Chinese majoritarianism would have dangerous consequences for our region

Yingwai Suchaovanich’s arguments are predicated on the belief that the 1.4 billion Chinese in China (not 14 billion, which I presume was a typo) ought to determine the destinies of the 23.58 million ethnic Chinese living on Taiwan. He airily dismisses, and indeed does not even address, the democratic proposition that the Taiwanese ought to be allowed to determine their own destiny. China owned Taiwan for so many years, he insists, and China ought to keep owning it, regardless of what the people living on it want.
Yingwai’s thinking is based on majoritarianism. This is the idea that the majority in any country ought to rule the minority, who have no say in the matter and may justifiably be massacred and eaten if the majority so desires. In this case, majoritarianism is allied with Chinese chauvinism. Gone is Deng Xiaoping’s breezy assurance that China would never practice “big-power chauvinism”. Was this a con, like the “one country, two systems” joke perpetrated on Hong Kong? It sure looks like one. It seems to be a natural law of politics that once a country gets powerful enough, chauvinism, and greed for more territory, follows naturally. Note the rise of great empires. Feed the beast, and the beast gets hungrier.
No one will deny that China has a great culture that is admirable in many ways. Taiwan shares that culture. The issue is whether the biggest and most powerful repository of that culture has the right to impose its political system on smaller and weaker ones. If you concede that the 1.4 billion ethnic Chinese on the mainland have the right to impose their political system on their fellow ethnic Chinese wherever they may be, you then get a fascinating series of spin-offs which will not be welcomed by existing governments. “Hmmmm,” the Chinese chauvinist will think. “Singapore has a majority of ethnic Chinese citizens. Singapore should belong to China.” Gobble gobble gobble, and there goes Singapore. 
Since that would leave an unsightly gap on the map between mainland China and China’s Singapore, let’s gobble up the gap too, and all the ethnic Chinese living in it. Let’s make all the parts of Greater China contiguous by grabbing Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. That would give us not only a more beautiful map, but also an excellent springboard to Indonesia, which has lots of ethnic Chinese. Not to mention the Philippines.
You can see where all this leads: to the conclusion that every country with a significant ethnic Chinese population must become part of China. Never mind that those ethnic Chinese populations may have a horror of the current Chinese regime. 
I’m sure that Yingwai will insist, with Deng Xiaoping, that China has never practised big-power chauvinism. If that’s true, that’s good. Let’s keep it that way. Let China keep its hands off Taiwan, and let the Taiwanese people decide their own future.
S Tsow