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exnaderite
Junior Chimp
Posts: 7,218
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« on: July 07, 2006, 12:19:05 AM » |
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No, definitely not. It doesn't make any political or economic sense, and I don't know what will provoke Beijing to move against the island. Last year their rubber-stamp parliament passed the Anti-Separation Act, which stipulated that they are not to take any military action against Taiwan unless the Republic of China actually renames itself as Taiwan.
In 2004 president Chen was reelected in a razor-thin election (thanks to an election-eve "shooting"), and proposed a timetable that would declare Taiwan an independent state by 2008. Of course Beijing was furious at this, and vowed to pressure him accordingly (they already have a history of doing something whenever Taiwan votes; just before the 1996 election China fired a missile into the Taiwan Strait).
For the past two years things have been looking miserable for Chen. His party has lost election after election, and his coalition has been hit be scandal after scandal. Chen is now highly unpopular (his approval rate is almost literally in the single digits) and his talk of separation has accordingly been forgotten. Just last week he narrowly escaped being censured by the legislature, and even then no one dared to vote against the motion. Needless to say, his dreams of independence are deader than a dodo. Hence, the chance of war in Taiwan are near zero.
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