Eyck Freymann

That's a weasel word.

Taiwan has never been subject to the People's Republic of China in its history.

But if Taiwan becomes unified as part of China, what's the United States going to go in?

We're going to go in and topple the government?

We're going to tell them no?

They should have self-determination to decide.

And that is one reason why it's a no-brainer to start to build a semiconductor manufacturing base in the United States and Japan and other allied countries because there's any number of reasons to doubt whether we have assured access in the long term to Taiwan's chip supply.

And if this is the most essential bottleneck to the development of frontier AI,

then we cannot put all of our eggs in that basket.

So the younger Taiwanese tend to lean more towards the DPP, historically.

They tend to, in polls, they tend to identify as, I'm Taiwanese only, rather, very few of them will say I'm Chinese only.

An increasing number will say that I'm Taiwanese only, although many will say I'm both Taiwanese and Chinese.

Chinese in the sense of culturally, civilizationally Chinese, not Chinese in the sense of People's Republic of China, Chinese.

And I think these dynamics are affected by what the mainland does.

China is, I think, perfectly happy, Xi Jinping would be perfectly happy if Taiwan would sign a piece of paper that says, I accept one country, two systems, Taiwan plan, which is to say, I accept your principle.

that there's only one China, and we're part of it, and you're the legitimate leaders, and we will get a Hong Kong-style arrangement where we get to keep our laws, our institutions, our democracy, we get some freedom of expression, freedom to organize, we get our fancy passports that have visa-free access to all these countries, all these perks, and maybe Beijing will give them free energies, other subsidies, other perks.

That is the offer that's on the table for Taiwan.

But it's become a whole lot less attractive now that Taiwan has watched what happened to Hong Kong because Hong Kong took that deal

And it was all right until people in Hong Kong started to object to the CCP's encroachment on their institutions and their freedom to organize and speak out.

And what ended up happening is Xi Jinping sent in masked thugs that brutalized people, rounded them up, disappeared people in the night, terrorized the population and crushed them into submission.