> what authority do you think China has over Taiwan?

Authority, none. Power, plenty.

Taiwan is composed of the refugee losers of the Chinese civil war. That gives them zero legitimacy to continue as anything but a breakaway state occupying a formerly Chinese province.

> Taiwan is composed of the refugee losers of the Chinese civil war

By this logic China should be returned to the winners of the Opium Wars [1]. No countries for losers! (To say nothing of the CCP’s inaction against Imperial Japan in WWII [2].)

Anyone can come up with reasons for stealing stuff based on decades, centuries or millennia-old gripes. What matters is where the people alive today live and how they identify. For good reason, the Taiwanese have been drifting away from China since Xi.

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

[2] https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-imperial...

And do the winners of the Opium Wars have a verifiable historical claim to the land for thousands of years?

> do the winners of the Opium Wars have a verifiable historical claim to the land for thousands of years?

No. Similar to how the Han Chinese don’t have one to Tibet (and other parts of modern-day China).

Practically all land touched by humans has multiple verifiable historical claims to it. The further back we go, the more there are and the more ambiguous they become. The only thing we can say with certainty is who is there today. Every other path means violence and is honestly a bit stupid.

Oh I’m sorry, did you forget that it wasn’t Han Chinese that laid claim to Tibet during the Qing dynasty, whose emperors were Manchus (even though Han was and still is the main ethnic group)?. But snark aside, your argument doesn’t address my central point.

They can try and find out.

Well, I hope they don't. Unless you know something the rest of the world doesn't China has Taiwan seriously outmatched both economically and militarily. The main question is if China takes minimal or significant losses in the event of an attack.

I could say the same to you. Never in the history of humanity has there ever been an amphibious assault as large as would be required and over as far a distance as the Taiwan straight. And Taiwan is a veritable fortress. A warrens’ nest of hidden antiship missiles and ammunition sites.

Both countries claim to be one China lol

This take is ignorant of the last 20 years of Taiwanese politics.