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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