From a medium- to long-term perspective, Taiwan's democratization greatly contributes to the resolution of issues between Taipei and Beijing, but in the short run it has completely upset the calculations, not only of China but also of the US. Since the 1970s, both Beijing and Washington have been expecting Taiwan to make a deal with China that effectively ends the dispute about the island's status more or less on China's terms.
Democratization in Taiwan has made such a short-term outcome impossible. Now it is beginning to be understood that a genuine solution will be far more complex and less formulaic than expected. But democratization has also brought the promise of a genuine solution, for Taiwan now has a government that can genuinely speak for its people and therefore enter into legitimate and binding undertakings.
That opportunity for genuine settlement, however, is currently undermined and blocked by the current short-term approaches both from Beijing (unrealistic demands coupled with military threats) and Washington (unrealistic demands coupled with threats to withhold defense). It is time for all concerned to recognize that there is nothing simple or easy about the issues here; their solution will require substance and not mere slogans.
I urge Americans and other Westerners in particular to try thinking about the problem as if it were "European." Even with the best will in the world, the actual unification of the European Union is going very slowly, but this is a fact that does not surprise us, for we are accustomed to the idea that European states are complex and so are their differences. But when it comes to China, some Westerners still seem to imagine that a primordial, shared, and overriding "Chineseness" makes everything easier. This makes about as much sense as arguing that, because most of the European states grew out of the Roman Empire (which is true), European unification should be easy (which it is not). But the fact is that America's China policy has always assumed not only that reconciling the two sides of the Strait will be easy, but even that it will actually be well-nigh automatic.
The Impossible Happens
Few, I suspect, imagined in 1986 when he was in prison for political offenses that less than 20 years later Chen Shui-bian (
Democratization and liberalization are what have saved the island from that fate and great credit is owed to all who brought that about, both within the long-ruling KMT and in the brave opposition, and to the enlightened US approach that fostered it. The impossible has happened in Taiwan, as it has as well in a host of other states (and I believe will eventually in China as well). But it would be less than candid not to admit that some outsiders are very disappointed with this result and frankly not yet reconciled to it.
The Inner History of "Normalization"
Why all this should upset Beijing is perhaps obvious. But why also Washington, which is clearly unsure how to respond? Surely Washington favors democracy and furthermore has, through numerous oral and written assurances since the 1970s, not to mention legislation, made clear that it will stand by Taiwan?
All that is true, but reality is not so simple. The fact is that within all the careful language and reassurances of the US recognition of Beijing in the 1970s lay a fundamental but never articulated expectation, which was that within a fairly short period of time Taipei would come to terms with Beijing.
Taipei received no forewarning of what was coming nor was its government consulted about any of the terms. US President Jimmy Carter terminated the security treaty after a year's notice, but that step was taken only after objections were raised within the administration to the original plan simply to drop it. The first draft of the Taiwan Relations Act made no mention at all of security relations with the island. The Taipei government was never mentioned; only the people "on" (not "of," interestingly enough) Taiwan. Clearly no one was planning on dealing with the "Taiwan authorities" much longer, or they would have been nicer.
The shock of derecognition was expected to provide enough of a push to compel the mainlander-dominated government, whose chief claim to legitimacy had always been based on China and not Taiwan, to strike a deal, and the surfacing on the Chinese side of "one country, two systems" at this point was not coincidental. No one expected Chiang Kai-shek's (
Three years after derecognition -- and only two years after the mutual defense treaty had expired -- the US attempted to pressure Taiwan even more by the 1982 communique on arms sales. To be fair, the meaning of this document, which premises everything on a "fundamentally peaceful" Chinese approach, can be disputed. But I am inclined to believe a retired US diplomat with intimate knowledge of the issue when he explains that and end to US weapons supplies (implied in the document) was intended to close off any road for Taiwan but acceptance of the peaceful terms China was then offering.
The 1970s and the 1980s were dominated in the US by the expectation in some influential policy circles that Taiwan would cease to be a problem, after a decent interval. That was what "normalization" was all about and how it was understood in China. We would sacrifice Taiwan, though we hoped and expected that Taipei would help to conceal this fact by going quietly. The communiques (but not the Taiwan Relations Act) were intended simply to facilitate this outcome and not, as some suggested at the time, to provide a pathway to continuing US ties to Taiwan.
