I know china was desperately poor in the past, I've heard of people starving. My western media sources also predicted china was ascendant in the world every year for the past 10 years. Like the nyt or the economist. Now they are looking at demographic collapse, economic struggles in China, I'm not sure where it will go in the short term. I'm sure china will figure it out over time.
I'm not sympathetic to this view that by saying the west cares about Taiwan's independence, we are going to cause China to attack Taiwan, since we talk about how China & Taiwan should be free and we'll push too much on the feelings of China or something. That's ridiculous. China keeps threatening to attack Taiwan, I'm not responsible for their actions. I can only help Taiwan, as an american and a believer in the freedom of democracies. China will attack Taiwan or subvert their democracy slowly or just accept them, but I will support the us defending Taiwan's democracy. I know many people from Taiwan, and from China too through work. They are all just people. They should be free to self determine their future and live in peace, all of them.
It's similar to Russia telling former ussr countries they can't make treaties with NATO or they will attack them, then they go and attack the ones that don't make friends with nato. I just can't accept that type of hysterical behavior. I respect the achievements of china, but they don't have the right to invade people because their feelings are threatened or something. The same is true of the us. The us is not a perfect country of course. But I'm generally in favor of democracies being able to survive.
China is not a democracy and is against the democracy of Taiwan surviving. Yeah, I knows there is a complex history about taiwan the island, and the kmt treated the natives in taiwan terribly, and there was the war for China in the 1950s that the kmt lost and chinese communists won and taiwan wasn't a democracy at the start, until recently. Still I want the democracy of taiwan to persist. I don't care about the historical arguments about one china. Let that democratic country survive. I hope one day mainland China becomes free and the people have self-determination. I've known people who escaped the soviet union and married people in my family even back into the 1980s. It can happen again hopefully the people of China can become free and self-determine their own choices about their lives.
Western media has also predicted that China would be crushing everything in the west for the last 10-20 years, from manufacturing to software engineering to military technology. I work as a software engineer, I've worked with people educated in china for 30 years now. They are smart, as brilliant and capable as anyone I meet. I don't underestimate their capabilities.