China has given up on peaceful, uncoerced unification with Taiwan. That is the message that clearly emerges yet again from China’s approach to and response to Taiwan’s recent election.
During the campaign season that preceded January 13, Beijing made virtually no effort to win hearts and minds in Taiwan. It relied instead on political warfare and outright threats. China claimed that “peace and war” were on the ballot. On the eve of the election, the Taiwan Affairs Office warned voters that Vice President William Lai (賴清德) “would continue to follow the evil path of provoking ‘independence’ and … take Taiwan ever further away from peace and prosperity, and ever closer to war and decline.” To their great credit, a plurality of Taiwanese voters paid these threats no mind.
As for political warfare, Beijing’s reliance on disinformation, what Taipei calls “cognitive warfare,” and other forms of political interference betrays China’s lack of confidence that it can make its case on the merits. Indeed, that lack of confidence is well deserved. There is, on the one hand, scant interest in unification among Taiwan’s populace. When Taiwanese voters gaze across the Taiwan Strait, they are dismayed by what they see — whether that be Beijing’s treatment of Muslim minorities, its crackdown on Hong Kong, or its repression of civil society. On the other hand, people in Taiwan have developed and embraced a unique Taiwanese identity, and Chinese appeals to blood-and-soil ties fall on deaf ears.
It is precisely because Chinese leaders know that uncoerced unification is not in the cards that they feel they must meddle in Taiwan’s domestic affairs to bring it about. When that meddling fails, as it did last month, Chinese responses likewise reveal a belief that the Taiwanese will not be useful partners in bringing about unification. Xi Jinping (習近平) could have displayed magnanimity towards president-elect Lai, indicating that he hoped a constructive relationship was possible — and thus beginning to undo the damage to China’s reputation that has resulted from a decade of nonstop pressure on Taiwan. Instead, Xi opted to escalate.
Just two days after the election, Nauru severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan and established ties with the People’s Republic of China. For the first time — hence the escalation — a country switching its allegiance cited United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 as its rationale. Resolution 2758 granted the People’s Republic of China a seat in the UN, but otherwise said nothing about Taiwan or sovereignty over the island. In orchestrating Nauru’s citation of the resolution, China is signaling an enhanced legal warfare effort to isolate Taiwan internationally.
Moreover, in instigating the switch when it did, China was not punishing Lai, who will not be inaugurated until May. Instead, China sought to punish Taiwan’s voters for the choices they made. Taiwanese voters, however, did not opt for war — despite Chinese efforts to construe their choice as such — but rather opted for continuation of the status quo that has held since 2014, when then-president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policy of cross-Strait detente fell apart. That status quo has been defined by the government’s willingness to engage with China without political preconditions, its decision to abide by prior cross-Strait agreements, the Democratic Progressive Party’s embrace of the Republic of China constitutional framework and Taiwan’s continuing quest for greater international space.
This has been a good deal for China. Yet it is one that Beijing has refused to accept despite knowing, after nearly two decades of failed attempts to coax or coerce Taiwan into a closer embrace, that there is no better deal on offer.
None of this is to say that armed conflict is inevitable. Deterrence is possible, and Beijing would prefer to achieve its aims via other means. But those means will be coercive and Taiwan will find itself perpetually on the defensive. Pressure will continue to mount, as China under Xi has lost the capacity for flexibility or significant modulation in its cross-Strait policy.
The Taiwanese continue to stand tall despite Xi’s efforts to make them bend the knee. He does not abide that defiance, but he has thus far failed to solve it. His insistence on doing so foretells rough waters ahead.
Michael Mazza is a senior director at the Project 2049 Institute and a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.
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