Why doesn't the world just recognise Taiwan officially, China need to export etc. fuck them, what are they going to do?
I understand people thinking the WHO and others need to play nice so they have access or whatever in China but for China to be successful, they couldn't keep their nose out of joint and would have to accept the world calling their bluff?
If 50% to 60% of Hawaii decided they wanted to be their own country, and the US said no, do you think that the rest of the world will just recognize Hawaii as their own country?
Taiwan is currently in a weird political state, but currently there's no indication China plans to use military force (a la HK) to get Taiwan to "really" be a part of China as China, and most of the rest of the world, is pretending like Taiwan is not its own country. Taiwan honestly operates de facto like its own country.
China may be slowly be trying to soft power its way into Taiwan by sending mainlanders to Taiwan and investing, etc, but that strategy is almost inevitable. It's a really small island. Ethnically, the two countries are mainly composed of Han Chinese.
Honestly, the best thing that could happen now is for China to ignore Taiwan and keep pretending like its just a territory of China that gets to do its own thing. Better than getting HK-ed, honestly.
What happened with the WHO was an incident that highlighted that yes, China doesn't consider Taiwan to be its own country, and wants the world to know it. But that's just words. It doesn't affect how Taiwan handled COVID-19. I do think the preferable option would be for Taiwan to have been able to participate separately from China. Diplomatically though, I don't have what the best method of getting this to happen would be.
(*edit: To clarify, only half or a little over half of Taiwan wants actual independence from China. The remaining don't necessarily want to be reunited with China, but they don't want full, actual independence either. Still, there's something eyeroll-inducing about watching a bunch of people with no investment/skin in the game use Taiwan as a political bat in order to push their own "FUCK CHINA" narrative without considering what actual Taiwanese people want or what ramifications there may be for Taiwanese people.)
(*double edit: I'm not even truly Taiwanese. My parents were both Taiwanese, born and raised, but I wasn't born there. So, I don't even feel like I'm "really" Taiwanese and I often feel like my opinion is pretty worthless compared to someone who is actually Taiwanese. That being said, I do feel tapped into part of the consciousness because I WAS raised in a Taiwanese bubble [majority of the people I grew up with were Taiwanese or kids of Taiwanese], I learned a lot about the history of Taiwan, and I still have family in Taiwan. So yeah, watching all y'all who really know nothing so confidently run your mouth on this stuff... lol.)
