Scott Mc Kiernan Presents zReportage.com Story of the Week #812 TUESDAY November 2, 2021: ‘Being Taiwan’ by ZUMA Press award winning photographer Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi who covers the ongoing story in Taiwan under the shadow of China.
zReportage.com Story of the Week #812: TUESDAY November 2, 2021: ‘Being Taiwan’ by ZUMA Press award winning photographer Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi who covers the ongoing story in Taiwan under the shadow of China: The increase in Chinese military activity in Taiwan over the last few months has caused global concern. The island of Taiwan, about a hundred miles off China’s southeastern coast, has its own democratically elected government, its own flag, its own military. Yet most of the world, including the U.S., won’t recognize it as an independent country for fear of upsetting China, which insists it owns Taiwan. Caught in the middle are the island’s citizens. Today, Taiwan has all the attributes of a robust independent state, and most Taiwanese want it to stay that way. But Chinese President Xi Jinping appears eager to annex the island, as Mao Zedong’s regime did to Tibet in the early 1950s, in the name of ‘reunification.’ A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would constitute the biggest threat to world peace in a generation. There is disagreement and confusion about what Taiwan is. China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province which it has vowed to retake, by force if necessary. But Taiwan argues that it is a sovereign state. Given the huge divide between these two positions, most other countries seem happy to accept the current ambiguity, whereby Taiwan has virtually all of the characteristics of an independent state, even if its legal status remains unclear. Welcome to: ‘Being Taiwan’
Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press