Note: Transcript fully created by automated AI
[00:00:00] Angela Lin: Hey everyone. My name is Angela Lin.
[00:00:02] Jesse Lin: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You really from? As you guys may have seen in the news, there is definitely more talk of Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan, especially when it comes to China. Taiwan’s Independence, military defensive positions.
So we thought we would take an episode to really explore if we think Taiwan will meet, remain an independent entity. For much longer. And if so, why?
[00:00:35] Angela Lin: And for any new listeners who may be joining us for the first time, we have a vested interest in particular because we are Taiwanese America. So this is top of
[00:00:46] Jesse Lin: mind for us.
Yes, so historical background. I think if we wanted to do like a Cliff Notes version of it, Taiwan was never really populated by Han Chinese people until, I don’t know, like the 15 hundreds. I think when people started, like percolating over there were already kind of like aboriginal indigenous islander folk who were living there.
And actually there’s. Pockets of, um, those populations there. And there’s a kind of tumultuous history. I think the Dutch were there for a while, then the Japanese were there for a while. And to be honest, China’s claim on Taiwan has always been really, really nebulous until the Civil War in China drove the nationalist out of mainland China and over to Taiwan.
And that was kind of. A split in China, but also technically like the full takeover of China because Taiwan still officially recognizes itself as the Republic of China . So that’s kind of like in a cliff notes. I think the background history, and of course like now communist China is saying that Taiwan has always belonged to China, and that’s kind of where it stands.
So like a lot of world power. Acknowledge that Taiwan exists, but it has no political independence. Like if you go to any large city around the world, for the most part, you’re not gonna find a Taiwanese embassy or consulate or anything like that. And that’s because China enforces kind of this hard line rule that’s like, Taiwan belongs to us.
And like politically, you have to acknowledge that it belongs to us.
[00:02:24] Angela Lin: Yeah, I mean, kind of yes and no on the embassy thing, because you’re right, there’s no like official embassy or consulate anywhere really. But there are all these like essentially embassies and consulates around the world because they just call them something else.
Like I think the US one is like the American I. for Taiwan or some shit like that. Um, and they do basically the same thing. They just like can’t call it that for official reasons so that they don’t get in trouble with China. I think you did a great cliff notes of like, this is the, like, if you only need to color the.
That’s right. Um, so just a little more meat on those bones. So, um, for those that are kind of like confused about why Taiwan is officially called Republic of China, still, if they’re like trying to be their own thing, which we’ve like a little bit talked about in the past, it’s because they’re kind of two factions within Taiwan.
So they’re two main political parties. There’s the KMT Ming Bang, which. The original political party that came from China, like before Civil War. The nationalists, basically the nationalists, they were actually the ruling party of China, like mainland China right after the fall of the Ching Dynasty. So they were like the first post empire, no, you know, like Imperial Empire type China, um, political.
And then they, as Jesse mentioned, got pushed out by the Communists into Taiwan. There was never a treaty signed or anything that like claimed the end of the war between, uh, these two factions of communist China and Guang. So technically, like we’re still in a civil war kind of ceasefire kinda thing. . Um, but the people who are claiming Taiwan is independent, is actually a newer faction.
So the other opposing political party within Taiwan is the Democratic progressive Party, which is the current administration’s political party. So it’s Tua, the current president is part of that, and they’re the group that are more kind. , um, on the side of, we don’t, we’re not trying to claim we are China KMT is actually like Taiwan’s, like the OG China or like the real, um, legitimate China and cultural China, and we want to be recognized as China.
On, in addition to mainland versus D P P is like not Taiwan’s kind of its own thing, like leave us alone. So that’s kind of where those two factions like differentiate. But the official name of Taiwan is still Republic of China because the K M T established it as such in 1949 when they. We’re pushed out into Taiwan and we’re still claiming like we’re the real China, they just failed to actually take back mainland China, which was their original goal,
Um, so, so
[00:05:20] Jesse Lin: yeah. Maybe if you haven’t been super paying attention to throw even more complexity into the situation is there are. Global geopolitics involving China and the Western countries. And Taiwan, although it is quite a small country, I think it’s a strategic military importance because of how close it is to China and like how we have troops staged there.
