Hearted Youtube comments on Asianometry (@Asianometry) channel.
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The problem with Taiwan is that it is large, homogeneous (there are two main ethnic groups in Taiwan), and has a long history as a distinct region, unlike Macau and Hong Kong.
Whilst Macau is an international city of business (and quite a small city for Chinese standards), being mostly known for its gambling industry and attracting many rich Mainlander Chinese and foreigners, and whilst Hong Kong is also an international city which hosts many international businesses and is home to a large immigrant population, consisting of wealthy Europeans, South Asians who were brought over during British colonial times, an indigenous Chinese population, and a large population of recent Chinese immigrants from Guangdong (who came to Hong Kong to escape poverty or persecution), Taiwan is not an internationally renowned destination, Taiwan has a huge population of indigenous Chinese residents (though, 14% of the population of Taiwan are recent Chinese immigrants), and Taiwan is an entire Chinese Province, not just some small city full of rich immigrants and Chinese refugees; additionally, Taiwan has been administered separately from other regions of China for around 340-360 years, though it was only proclaimed as an independent province from Fujian in 1885.
So, why is it so difficult for China to reclaim, or, more accurately, annex Taiwan? Is it because Taiwan is an American puppet, propped up by American guns? Or is it because Taiwan is controlled by the Kuomintang, with aims to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party and take control of all of China? Or is it because Taiwan is full of brainwashed Fujianese people who believe that they are a separate ethnicity from the Han Chinese? Well, actually, it is all of these things to some extent, though this doesn't explain the whole story, and these accusations are quite biased and hurtful. No, there is a major reason why Taiwan is still independent from China, and it is none of these reasons which I have listed.
Unlike Macau and Hong Kong, Taiwan is not controlled by a foreign government. With Macau and Hong Kong, agreements on Sovereignty were the responsibility of external powers, those being China, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, this was only the case for Taiwan when it was under the control of the Japanese Empire, and even then, Japan had been ceded the territory of Taiwan in perpetuity, and this is why Japan conducted assimilation campaigns against the Taiwanese people whilst Taiwan was under its control, intending to permanently integrate Taiwan into Japan, politically, culturally, and ethnically. Meanwhile, concerning modern Taiwan, the modern Republic of China almost exclusively administers Taiwan, so the issue of giving up Taiwan is not just a cession of a single region but a cession of the ROC's entire Sovereignty, which is why it is not likely to happen in the near future.
While it is true that the Kuomintang, the former rulers of the ROC, have in recent history decided to align themselves with the Chinese Communist Party and now believe that Taiwan must be reunited with China under the rule of the CCP, given that it is unrealistic for the KMT to reunite Taiwan with the Mainland under its own rule, Taiwan is still independent. And, the primary reason for Taiwan's Independence is that the Taiwanese people themselves - not the recent Chinese immigrants but rather the indigenous Chinese residents - want some form of independence or autonomy, whether that is "De Jure Independence" or "De Facto Independence". These people have been living in Taiwan for hundreds of years. They have experienced life under various regimes, but throughout all of these regimes, they have never lost their Taiwanese identity. And their Taiwanese identity didn't originally pertain to the idea that Taiwan is an independent country; instead, the Taiwanese people have always identified with the island of Taiwan, at one time "Taiwan Prefecture of Fujian Province, China", at a later time "Taiwan Province of China", at a later time "Taiwan Dependency of Japan", and at a later time "Republic of China (Taiwan)".
Whilst the Mainlander Chinese, both the actual Mainlanders and the Mainlanders in Taiwan alike, love to refer to the Taiwanese as "Fujianese (and Hakka) immigrants in Taiwan", this designation is blatantly false. Ask yourself; does a Shanghainese person refer to himself as a Zhejiangese immigrant in Shanghai? No, he identifies as Shanghainese because that is his province. Likewise, the Taiwanese people are NOT Fujianese, at least not anymore. Nowadays, most Taiwanese people identify as Taiwanese, regardless of whether they believe that they are independent or not, and they only consider Fujian to be a distant ancestral homeland, rather than their own current homeland. Of course, the Hakka do often identify as Hakka, rather than as Taiwanese, but this is because the Hakka have never possessed their own province, whether in Taiwan or in Mainland China, and identify with the Hakka culture rather than with a hypothetical "Hakka Province".
