They are trying not to remind China of their continued existence

The thing that nobody wants to admit with Tibet is that China won. They moved a bunch of Han people into the region and it’s now so interconnected with the rest of China that even if a completely free and fair referendum were held on independence, it’d probably be defeated 2 to 1. Call me a bot or a doomer, but if you ever go to Tibet, you’ll realise the old Tibet is pretty much gone. All that’s left is just another Chinese province with Tibet-themed attractions. They did it with Tibet and Inner Mongolia, they are doing it to Hong Kong, and if given the chance, they’d do it to Taiwan too.

While that’s how it started, most Taiwanese people don’t think of themselves as Chinese any more.

The people who consider themselves as solely Taiwanese people outnumber those who consider themselves Chinese by 2 to 1. The Taiwanese government can’t do something like change its name to the “Republic of Taiwan” without starting shit with the People’s Republic of China. So they figure sticking with the old name of the “Republic of China” is less llikely to cause problems.

A lot of geopolitics in general revolves around people trying not to start a conflict over something dumb rather than accepting obvious truths.

I think that’s not what the author was trying to say here. He’s saying that recognition should be granted on an objective basis based on whether an organisation claiming to be a state is able to exercise the powers of sovereignty, without respect for the political implications, and that if Palestine meets the requirements, then Taiwan definitely does as well, so it’s unfair to not also recognise Taiwan.