Not even close. Hong Kong was at the end of a 100 year lease to UK from mainland China. Taiwan is China's previous regime military holdout. There is no soft (diplomatical) path for it's reintegration into mainland, ever. Observe that HK's didn't go that smoothly, either even if it was only a "change of administration".

   > Taiwan is China's previous regime military holdout. 

Yeah but those guys are all dead, so you're relying on 2nd & 3rd generation citizens to hold the same values. That doesn't generally happen.

Living in a former colony that's been given abruptly cutoff from motherland and sent to the wolves (ha!) almost 300 years ago, I can tell you firsthand that culture and values actually _thrive_ in the face of adversity. I'd contend that comfort and the lack of conflict is actually the greatest long term threat to cultural identity.

China is patient, but in "Civilisation-game" terms I believe that the strategic, political and economic importance of Taiwan are much to high for the CCP leadership to passively ignore long enough for a "cultural victory".

Taiwanese may also have the value of "having free elections", I hear those are quite popular and people may not want to give them up. Especially now they can see what happened to HK.

It was explained to me that in mainland China they do have free and fair elections. That they only have one candidate to vote for is just a quibble.