So, There’s a lot of that kind of political maneuvering as well. I think that a lot of that acts actually blown up the importance of Taiwan and like the tensions there, rather than I think the inherent tensions between the people who live there and. In China cuz for it’s been like that for a while where they just kind of like coexist in a, in a fashion.
I definitely think that being part of like the chess game of global geopolitics has made it a little bit more like stressed.
[00:06:13] Angela Lin: Taiwan is kind of like the last stop gap between like the free world version, like the Democratic societies versus communist China within the Indo-Pacific. region is kind of like how they, because every time you read some like official statement from any of the countries, it’s like we want to maintain peace and stability within the Indo-Pacific region.
Um, and to your point though, to like make sure we fill in all these gaps. Yeah. The one China policy for anyone, it’s, it’s like a little bit self-explanatory, but not really because it is ambiguous af in terms of like how people adhere to it or don’t. So the one China policy as CH mainland China, communist China sees.
Is that there’s literally only one China. So like they don’t recognize, you know, Republic of China, AK Taiwan as like a separate China. There’s only one China, the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan is a province of China. So like inherently part of this one China. , that’s how they see it. Technically, all the other nations in the world really, or the world powers acknowledge the one China policy.
Yes. So no one’s gonna come out and be like, Taiwan is its own independent country, um, separate from China. Nobody says that including the us. However, most countries have this like weird. Dancing around the subject version of acknowledging it, where like most of the world powers do some sort of separate like economic relationship and like unofficial political relationship.
What’s Taiwan? They just can’t formally call it a country, but like the US for example. I think it was 79 19 79, established the Taiwan Relations Act, which like simultaneously says, we recognize Taiwan is not its own country, but also we’re gonna like, do business with Taiwan and like, um, we can supply military aid to Taiwan.
Um, and all these like separate things as if it’s a separate country. It’s not a country y’all, so it’s this like very weird thing. And after Pelosi’s visit, which we’re gonna get into, like all these countries also came out to like say exactly the same like confusing things where they’re like one China policy, foho, but also like Taiwan should maintain its own
Like should be able to like, yeah. Left alone and like let’s maintain stability. Y’all status quo.
[00:08:45] Jesse Lin: I feel like sometimes when we look at this fight for country hood, it seems like a very silly thing cuz it’s just like, is it a country or is it not? But I think that being a country affords its specific standings where.
Not being a country doesn’t, for example, Taiwan cannot participate officially in the World Health Organization because China has blocked them. They cannot be part of the UN because China has blocked them. And I think even if you look at like the consulate examples, they, I don’t think you have like the full range of safety services that you would find at a consulate or an embassy.
Like if you go to American Embassy anywhere. Basically safe. Like there are like armed guards there and you have like the political weight of the US being like, no, no, no, like you cannot violate our consulate embassy. But I don’t think that same st like the same rules apply to whatever. consulate, embassy backup, things that they have for Taiwan.
So I think there are like a lot of material differences as a citizen of Taiwan and a lot of us I think don’t appreciate that because we all have citizenships and countries that have pretty legitimate standing where you can like go anywhere and feel really safe that you can go. The consulate or embassy, if anything happens to you while you’re traveling.
Yeah.
[00:10:04] Angela Lin: It is stuck in this kind of like weird place of kind of being a country, but not having the full protections or recognition for sure. Um, and I, I forget what the like official term is, but there, I kept reading in all the articles that I was reading up on that like, most countries recognize it as like a, what do they call it?
Like a stateless government or some shit, like, it was like a self-sustaining government without. A country’s borders is like, interesting. It’s in a different wording than that. I think it was something like a stateless self-governing body body or something like that. Like the, the most roundabout way of saying like a country without
[00:10:43] Jesse Lin: saying it’s country, the mental gymnastics mm-hmm.
That people are going through to like, make this work. I wanna like, come on please. Yeah.
[00:10:49] Angela Lin: Surfs. Okay. So that’s kind of the, the historical background. We wanted to talk about this because it is, Well recently was flooding the headlines because of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Uh, that became like a shit storm.
[00:11:07] Jesse Lin: There were subsequent visits by, um, some other Congressmen as well. Yes,
[00:11:10] Angela Lin: Congress people as well. Two weeks later there were several other Congress people. So, I mean, first of all, I just, I’m very confused, like when it first made the headlines. Pelosi’s gonna visit Taiwan. I was like, who cares? Like, I didn’t understand why that mattered, because I follow Tangui on Twitter, the president of Taiwan on Twitter, just, just to see.
