As a rule of thumb, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait will take a non-zero-sum approach to tactical items, such as financial cooperation, fighting crime and adding cross-strait flights, with the result that both sides will enjoy payoffs.
When items under negotiation enter the strategic level, however, China adopts a zero-sum strategy, in which the payoff takes something away from the counterparty.
In the Nanjing round of talks, no agreement was reached on the “fifth freedom of the air,” for example, as yielding on this item would have implied that air travel between Taiwan and China is international rather than domestic.
By taking a zero-sum approach on this matter, China denied both parties the moderate payoffs that a Nash equilibrium would have provided. It valued lose-lose (or in this case not-win, not-win) at the tactical level above any other possible outcome.
As cross-strait negotiations continue, it should become clearer which issues China considers tactical and which it considers strategic.
On the former, it will show “goodwill” and take a non-zero-sum approach, with the implication that negotiations can proceed smoothly.
On the latter, however — including the question of Taiwanese independence — Beijing will very much be the zero-sum, intransigent player.
This shows us that, for China, the payoffs at the tactical level are a means to an end at the strategic level — the same approach to negotiations that once led an observer to reflect on former Chinese premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai’s (周恩來) style of diplomacy as not involving any substantial concession on any important (that is, strategic) issue.
What has yet to be determined is whether Taipei will also take the zero-sum approach to negotiations on strategic matters.
If it doesn’t, or if it fails to recognize that this is the game China has been playing all along, it could very well lose everything.
J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.
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