So, clearly, there does exist a distinct Taiwanese identity, even though the Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang love to ridicule this identity, referring to the Taiwanese as mere Fujianese migrants. The only question of Taiwanese identity is whether the Taiwanese are a subgroup of the Han Chinese, or whether they are an independent ethnic group. Critically, the history of Taiwan is unique amongst regions of China; Taiwan was colonised only in (relatively) recent history by China, starting from 1683; though, Han Chinese people from Fujian Province began migrating to Taiwan in large waves during the early-1600s, to work for the Dutch East India Company and for the Kingdom of Tungning. Taiwanese people, for the first 2-3 centuries of living in Taiwan, experienced life as frontiersmen, expanding the territory of China by Sinicising the indigenous Austronesian natives and by increasing the population of Han Chinese on the island. Originally identifying as Fujianese, these people eventually came to identify as Taiwanese, and this identity was cemented through the shared experience of living in Taiwan as immigrants for hundreds of years, separated from China by the Taiwan Strait, and trying to adapt to life in a isolated island full of indigenous tribes and deadly diseases.
In 1885, the Qing Dynasty proclaimed Taiwan to be its own independent province, separate from Fujian Province. Of course, Taiwan had already effectively been separate from Fujian since China had begun colonising the island, given that Taiwan and Fujian were separated by the large Taiwan Strait. The proclamation of an independent "Taiwan Province" was not very remarkable; life in Taiwan continued as normal, and most people did not care whether Taiwan was its own Chinese province or not; they mainly identified with the island of Taiwan, loosely identifying as ethnically Han Chinese (in the same way that the American settlers from the United Kingdom would primarily identify as American). Of course, shortly after the 1885 declaration of Taiwanese province-hood, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895.
The Taiwanese people initially resisted the Japanese invasion, with local militias defending Taiwanese villages, and with high-ranking Qing-loyalists proclaiming "the Democratic State of Taiwan". Regardless of self-identification and beliefs, the various ethnic groups on the island, which consisted of various Chinese peoples, such as the Hoklo Taiwanese, the Hakka Taiwanese, and the Mainlander Chinese officials stationed in Taiwan, as well as the various indigenous Austronesian tribes, all tried to defend Taiwan from a foreign Japanese invasion, and they resisted Japanese rule for a period of time after China ceded Taiwan to Japan. However, eventually, these people were defeated, and Japan gradually began to absorb Taiwan into its territory, such as by educating the Taiwanese in the Japanese language (this programme took several years to become successful, of course), and also by making the Taiwanese believe that they were citizens of Japan, and also by making the Taiwanese believe that they were ethnically Japanese.
Nowadays, the Taiwanese no longer identify as Japanese. Even though most Taiwanese people have favorable views towards modern Japan, they would certainly not support Japan if it again decided to start invading and occupying all of its Asian neighbours, as it did 80 years ago. However, despite this fact, the Taiwanese people no longer identify strongly as Han Chinese either. First and foremost, the Taiwanese are a settler people, just like the Americans and the Australians. Secondly, the Taiwanese people love their island above all else, and their loyalty to their island is more important than their loyalty to any external government which might have control over the island. And thirdly, the Taiwanese identify strongly with their unique cultural experience, because this is the only history which they know. They never experienced the Xinhai Revolution. They never experienced the Warlord Period of China. They never experienced proper rule under the Republic of China (this only occurred from 1945 until 1949, but during that time, Taiwan was subjected to the February 28 Incident and Martial Law). And they also never experienced China's Communist Revolution, Cultural Revolution, and Economic Revolution (1978- and onwards, instigated by Deng Xiaoping). So, how can the Taiwanese identify as Han Chinese if they have experience history completely differently from the people living in Mainland China?
(Continued below.)
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