And like, sh all she ever does is pose pictures of when like, uh, another country’s like, people come to visit Taiwan and be like, this country in Taiwan, Taiwan. You know, reaffirm their friendship. That’s like all she does on Twitter and us people are always there. So I just like, I didn’t understand, first of all, like why Pelosi mattered in, you know, in contrast to all these other official US people that have been visiting Taiwan since forever.
[00:12:01] Jesse Lin: I think it’s cuz she’s so close to the presidency. Like she’s technically like third or fourth in succession, if anything. Ooh.
[00:12:08] Angela Lin: Like designated survivor style. She’s like
[00:12:10] Jesse Lin: very, yeah, no, she’s like close to the top. She’s very, she’s very close to being the president. If anything happened to like. Biden, Kamala, then it’s like her.
So I see. I think also like because of her standing in Congress and like how long she’s been there, it’s again, it’s like this whole geopolitical like show thing where it, she going there somehow implies that the United States somehow supports Taiwan and like legitimizes it somehow by sending basically something to the effect of a head of state to.
that nation. I don’t, I don’t think any president has ever, or vice president has ever visited Taiwan. I, it might be even part of the like, agreement that they have in place that they would like never do that. I don’t, I also think it’s because her schedule got leaked. So usually with these trips like the uh, succeeding Congre Congress people trip, you didn’t really know until they were there.
And I think because her schedule got leaked, it got blown up really quickly where everyone could be like, oh my God, she’s going. Versus like, if she had just gone there. Quietly, no one would’ve really known until she was there. Right. And then it would’ve been like, she’s there, she’s gone. That’s kind of what’s happening with the Congress people now.
But because her travel schedule got , it kind of got like exploded into this thing that it was like, I don’t even think it was supposed to be anything super significant.
[00:13:30] Angela Lin: Yeah. I feel like it’s a classic case of people blowing up shit. That’s not a thing, because her visit was. Such a like symbolic thing on both sides, right?
Like people would be like, yeah, it’s free Taiwan. Absolutely. And then the other side like, fuck you guys going against China, blah, blah. For those who didn’t know the full context, this is one stop on her. Like multi-stop Asian tour, essentially. It was not like, she was like, I’m going to Taiwan as the only des.
Nation as a like symbolic representation of us is blah, blah, blah. For Taiwan, it was like, I’m gonna like 12 different countries in Asia, and Taiwan is just a stopover because it is like it. It was made into such a thing. I was so confused when it was like, oh, Pelosi’s going and it’s like being blown up as a thing.
I was like, I really, I don’t understand. . Yeah. And also like, I’m sorry, I, I got, I get what you’re saying about like she’s technically if like all these commanders, she’s technical. Yeah, yeah. If she’s really that high up of like, if all these people died, she’d become president. You know, it’s just like comical to me.
She’s so old. She’s just like, every time I look at the politicians running our government, I’m like, So you’re saying if Biden’s out, kamala’s out, like maybe one or two other people are out, we have this like 86 year old woman who then becomes our president. And this is like a thing I, it just like blows my mind again about like how ancient our government is.
Everyone is old.
[00:14:53] Jesse Lin: Yeah. Yeah. I do think that from the Chinese side, it was probably like a really good excuse to do more like inflammatory politics in a sense, to say like, you know, like pushing the buttons and like testing the waters. I feel like there’s been a lot of that where it’s kind of like everyone’s trying to be like, how far can I get?
Without people getting like really mad and like being seriously like slapped for something. This is like another one of those things that I think was a testing ground for that almost.
[00:15:22] Angela Lin: I think it was more just. an excuse for them to try to up the ante a little bit more because they were already doing, like, for those who don’t know, China’s constantly running like random military, quote unquote non-military operations or whatever, like a near Taiwan.
Like they, they’ve been sending aircraft and like naval related things over and near Taiwan. Um, for a long time. Like I remember, we. Interview Savannah, who was in Taiwan. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. When we talked about like the Taiwanese election two, one or two years ago, and she was like, yeah, literally yesterday there were like 10 Chinese military aircraft that were like flying over Taiwan just as a show of force.
