Having returned recently from her first visit to Taiwan, US Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, commented that the US’ US$6.4 billion sale of military arms to Taiwan was “a mistake,” and reiterated her opposition to the sale. The comments came after a tour of the region that also took her to Beijing and Shanghai, and seem to indicate a shift in US-Taiwan relations. Feinstein is known in the US Senate for her pro-China leanings and is a key figure amongst US politicians who favor maintaining good ties with Beijing. Believing Sino-US relations to be very important to US interests, she has always been somewhat opposed to the idea of selling weapons to Taiwan.
Then there is Bonnie Glaser, a China expert in Washington, who said in a recent interview that China has recently started to make a lot of noise over the Taiwan military sales issue for a specific reason. It sees cross-strait relations as having entered a new phase, and is now looking for the US to re-evaluate its Taiwan policy.
At the same time, late last month, during the second round of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, China’s leaders made their stance known through an address given by Rear Admiral Yang Yi (楊毅).
Yang commented on the US record of interfering with China’s core interests, especially on the issue of unification. Yang focused specifically on examples from last year through to the beginning of this year — namely arms sales to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama’s meeting with exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama. These actions, he warned, have angered not only the Chinese government but the Chinese people, too, and the US continues on this course at its peril.
It appears that Beijing’s policy of verbal attacks and saber rattling against the US, in which it claims to want to promote cross-strait peace while opposing US arms sales to Taiwan on the other, is gaining ground.
All of this has conspired over the last few years to create a new environment not entirely conducive to Taiwan’s national interests, helped in no small part by the government’s declaration of a “diplomatic truce.” Our armed forces are being prepared for a more defensive role in which they are downsizing and even about to switch over to a system of voluntary enlistment. In light of this, even a major US government think tank believes that the closer ties brought about by the degree and speed of the economic exchanges, the sheer volume of human traffic between the two countries and the subsequent reopening of systematic cross-strait negotiation channels, are all incrementally increasing the possibility of Taiwan willingly merging with China.
In a speech in which he laid down his “six points” to promote peaceful development between the two countries, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) said that China extends a sincere invitation to those people who have supported, been involved in or followed the cause of Taiwanese independence, to return to the correct path forward for peaceful development across the Strait. This was a clear shift of emphasis to a more soft power approach, to which the Taiwanese leadership has responded, reiterating on several occasions that Taiwan has no intention of challenging the core national interests of the People’s Republic of China.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), for example, said in an interview with CNN early last month that he would “never” ask the US to take up arms on Taiwan’s behalf. Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) said on a visit to the US that a peaceful framework to cope with political questions was unavoidable at some point in the future.
The US has never really given much thought to the fact that China and Taiwan might “merge,” because the assumption has always been that China will use military force. There are, however, substantive changes going on internally within both Taiwan and China at the moment, including a dramatic increase in Taiwan’s economic reliance on China, to the tune of about US$100 billion; including increased numbers of Chinese tourist groups and expanded economic activity between Taiwan and specific regions in China. This is all increasing China’s overall strength.
The US needs to tread carefully and to give some thought to how a united Taiwan and China would impact US interests. If we do, indeed, move in this direction, we can expect a renewed confidence in the Chinese military, no longer constrained by concerns of having to face US forces in the Taiwan Strait. In other words, we can expect structural changes in US military strategy in the Taiwan Strait area and in its relations with both China and Japan.
Not so very long ago Guo Zhenyuan (郭震遠), a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, and Kuang Mei (鄺梅), an assistant professor at Tsinghua University’s Economic Research Institute, both suggested that 2008 marked a significant turning point in cross-strait relations, with the advent of the new idea of peaceful development. This, they said, confirmed the fact that US influence in the region, and its ability to intervene between Taiwan and China, was on the wane. In The Art of War, the great military strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) wrote that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without even raising a weapon. We have been warned. I think it is time for our political leaders to get their heads in the game and work out how to respond to a situation that grows more precarious by the day.
Lu I-ming is the former publisher and president of Taiwan’s Shin Sheng Daily News.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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