I don't see the point of focusing on these formalities. If the PRC and the ROC had signed a peace treaty 70 years ago, the PRC could still declare war today. Just as /u/spaced-out said, the Chinese Civil War really is over. Pretending like that isn't the case due to there not being a peace treaty is just the PRC looking for a flimsy pretext to paper over their military belligerence. Presumably it's easier to do that than it is to admit that the PRC in fact isn't a peaceful government as it likes to claim.
That's an irrelevant formality. The people who will have to do the fighting, and even Xi himself, were not even alive during the Civil War. If he orders people to start shooting after >70 years of peace, he's starting a war.
Finishing a war. There wasn't 70 years of peace. ROC port closure policy to blockade PRC lasted into the 80s, while ROC was used as staging for US operations into PRC throughout cold war. This is relatively recent memory, literally everyone in current and prospective PRC leadership was alive to understand the liability of TW as US asset, which has to be addressed eventually via conclusion of civil war. PRC hasn't even retaliated escalation to ROC measures of full island blockade and unrestrict infiltration over TW airspace. Just because PRC is behaving good (relatively) doesn't mean it will continue to. Nor that even if formally PRC had to start a new war to take TW, it will because the underlying security considerations are the same.
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I agree that it ended and a new conflict would likely be named something different but formally there was never an armistice or peace treaty.
I don't see the point of focusing on these formalities. If the PRC and the ROC had signed a peace treaty 70 years ago, the PRC could still declare war today. Just as /u/spaced-out said, the Chinese Civil War really is over. Pretending like that isn't the case due to there not being a peace treaty is just the PRC looking for a flimsy pretext to paper over their military belligerence. Presumably it's easier to do that than it is to admit that the PRC in fact isn't a peaceful government as it likes to claim.
That's an irrelevant formality. The people who will have to do the fighting, and even Xi himself, were not even alive during the Civil War. If he orders people to start shooting after >70 years of peace, he's starting a war.
Finishing a war. There wasn't 70 years of peace. ROC port closure policy to blockade PRC lasted into the 80s, while ROC was used as staging for US operations into PRC throughout cold war. This is relatively recent memory, literally everyone in current and prospective PRC leadership was alive to understand the liability of TW as US asset, which has to be addressed eventually via conclusion of civil war. PRC hasn't even retaliated escalation to ROC measures of full island blockade and unrestrict infiltration over TW airspace. Just because PRC is behaving good (relatively) doesn't mean it will continue to. Nor that even if formally PRC had to start a new war to take TW, it will because the underlying security considerations are the same.