"Is Taiwan part of China?"-"Yes!"

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) Constitution and its Anti-Secession Law say yes. And the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), the residual state system having survived a four-year civil war (1945-49) with Communists still runs the island, also says yes. The very reason for the existence of the surviving ROC on the island is that the PRC's Central Government in Beijing has elected NOT to dismantle it after it assumed the role of ruling the whole of China from ROC in 1949. In the best interests of the Chinese nation, the Central Government wants a peaceful, "One Country, Two Systems" reunification with Taiwan.

To continue with the above discussion entailing complicated, contentious historical and legal points would require extensive research, which is not what I want to deal with in this posting. For example, a Western scholar even argues that China is a culture that pretends to a country. It might take months of research and study of historical, legal and social books for an amateur like me to challenge his conviction. My first-minute response to his point is that he says only half the thing. As I see it, China is a country that is united by one culture. Another startling assertion is that, according to some arrangement, Taiwan is a territory of the United States that puts the island in the hands of the occupying ROC after WWII ended with Japan surrendering the island to the Allied Forces in 1945. People of this opinion go on to say that the reason why neither PRC nor ROC owns Taiwan is that the arrangement did not specify to whom the island was surrendered. And that's why the U.S. has a relations act with the island and justifiably sells weapons to Taiwan, one of its territories, according to that frame of thinking. This is a word game: By one treaty, China lost Taiwan to Japan; and by another, Japan lost Taiwan to an unidentified entity, but not China. Who is it to be, then, if not China? China lost a piece of its soil to an enemy in a failed war and couldn't take it back even when the enemy was defeated?

Beijing has provided a good and operational framework into which Taiwan can again live under one flag with the rest of China: "One Country, Two Systems". To use force to reunify the nation is the worst choice that China has desperately tried to avoid. China has had enough of such internecine within itself and wars with foreign countries in its history. Too much of them! But, this does not mean China will do nothing violent if its patience and endurance are tested to the extremes and it fears it would lose Taiwan again.

In my opinion, things have not changed too much since British-French forces burned down the Summer Place in Beijing in 1860 and European, American and Asian democracies invaded China and occupied Beijing in 1900. The rule of the game is still "might is right". Today's China has means, ways, resources, capabilities, will and domestic popular support (if reasonable) to have it all its own way, at least of keeping Taiwan part of its territory, which China is justified to do according to China's Constitution and the Anti-Secession Law.