It’s like this is an ongoing thing. It was just that like when Pelosi said that she was going to go, then they were like, okay, we’re gonna send like all of these, you know, we’re gonna like double the number of aircraft we’re sending or whatever. And there were all these threats made. People were saying like maybe they’re gonna like shoot Pelosi’s plane out of the air before she can land and like all this shit.
And I don’t know if you saw, but there’s actually like either NBC or Associated Press. Um, Print this article. It was actually kind of funny, it backfired on China. Um, in that they’re always really aggressive, right. With their kind of like threats Yes. Of like, okay, if you push our buttons, we’re gonna like come back harder on you.
And so they were making all this like huff and puff about Pelosi and then. When she actually went, they didn’t do all that much. Like, yes, they like upped the amount of like planes that are flying over the street and blah, blah, blah. But like I said, they already did that kind of stuff before. It was just more of it.
And actually the Chinese nationalists on social media, the ones that are always like trolling, Us when we talk about Taiwan and like blah, blah, blah. Uh, just like normal people on the internet talking about China, Taiwan things, they actually got mad at the Chinese government for once because they were like, what the hell?
Y’all made such a big show of like you said you were going to do all this. Stuff if like Pelosi landed and then you did nothing and they actually, it was like the one time ever that the fan, boys of Chinese nationalism actually turned on the government.
[00:17:36] Jesse Lin: That’s kind of what I was saying. It’s just like another thing that they’re using to like inflame the situation and also kind of like justify the things that they’re doing and they’re just kind of like tiptoeing to see where the line.
And they’re trying to get as close to line as possible and like get people to move the line. That’s how I feel because like as you’ve mentioned, the aggressiveness of what is happening is not new, but I definitely feel like it’s intensified recently.
[00:18:04] Angela Lin: Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from?
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And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations at buy me a coffee.com/where are you from? Thanks y’all. Yes. And also for those who may have missed it even before Pelosi visited, because she visited in August, like first week of August on June 15th, so like a month and a half before that, Xi Jinping randomly signed this order that allows him to conduct.
N quote unquote non-war special military operations outside of China. Does that phrase sound familiar to anyone? Um, yeah. So he took inspiration from what’s going on with Ukraine and he announced that that was gonna be like a thing that they’re allowed to do now. Um, so given all of. What is your, let’s go into speculation mode.
How, what do you think is the likelihood of this actually creeping over the, like tiptoeing towards the line thing you’re talking about and actually creeping into potential takeover of Taiwan soon? Given that Xi Jinping’s whole legacy is like largely grounded on fulfilling. Chinese reunification.
[00:19:48] Jesse Lin: I, I want to be more optimistic about it and say that he won’t, because there are very many deterrents, I think, to doing so and very little to gain.
I’m not saying that, you know, to shit on Taiwan, but it is a very small land mass. It does not have particularly any special. Like resources.
[00:20:12] Angela Lin: That’s not true. The semiconductor industry is dominated
[00:20:15] Jesse Lin: by Taiwan. Yes. Like they have lots of semi, but that, that can be produced in China too. Like they also have a lot of rare earth in China.
As
[00:20:24] Angela Lin: far as I understand it, Taiwan is like the number one semiconductor producer producing supplier of the world. So like all the like computer chips and shit are like reliant
[00:20:36] Jesse Lin: on Taiwan. Yes, but I’m, I’m, I’m thinking more from like a, a raw. Resources standpoint. Like it doesn’t have any like coal, it doesn’t have any iron, it doesn’t have any gold, it doesn’t have any, like anything special like that.
I, I see your point on the semiconductor, but you can always build that capability elsewhere. It’s just like people and factories that could be built potentially elsewhere. There are not any like resources there that are finite, that are like really worth going after in, in, in my understanding of the situation.
So I just don’t think that there’s a huge upside for China to take over. Taiwan, especially since, as Savannah mentioned, they don’t even need to really do that to strangle Taiwan. They just can cut Taiwan’s economy. In half by not doing any business with them. So a straight up invasion just seems really, really unnecessary to me with a lot of risks on she’s behalf because he risks antagonizing all the other Asian countries or some of the more Western aligned Asian countries, like South Korea and Japan, and he risk antagonizing like the larger western group of countries.
