> We all know that if the "CCP" had lost the civil war and was reduced to ruling a tiny island off the coast, nobody would take the "PRC" any more seriously - as the true ruler of the whole country or as an independent state - than a "Confederate States of America" holed up on the Florida Keys.

Perhaps not for the first 10 years. But 60 years and two generations later, it doesn't make any sense at all to refuse to recognize the independence of a self-governing group of over 20 million people.