But imagine this scenario flipped on its head and this was an American college student wishing to display pride in his Southern heritage by hanging a Confederate flag. They don't want to hang the US flag because it's associated with the Union, so they choose Lee's battle flag to hang.
Imagine how the comments would be rightfully ripping into OP, but now because of Anti-Chinese propaganda, the nuance is completely lost on Westerners.
If anything, he believes the imperialist propaganda that the Yuan and Qing dynasties weren't actually China -- invented specifically to justify the Japanese occupation.
So guy who has never been to, or been raised in China wants to judge his mother’s concerns when she has spent a majority of her life there. I don’t know much about the history of Taiwan, but when it comes to “ethnicity” wouldn’t indigenous Taiwanese people and people who actually live on the island have more of a reason to hang said flag rather than some kid who’s family isn’t even from there?
No, the actual indigenous Taiwanese people probably see the flag of the ROC about the same as indigenous people in North America see the US or Canada flags. When the nationalists fled the mainland and established themselves on Taiwan they proceeded to conduct a massive campaign of repression against the indigenous population. Don't forget that Taiwan was under decades of military dictatorship. That flag does not represent Taiwan, it represents a former government of China that was rejected by the Chinese people. The flag was imposed on Taiwan by the butthurt losers of a civil war that never ended because the US has been meddling and preventing a resolution of the issue for over seventy years now.
Thank you for giving details on this. I knew about the dictatorship but was a little unsure if Taiwan had an indigenous population or was uninhabited before.