What’s he gonna get from. Like 30 million people. Pride.
[00:21:46] Angela Lin: I think a lot of it comes down to intangible things. Why does Putin care so much about Ukraine? Ukraine, relatively speaking as like a small land mass compared to Russia and to all these other like territories they claim are part of Russia or they wanna re reclaim as part of former Soviet Union Glory.
And related to that, I will add that. The other piece, why. Bringing this up is that, yes, I agree with you. It’s highly risky for seemingly a small reward, right? On she’s account. However, um, you could argue that like, because he’s viewing what is happening with Putin and Ukraine kind of backfiring on all the other nations.
Like we all were like, we’re gonna. Crush Russia with the sanctions. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re gonna stop the war immediately and it backfired on us. The rubal is actually doing better than it was before the Ukraine invasion because we impose all these sanctions, but it backfired on us because the whole world si is reliant on Russian oil.
Yeah. Um, and. because they blockade so much of Ukraine’s territory. Also all the grain, lots of things going on, right? Yeah. So like it’s not going well for all these countries that we’re trying to like stop Russia. So similarly, I guess I’m. More concerned than I used to be about. She getting funny ideas about this being like a better time to strike for Taiwan because before Russia invaded Ukraine, all the world powers are like, you better not do it.
Like you’re gonna regret it. And then like lo and behold, they don’t really regret it and they’re doing a lot better than we all thought they were going to be doing. So she might be kind of hedging his beds and thinking. It might be worth it to like ruffle a few feathers because tbh, like the US in particular didn’t do that much to help Ukraine.
So like will they really do that much to help Taiwan that they claim they care so much about? Yeah,
[00:23:58] Jesse Lin: you know, I’m more conservative person in that aspect. I could be wrong. I’m not an economist. I don’t know the inputs, outputs of the GDP of the Russian economy and the Chinese economy, but. . Anecdotally speaking, I feel like the Russian economy was much more insulated because they don’t really, they already weren’t exporting that much.
Like they exported oil largely, but they don’t have like goods. When’s the last time you bought something that was like made in Russia? Like never. But I think China depends so much on foreign people buying their goods. That being said, it’s like, You know, dictatorship. So in theory, she could just like crush the economy into buying internally and make that work.
So I don’t really
[00:24:37] Angela Lin: know. Well, and also I guess the, the word invasion is kind of loose, right? Because it doesn’t have to be military based in terms of like the way that China. tries to take over. Taiwan. Make it. Could be a could also. Yeah. Yeah. Economic. It could be hacking. I don’t know. It could be a lot of things.
Yeah. Like it doesn’t have to be what we consider to be like, um, a takeover. A traditional takeover. Yeah. I’m just a little bit more concerned than I used to be. One I goes like, shining light, not really, but like a little hint that might precede anything happening. My dad. Has like we’ve talked about, but he has kind of like a mixed notion of the reunification thing because.
He’s from Taiwan. His family’s from Taiwan, but he had a business in China. He sees the, like economic, especially right potential of China. So he’s, he’s very pro China tbh, but he says that he doesn’t think the Chinese invasion of Taiwan will happen anytime soon. But if it does happen, the telltale sign of when it’s gonna happen is when China tries to like, woo, all of the.
Um, highly skilled people from Taiwan to set up business in China. So he’s like, yeah. So once you see China saying like, Hey, lawyers and doctors and like all these skilled professionals from Taiwan wanna like set up business over in China, that’s a sign, aren’t they doing that? I think he means like by making it like insanely easy to set up or like lucrative or some, some other incentive to like get all these people over because that’s a sign that they’re trying to extract all the valuable.
You said there’s nothing valuable in Taiwan. The people are, what’s human capital is valuable. Yeah, human capital. So they’re gonna try to extract all of that first before they do anything that could like crush what is valuable in Taiwan. He said it’s complicated because technically China doesn’t see Taiwan as like an enemy.
It is. A rebellious province that refuses to like listen to its mommy and daddy. Right. That’s kind of how they see Taiwan. So it’s not in their interest to try to like kill everyone. That’s
[00:26:49] Jesse Lin: like spilling family
[00:26:50] Angela Lin: blood. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like you’re all Chinese, so we’re just trying to like get you back in the fam is how he sees it.
