Inspired by the efforts of the Republic of Ezo many decades prior the Japanese forces in Taiwan declare their own republic. Fearing that Taiwan would fall into Chinese hands and trying to shelter their officers from prosecution they consider this an effort worth undertaking.
They hope that by playing up the communist threat to the region while instilling fear of the Kuomingtang in the Taiwanese people they might be able to preserve themselves.
(Historically these forces didn’t surrender until a while after the home islands surrendered)
There are a bunch of possible paths they could take, here are a few options:
1) they create a military dictoatorship and try to Japonise the island further, aiming to possibly one day reunite with the home islands which would likely hurt their flimsy legitimacy as a government.
2) they could embark on ‘Taiwanification’ in order to prop up their legitimacy, democratizing institutions and including Taiwanese in the government either largely or partially and playing up the difference between the Taiwanese people and the mainland Chinese. Whether they can see this policy through is another matter. It could end up being a collection of half-baked measures.
3) try to do something inbetween option one and two, or fail at either.
Anyway they insist that the Taiwanese people do not want to join China and claim to act as a vanguard against communism.
Could they survive or would they suffer the same fate as the Republic of Ezo? Is there any chance of them ever uniting with Japan or is the best thing they can hope for continued independence? How would the Chinese respond? What concessions would they have to make to survive? Post your musings.