The last thing I want to see, and I think this is true of everybody, is to have any kind of conflict involving the Strait. And in order to avoid that, you have to understand the conditions more carefully and be more sensitive about how people feel about them. If democracy is used as a weapon — I mean democracy is a wonderful idea, for all its faults, I still think it's better than the rest — we must distinguish what is used as an internal instrument by the people themselves, which is fine, from what is used by others outside to serve their own agenda, which is dangerous and could actually create the destabilizing conditions that harm the people who want democracy.
TT: What's the Chinese perspective on Taiwan?
WGW: Here is something very complicated for all Chinese. The people, the leaders and different generations of Chinese on both sides of the Strait probably have different views about what should be done. There are subtle variations in their respective views. But basically they agree that Taiwan is part of China.
TT: In your opinion, what does China want from Taiwan?
WGW: The government leaders on the Mainland don't want the Taiwanese to be hostile. They wouldn't want people in Taiwan to be used by hostile powers against China. In terms of security, they would want a Taiwan that is on their side. But they don't see that. They were uncomfortable that Taiwan was part of the Cold War to begin with. Taiwan was very much part of the anti-communist frontline, and the memory of that remains. And they are not yet sure that that is over, that countries that could be hostile or that don't really care what happens to China, that want to destroy China for ideological reasons, would always want to use Taiwan as a base for doing that.
At the heart of it all is the fear that Taiwan could be used by other people and that the Taiwanese are so self-engrossed that they don't see that and could innocently or deliberately be used by forces that are hostile to China. So from that angle, China would never allow Taiwan to be in that position. That is my understanding. If there is a threat of that happening, they will go to war.
TT: But what about the issue of independence? How does that fit into the thinking of the leaders in China?
WGW: That's part of the story; but it's not the only part. The more fundamental thing is not to have Taiwan so positioned that it could be used by enemies of China against China. And this is part of the history that Chinese leaders learned from the 19th century: China's enemies come not only from land. In the past, it was always from overland and China never had a dangerous enemy from the sea. So the 19th-century British, after the Opium War, and the French, the Japanese and the Americans, all came by sea, and that woke the Chinese up for the first time in their history that there can be dangers from the sea.
TT: And this was a fundamental shift in the thinking of China's leaders?
WGW: Once they woke up to the fact that you can be attacked from the sea and be defeated by sea … it changed the whole of Chinese history. The 19th century's successful invasions by sea really broke China's confidence in a way that the invasions by land never did. The leaders said that never again would they allow the sea approaches to China to be vulnerable. The fact is that victory in World War II — not by the Chinese alone but with the help of the Americans and other allies — confirmed that Taiwan is part of China. Having achieved that, the Chinese are not prepared to let it go again.
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