The prospects for reconciliation between China and Taiwan may be fundamentally flawed because of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) inability to come up with a new Taiwan policy to address the contradiction between China's peaceful rise and its desire to maintain a credible threat to Taiwan, a British scholar specializing in China-Taiwan relations said last week.
In a paper presented to the Asia-Pacific Security Forum 2005 last Thursday, Christopher Hughes, senior lecturer in the International Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science, challenged the idea of a possible reconciliation in Sino-Taiwan relations in the years to come -- at least not before 2008, a key year coinciding with Beijing's Olympic Games, the CCP's 17th Party Congress and the presidential elections in Taiwan and the US.
He said domestic factors in China, Taiwan and the US will not be conducive to reconciliation; rather they could be the "quiet before the storm." Hughes said the development of Taiwanese identity is a crucial element in Sino-Taiwan relations that the CCP has been unable to harness since the election of Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in 2000.
"There is a general awareness and agreement in mainland China that they've lost the game on Taiwanese identity. They've lost the battle for some minds in Taiwan," Hughes said.
The academic said that the failure to tackle the development of a Taiwanese identity could be one reason behind the PRC's tougher line toward Taiwan.
Hughes said this revealed a contradiction in Beijing's desire to present itself as "a peaceful rising power" while at the same time maintaining a credible threat toward Taiwan.
Hughes said that literature by Chinese scholars on the "peaceful rise" reveals this contradiction.
"When they get to the Taiwan issue, it's very difficult for them to reconcile these two things," Hughes said.
However, Hughes added that there were also some Chinese scholars who, recognizing this dilemma, have begun discussions along the lines that if China wants to have a peaceful rise, it has to at least have a new Taiwan policy, such as allowing the possibility for a "two China" formula.
However, Hughes said these types of developments are quickly suppressed.
"That's one of the reasons that peaceful rise is not being discussed anymore and now peaceful development has become the new word," Hughes said.
Regarding Taiwan's domestic situation, Hughes said that identity politics had become crucial to the internal dynamics of electoral politics, especially for the DPP.
"Taiwan's 2004 presidential election showed the need for the DPP to make identity politics central to [their] campaign, to shift the middle ground away from economic issues," Hughes said.
Looking at the opposition, Hughes said the new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) under Ma Ying-jeou (
"It's very interesting to see that Ma Ying-jeou's policy is really a reversion to what Lee Teng-hui established back in 1988, which expounds that unification essentially won't happen unless democratization happens in mainland China, which, you all know, is a long, long time away," he said.
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