There was never a positive referendum on Taiwan’s independence. Taiwan never formally declared itself to be a sovereign country. The independence movement began to emerge only since the end of the 1970’s. So it is a fairly recent phenomenon.

The pro independence party has just lost local elections. Taiwan is not part of the United Nations. The representative of China at the UN is the government in Beijing.

The 1947 constitution of Taiwan is still in place and it describes a unified China controlled by Taiwan. So even taiwanese do not describe themselves as forming an independent country from China, not even in their constitution. The opposition between Taiwan and China since 1947 has not been one between two peoples but rather one between two ideological movements within a single people.

There are only very few nations in the world (most of them really small) who recognize a unified China governed by Taiwan. These are Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Paraguay, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu. So even they do not recognize an independent Taiwan. Among them, one of the largest is Honduras, but that country has just modified its position and now recognizes that the unified China’s government lies in Bejing.

The US official policy is that there is only one China, and its government is in Beijing. Neither does it recognize the existence of Taiwan as an independent state. It is true that the US only ‘‘acknowledges’’ that Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China. What does that mean? Despite their official policy, they wish to exploit the fact that there is a big divide between the two ideological views about a unified China. They are also willing to leave the door open for a resolution of this conflict that would lead to the independence of Taiwan. This is why they only acknowledge the fact that Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China. Although officially the US government does not support Taiwan’s independence, at the same time, they are as a matter of fact doing everything they can to turn Taiwan into an independent country. Of course, this is not because they support the principle of the self-determination of peoples, for it’s a principle that the USA constantly violate. Neither is it because of values such as democracy, the rule of law and human rights. It is because they know that China would not tolerate it and would then militarily intervene. (For China, efficient control over Taiwan is a way to repair a century of humiliation). A military intervention by China in Taiwan could then be used as a pretext for US intervention and would justify a war against China that, hopefully for them, would weaken China, something that is essential to maintain US domination in the world.

What people do not understand is that the US is in a deep financial crisis: a federal debt that reaches 30 trillions US$, a trade deficit that reaches 1 trillion US$ and, most of all, the inexorable « dedollarisation » of international financial exchanges. The US dollar will sooner or later cease to be the world reserve currency, It is also expected that the ratio between the federal debt and the US GDP could reach 200% within the next 30 years. By that time, one third of US revenues would have to be used to cover debt servicing. The US economy could shrink, could find itself unable to cope with its debt and could be confronted with hyperinflation. Knowing all that, the only solution seems to be to weaken by all means necessary economic competitors. Waging wars with Russia and China seems to be the only remaining solution for reinforcing US economy and imposing the dollar as the international reserve currency.

Talking about an independent Taiwan for the moment rests just on a figment of one’s imagination. There is no merit for such a claim. It is a position held by Neo Cons who want to use the political situation in Taiwan as an excuse for intervening and weakening China. It is similar to the US support of Ukraine, a proxy war serving the purpose of weakening Russia, or of ‘extending Russia’, as the Rand Corporation would put it.

The National Endowment for Democracy, an organization that does the same job as the CIA, has been trying to convince taiwanese to favor independence in revisionist history books used in schools, but the taiwanese population first and foremost wants peace, just like the Ukrainian people wanted peace when they voted for Zelensky in 2019.

On all those issues, it is not my opinion that matters. The facts speak for themselves.