Asia Times
Date: June 12, 2018
By: Chris Tayloe

The China-Taiwan story has long been defined by China’s sovereign claims on the island. This “renegade province” story is a legacy of the Chinese civil war of 1927 to 1950 fought by the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC), and which drove the KMT to Taiwan.

But today the war is about far more than the CPC’s continued sovereign claims on the island. In fact, the sovereignty issue may have far less to do with China’s Taiwan bellicosity than most of us realize.

When journalists write about Taiwan, they generally evoke its vibrant and hard-earned democracy, which is obviously a subject that Beijing’s autocrats would prefer was never discussed.

But the byproducts of Taiwan’s democratic evolution are also anathema to Beijing because they make a mockery of the CPC’s much-touted claims of having evolved a magical rule-all model for governance based on – of all things – Marxism.
[FULL  STORY]