It sure seems odd that when you search Yahoo! images for Taiwan, the ONLY flag pic you get on the first set is one set beside the Chinese flag. Actually, that’s not odd at all. The CCP has egregious amount of influence over the internet. Who has the time to sit around all day combing social media and search engine results for anything that isn’t CCP-approved? Wumao, that’s who.

But this isn’t about Wumao (China’s 50-cent army), or even about the CCP. This is about Taiwan.

Everyone in the world knows Taiwan is a sovereign country. China says that Taiwan is a province of Taiwan, Taiwan says China can take its pineapples from their cold, dead, hands. Also, if Taiwan belongs to anyone, it belongs to the United States. (Fun Fact : The Pentagon considers Taiwan an “Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier”.)

Most of the Western world probably hasn’t heard the word Taiwan since middle school (A lot of the manufacturers of goods we got from Taiwan moved their factories over to China, just like every other developed country did). Of those that have, they probably only know there’s something about pineapples and semiconductors happening.

Taiwan is the world’s primary manufacturer of semi-conductors. Due to supply constraints, China is no longer able to produce any. Like, at all. They don’t have the raw materials to feed into their copybots. There’s more to it, but, meh. If you haven’t heard about the semiconductor shortage and how it affects you, personally, then maybe we should address your lack of general awareness. But we won’t, not this time.

Taiwan produces the best pineapples in the world. That isn’t mere marketing (though it doesn’t hurt being able to legitimately claim having the best of something), they’re legitimately better. I have to imagine it has a lot to do with the particular soil composition. However, the quality of Taiwanese pineapples isn’t why they were in the news.

China boycotted Taiwanese pineapples. Which basically destroys their made-up credibility about their made-up assertion of sovereignty over the island nation….whatever. China boycotted the pineapples. Can you guess what happened next? Remember the Australian lobsters and wine? Except there’s about a billion more Asians than there are White People….so Taiwan’s entire national pineapple supply for the year is sold. I don’t know what their harvest cycle looks like, but some portion of the next one has been sold as well. I really need to get into futures trading!

“But Rocky!”, you say, “What the heck is China’s problem?”.

Well the short answer is, China sucks. They’ve gone so far as to bully other nations into treating Taiwan as if it is part and parcel of China. This affects…nobody. Their entry into the UN might be affected, but as far as trade goes, the US has never not traded with Taiwan. It’d be like if China got Europe and most of Africa to not trade with Brazil. Brazil could still trade through the US, which they probably do anyway just for logistics…soo.. China is also pretty dumb a lot of the time.

Okay so quick review before going deeper. Modern day Taiwan is a country in the Orient. They speak and write Mandarin. They are wealthy. And healthy. They are a vital asset from a US strategic standpoint, regardless of whatever political nonsense is going on. Their own military’s sole purpose and training is for defense against China. In other words, Taiwan is a developed country in the Pacific, neighboring China and Japan.

I started to wiki the next part, saw “Qing” dynasty (pronounced Ching..lol), then remember the important parts.

The Qing dynasty was the last of China’s emperor-ruled history. Because communism. Just like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Mao Zedong turned China red. Both in terms of government and in terms of blood. There’s actually a lot that happens in-between, but we’re more concerned about Formosa. Formosa is/was the name of Taiwan’s mainland. “But Rocky!”, you say before I quickly interrupt, “Yes, I understand this means Taiwan is part of China. WRONG. Well, it’s actually right but…just let me finish.".

So before Mao Zedong fully owns China, the Republic of China owns China. Okay, so remember that. The Republic of China, the ROC, IS the legitimate China before WW2. They had some kind of civil war going on I believe, idk…China was a mess. So World War 2 ends, and whatever crap is going on inside mainland China resumes. (Hong Kong just chillin’, still British AF). Mao ends up gaining enough control over the country, that China relocates to Formosa. The Republic of China. The ROC. The China that people want. The China they left behind is now ruled by (wait for it) the People’s Republic of China, the PRC. The China that people are told to want.

So Taiwan is basically the “real China” but they don’t even care about that anymore. They’re literally over it. This isn’t some Korean peninsula non-sense, there’s no desire for unity. Taiwan also had a brutal dictator-ish ruler and all sorts of poverty and suffering, but only briefly. China got to keep the name, and the poverty. So it wasn’t really all roses and semiconductors. At first.

Taiwan got its shit together, became the epitome of democracy (including their fraud-proof voting process), and started making it rain $$$. China on the other hand, can’t let it go. Probably because the Han are as inbred as pandas, but that’s another topic for another time.

Whereas China has had its culture and heritage eroded and often erased entirely by the CCP, the Taiwanese did not abandon their traditions and history. If you go to China today (so many reasons why that’s a bad idea), hoping to see some culture, you’ll find only state-approved arts, parks, and statues. No clovers or Blue Moons here (but they do have Baiju). In other words if you want to see Chun Li’s China, you won’t find it in China. You’ll find it in Taiwan. That’s kind of a bad analogy.

Point being, Taiwan is the happy, fun, exotic China you imagine exists. Also, you won’t get arrested for being gay. That probably doesn’t matter to most of you, it certainly doesn’t matter to me, but if you smoke pole in mainland China, you get dead. (It’s a crime. It got de-criminalized, but it’s not like getting caught with a gram of pot…it’s like getting arrested and executed).

Is this girl from China or Taiwan?