Expectations Dashed
As Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz has observed, the advent of full democracy in Taiwan has changed the whole situation in ways that are sometimes not fully grasped.
To begin with, it has immeasurably invigorated Taiwan. The DPP victory has brought a vast and hitherto alienated part of the Taiwan population into the midst of practical decision making, with talents, skills, money, enthusiasm, and a host of other resources. The defeated KMT looks likely to emerge from its current stock-taking reinvigorated as well. This reinvigoration of course did not begin this year: Both Chiang Ching-kuo (
This is far from the isolated and demoralized KMT government that some had expected to make their own bargain with Beijing. But even if today someone emerged who wanted to accept Beijing's terms -- a Taiwanese Tung Chee-hwa (
Furthermore, the whole question of Taiwan's future has been opened for honest discussion. Much to the irritation of Chiang Kai-shek's government, the US never recognized it has having more than administrative authority over Taiwan: Legal sovereignty was repeatedly ruled out in favor of the doctrine that the island's status "remained to be determined." Nor did the US abandon this position even in the Shanghai communique; we only "acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China." This was reaffirmed five years ago by the Clinton administration.
At the time of normalization, the expectation was that the issue would become moot after Taiwan made its expected agreement -- even though Washington did not recognize the Taipei government as having sovereignty over Taiwan.
But this did not happen, and now Chen has quite rightly pointed out that there is confusion in Taiwan (and not only in Taiwan) about what China means by "one China" and that no consensus exists in Taiwan over the island's status. Legally, however, there is continuity -- a Republic of China government and constitution, the same flag, national anthem, etc. -- so it is hard to accuse Taipei of unilaterally altering anything.
This is a very inconvenient set of developments for Washington and for Beijing, but they will not go away easily. Unless one decides to establish a "China policy exception" for all concepts of law, legitimacy, comparable treatment, consistency, and so forth, they must be addressed from general principles, not short-term expediency. But to do so now will not be easy.
Beijing's Fear of Democracy
The biggest shock to Beijing from this election, however, was not Chen's victory or even the uncertainty it cast over long-standing aspects of China policy. Rather, what really upset Beijing was the KMT's loss. That a long-time ruling party, long organized according to the same Leninist principles as the Communist Party, should have been turned out peacefully by Taiwan's voters was deeply unsettling to Beijing.
Fear of democracy, in fact, even more than fear of "Taiwan independence," is at the root of the current tension between Taipei and Beijing and this fact makes achieving real peace more difficult. The most neuralgic comparisons between Taipei and Beijing are not in how they explain "one China" (if they do at all) but in how they treat their own people.
In China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is being purged to silence some members' eloquent advocacy of liberalization. On Taiwan, the head of Academia Sinica, who long shunned politics, has begun to take a public role. In China, political power is passing to the taizi dang (
Given the increasingly volatile domestic situation in China these days it is not so much wordplay about "one China" but rather Taiwan's democratic example that most of all inspires fear in the hearts of the rulers in Beijing and this fact has important implications.
A Short-Term Resolution?
Some influential observers argue current tensions can be resolved fairly easily by means of compromise that will simultaneously meet China's demands for "unification" while assuring that Taiwan will continue to enjoy all its present freedoms. That might be the case if the issue was no more than finding an acceptable international status for Taiwan. Word games can help there, as with the Olympics and the Asian Development Bank. But if the problem is Taiwan's democracy, then no fundamental solution is in sight.
If what Beijing worries about is Taiwan's destabilizing example, then a lot more than a verbal formula will be required to fix things. Nothing less will be needed than to bring Taiwan to heel, to force its people to bow, to incorporate, perhaps loosely at first and mostly verbally, into a power hierarchy in which it acknowledges Beijing's superiority. To do that will require more than finding words; it will require changing facts. Otherwise, its example and its impunity will continue to have an effect inside China itself.
