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Taiwanese pop music and television became wildly popular on the mainland, and Chinese tourists flocked to visit Taiwan, promoted by state media as China's "treasure island." Ties further flourished after the turn of the century. Beginning in the early 1990s, many Taiwanese firms moved manufacturing operations to the mainland, where labour was cheaper, and authorities were hungry for outside investment to fuel economic growth.
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In fact, for much of the past 30 years, the possibility of conflict had seemed remote. In October, China's military sent a record number of warplanes into the air around Taiwan while Chinese diplomats and state-run media warned of a possible invasion unless the island toes Beijing's line.īut it hasn't always been this way. Today, relations between Taipei and Beijing are at their lowest point in decades. Taiwan is now a flourishing multi-party democracy but the mainland's ruling Chinese Communist Party continues to view the island as an inseparable part of its territory - despite having never controlled it. Mainland China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago, when the defeated Nationalists retreated to the island. "I really wish that Taiwan could remain as it is today." They always break their promises," he said. "It reinforced my thoughts on the Chinese government in (that) they don't really do what they say. Samuel Li, a student in the city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan said Beijing's crackdown on Hong Kong had escalated his distrust of the Communist regime. Since the Hong Kong protests broke out in 2019, more than 32% of respondents in Taiwan preferred a move toward formal "independence" - twice as many as in 2018 - according to a survey by Taiwan's National Chengchi University in June.įewer than 8% of respondents favoured "unification" with mainland China, while most wanted to maintain the status quo - an arrangement by which Taiwan remains self-ruled, without an official declaration of independence. The recent events in Hong Kong have given Lin greater determination to defend Taiwan's sovereignty, he said - and he is not alone.Īs authorities in Hong Kong arrested pro-democracy supporters, including opposition politicians and newspaper editors, a growing number of people in Taiwan have reflected upon the island's future relationship with mainland China. "If I were in Hong Kong, I think I'll probably be in jail," said Lin, the 33-year-old deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Lin says he could only watch from afar as nearly all pro-democracy figures in nearby Hong Kong, about 800 kilometres southwest of Taipei were arrested or fled overseas in the year since Beijing imposed a controversial national security law in response to mass pro-democracy protests in the city. In just five years, Lin Fei-fan went from charging into Taiwan's legislature and occupying the building with hundreds of students to a senior job for the island's ruling party.īut his story could have been very different if he lived in Hong Kong, where student activists once brought the financial hub to a standstill as they took to the streets to demand democracy and freedoms.