Setting aside the "blue green" matter, the question remains: what exactly are the "political reasons" at play here. That phrase raises my suspicions. Which party, what is their alignment and what is their problem with nuclear power?
Green is the independent Taiwan/nationalist party. Blue is the anti-war/friendliness with China party.
The anti-nuclear sentiment is more due to the age/state of the reactors and concerns over earthquake safety after the Fukushima nuclear accident and the inability for the island to store/handle/dispose of waste.
I don't think the state of nuclear power will change much even if the blues gain power. Taiwanese politics has a way of making the minority party always be against the status quo for some issues just to be a pain for the majority party, and their stance on nuclear power tends to flip flop depending on who's in power.
It's nowhere near that straightforward. The party in question is the Kuomintang (KMT), who fought against the CCP in the civil war and founded the Taiwanese state. However, their position matches the PRC's in that there is "one China", and they assert that the Green/independence movement will break the status quo and basically force the PRC to invade.
The PRC has repeatedly stated that a declaration of independence by Taiwan would amount to an act of war and they would be "forced" to invade to stop it. Obviously the forcing is in quotes, because it's just the PRC forcing itself, but the PRC has painted itself into a corner here and nobody has dared to call their bluff yet.
Yes, forcing should be in quotes because it is complete bullshit. The KMT implying China owning Taiwan as the status quo is also complete and utter bullshit. Taiwan overtly called their bluff when they just elected the other party in a democratic election because they want China to fuck off.
So again, no. The KMT is not the anti war / friendliness party. It’s the party in favor of letting China seize everything.
Refusing to spread your butt cheeks against an imperialistic nation’s ambitions is not “pro war”.
The KMT believe, officially, that Taiwan own China; the DPP believe Taiwan to be independent of China. Neither regard the CCP as the legitimate power in Taiwan.
China: 1 Billion people, GDP ranking: #1 or #2 depending
Taiwan: 0.02 Billion people, GDP ranking: Not even top 10, location: literally part of China.
How do you see the future playing out where China doesn't get to do what it likes to Taiwan? It is all but set in stone at this point, literally the only path Taiwan has to get a good outcome is to negotiate it with China. We've seen in Ukraine what will happen to them if they rely on the US in a military way. There will be mass deaths, the island will be levelled and China will likely seize control anyway.
I wouldn't want the CCP seizing control, but a policy of serious independence is being taken off the table due to China's sheer size. There isn't a backer available to Taiwan that is big enough to stop the mainland from getting what it wants. War is pointless for Taiwan; they'd even be better off going out Hong-Kong style.
It isn't a question of whether China would win, it is the certainty that Taiwan would lose. And regardless, that isn't the reason why large empires are unstable. Through history big countries tend to win but large agglomerations tend to dissolve for economic concerns. That is what happened in the largest imperial dissolutions in history (British, Mongols) which weren't because of a defeat by an external power or because they had any trouble conquering small powers. Or the most recent with things like the USSR.
Large empires tend to lose through military victories and bad economic strategy.
I take it you're not a fan of the expression "Live free or die". But not everyone agrees with you. Some understand why "liberty or death" is actually a reasonable way to live and die - that liberty is in fact worth fighting and dying for. Because if you're not willing to fight for liberty, sooner or later someone will make you either fight or become a slave, and if you won't fight, slavery is all that's left.
As for the actual practical situation: Sailing enough troops to conquer Taiwan across 90 miles of ocean, to land on a very small number of workable beaches, that have been known to be the only workable beaches for decades and therefore have highly prepared defenses... yeah, that's not something that China is guaranteed success at. Xi has looked at what happened to Russia, and may be less certain of Taiwan rolling over, and less certain of success.
So no, it's not inevitable. Stop counseling despair.
With regards to “live free or die”, I’d say it only makes sense if the enemy want to genocide you. Like in the case of the Nazis, I would say fighting them is best (if you’re not “aryan”), since they’d murder you anyways.
