If the Chinese leaders really have a strategic vision, they should realize that the current tactic of playing tough with Lee Teng-hui in order to divert China's domestic crisis is a bad choice.
The better alternative is to be cool-headed and resolute to solve the key problem in China, which is to give the governing power to the people and carry out true democracy. This will generate peaceful competition across the Taiwan Strait.
In the end, whether divided or unified, the two sides will be both members of the global village. Division and unity are just a transient stage of social development unique to circumstances.
Facing the incoming new millennium, we should have the wisdom to transcend the bloody old paradigm of forced unification.
When leaders from both sides of the Strait negotiate in good faith on a state-to-state basis, China and Taiwan shall be able to reach agreement and stride toward unification, toward a "grand peace," just like the European Union.
Zhang Weiguo is a former lawyer in Shanghai and Beijing Bureau Chief of the World Economic Herald. He is now a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley and an independent journalist.
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