So he was like, that’ll be the sign at the time of she is saying this like military operation thing. My parents were still in Taiwan, and so I was concerned. I was like, um, how are you gonna know? Like, do you have a way out? Like if they just randomly decide to invade Taiwan? Finally I was concerned for them and he reassured me with his notion.
Of like there will be signs first and as soon he was like, as soon as I see those signs of like, Hey, y’all like all you skilled people come on over. Or he is like, I’ll get the fuck out. Like , I’ll be long gone before that. I’m like, okay.
[00:27:31] Jesse Lin: I mean, also on the other side, I feel like that kind of migration just happens naturally, like.
As things get more serious, that kind of human capital will just leave and their money will leave too. Like I feel like, you know, like before the invasion of Ukraine, there are a lot of people who are like, it’s not gonna happen. But then like slowly as it got more real, more and more people were fleeing.
Even though Russia had not actually pressed into Ukraine yet. I
[00:27:56] Angela Lin: guess you mean out of Taiwan in general, but not that they would go into China.
[00:28:00] Jesse Lin: Exactly, yes. Yeah. Other places.
[00:28:02] Angela Lin: Yeah. Got it. Okay. Well, I think the last thing we wanted to discuss in relation to this is if. This were to happen, the reunification that China wants so badly, what would it feel like to us to lose a quote unquote homeland with this being a complicated issue since neither of us actually was born or raised in Taiwan, but our kind of like concept of cultural heritage is very deeply tied to that.
Quote unquote country because ,
[00:28:36] Jesse Lin: well, it’s even more confusing because technically China will still exist. Where all of that cultural heritage originated from . I don’t know. I mean, like Covid really threw a fucking monkey wrench into the whole thing. But I always had this idea that I would be going back more frequently and trying to like reconnect with my family and like get to know Taiwan better, even though I know I’m never gonna be.
You know, people are always gonna clock me as like, not a Taiwanese person, but I dunno, it feels weird to know that there’s a place where lots of happy things and memories are because I do, I, I haven’t visited a lot, but I have like lots of good memories of time with my family there. It’s weird to know that that might be, Violated in a way, if that makes sense.
And it feels really unsafe. You know, living in the United States, you’ve never had to face the fear that like anything would happen. It’s always been so secure. So then to suddenly confront the fact that a place where your family lives and has built lots of memories and has experienced lots of love is suddenly going to.
Attacked. You don’t necessarily know how, as we’ve discussed, it can be economic. They could actually be marching troops in. So I think it’s really, really scary and it’s really, really sad. It’s
[00:29:54] Angela Lin: a really complicated issue, right? Because when we talk about heritage, something that we can’t deny, and we talked about in the whole like T L D R of the history of.
Chinese Taiwanese tension is that Taiwan as we know it, right? Current modern day at Taiwan. It started from China. Like the people are literally like, they were a Chinese political party that like fled. And then all these people that now consider themselves Taiwanese at some point came from China. And so a lot of that cultural heritage, at least the like older heritage or Chinese traditions and food and like all these, you know, things that built.
What Taiwan is today, but you cannot possibly deny that Taiwan has developed its own kind of thing since becoming its own nation. It’s similar to our kind of previous debate about like, is the US more of a thing or is like the statehood identity more of a thing, right? Like. Even if you are super Chinese nationalist and you wanna claim Taiwan is just a province, this province’s culture is its own thing.
So I think that is like a standalone differentiator from Taiwan versus China. Right. But the main thing is that if Taiwan were to actually be taken over. The government changes. So like as it stands today, even though even if you try to say Taiwan’s not a country, it is run by a democratic process. It’s not run by communist regime.
And so people are used to certain freedoms and privacy rights and other rights that people in mainland China do not currently have. So if Taiwan is taken over fundamentally, It will be quite different because the government will change hands. So it’s different from us saying like, you know, moving from California to New York or to Florida or whatever, because we’re all still under the same president, we’re still under the same government.
It would be more like, , um, moving from Florida to Cuba, you know, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it, that’s what scares me is like, I think the flavor of Taiwan in terms of like the, the way people act and like the modern culture that’s been built up about, uh, around Taiwan won’t necessarily change because that’s what’s been built up in the last, uh, 80 years or whatever.
