Thanks so much for all your great work, Caitlin! One clarifying point on your statement, "China has been sorting out its own affairs for millennia and has managed to do so just fine without the help of white people running in firing military explosives at them, and Taiwan is no exception.". There was a century in the last millennia where first the Europeans and Americans and then the Japanese "interfered" with (read: killed, subjugated, coerced, threatened, blackmailed, raped, pillaged, etc) the Chinese. This history shapes Chinese policy to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
Thanks so much for all your great work, Caitlin! One clarifying point on your statement, "China has been sorting out its own affairs for millennia and has managed to do so just fine without the help of white people running in firing military explosives at them, and Taiwan is no exception.". There was a century in the last millennia where first the Europeans and Americans and then the Japanese "interfered" with (read: killed, subjugated, coerced, threatened, blackmailed, raped, pillaged, etc) the Chinese. This history shapes Chinese policy to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
... and of course assistance in the form of industrial intelligence since at least Kissinger's mission in the 70s.