But you have to be intelligent about it in other circumstances, and consider whether it’s actually worth throwing your life away, if the enemy isn’t genoicidally murderous like the Germans under the Nazi party.
Consider African Americans under Jim Crow laws — should they have fought violently? That only would have led to them murdered, even potentially in large numbers. African Americans have survived in the U.S. and not been mass murdered partially due to not fighting (and also by moving to more hospitable areas during the Great Migration).
>It was in these early years that Ross began to understand himself as an American—he did not live under the blind decree of justice, but under the heel of a regime that elevated armed robbery to a governing principle. He thought about fighting. “Just be quiet,” his father told him. “Because they’ll come and kill us all.”
Basically don’t fight the enemy that’s enslaving you, unless you’re strong enough to win; otherwise you endanger suffering ethnic cleansing / genocide of your people.
> Some understand why "liberty or death" is actually a reasonable way to live and die
If there is a choice, sure. If there isn't a choice, then living is also a good option. Losing liberty isn't a reason to commit suicide.
> Stop counseling despair.
What despair? Why would Taiwan have to despair? China already controls something like 10% of the human race, the 10% that has seen the biggest improvement in living standards over the last 50 years.
Signing up with that would be unpleasant. But it seems like a better option than a war with the world's greatest industrial superpower that Taiwan is quite likely to lose. We've had a bunch of countries choose war with the US and they'd almost uniformly have been better off surrendering and arguing for liberty in a diplomatic way.
> How do you see the future playing out where China doesn't get to do what it likes to Taiwan?
if Taiwan carried out its former plan of using nuclear power stations to build the bomb it wouldn't have to worry about China again (or fickle US support)
This response doesn't get me there. I want specifics about where the anti-nuclear pressure comes from in Taiwan. A brief hunt for a description of the situation in Taiwan led me to this[1]:
"Fast forward to the present day, and the energy battle lines have not much shifted, with most pro-nuclear advocates also representing the Kuomintang (KMT), the party of Chiang Kai-shek and whose candidate drew just 39% of the vote in the 2020 presidential race. Meanwhile, the DPP, which has grown to become dominant, remains heavily anti-nuclear. Over time, the distinctions on nuclear have become less about anti- or pro-authoritarianism; rather, the DPP is widely seen as the young, pro-environment party, while the KMT is seen as pro-business (and, paradoxically given its origins, too cozy with China). This leaves very little political space to advocate for nuclear energy on the premises of eco-modernist environmentalism."
Ok. That's gets me there. The pressure is coming from environmentalists -- imbued with the unassailable virtue -- so any discussion of the matter carefully conceals the prevailing parties and positions and names go unnamed, by both journalists and the participants in this thread. Exactly what I suspected.
It really makes sense for the DPP (Green) to be anti-nuclear. Mainland China is using Westinghouse AP1000 designs from the US for their nuke plants. Taiwan is friendlier with the US and can get a nice discount to license the same AP1000..
The DPP isn't anti-nuclear for strategic reasons - it's anti-nuclear for ideological reasons.
The nuclear program in Taiwan was heavily tied to the KMT's ambitions, and as a result Taiwan's anti-nuclear movement is heavily tied to Taiwan's pro-democracy movement which became the DPP, along with the MASSIVE beating nuclear power took all over Asia after the Fukushima disaster (which imo was overhyped in Chinese language media).
Politically speaking, Taiwan under authoritarian KMT rule was in a fairly similar spot to China today, and most of the significant gains that Taiwan saw happened after Taiwan democratized.
That said, anti-nuclear sentiment is equally strong in Mainland China as well, and aside from flashy tech demonstrations, the PRC prefers to use a mix of more politically palatable coal and renewables.
Finally, it is the 1980s-90s generation that is currently in power in Taiwan, and has been for a decade now. Anti-nuclear sentiment will remain for the foreseeable future [0]
