japanese was the start of a new era of a powerful and independent China. There is violent disagreement as to who should hold the mantle of power, but few disagree that China should regain control of all the territories lost by the Qing dynasty, including the vast inner Asian territories of Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and inner Mongolia. And, of course, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Military and economic considerations have thus far prevented China from simply rolling in and taking over Taiwan. Hong Kong is unfortunately lost; the PRC government decided to speed up integration with the rest of the mainland, as Hong Kong became less important economically relative to the new powerhouses of Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, etc.
Interestingly, some of China's largest manufacturers are controlled by Taiwan businessmen. Foxconn, for example, with a couple of million employees and massive factories that make most of Apple's devices, is controlled by a Taiwanese. Once they were able to invest indirectly into China, Taiwanese with their superior capitalistic acumen and modern technology made a killing.
Where do we go from here? China wants its historical lands back. Taiwanese recognize the inevitable, that the PRC is the real China, but Taiwan is also the real China, albeit having preserved many cultural traditions and religious practices that were banned for a long time on the mainland. They are still at an impasse, but as long as Taiwan politely pretends it is "part of China" and China politely allows Taiwan to continue the status quo, little will change.
People don't realize that Foxconn is actually a Taiwanese company that is running on Mainland China for making iPhones. Global Foundaries, Pegatron, TSMC, all these semiconductor companies are in Taiwan and not in China. Intel is getting their butts kicked by TSMC in the race to produce the smallest chips in high volume. And Taiwan has some of the best silicone foundries chips.
China cares, because ever since Mao's Revolution, Taiwan has one-upped China in a major way, by getting the US and a group of other countries to recognize "just some small tiny island" as the official "China" (Republic of China, ROC, aka Taiwan). Taiwan ever humiliated China by getting admitted to the UN as THE one China.
No wonder China's as angry as a disturbed hornet's nest. Even after booting Taiwan out of the UN, and taking its place, they're still hopping mad.
Reminds me of Castro's take over of Cuba? Does that not rings bells of similarity to you?
America's boycott of that small island. Attempts at economic destruction. Support of mercenary invasion.
Cuba of course over came obstacles to its survival. A lot with Russian help, but then would Taiwan have lasted without American support?
Taiwan, of course lost most recognition from the seventies onwards, when China's economic growth saw America ditch Taiwan and recognise China. The world followed from that point. Now a handful of very small, mostly islands and the odd African and Latino country are the only ones to continue recognition. (not even sure if any of the latter still do)
Cuba meanwhile has a stack of recognition from around the world.
Reminds me of Castro's take over of Cuba? Does that not rings bells of similarity to you?
America's boycott of that small island. Attempts at economic destruction. Support of mercenary invasion.
Cuba of course over came obstacles to its survival. A lot with Russian help, but then would Taiwan have lasted without American support?
It probably would have gotten taken over by China.
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Taiwan, of course lost most recognition from the seventies onwards, when China's economic growth saw America ditch Taiwan and recognise China. The world followed from that point. Now a handful of very small, mostly islands and the odd African and Latino country are the only ones to continue recognition. (not even sure if any of the latter still do)
That's because China is an economic behemoth. From a business point of view, it makes little sense to anger China by recognizing Taiwan when the benefits of doing so are minimal.
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Cuba meanwhile has a stack of recognition from around the world.
Cuba is irrelevant at this point. Most of the issues surrounding it took place during the Cold War. The US still enforces it's embargo but beyond that it has lost much of it's significance.
It ultimately boils down to the One China policy, which entails that mainland China and Taiwan are a single entity.
Along with Hong Kong, Macao, Tibet, and many disputed islands.
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