China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau. What's a country and what's not? Obviously, we know that China, the People's Republic of China, is a sovereign nation. We know that Hong Kong and Macau were once colonial possessions have been returned to China, the PR China that is. So what about Taiwan? Is it a country or is a territory, or is it a province? Well, all of the above. And now here we see a big problem.
We should be quite familiar by now, especially if you've been following my posts, that China had this civil war where the Communists won and pushed out the Nationalists, who were in power for a number of years. So what happened to those Nationalists, well they fled to Taiwan, the island off of mainland China.
Taiwan experienced the Taiwan Miracle, where it underwent drastic improvements in a period of 20 years, bringing it the exclusive club of the "Asian Tigers". Of course, the biggest problem was really Taiwan's fight for existence. With the PRC growing, it started to assert its dominance by taking over Hainan island and then kicking out the ROC from the UN. The PRC replaced Taiwan as "China" in 1971. Since then, there has been back and forth between which country is the "true China". Both support the "One China" policy and see themselves as legitimate China.
It seems that the PRC is winning. It is repeatedly calling for others to support the PRC as "China" and now we are seeing it force airlines to label Taiwan as a part of China. Of course, Taiwan still fights back, because products made in China and Taiwan are distinct, as the will say "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan".
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