Sun, Apr 12, 2026 page8

• China often breaks its promises

  • By Hou Liang-xuan 侯量軒
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  When political leaders speak of “peace” across the Taiwan Strait, the word carries an intuitive appeal. However, in international politics, peace rests on commitments — and not all commitments are equally credible.

  On Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) led a delegation to China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The visit was framed as a “journey of peace,” with an explicit focus on dialogue and stability. In a time of heightened cross-strait tensions, “peace” is an appealing political aspiration. Yet when peace is predicated on political commitments, a question arises: How credible are those commitments?

  This question is not rooted in suspicion or ideology but in patterns observable across historical experience. Over the past several decades, China has repeatedly used agreements and assurances as instruments to facilitate the incorporation of politically distinct regions. In 1951, the 17-Point Agreement promised Tibet the preservation of its political system and religious autonomy. In the following decades, however, Beijing gradually restructured governance in the region, eroding the autonomy it had pledged to protect. A similar trajectory can be observed in Hong Kong. The Sino-British Joint Declaration and the “one country, two systems” framework promised a high degree of autonomy and institutional continuity. Yet recent developments — including the imposition of the National Security Law and electoral reforms — significantly altered the city’s political landscape.

  The importance of these cases lies not in identifying a single “breach,” but in revealing a broader governing pattern. China’s political commitments — even when formalized in agreements with international legal significance — are not fixed constraints. They function as policy instruments that can be recalibrated as circumstances change. In this sense, they are less “institutional commitments” than “strategic commitments.”

  Understanding this dynamic requires attention to the logic of China’s political system. In the absence of an independent judiciary or external arbitration mechanisms, political agreements lack enforceable guarantees. When compliance depends entirely on the discretion of a single governing authority, commitments cannot easily become binding institutional arrangements. Once a dominant actor consolidates power, the incentive to defect becomes structurally embedded.

  Second, within official discourse, state sovereignty and national security consistently take precedence. When political conditions shift, prior commitments are reinterpreted or rendered obsolete under the justification of safeguarding the state. In this framework, agreements do not function as mutual constraints but as provisional tools of governance.

  Finally comes the role of time. In many cases, Beijing initially offers relatively flexible arrangements to reduce resistance during the early stages of integration. As control becomes more secure, these arrangements are subsequently revised. This pattern — promise first, restructure later — suggests that the credibility of commitments cannot be assessed solely at the moment they are made but must be understood in relation to long-term shifts in power.

  These historical patterns do not necessarily negate the value of dialogue, but they do raise the threshold for evaluating any promise of “peace.” If an agreement lacks verifiable mechanisms of enforcement or allows for unilateral reinterpretation, its function is closer to political strategy than a stable institutional guarantee.

  A more pressing question is not whether engagement should occur, but under what conditions commitments can be considered credible. A credible political commitment requires three elements: verifiable implementation, enforceable constraints and institutional safeguards against unilateral revision. Without these, “peace” becomes a rhetorical construct rather than a durable political reality.

  In international politics, the value of a commitment lies not in the appeal of its language but in its capacity to endure constraint. If the meaning of an agreement can be redefined over time, what it offers might not be lasting peace but only the temporary illusion of stability.

  Hou Liang-xuan is a Taiwan-based writer with a background in sociology who focuses on education policy and social inequality.
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