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This is hands down the best talk I've heard in a long time on Taiwan, the underlying dynamics at play and what could be a solution. If you want to understand the issue, this is an absolute must-watch.
It is by George Yeo, who is undoubtedly one of the outsiders who best understand China and Taiwan. He was a Singaporean cabinet minister during 21 years, including Minister for Foreign Affairs during 7 years. He's speaking in Taiwan in front of an audience made of senior ROC officials, including former president Ma Ying-jeou.
He explains that as things stand China would likely win a conventional war with the U.S. over Taiwan, and the U.S. know this. And therefore it's now all about nuclear deterrence: China is working on having an assured nuclear counterstrike capability and the U.S. on denying them this. Yeo believe that China will undoubtedly obtain this counterstrike capability and when they do, it's basically over: the U.S. would lose a conventional war and couldn't credibly threaten China with nuclear warfare (because they themselves would get hit in a counterstrike). This means that, according to Yeo the status quo is "a ticking time bomb" and it is in Taiwan's interests to find a political accommodation today when they still have some negotiation leverage.
His proposal is to create "some kind of Chinese commonwealth", whereby there wouldn't be a common executive (so it wouldn't be the PRC taking over the ROC or vice versa), or any executive at all, but both sides would meet from time to time to "talk about trade, cooperation, problems, agree on certain principles, etc". He likens it to the old Icelandic commonwealth (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic) or to the old Swiss confederacy (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss).
According to Yeo this proposal could be accepted by the mainland which, given the fact he knows most PRC leaders intimately, he wouldn't say lightly. He reminds the fact that China accepted willingly a Portuguese administration of Macau during two dynasties, Ming and Qing, and even refused initially to get it back from Portugal when they proposed it in 1973, asking them to delay the handover for another 26 years! He says that to illustrate the fact that China has absolutely no problem with these types of arrangements as soon as the entity in question is essentially being a good neighbor.
This proposal is extremely smart because it could be a win-win for everyone involved. It'd be a win for the ROC because they'd continue to be their own selves and could even have more independence than they do now, because their status with regards to the PRC would be more formalized and a lot of the tensions and stigma would be removed. And it'd be a win for the PRC because they'd be "reunited" with Taiwan under one "roof", albeit not the PRC roof. In effect it wouldn't be "one country, two systems" but more something like "two countries, two systems united under a common roof."
I really hope that Taiwanese leaders see the wisdom in these types of proposals because, as Yeo says, "the alternative is a dead end and tragedy, not just for Taiwan and the mainland but also for Singapore, the entire region and the world."
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