The current situation in Hong Kong supports this analysis. Hong Kong after all is already a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. But that alone has not really calmed Beijing. Letting full democracy and free speech flourish in the SAR would immeasurably boost China's reputation and help build confidence in Taiwan. But it is becoming increasingly clear is that what China wants is to get Hong Kong genuinely under control: To halt the further development of democracy, tame the media, and create an economically profitable but politically subservient entity -- and this with a territory already fully part of the PRC. Taiwan and the rest of the world should take note.
The Real Future
For the moment it is in the interest of all parties to continue to fudge the basic issues in the interests of peace and prosperity. But all must consider the real future.
For anyone who listened sympathetically to DPP arguments about China policy in years past, the current situation is not surprising. One basic approach was that China has a quarrel with the KMT, not with us; get rid of the KMT and they won't care about Taiwan any more. That has proved to be overly optimistic. I am not suggesting now that the DPP necessarily alter any of its principles or policy objectives. But it is clear that moving from opposition to governing will mean a change -- although the initial signs are very positive.
For Washington and Beijing (and the rest of the world) it is time to think about what is really going to happen, rather than what they thought was going to happen in the 1970s but did not. Taiwan is not going to disappear. It is, by any standard, a "state" and one with a very substantial real international profile, despite its tiny cross section on all official radars.
The Chinese policy of attempting to appear alternately forthcoming and threatening has failed abjectly. My own belief is that if Beijing would make better offers, lots of problems could be solved. But the current trend in Beijing, reflecting the volatile domestic situation, is to brook no compromise with Taiwan. Negotiations with legitimate elected representatives of Taiwan's people might, after all, lead to demands that the Beijing government allow the election of legitimate representatives for China's people. Hence the resort to force.
Force, however, will not solve any problem; it will only make them worse. Those in China who delude themselves that a series of missile salvoes will somehow bring Taipei to terms should consider NATO operations against Serbia. The original concept was for two days of bombing, with pauses for Milosevic to reflect, which it was confidently expected would bring him back to negotiations. The bombing of course lasted 77 days, still failing to achieve its objectives.
China should also recognize that force against Taiwan will bring catastrophe onto her own head. Markets will be closed, that of the US most importantly; foreign investment will cease; the economy will slide towards collapse -- and the unspoken bargain with the Chinese people, prosperity in return for obedience, will be broken, with results difficult to foresee. Regional powers such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and others will begin serious programs to acquire deterrent capability against China -- ballistic missiles, weapons of mass destruction, and so forth. Finally, the US will certainly be involved militarily.
Now in a certain sense the current difficult situation is caused by democracy in Taiwan, because without that democracy the island's government might indeed have buckled under. But it is also caused by Beijing's turn away from political reform in 1989, the Tiananmen massacre, and the stirring up today of crude nationalism as a substitute for political legitimacy. In the short run, reconciling regimes of two such distinct types is impossible.
But in the medium- to longer-term, a modus vivendi is not only possible, it is well-nigh inevitable. Its shape is not difficult to discern; it is what I call "baptizing the status quo" -- giving a legal name to what exists, without changing it in any way. That is in everybody's interest. Getting there, however, will require ending the incompatibility that currently exists between short-term management of the relationship and long-term interests. The world, China included, needs to engage Taiwan, not isolate it.
But if democracy is part of the problem, it is also part of the long-term solution. In the Cold War, peace in Europe was kept by a mixture of deterrence and discussion. But when communism and dictatorship collapsed, real peace became possible of a kind that simply could not have existed earlier. The same is true for Asia. Democracy makes our allies there even more precious than they were during the Cold War, when many of them were dictatorships and only "free" relatively speaking. We must not attempt yet again to sacrifice Taiwan. Instead, we must work to maintain peace in the present, keeping every form of communication and dialogue continuing, while seeking to create the sorts of conditions in the future -- political liberalization in China included -- that will make possible in the East the sort of genuine peace that may now be dawning in the West.
Arthur Waldron (林蔚) is Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. This paper was presented at the international conference on "The Development of Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations into the 21st Century" sponsored by the Chinese Eurasia Education Foundation and the Institute of International Relations of National Sun Yat-sen University.
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