Does Taiwan becoming a successful democracy mean that China can? Taiwan is a small homogenous island, China, and more clearly Russia for that matter, is an empire. I fear China would fragment probably in bloody civil war if central power were loosened.

Taiwan cannot be considered a legitimate government either as the premise of their existence is illegal as they've claimed a territory that didn't belong to them and established a country (supported by whose thinks that communist should not exist - remember North/South Korea, North/South Vietnam)

The fact that someone elected the government doesn't change anything. People can be manipulated easily, look at who voted for Trump. The reality is that you've to see the history objectively.

CCP won the civil war in China (like Washington won the independence war) and is the legitimate government of China.

Luckily we don't vote for who is legitimate or not in HN, but in the UN. And there are resolutions of the UN that consider the CCP the legitimate government of China. The same can't be said for Taiwan for example.

I'm sorry but the down votes don't change the fact. Your view of what happened is pretty foggy and inaccurate, perhaps full of bias.

Taiwan was originally not a country, but it became one when it held elections. Having been elected by the people of the island of Formosa, and with no other legitimate government laying claim to that territory, they became a legitimate government.

The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China does not make them in any sense a government, it just makes them the world's largest and most murderous criminal gang. We should stop pretending that China has a government and start working on how to bring them to the Hague for trial.

I'm sorry you lack of basic knowledge.

Country is not defined by the existence of an election process! Taiwan is not recognized as a county by the UN! While the CCP is recognized as the legitimate government of China

Also China has been claiming control over Taiwan ever since they won the civil war, so is not true what you're saying here that nobody has claimed Taiwan.

> The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China

Well.. first they were not a bounce of men with guns they had the support of millions of people in China! And the reason was pretty easy, the old government (that become the Komingtan) sold China to the west and Japan (look for Nanjing puppet state [1]) and they were not happy about it by any means! So yes, they had all the rights to start the revolution to fight a corrupted government.

But even if they were a bounce of random people, the Brits went in Australia with guns and all and claim "this is mine now" and as you can see nobody is complaining about it. Before that they went to the current American continent and claim the land as well with guns and all, guess who won?

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Jingwei_regime