Talk: Taiwan

Republic of China or Republic of Taiwan?

While I think it would be an empty gesture to add anything to this, knowing it'll probably be covered by Shadows of Asia, but would Taiwan still be officially known as the Republic of China and would the Kuomintang Nationalist Party, the Pan-Blue Coalition or any of it's successors still be in charge. There's a significant independence movement in favor of forgetting about reunification with China. With the disintegration of China in SR, would the KMT, Chiang Kai'shek's posse, still be hanging around?--YoungFreud 23:43, 28 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

It's all speculation, but I'm not convinced you can do all that much with Taiwan with any degree of accuracy. Taiwan's not exactly stable in 2004. There's a half dozen movements in Taiwan, and have been for years. I believe the one you mention is sort of an older view. Reunification of China in this case means that China and Taiwan becomes one country under the KMT party. i.e., China government just curls up into a ball and disappers. Right now (2004), it's hard to figure out anything at all, because the current ruling party just faked an assassination attempt right before the election and then had to rig the election anyway. Everything I'm hearing from relatives there sounds like most people don't care about anything except for getting rid of the current government, which is giving the pro-China reunification parties more popularity.

Translating this into Shadowrun, I would just stick an AA Computer megacorp in there if there isn't one already to represent today's semiconductor industry base, with facilities on the mainland. Money is power in Chinese/Taiwanese government, so they effectively have absolute say in what goes on over in Taiwan, given enough money to throw at the politicians. You can see similar happenings on the mainland today. There was a recent issue of National Geographic where local big businesses disregard environmental law and the officials look the other way, because the business is bringing money, prestige, money, regional identity, and money to the province. Taiwan is more advanced technologically than China, so environmental issues aren't as big, but doing business is pretty similar. Honestly, I'm rather worried about how Shadows of Asia is going to turn out, primarily whether it's going to include much of the last decade accurately. --msde 04:25, 29 Sep 2004 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Rewrite

I rewrote most of the entry. I updated it to to the template and format used for the other Chinese states. I included demographic information from Shadows of Asia.

That Taiwan formally declared independence before 2018 is speculation, but is necessary for the source material to be consistent. Currently, Taiwan is officially the Republic of China. Obviously, they must have relinquished the name, for the People's Republic of China to become the Republic of China in 2018. I deleted the flag, because that's the flag of the Republic of China. An independent Taiwan would probably not use it.

The Nationalist War text is from Shadows of Asia.

Taipei and Kaohsiung are listed as notable locations, because they're cities on the map.

That the Taiwanese population align themselves into mainlanders and Taiwanese reflects a stylized simplified view of current politics, but Shadowrun's geography seems to prefer that. The divide probably carry over into the Sixth World, if the Nationalist are still around in the 2040s and still desire reunification, though I have no idea how that works out if there is a mainland Republic of China that claims to be the one from 1912. --Glorian

Blah, I need to get my hands on Shadows of Asia and all the other supplements I've been meaning to grab. Last one I have is Rigger 3 and I want to make sure Taiwan looks right hehe. Keep in mind that these older articles predate Shadows of Asia. Rewrite looks good from here, and I have no idea what the Republic of China is doing only on the mainland. --msde 19:55, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Unfortunately, that's all there is in all of Shadowrun about Taiwan. It's mentioned in the China article, that basically the PRC splintered apart in 2018, the Communists got kicked out and businessmen called the New Progress Party took over. The part centered around Beijing renamed itself the Republic of China. I can only imagine the apoplexy of the pan-blue parties in the Shadowrun world at some upstarts restoring the Republic. --Glorian 20:27, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

That almost sounds like there are two unrelated Republics of China. --msde 21:01, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

One more thing. I would have rather used a picture with Taiwan, Taipei, and Kaohsiung labeled, but uploading is disabled. --Glorian 20:27, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I've been unable to contact Adam Jury since I started working on this project again. There are some tricks that can be done to label existing pictures though, we can always do that as a worst case scenario. --msde 21:01, 26 June 2006 (EDT)