But with the government changing, it just cannot run the same way. So that’s where I’m fearful. Is like I, for example, I don’t wanna go to Hong Kong anytime soon since they got taken over by China. Even though I used to visit it and it felt like its own thing. I’m, I’m kind of scared to visit Hong Kong now and I feel like that’s how I would feel towards Taiwan.
The
[00:32:37] Jesse Lin: idea of losing the homeland is much more than just like the whole thing being torn apart by war stripe, but actually like the cultural identity of it is lost. And I think kind of taking over Taiwan will do exactly that. I mean, you just look at Hong Kong. Crushed like the vibrancy of what Hong Kong is because we’ve seen there’s this kind of homogeneousness that they want to implement everywhere.
So everyone is very similar and I really, really don’t think that they would just allow Taiwan to maintain those, the separation and the culture that it has because that’s not the approach that they’ve taken. In China.
[00:33:15] Angela Lin: Yeah, so we don’t feel great about the idea of potentially losing a homeland even if we were not born and raised there.
It is still a big part of kind of like certainly our families and our families’ histories, but also. , what we grew up with, we visited many times. It kind of shaped our identity crises that we constantly talk about, but our kind of foot in both worlds is shaped by that experience we have with Taiwan as well.
[00:33:45] Jesse Lin: Yeah, I think it’s just kind of like, it’s something that you don’t really think about, but like once you lose it, I think it, it can become like a really big hole for you. Should I move on to the Fortune cookie clothes? Because we always like to end on a sweet treat, so we’re gonna do some more speculation and crystal ball.
Do you wanna just crystal ball the best scenario? I feel like we’ve talked about a lot of poo poo stuff. Yeah.
[00:34:07] Angela Lin: I mean, Boring answer, but best case scenario is that status quo is maintained, which is, if you’ve been reading any of these, any of the articles, that’s the phrases that keeps coming up is status quo.
It’s like weird, ambiguous state that Taiwan is in, where no one, no one acknowledges it as a country, but still essentially does all the things that you would do with , with a different country that you respect. So status quo maintained, and China can keep doing its whole, you know, threats and whatever, but not actually.
It’s carrying out a full on takeover.
[00:34:41] Jesse Lin: Okay, well, I will take it to the WOOWOO level. , I think that XII Ping will pass away. The communist party will fall into disarray and Taiwan will be elevated to a real country.
[00:34:52] Angela Lin: That is indeed best case scenario. Damson. All right, well, uh, fingers crossed. We’ll see that’s
[00:35:00] Jesse Lin: a long term best case scenario.
It is.
[00:35:03] Angela Lin: I mean, going back to the whole thing about like wire polishing. So old that run our countries, she’s 70, right? Yeah. But fucking Nancy Pelosi is like 86 or whatever’s, and she’s. Kick in, like on paper you’re like, yeah, 70 something years old. You should be like ready to , ready to wind it up. But no,
[00:35:22] Jesse Lin: I don’t know.
Maybe someone from within the Polar bureau will just be like, it’s time for you to go .
[00:35:28] Angela Lin: Well, the reality is that they have an election coming up and previously what? If, if y’all have been listening for a while, we did a previous episode about China and I think we misspoke about something. So several years ago, Xi Jinping did change the law that gave him the right to be president forever, essentially.
But what we misspoke about is it was not saying he will be president forever, it’s that they got rid of the term limits for a president. Mm-hmm. , it doesn’t mean he will be the president forever. So it’s not like Putin, where it’s like Putin is kind of like the, the only important person technically there.
If there’s enough infighting within the Communist party and people are sick of Xi Jinping, he could be ousted in the, in the next election, which is coming up ish. So, The theoretically they could change leadership and the next person could not be as crazy about the whole reunification thing. At least not imminently.
Alright, well this was a lot, um, listeners, I, I don’t know how much y’all are invest. In this, or if you have just been keeping over the headlines and have, uh, a hot take or anything else you wanna share with us. But feel free to interact with us on social media, on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, wherever you’re watching this, and let us know your thoughts about everything that’s been going on.
If all this recent tension was Pelosi and the Ukraine invasion kind of influencing she, if you think it’s gonna tip the scales one way or another, let us know what you. And
[00:37:03] Jesse Lin: come back next week for a fresh, new episode