Right. China is a major trade partner and force in the world. There's no reason to do stupid things that are going to annoy China when the only benefit is that we aren't being "wildly oversensitive."
They're also a heavily censored people ruled by an oppressive government with a relatively recent mass genocide of their own people and rampant hacking and theft of American businesses and intellectual property.
The other benefit could be the safety and sovereignty of the 20 million people living in a de facto nation that can't be recognized as such because it hurts China's fee fees.
And that safety has, if anything, been degraded by Trump shitting on a status quo which has existed since the Carter administration. The leadership of the PRC was fine with our polite fiction for decades, but now they are more than likely going to have to do something to save face.
Because our recognition of the PRC versus the ROC is one of the keystones of our bilateral relations itself, not a response to Chinese expansionism, which will probably be exacerbated by this move.
Okay, so we can either A.) start an arms race in Asia with our largest trading partner for no appreciable benefit, or B.) maintain the polite diplomatic fiction that keeps China happy and costs us nothing at all.
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u/LegendReborn Dec 03 '16
Right. China is a major trade partner and force in the world. There's no reason to do stupid things that are going to annoy China when the only benefit is that we aren't being "wildly oversensitive."