Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Or, crazy thought, the people in charge of Taiwan have the ability to tell America "no" but instead are having meetings with high level officials, like the Taiwanese president. Perhaps they are getting nervous given Chinese past actions, and don't really welcome the idea of going through what Hong Kong just did. Having themselves replaced with mainland toadies.
Is there any actual evidence Taiwan is not happy about these visits? Because if they were, I'd suspect they wouldn't be so open to these meetings...
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I agree with your general sentiment, but I think it's more complicated than you're presenting.
As i mentioned above, the culture (shared between China and Taiwan) puts a heavy emphasis on face and shame. Also on honor and hosting. There are pretty complicated relationships at play here, and if the US house of representatives, putatively the representatives of Taiwan's largest military ally are requesting a visit, it's uniquely difficult for the Taiwanese to turn it down. Add to this that the story of them rejecting the visit would play extremely well within China and potentially extremely poorly among the hard anti-mainland portion of the taiwanese population.
Probably, Taiwan is somewhat of a willing pawn here, but it is hard to really know. I do absolutely think that they are being wielded in a larger global power play, but I am not sure it is unwilling.